Mise en place
It’s French for “putting in place” or “everything in its place”, and the most popular context for the phrase is in the kitchen. It’s a form of preparation that involves getting all your ingredients and tools (and maybe a glass of wine, if it’s been that kind of day) together before you begin setting things on fi... er, cooking.
It takes some of the excitement out of cooking, because there’s a lot less running back and forth to the pantry, looking for spices or realizing that you’re out of clean ramekins. (Ramekin is a weird word, so I had to look it up: we use it to refer to a little circular dish-thingy. The French, from whence the word comes, use ramequin to refer to a small amount of cheese toasted or baked with breadcrumbs, eggs and seasoning in the little dish we call a ramekin. I have yet to discover what the French call the little dish that they bake ramequin in. With nonsense like this, it’s amazing that we can actually translate anything from any language. Seriously...)
Anyway, pros take this pretty seriously because pros don’t mess around. With proper mise en place there’s less of a chance of being unprepared or surprised and things seem to go a lot smoother and faster. Which probably explains why I’ve been so resistant to using it until the last few years. I didn’t grow up in the French culinary tradition. I grew up in a tradition of Minnesotan Norwegian Lutheran casseroles—or “hot dish”—on my mom’s side and German farmers who could weld tractor parts together with swear words on my dad’s side. Stoicism, yes. Elegance and refinement... less so.
My excuse for not gathering together the necessary items beforehand has perennially been that I’m in a hurry, I have to start right now. Never mind that I do NOT write code this way. I don’t even pack for a trip that way. I wouldn’t paint a room that way if I only had an hour. I guess some things do need to be taught in context, or perhaps I’m just a little slow.
I remember watching the Food Network what feels like a loooong time ago. A couple things stand out about those episodes: the chef putting a dish in one of the ovens and then taking the finished dish out of a different oven after the commercial break is one example. “Ah, yes, the magic of television!”, I laughed to myself.
But the other was this: all of the beautiful ingredients magically waiting for the chef in neatly arranged glass bowls and ramekins, waiting for their expert hands to deftly make an omelette or a croque en bouche or a grilled cheese sandwich with pickles. And I sat there, watching, thinking “Well, yeah, it would be nice if someone got all the stuff together for me ahead of time!”
Yeah, dumbass, it would, wouldn’t it?