During the class on the evening of April 14th, the class at my school, New Oriental Culinary School, had a debate competition. The purpose of this debate competition is to exercise the students’ language ability and promote the communication and exchange among the students. The theme of this debate is: which is more important, culinary skills or culinary ethics. On the positive side, cooking ethics is more important, and on the negative side, cooking skills are more important.
The number of people in each debate group is 5. In this debate, the debaters on both sides made wonderful speeches, which made the rest of the audience members think and listen. Let’s take a look at the views from both sides.
Cooking Ethics are more important
What is Chú dé (厨德)? Chú dé (“Kitchen Ethics”) refers to the ideological and moral character of a chef. The character of the chef refers to his responsibility for the life and health of customers, and the professionalism of the working kitchen. When we exist in this world as human beings, we need a positive spirit and a positive attitude towards everything. Maybe now you study well in this school and your cooking skills are good, but if you are a morally corrupt person, then you will be condemned by the society and abandoned by your future bosses. Then your good cooking skills will no longer be of use.
Even if you don’t become a very good chef after studying in this school, but you have good chef’s ethics, your boss will see your heart, and no company will hire a chef without a good ethics. For example, we have some excellent students in our class who always rank at the top of the exam, but are they really positive about each practice? The answer is no, even they would argue and then fight. However, we know that teenagers are always impulsive, which does not mean that they have poor moral character.
Of course, there are some students with poor grades in the class. Their cooking skills are not up to the mark, but they obey the management of the administrator. They always study quietly, do not quarrel, and do not fight. Maybe their skills are poor now, but it doesn’t mean their future is also bad. Their calm personality will take them further on the path of becoming a chef.
So what if we go to work in a restaurant as a chef? Maybe the head chef will choose skilled chefs at first, because restaurants need such staff. But after a period of time, the restaurant management found that they only care about their cooking skills, and don’t care about the health of the customers, they don’t check everything in the kitchen carefully, and put some expired seasonings into the dishes, which endangered the health of customers. Or they always have conflicts with other chefs in the kitchen, even to the point of fights.
Our teacher, Mr. Zhu, once said: “When you come to New Oriental Cooking School, I will first teach you how to be a human being, teach you how to handle interpersonal relationships flexibly, and finally teach you how to master cooking skills.” There is a saying in China: “learning skills is first learning morality, and cooking is first being a person,” this is a concept that Mr. Zhu wants to express.
Cooking Skills are more important
At New Oriental Cooking School, we chose the profession of Chinese chef, so what is your purpose in coming here? Whether you want to be a qualified Chinese chef or not, if you want to become a qualified Chinese chef, you must master the techniques of Chinese cooking, so the skills of a chef are the most important. A woman or a man who only cooks at home, would you say he is a cook? His cooking just satisfies the family and you can say he cooks well, but you can’t say he’s a chef. As a chef, the chef’s cooking must be served to the customer, and he can make all kinds of customers feel satisfied.
Here’s an example where you and another chef go to the restaurant for an interview, and the chef first asks you to each cook a dish, and the chef will test it from the whole: knife work, cooking operations, cleaning the stove after cooking, and the taste of the dish. From these aspects, it will test whether your whole process is smooth. Of course, in the end, the better chef will leave behind a chef with poor cooking skills. Because the chefs in the kitchen are a team, they want strong partners. If you don’t have good cooking skills, you just have good character, people may say that you are a kind person, if you have good cooking skills, then people will say, you are a good cook.
The chefs who are now famous are famous because of their excellent cooking skills. Only after relying on your strong cooking skills to get a job, you can let the chef see your excellence, you can get greater achievements. Maybe you’ll be known for your strong cooking skills. If you’re just an average or bad cook, you won’t have a good position in the kitchen, you may have to be the assistant chef who works on the stove all the time, and you may only be able to wash and cut vegetables in the kitchen all the time. You may only be able to do some basic kitchen work. However, if you are a good cook, you will soon be able to take charge of a stove yourself, you will do all kinds of cooking, and finally, you can even become a chef and manage the entire kitchen. I believe that most people have the illusion that what man doesn’t want to be a manager?
Now let’s talk about some real-world questions, maybe you will choose other careers in the future, but the fact that you are studying here now shows that you want to become a chef now. Then the profession of chef will be your iron rice bowl, good cooking skills will allow you to get a higher salary, and you will even become the head chef of a restaurant. A higher salary can give you a better material life, you can make your family better off, and you can create a better future for your children. In such a realistic world, most people in a certain profession are no longer because of dreams or likes, they just want to get a better salary, they just want to live, they just want their families to live a good life.
Summary
Finally, the students voted. The result was 5:13, and the “cooking skills are more important” debate was won. I am one of the “5”. Perhaps because the pro-cooking debaters spoke with enthusiasm, they ignited the hearts of these teenagers, or perhaps because they mentioned more realistic questions that made them think. In the end, most of the teenagers voted for “cooking skills are more important.”
Why do I think kitchen ethics are more important? In fact, both kitchen ethics and cooking skills are the best, kitchen ethics makes people’s spirit and soul better, and cooking skills are realistic things and cannot be lacking. Those famous chefs, their cooking skills must be good? Those chefs who are not famous, although they are not famous for their cooking skills, they conquer their customers with their chef’s heart, they are responsible for customers, they love customers.
I chose Chú dé (厨德), kitchen ethics. I am older than those teenagers in my class, I have experienced more realistic things than them, but I still chose kitchen ethics. Because I think that in any case, you must see your heart clearly, you must keep a pure heart, and be grateful for those things that are full of reality, and let me feel how important it is to maintain a sincere, warm heart.
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