Making progress is mostly an unglamorous affair. It’s bland. Practice makes perfect, sure. But practice is bland, it’s uneventful, often frustrating. It is difficult to recognize the progress you are making when it comes in tiny increments through daily practice. Of course, it is in this unglamorous, bland, tedious and repetitive practice that future mastery lies. If only it were easier to remember that while you are going through the blandness.
Excellence is a Habit
Kobe Bryant was notorious for his grueling 4 a.m. training sessions, sometimes practicing for hours before his teammates even arrived at the gym. The writer Haruki Murakami follows a strict daily writing routine, treating creativity like a muscle that must be exercised every single day. Charlie Parker famously claimed to have practiced his saxophone for 11 to 15 hours a day for a period of 3-4 years, and John Coltrane was similarly known for his relentless pursuit of musical excellence, sometimes even falling asleep with his saxophone still in his mouth.
‘He was such a compulsive practiser, like he wanted to practise all the time…When you start doing that you get a connection to the instrument… It starts to feel like an extension of yourself.’
Kamasi Washington on John Coltrane
When people think of excellence, they picture the moments of triumph, the soaring solos, the flawless performances. What they don’t see is the hours, days, years of tedious repetition that preceded them. It’s the same in the kitchen, in business, in any pursuit of mastery. The greatest painters, architects, and surgeons—anyone who has reached the pinnacle of their field—have one thing in common: they endure the blandness of repetition to achieve brilliance. They know there are no shortcuts.
This week, Maxine would tackle something hearty to build towards mastering knife skills and building flavour: my father’s take on Ragu Bolognese. Cooking a proper ragu is as much about patience as it is about skill. From the evenly diced onion, carrot and celery – the mirepoix – to the slow-simmered sauce, a good ragu cannot be rushed.
Chop Until the Knife Feels Like an Extension of Yourself
Mirepoix, the humble yet essential trio of onions, carrots, and celery, is the backbone of countless dishes in French cuisine and beyond. Named after the 18th-century French nobleman Duke of Mirepoix, whose chef popularized this aromatic base, it serves as the silent workhorse of flavor-building in soups, stews, sauces, and braises.
Beyond its culinary significance, mirepoix is also a rite of passage for any cook learning knife skills. The precise dicing forces a cook to master control, consistency, and efficiency. When done repeatedly, day after day, the knife begins to feel like an extension of the hand—moving instinctively, almost without thought. Just like John Coltrane and his saxophone. Mastering mirepoix is about honing a fundamental skill set that translates to everything else in the kitchen.
But as we stepped into the kitchen, something felt off. The energy was low, the enthusiasm dampened. Maxine wasn’t quite herself, and neither was I.
You Can’t Be At Your Best 100% of the Time
Some days, things just don’t click. Some days, you show up and give it your all, and it’s still just… meh. Maxine’s third day at Chef’s College was a little bit like that. Bland. The session was a bit bland, the food was a bit bland, Maxine and I were a bit bland, it was all a bit bland. It’s just the way it goes sometimes.
Maxine is on school holiday this week, which probably explains her lower energy – she’s in rest-mode. For me it is the exact opposite: I am having an extremely busy week and, unlike previous sessions, I did not take 30 minutes to switch from Business Barbara to Teacher Barbara. I worked right up to the moment she knocked on the door, jumping at the sound, even though I was expecting her to arrive at any moment. My brain was still at work, my physical body smiling and opening the door, going through the motions without being fully present.
It was early on in my own journey at Chef’s College that I learned that there is a direct relationship between your emotional state of mind and the outcome of the food you prepare. You can tell, somehow, if the dish was prepared by someone stressed, angry, or sad. I have no idea exactly how this works, but I know for a fact that it’s true.
Emotion in Cooking: The Intangible Ingredient
I was a “mature” student at Leith’s, going back to school at 27, paying a hefty sum in tuition fees to study at one of the most prestigious private cooking schools in the UK. I was no longer interested in being part of the “cool kids sit at the back”-crew; I was a front-row student. And I am a hard worker—once I am gripped by something, whether it’s chef’s college, starting Kung Fu, or deciding to write a blog, I become quite fanatic about it. I am also very hard on myself (and sometimes others) when I believe I am delivering below my own expectations. A lot of this, I recognize in Maxine. Particularly how tough she can be on herself.
The first time one of my teachers at Leith’s told me that my food would be affected by how I was feeling, I dismissed it as poppycock—something teachers say to make students feel less bad about failing. If my dish had shortcomings, it was because of something I did or did not do, not because of my state of mind. But, once you’ve been cooking daily for a few months, it becomes clear that it’s not a made-up thing, something that is said just to make you feel better. Over time, you even start to recognize these emotional states in the tiny, nuanced differences that probably only you would ever notice—coming through in the taste or appearance of the food you have just prepared.
Speaking Your Mind – “It Is Bothering Me”
I was concerned that this precision chopping, for 30 minutes, would be boring for Maxine. Which more than likely was projection – the last thing I was feeling like, with a mind full of work problems to solve, was chopping up onions, carrots and celery. Rather than stepping back and simply observing Maxine, allowing her to make up her own mind if this was a boring job or not, I lived up to the nickname my aunt gave me when I was a toddler: BlaBla. Maxine was happy to let me talk her through how to approach the onion, square the carrot, trim the celery, but talking through her concentrated chopping was a step too far.
