From further afield:

- Chef as disciplinarian - Rene penned an article for Lucky Peach, looking at his own evolution from anger to understanding. "Maybe change starts with schools. The chef curriculum is outdated. You show up at school, they hand you one book and you treat it like the Bible. I've seen the book from the CIA, and I remember the book here in Copenhagen. We need new books, and one dedicated to how you deal with guests, waiters, cooks, and producers - a manual on basic human interaction."

- Chef as family member - Alice Waters did likewise a few months back ... she had me at hello: "I fell in love with food in France, and when I came back home, I wanted to eat the same way. I went over to my little local bookstore/cookware shop, and I was lucky to find a book by Elizabeth David." Two of my favourite things. There are also some very interesting thoughts about keeping a restaurant fresh and striving for more, managing family life and splitting chefs hours to encourage creativity.

- Chef as gardener - This month French mag YAM explores one of Alain Passard's two vegetable gardens. We're not talking patch, rather space for 500 varieties of fruit and vegetables that results in three tonnes to the restaurant each month. I particularly loved the description of the six families of vegetables: vegetable-flower (cauliflower), vegetable-fruit (tomato, cucumber, aubergine), vegetable-racines/root (carrot), vegetable-tuber (potato, jerusalem artichoke), vegetable-leaf (salad and herbs) and vegetable-bulbs (onion). It's in French, but there are pics.