first of an irregular post

Members of the public, who’ve never seen a real professional kitchen, might think that behind the swing doors of the great restaurant kitchens of the world work teams of blessed individuals, each the winner, in life's great lottery, of the rare chromosome of culinary genius.
Actually, not much could be further from the truth. Most members of these motley crews are lucky to have found any sort of gainful employment at all and, jeez, if they can cook so can anyone.

There’s a couple of reasons why anything edible ever comes out of these places.
First – someone, hopefully the head chef, needs to know what they’re doing.
Second – this person who knows what they’re doing coaxes some sort of organization out of the blind chaos that is the default setting for most kitchens, and then
Third - imposes a fearsome rule on the other people who don’t know what they’re doing.

The rest is relatively easy because,luckily, generations of French grandmothers have worked out what goes nicely with what, and their husbands, sons and (sometimes)daughters have worked out what to do with grapes.
So all you’ve got to do to is buy a good bottle of wine, buy some ingredients of the marrying kind, and follow the rule.