“I can’t chop and talk at the same time,” she grumbled. “That’s why I’m talking and you are chopping,” I responded, with just a touch too much cheerfulness for it to be genuine. I wasn’t chitchatting because I was cheery, I was chitchatting to fill the space, to chitchat my brain into Teacher Barbara and stop ruminating about the work I had been focused on. Maxine has a phenomenal bullshit-radar, and she doesn’t respond well to anything she feels isn’t genuine or authentic. “You. Talking. It bothers me.”
One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in kitchens—and in life—is that frustration is a signal, not a stopping point. When something isn’t working, the easy response is to brush it off or grumble about it. But real growth comes from articulating what’s wrong. It’s not the first time that Maxine has shown her frustration to me – but in the past it would mostly be in the form of a temper tantrum. Some time ago, she nearly took my toes out when she hurtled darts onto the ground because I had congratulated her on having lost by a very narrow margin. Not appreciating praise for failure, she stormed off.
Maxine is beginning to grasp this is not a productive response. We had made an agreement before our very first session together, that I would not allow such a tantrum in the chaotic environment of the kitchen, it’s dangerous. Cooking isn’t just about technique; it’s about awareness. Her ability to articulate what was bothering her, giving me clear instructions to please be quiet, was possibly the greatest success of the day.
Sometimes, the most important progress happens on the days that feel like nothing special at all.
Gaining Confidence
As I shut up, stepped back, and let Maxine get on with chopping, the quality of her dicing visibly improved. Where the irritation at my every “Very good!”, “That’s lovely!”, “Wonderful!” chirp would end up in all sorts of shaped vegetable pieces, in the blissful silence, Maxine’s cuts became more accurate, more confident, with every chop.
As her confidence with the knife grew, so did mine. Had I been holding her back because of the mandoline cut on Audition Day? Was I mollycoddling my protégé out of fear that she would hurt herself? And, taking that thought a little further, was I hovering over her every move to ensure each dish we prepare together would be a success, just to make sure she would not suffer disappointment? How very unfair would that be?
Maxine is a sassy, intelligent, highly independent young girl who is showing increased confidence and self-awareness every time we meet, and who is very actively working on self-improvement – always challenging herself to achieve, comfortable outside her comfort zone.
I made up my mind that I shouldn’t just shut up more often, I should give Maxine a lot more space to cook independently. Give her the space to experience both failure and success in the kitchen – by her own hand, not because I stepped in to guarantee an outcome.
Leveling Up
Next week is Ready, Steady, Cook week – following the 3 Formal, 1 Fun Lesson format we had agreed after our last session together. It will be the perfect opportunity for me to give Maxine the breathing space she deserves and show her that I have every bit of confidence in her capabilities as a chef.
She knows that we will start next week’s session with a pop quiz and, regardless how she does on this, I can let her know that she has successfully passed MJCC Level 1 and it is time to level up.
At Leith’s, the teaching would be split into two day parts – 4 hours of demonstrations and lectures, and 4 hours in the kitchen, practicing what we had seen and learned in the classroom. Maxine and I only have 2 hours per week and, although we had agreed at the start that some sessions would be demos and some would be practical sessions, all she wants to do when she’s here is to be hands on.
Rather than the “blended” demo & practical sessions that we have ended up with in Level 1, Maxine will have to cook (and clean!) far more independently in Level 2. In writing these reflections on our sessions, and finding that there are so many high quality video demos available on, probably, all the topics Maxine will need to cover in her journey at Chef’s College, I can include these in the lesson plans that she always receives a week ahead.
To pass Junior Chef’s College Level 2, Maxine will need to watch the demo videos before our session together, review the lesson plan and recipes, and prepare a time plan of what she will be cooking. Just like I had to at Leith’s.
And like my teachers at Leith’s, instead of stepping in when I see issues or potential improvements, I will ask Maxine questions for her to learn to articulate what she has in mind. And beyond that, I will be quiet, observing in the corner, available for any questions, but otherwise keeping my babbling to myself so Maxine has the room to fully engage with what she is doing. As she so eloquently asked me to do this week.
Embracing the Bland Days
Not every cooking lesson will be a revelation. Not every meal will be memorable. Some days are just about showing up, putting in the work, and getting a tiny bit better. The people who get really, really good at something aren’t the ones who only work when they feel inspired, they push through the uninspired days, too. That’s the secret – showing up. It’s as simple as that.
Maxine’s third day at Chef’s College wasn’t spectacular. But it was important. Because real progress happens when no one is watching, when the work feels tedious, when it’s just about crying through another onion, dicing another carrot, peeling another potato. And the most important progress of today was Maxine finding her voice. From here, everything else will follow.
Mastery isn’t about giant leaps. It’s about a thousand small, seemingly unremarkable steps. And that’s what we did. One more step. One more lesson. One day closer to greatness.