Summary: Guys, if you want to prepare an elegant meal all by yourself then this is how you do it. This episode is based on the book The Gentleman’s Guide to Cooking by Randy Motilall. 

Something that never happened during my dating life was preparing a candlelit dinner at my place. “Let me do the cooking” was just not one of my lines. Romantic dinners were great as long as someone else was preparing the food. It actually started to become a problem because sometimes you need to be able to prepare a nice meal and there is real skill involved in creating an elegant meal experience. Think about it. What do you do when it’s your turn to host an important family gathering or holiday dinner. We’re not talking about poker night, those guys don’t care. We’re talking, this is gonna get me a promotion, kind of cooking. Catering works for sure but it’s not the same. It sends a different message when you take the time and do it yourself.

Randy Motilall: I’m going to throw a lot of my friends under the bus. I love my guy friends, can’t cook but they have their significant others and their wives and I’m like, “Hey man you need to cook for your wife” and they’re like ok well tell me what to do and I’m always walking them through it. Now I have the guide and they’re using it and their wives are like thank you so much.

That’s Randy Motilall and he’s talking about The Gentleman’s Guide to Cooking. 

Randy Motilall: It’s to help you build that confidence in your skills so you don’t have to go out to a restaurant to have a good meal every time. You can have an elegant meal at home and that’s what I wanted to try to bring with this book and to show people yes you can do it. 

That’s right, if you don’t have the time that’s one thing but if you don’t have the skill that’s another. Same thing goes for small get-togethers. I’m not a big drinker but for years I would stick with a simple beer or glass of wine at home but when I went out I’d order a nice handcrafted cocktail. Why not make them at home? Well, I wasn’t good at it. Same thing with appetizers and fancy desserts. They were too hard for me to figure out, as crazy as that sounds. I didn’t have the skill. 

With most dishes I just had no idea what ingredients to use to get the flavor I liked and when I’d find a recipe that seemed to hit the mark the list of ingredients was so long or so unfamiliar to me that I just gave up. I mean I hadn’t even heard of some of the things on the list so of course none of them were in my kitchen. In his book Randy said something interesting that really hit home for me, he said “…surrounding yourself with the right ingredients is like surrounding yourself with the right people. A gentleman always makes the right choice.”

Randy Motilall: I think that also having that confidence in the guide to work with it helps you with your shopping as well. You know what all to pick up or when your going to find certain ingredients you may  stop and look at something else as well that you may not have looked at before and you’re going to be willing to try that as well well because it’s in the same flavor profile and your like ok maybe I can substitute this for this instead and it will most likely work. 

He mentioned the word Flavor Profile and we’re going to circle back to that but first here’s a pop quiz - do you know the difference between a red wine glass and white wine glass or a water glass?  Not everybody does. A properly laid out table is the first thing your guests are going to take notice of and it’s a basic skill that we should all know. Yes, there are a lot of different variables and they can seem overwhelming which is why he put a numbered diagramin his book. 

Randy Motilall: A nice set table, or nice table setting excuse me. You're gonna see that and you’re like oh my gosh I’m in for a great meal because you’re already expecting something  great that has no food on it already, you add the food to it and it’s gonna enhance your experience....