I've been mulling this one for months. I am really rather stumped...
My ex is and was head chef at a high end restaurant. He has no formal training, the closest is a couple of years of informal apprenticeship under a very talented chef. At home, his cooking was always inventive and varied, and we both enjoyed shopping for and keeping our kitchen stocked with many ingredients, some obscure by normal standards. Just like all of your kitchens, I imagine. At the same time he was not snobby, at least not as regards my cooking skills. He still calls me sometimes for cooking advice.
Now, a couple years later, my partner's brother is a chef. More or less a sous chef (that's how he described it, verbatim, when I asked him) working at a high end restaurant at a high dollar country club. He went to the Western Culinary Institute, has a degree from there. In his kitchen one will always find huge amounts of various cuts of beef, chicken breasts, artichoke hearts, fig vinegar, 3 kinds of hot sauce, all what I would expect from my experience with my ex and his peers. But what has me stumped is things like NO onions of any kind on a normal basis, once in a while some pre-peeled garlic, no pepper grinder (preground pepper only and that in huge quantities), no normal spices or herbs, etc. You get the idea, I'm sure. No basics.
Furthermore, and just as curiously to me, in the 8 months or so that I have known him EVERY week is the same. Mondays, tacos; Tuesdays, gnocchi and spicy sausage/chicken/roasted red pepper/tomato sauce; Wednesday, Kraft macaroni and cheese with ground beef; etc. Also he takes it as a given that people without degrees don't cook well. Period. No negativity, that's just his inner reality.
I'm really not being critical at all, although it probably sounds that way. It impacts me not at all, and perhaps he is just tired of cooking after doing so all day, and wants to keep it simple. It's just far outside of my realm of experience.
My ex is and was head chef at a high end restaurant. He has no formal training, the closest is a couple of years of informal apprenticeship under a very talented chef. At home, his cooking was always inventive and varied, and we both enjoyed shopping for and keeping our kitchen stocked with many ingredients, some obscure by normal standards. Just like all of your kitchens, I imagine. At the same time he was not snobby, at least not as regards my cooking skills. He still calls me sometimes for cooking advice.
Now, a couple years later, my partner's brother is a chef. More or less a sous chef (that's how he described it, verbatim, when I asked him) working at a high end restaurant at a high dollar country club. He went to the Western Culinary Institute, has a degree from there. In his kitchen one will always find huge amounts of various cuts of beef, chicken breasts, artichoke hearts, fig vinegar, 3 kinds of hot sauce, all what I would expect from my experience with my ex and his peers. But what has me stumped is things like NO onions of any kind on a normal basis, once in a while some pre-peeled garlic, no pepper grinder (preground pepper only and that in huge quantities), no normal spices or herbs, etc. You get the idea, I'm sure. No basics.
Furthermore, and just as curiously to me, in the 8 months or so that I have known him EVERY week is the same. Mondays, tacos; Tuesdays, gnocchi and spicy sausage/chicken/roasted red pepper/tomato sauce; Wednesday, Kraft macaroni and cheese with ground beef; etc. Also he takes it as a given that people without degrees don't cook well. Period. No negativity, that's just his inner reality.
I'm really not being critical at all, although it probably sounds that way. It impacts me not at all, and perhaps he is just tired of cooking after doing so all day, and wants to keep it simple. It's just far outside of my realm of experience.