Break Down or Just Cut It Up

[Richard Kilgore]

Where have you people been? I always say "break up" the chicken...that's the new cool way.

I think "plate" if I am, er, plating the plate, but I said that out loud once and got an irritated response from a couple of family members. And I said it once out loud with friends and received a somewhat uncomfortable, intimidated response. Other friends it would be no issue. But I have learned it's often better to not say it. So tonight, I'll "dish up".

[weinoo]

Sigh. I'll never say it again.

Speaking of silly, home enthusiasts like me should know that referring to yourself as a chef in a restaurant setting is liable to end with unpleasantness.

Or a lot of rolling on the floor laughing.

[gfweb]

Breaking down is for Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I don't "plate" either.

At the same time I'm sure some words that have become absolutely common, like "saute," were once considered pretentious. And then there are words you find in older cookbooks that have been pretty much lost. I definitely think we need to bring back "despumate."

[Richard Kilgore]

We taught me to think "plating" in the EGCI, so I never thought of it as pretentious. Presentation matters to me unless we're eating family style.

[Chris Amirault]

Well.

Two pretty remarkable, well-known, chefs, Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot of Ideas in Food (book and blog both), both just "misused" the term "breaking down" in their most recent post, in which they "break down" a few stalks of broccoli rabe into component parts. Sorta like the way I was "breaking down" a couple of chickens.

[weinoo]

Well.

Two pretty remarkable, well-known, chefs, Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot of Ideas in Food (book and blog both), both just "misused" the term "breaking down" in their most recent post, in which they "break down" a few stalks of broccoli rabe into component parts. Sorta like the way I was "breaking down" a couple of chickens.

Well, they're chefs so they (theoretically) should be allowed to. However, to use the term "break down" and apply it to broccoli rabe is just pretentious. As is the use of "component parts" in reference to a stalk of broccoli.

I used to have to trim the artichokes when I worked at Spartina (hey, I told you I never made it too high on the totem pole ) . No one ever said to me to go "break down" a case of 'chokes. They said to go prep a case of artichokes; strangely, I knew exactly what they meant.

It's time for breakfast. You'll all excuse me while I go break down an egg, fire it, and then plate.

[BadRabbit]

It seems to me that some of you are mistaking precise language for pretention.

[Chris Amirault]

Precisely.

[weinoo]

Precise language in a restaurant maybe...at home or in a friend's kitchen, not so much.

[abooja]

I will often say that I am "plating" dinner to my husband, but it is almost always with tongue in cheek and a fair measure of self-consciousness. The alternative, for me, is to say that I'm "slapping the food on the plates", but that takes longer.

I've also used the term "mise en place" when explaining, to this same husband, why he is cleaning fourteen bowls after a simple Tuesday night dinner for two. He is never sufficiently impressed with the lingo to stop shaking his head.

There is one more word that I feel pretentious for using, but shouldn't, because that's what they're called -- macarons. Whenever my husband feels the need to mock my pronunciation of this word, as he pops another into his mouth, I remind him of his attachment to the word, "torchiere". It's a friggin' lamp, dude.

[Alcuin]

I don't think "break down" is any more precise than "cut up" (though it is more precise than "cut"). It's not wrong or misuse of language, but using "break down" comes with some connotations that "cut up" doesn't. So if you like the word and those connotations use it. I imagine people get pleasure from the sense belonging to a cooking elite that analyzes food in terms of its component parts, no matter what it is and sometimes on the molecular level. And that's great and good. But to say that one is more precise than the other, well, I just don't see that. Like I said before, there are only so many parts so when I'm going to cut up a chicken and you're going to break one down, we're probably going to get some strikingly similar results (and differences related to learned and personal methods).

[mkayahara]

I hesitate to beat a dead horse here, but I just realized that there's another term I find funny when home cooks use it: menu. To my mind, a menu involves several different options that allow me to customize my meal as I like. So I don't plan a menu at home, I just decide what I want for dinner!

[technophile50]

fabricate: 2. To construct by combining or assembling diverse, typically standardized parts:

A more pedantically accurate use of the (somewhat) interchangeable words "make" and "fabricate" -

I MAKE soup, I FABRICATE lobster bisque.

When I take my knife/cleaver to a chicken, I defabricate it.

Chef de cuisine = chief, or person in charge, of the kitchen.

Kitchen is the room where food is prepared - in colonial US, often a separate building because of fire danger and the heat, humidity, and unsightly mess (feathers, guts, blood) created by food preparation.

Insider slang shorthand use of "kitchen" to refer to "kitchen staff" has lead to its acceptance as an alternate definition.

When Gordon Ramsay says "This #$%^&*@ kitchen is so filthy there's mold growing everywhere" he's not talking about the personal hygiene of the staff, and when he says "this kitchen's at war with itself" he's not talking about the stove plotting against the refrigerator. Like the Red Queen, "it means what he chooses it to mean, neither more nor less.”

Cook refers to the process of heating food in a sometimes successful attempt to make it more edible, or the person of generally lesser skill who performs this task on the order of chef by e.g., boiling water.

Insider slang use has morphed this term in two ways; first, there is an implied diminutive or even pejorative use regarding skill, and it also is generically used to refer to any lesser skilled food preparer.

This has led to some hilarious oxymorons - pastry "chefs" who are only in charge of donuts, or "salad cook" job openings at The Roadhouse Grill. (cook me a nice fresh green salad, eh &:>)

"Chef" covers a lot of ground from amateur to internationally famous - so use a modifier - home, professional, modernist, potty mouth(you know who I'm talkin' 'bout &;>)