Mise en place??

[thatchairlady]

I don't generally have all my ingredients sitting in their own little bowls but will do all the slicing and dicing before I start cooking. Makes me a little crazy when a TV chef has everything laid out so perfectly in little dishes and then doesn't use ALL of the ingredient in the dish?? So ya diced up onions or celery or carrots and then use all but a few TBSPs?? What's with that?

[minas6907]

I could see that. They probably just want to have enough ingredients on hand, but when your cooking you sort of get a feel for how much of an item you want to have inside your dish. If I wanted to make a salsa fresca and cut everything up and divided into separate bowls, it would be a little harder to figure how much of an item I need, but when I start combining everything, I might find that I dont need all the onion that I cut, or all the cilantro. I would think that if one is doing a tv show, the measurements aren't always so exact, they may just have enough ingredients in their bowls and give approximate measures while speaking.

[pacman1978]

You are assuming that they have done the cutting themself which is pretty unlikely. So someone just gets told chop 2 onions, 3 carrots and a green pepper and he will use what he wants. Bear in mind in a restaurant you don't chop per order but a quantity in advance and then use the required amount...