英文原版对话1000个:723 How to be a Chef

Todd: OK, Rebecca we're talking about working in a restaurant. Now you became a chef. Can you talk about the process of becoming a chef? What do you do to get a job in a kitchen?

Rebecca: Well, there's lots of different ways, but the most common way is to become an apprentice 1 which means you go to the kitchen and work at the bottom level doing the basic chopping 2 - boring jobs - for maybe two or three years, and then one day a week you go to school, a cooking school. Your employer 3 pays for you to go to the school. You do get paid by your employer but it's a really small wage, so, yeah. Otherwise, you can start at the bottom, like a dishwasher, and actually Australia's most famous chef started that way. He just was a dishwasher and he slowly climbed up the ladder, so you can do it that way as well.

Todd: So what about you? Did you go to cooking school?

Rebecca: Yeah, I did, but actually I dropped out after awhile, so I did that for about a year but to be honest I think you get more experience in a kitchen. Sometimes the stuff 4 they teach you at school is a little bit old-fashioned 5.

Todd: How much actually of what you learn do you just learn on yourself, as just a creative process? Like how much do you think you learn by watching others and how much do you learn on your own, using your own creativity?

Rebecca: I think both are really important. Actually, I learned 6 a lot from my mother. When I was a kid, I used to watch her cooking all the time, and it wasn't until I grew up that I realized how much I understood about cooking just from seeing what she did in the kitchen, but also talking about how to do things with your colleagues I think is really important.

Todd: Now, I'm curious, you know how to cook, and everybody knows you know how to cook - family members and friends - so how... do you like to actually cook for family members and friends or is cooking a job that when you go home, you prefer not to cook for other people because it's like bringing your work home?

Rebecca: Well, I know some chefs that have nothing in their fridge and they hate cooking at home, but I'm not like that. I really love cooking for people. It's really the nicest thing you can do for someone is to give them a lovely meal. The sad thing is actually that no one will ever cook for me, because they're too scared. They always apologize before I even have a chance to eat it. "Oh, it's going to be terrible. Oh, you're a cook. I'm sorry." But actually I love food being cooked for me. I wish people would do it more.

Todd: OK. That's funny. Thanks Rebecca.