I was a chef for 17 years, 11 in a restaurant and 6 on a private yacht. What always strikes me is how much each piece of food is different. No two tomatoes are

I was a chef for 17 years, 11 in a restaurant and 6 on a private yacht. What always strikes me is how much each piece of food is different. No two tomatoes are the same and the higher the quality of the product usually the less automation in the growing or raising process making the final product even more unique. Rare, medium-rare, medium, ect. are temperatures, literally the internal temperature of a piece of meat. It's not just weight and dimensions of the cut that are involved in the cooking time, but also things like specific gravity and percentage of water. (Have you ever been to a restaurant that makes home-made french fries that are soggy and overcooked? They don't know about specific gravity of potatoes.[1]) Cooking is also multidimensional, for example, medium-rare by definition is 130 to 135 degrees F, however, the rate of cooking determines different outcomes. For example, lower heat and a long time to reach 130 degrees F has a very different end product from high heat over a short time. In the latter, the meat will be more unevenly cooked by cross section. Freshness is one of many factors that determine how much moister is released during pan frying. So sometimes the pan heat needs to adjusted in order to make sure that surface of a piece of meat or fish has the right amount of crispiness which in turn changes the cooking time One of my favorite parts of being a yacht chef was not knowing which foods were going to spoil first. Survival was about strategy and knowing how to make everything from scratch like bread, mayonnaise and pasta. The night before I'd look in the fridge and see what needs to be used first, it might be the spinach or the broccoli, and then design meals around that item. This is what imagination is for. Not only the state of the food needs to calculated, but also if we are moving between anchorages or marina the sea height. If the guests have been active fishing or scuba diving so there are psychological considerations also. Cooking is about imagination and to imagine different outcomes whether the internal state of a salmon or steak requires experience and that only comes from cooking, failing at it, and making mistakes. The only way to get good at cooking is to suck it for a long time. But, that is the same for everything. Don't cook just to eat, cook because it is a challenge like playing a video game where the ball needs to bounce off the paddle at just the right angle to make it hit the target. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoCCuys2cMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoCCuys2cMY