Finding Your Inner Self – After An Active Work Life - From Blueprints to Béarnaise

Introduction

For about forty years, my world was one of precise inputs and predictable outputs. As an engineer, I lived by blueprints, designs, processes, tolerances, and the laws of physics. If you followed the process, the bridge stood. If you didn't, it failed.

Then, as a finance professional, my world shifted to a different kind of system: spreadsheets, risk models, and market analysis. Again, it was about managing variables to achieve a desired, profitable outcome. A misplaced decimal point wasn't just a typo; it was a disaster.

In both of my careers, there was very little room for, "I wonder what would happen if..."

Then, I retired from both these professions.

I then looked at my life and asked, what I do for the rest of my life. That’s when I discovered the inner chef in me. I suddenly found myself with the one resource I’d never been able to properly factor into my old equations: time. And I discovered a new laboratory, one that had been sitting right under my nose all along: my kitchen.

I'm now regularly in the utterly glorious profession of discovering my inner chef. And I've found, to my great surprise, that my past careers in engineering and finance were the perfect training.

The Kitchen as an Engineer's Lab

At first, I did what I was trained to do: I followed instructions and processes. A recipe, after all, is just a blueprint for a finished product. "1 tsp" was a precise measurement. "Sauté for 3 minutes" was a non-negotiable timeline.

But the engineer in me wasn't satisfied with just following the blueprint. I needed to know why it worked.

Why sear the meat before braising? It's not just "to brown it." It's to kick-start the Maillard reaction, a beautiful chemical process that creates hundreds of new flavour compounds.
Why does a béarnaise sauce work? It's the physics of an emulsion—forcing fat (butter) and water (vinegar, lemon juice) to become friends with the help of an emulsifier (egg yolk).
Why knead bread? It's about structural engineering—aligning gluten strands to create a matrix strong enough to trap the CO2 gas released by the yeast.

Once I understood the why, the how became infinitely more interesting. The recipe was no longer a set of rules; it was a set of variables.

Cooking with a Finance Mindset

This is where the experimentation began, and where my finance background chimed in. My new "work" is all about managing assets and risk.

My assets? A beautiful cut of meat, fresh vegetables from the market, a well-stocked pantry.

My goal? To maximise their "return on investment" (ROI).

The finance pro in me scoffs at buying a $10 bottle of "cooking wine." I know that the return on using a $20 wine I'd actually drink is exponentially higher in the finished dish. That's good value.

But the real thrill is in the arbitrage. It’s taking a "low-value" asset, like a tough 0.65kg lamb forequarter chop, and applying a specific technique (the "risk" of a new recipe) to transform it into a "high-value" product: a fork-tender, melt-in-your-mouth braise that tastes like a million dollars. The ROI on that is off the charts.

Experimenting is just risk management. What's the real risk of adding cumin to a recipe that doesn't call for it? A slightly different flavour. What's the potential reward? Discovering a combination that changes the entire dish.

Retiring the Rulebook

In my old professions, a mistake was costly. It was something to be avoided at all costs.

In the kitchen, a "mistake" is just... lunch.

I’ve made stuff that could double as a doorstop (lesson: learn from the mistake). I’ve made a curry that was spectacularly bland (lesson: I didn't 'bloom' the spices in oil first). These aren't failures; they're just data. They're valuable, delicious data.

This is the joy I never had in the boardroom. The stakes are beautifully low, but the rewards are immediate and profoundly personal. There is no greater satisfaction than sitting down to a meal and knowing, "I didn't just follow the instructions. I created this."

I've traded my blueprints for butcher's paper and my spreadsheets for proofing baskets. My new projects don't have quarterly reviews, but they do get eaten with genuine joy by my family and friends. My inner chef was here all along, just waiting for me to punch out from the old job and finally start having some fun.

And I've got to say, that I am beginning to enjoy this very much.