A story about The French Laundry begins with these truths. Food is a form of poetry. Ingredients in a recipe, like carefully chosen words on a page, are composed. Cooking, like writing, is creative, soul-stirring work. 

"Cooking is not about convenience and it's not about shortcuts. Our hunger for the twenty-minute gourmet meal, for one-pot ease and prewashed, precut ingredients has severed our lifeline to the satisfactions of cooking. Take your time. Take a long time. Move slowly and deliberately and with great attention." - Thomas Keller, The French Laundry Cookbook