Concept tag
#craft-knowledge
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“Because that’s how it works”: when is that an explanation and when is it a refusal?
New cooks ask why a lot. Why rest the meat? Why salt the pasta water and not the sauce at the start? Why does this sauce split if you rush it? When I was an apprentice in Goa my chef answered almost…
Started by Joel D'Souza5 replies -
Nineteen years with one blade: Cook Ding and the discipline that wu wei is usually sold without
A customer from Europe, watching me cut a joint in my workshop, told me it looked effortless and that I must be practising wu wei. She had read a book about it on holiday. I asked her what it meant and she…
Started by Hicham Ouazzani6 replies -
My clients can’t tell walnut from stained beech, but they still mean walnut
Half the customers who order furniture from me ask for walnut. Most of them could not pick walnut out of a pile of stained beech if their life depended on it, and some unscrupulous workshops count on that. A friend lent me…
Started by Hicham Ouazzani5 replies -
Anscombe was right: we see causing all the time
I make cedar doors and ceilings in Tetouan. When I push a chisel through cedar I do not see a chisel, then a cut, and infer a connection. I see the chisel cutting. When my apprentice drops a plank and it cracks,…
Started by Hicham Ouazzani6 replies -
My father knew which cedar beam would split. He could never say how. Did he know?
When I was a boy my father would walk past a stack of beams and tap one with his knuckle and say: not that one, it will split when we carve it. He was almost always right. If you asked him how…
Started by Hicham Ouazzani6 replies