My Life in Food

I first began to dream of becoming a chef when following the recipes of America's Test Kitchen magazine. It was a chicken pot pie and a roasted garlic leg of lamb in the march 2006 issue of Cook's Illustrated. Over the next 13 years I have learned that cooking is not as easy as Jamie Oliver would have us believe. The most important lesson I learned in this time is that the best dishes you will ever cook are the ones passed on to you from someone standing next to you. I want to give away my cookbook idea. I would call it, "stand next to me." When in culinary school I noticed a certain magic that seasoned professional cooks have. This is what it is all about. If you think about it, the industry is built on this tradition. It is the ability where a chef first demonstrates a dish to a cook and then asks the cook to repeat it. The magic exists in the cooks ability to repeat that dish exactly as the chef without a recipe and by measuring ingredients by eye, and to do this with different sizes. I have seen this ability and I assure you that this skill is unreal. So what am I talking about? Well I could write a book about it. Actually, many people could write books about it. In fact, I predict this is the direction that food writers, and cooking shows, and cooking training will go. The cookbook, and food tv series has exploded in the last 20 years and it is going to lead to this truth, the best recipes include people in the list of ingredients and directions. The search for good food will end and begin with the realization that the best dishes you can cook come from having someone stand next to you while you cook it.