Cooking Under Pressure

I travel all over the world to teach cooking classes and perform culinary demonstrations for the public.

It's always a tricky proposition, though -- while I love the real-time interaction with people, you never know what kind of a situation you're going to walk into.

Because it's not feasible to travel with your crew, equipment and food, you really have to depend on the kindness of strangers.

Recently I traveled to Tampa, Fla., and Santa Barbara, Calif., to do a series of cooking classes and demonstrations and tastings for Lincoln -- I'm working with the company on a campaign for its new luxury SUV, the MKX.

In Santa Barbara, I arranged for a local chef, Paul Becking, from the restaurant Elements to provide the support staff and prepare 1,000 tasting portions of the dishes I was to demonstrate.

We'd never worked together before, but Becking seemed bright and competent over the phone as we figured out the details; there really is a camaraderie among chefs and a willingness to help out whenever we can.

When Becking and I discussed the food for the demonstration and the tastings, we decided to handle the same dish two different ways.

The demonstration dish, one of my recipes, had to be done in under five minutes, so we decided to cook it as written. ...