Posts
I can tell you it all started when say, I made my first pancake with dad. I could say that plunging my teeny fingers into soft warm bread dough caused an epiphany in my two-year-old mind. I could tell you that the moment I fell in love with food was that first birthday cake I made . . .wait this story is worth telling. . . It was my brother's birthday. I baked a double layers heart-shape yellow cake that I in turn dyed green (since he was a boy and all) With assistance from grandma of course, I covered it in pearly seven minute frosting and decorated with too many vibrantly pink and blue flowers. We all ate it, although it was dry and comprised of 40% food coloring. I remember the way my insides jumped when Grandma gave me the heart-shaped pans, my first cake pans.
I could tell you it was all those flour laden, sweet and sticky, full of garlic, made with love memories that made me realize I was meant cook. But in the end I think it just came down to genetics.
My hypothesis is that with each generation the foodie gene kept becoming a more dominant trait, morphing and strengthening each go around. So by the time my mother's chromosomes met my father's it was like an inevitable KA-BANG! This one meant to cook. In other words I really had no choice in the matter.
I bet I was already concocting strange recipes while in the womb. All those times I flipped the clicker of my mother's tummy, practice for flipping omelets. I mean, why do you think I chewed on so much stuff as a toddler? Sure blame it on teething, but I'll have you know that was just a clever rouse to keep everyone from nosing into my experimental flavors period.
So with all that behind me, genetics, destiny, and baby flavor genius, I realized I needed to go to college for this. That brings us to the now. I am 21, a third year student at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. Many people ask me how did I ever end up nearly 1400 miles from home. Easy! I went online and read the bios of successful chefs. It came down to JWU (pronounced J-whoo) and the CIA, Culinary Institute of America. I was torn, I sought my mother's wise counsel. She to this day has no memory of telling me this but she said, "Hey isn't that where that Todd English guy is from? I don't like him. Everyone that comes out of there is too pompous." So, in light of that I decided to move way out to the East Coast and run after my dream.
After three years, I'm nearly finished. I can't believe how much I have changed. It's amazing to think that in less time than it takes to mature a grapevine to bring forth fruit, I have come so far. Those first days in the kitchens here were hard. I had no idea how to use any of the equipment, I was 102% positive that everyone in my class was twice as smart as me and could probably beat my britches in a showdown. Everyone talked with different accents, and for some reason not a single one of them could pronounce their R's. They all loved foods like mussels and littlenecks, clams (I had no idea a Little neck was a clam- they don't even have necks)- to me they smelled like minnows, looked like a something I can't post on here, and tasted like the mud we scrape off our boots before heading in the house. How delicious! Not!
Oh and another thing, you know stage fright is where you forget all the steps to a dance or something. Well imagine having "kitchen fright" where you walk into a kitchen and are convinced that you really know nothing about food and gee what do what with a knife? Serious! That happens. You would have never know that dicing an onion would take so much thought. (Truth be told there really are special ways to hold the knives and use them.) Today, I am pretty comfortable with a knife, although I still have moments of kitchen fright, they are not that bad.So where am I going? Well . . . after November, that's still a mystery. I have several things in the culinary world that beckon me. I think I want to work in Europe though.
I love pastry! Plated desserts are like poems or songs. Each plate holds a message or a statement. And to express that each item, flavor, texture, color, scent, sound, and placement hits those notes and speaks those words. I love it! I love how sugar bends, how chocolate shines, and how any food can be made into a dessert. (candied garlic . . no kidding it's like candied ginger, well kinda.)
I love wine too! It seems wine is perhaps the only item that when someone consumes it they think about and actually can taste the soil it was grown it. It is effectually devout husbandry glistening in bottles.
So with this summer's expedition, I hope to be enlightened exponentially in the worlds of food and wine. I feel as though I'm getting to jump into my cookbooks, and bathe in my favor bottles of wine. I can't wait to see and touch these fairytale placed and foods I adored as a half-pint. I feel ready to run further and farther than ever, and at the same moment ready to crap my pants from doing that. hmmmmmm, maybe I'm still a toddler after all...Well that's me!