Free Mission: Cook! by Robert Irvine

fish will continue to cook even after it is removed from the oven.)
    Toss the raw endive and frisée with the lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. Reheat the beet reduction, remove from the heat, and whisk in the butter. Season with salt and pepper.
    PRESENTATION
    Place 2 halves of a braised endive on each plate and top with the cooked salmon. Drizzle the beet reduction around the salmon. Top the cooked salmon with the greens and serve.
    A Note on Mirepoix In French cooking, a mirepoix is used as the basis of flavor in many dishes. Classically, it is celery, carrots, and onions sautéed in butter to bring out their sweetness. In the beet reduction, we are cooking it in olive oil instead.
    L ET YOUR CREATIVITY BE YOUR GUIDE. AS A PROFESSIONAL, I HAVE A PER sonal conceit that I never do the same dish twice. However, in thinking about it, I realize that no one ever cooks the same dish twice.
    Even if you have made the same dish a thousand times, even if you follow your favorite recipe down to the minutest detail, you will never cook with the same carrot, the same onion, the same sprigs of thyme, the same splash of wine, the same cut of beef or fish, even the same spoonful of sugar or honey or flour. An experienced gardener will tell you that no crop of herbs, fruits, or vegetables is the same as the one from the year before. Variations in climate, rain, soil amendments, the weather on the day you harvest the crop, as well as the time of year you harvest, all have an impact. If the ingredients are different, how can the meal be the same? Be mindful of the ingredients in front of you; make sure they are fresh and beautiful, be attentive to their quality, be expressive in the way you prepare and combine their flavors. Be the food.
    Let the food in front of you speak to you and inspire you. Really look at your family and friends when they are eating your food. Examine your own palate and thoughts and feelings when you eat. Most of all, enjoy your food. Do your best to make sure that whatever you make is a pleasure to eat. There are few higher callings.

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SUNDAY ROASTS AND THE WHITE RABBIT
    Charming stories of Sunday dinner and a meeting with a surprise culinary character whilst out at sea
    Robert Irvine in the Sea Cadets, tallest in back row, third from right
    F OOD IS A PRISM THROUGH WHICH I VIEW THE WORLD, AND THE WORLD reflects its light back into my cuisine. When I travel, when I meet new people, when I take on a new position or challenge, when I read a book or hear a song, when I speak to other chefs and taste their food and see their approaches, when I eat something new and am impressed or depressed about it, these experiences influence, however profoundly or subtly, the very next dish I make.
    Like many a cook before me, my earliest influences and attitudes about food came at my mother’s knee. I grew up in working-class Salisbury, in Wiltshire, England, with my mom and dad, older brother, Gary, and younger sisters,Colleen and Jackie, in a town that boasts the tallest cathedral spire in the country and is just a stone’s throw from Stonehenge. I always thought my mother was the most beautiful woman in the world, with her long, dark hair and olive skin, like Sophia Loren. My dad, a former professional soccer player, had brown wavy hair and the hallmark leanness and keenness of a former athlete, and he was always the very expression of the staunch and steadfast Belfast Irishman. He earned his living as a painter, of houses and rooms, and my mother worked in a wallpaper shop, so between the two of them, they had us pretty “well covered.”
    You could say that I grew up before the Revolution. In the England of the late sixties and early seventies, there was no Food TV, no celebrity chef culture, no fascination with cookbooks or kitchen experimentation, and no gourmet food stores, and regular folks seldom ventured out of the house for dinner. This fact is easily borne out by the general and worldwide