This past weekend, I listened to an interview of Ian Knauer, author of The Farm: Rustic Recipes for a Year of Incredible Food. Knauer got his start in the “food business” by testing recipes for Gourmet Magazine. What was interesting was that Gourmet hired him not for what he knew about cooking, but what he didn’t know. As Knauer explains: I had not been to culinary school, which is the reason I got the job. I was an avid home cook — I loved to cook from magazines and cookbooks — but I wasn’t trained. That was important to them because they wanted someone who would cook like a home cook.   The reason that I was...