As I write this I am granted a small trip down Memory Lane looking back at the episodes of my life that created the food lover that writes for you now.
When I was younger I remember always having two hobbies, one thing that was new to me in that week or that month, be that a new movie (new, that is, to me the films I watched back then were never strictly new) video game, toy or book. And of course film which was something I could always return to as I needed. But as I look back now I realise that I had another hobby that I was essential to life at home: food. I began my journey through food in an extraordinarily lucky way, my mum is a brilliant cook. I would insist on calling mum a chef at this point but I know she’s too modest to accept that title. She cooks in a very classical French style with plenty of butter, cream and garlic so I had always explored and tasted good, well established food, long before I knew how to say or spell most of it. I became obsessed with the smaller details about my new hobby. Something that remains a constant in everything I do. I want know why people dress the way they do or why something as small as a lighter or a photo frame has a place in the scenes I create or watch. I looked into the small things that make seafood great, the shellfish, the deep red of well cooked prawns butterflied to gaze appealingly up at the recipient or the wealth of different varieties of olives sourced by knowledgeable independent sellers or well established supermarkets. So whilst I found the smaller things that made the food world tick and the things that the consumer had relished, I was introduced to the world of food competition. Long before the cozy comfort of shows like The Great British Bake Off, there were the Great British Menu and Masterchef. I was obsessed. Every weekday night we would sit as a family and watch as these chefs created masterpieces out of locally sourced British ingredients with all the theatre and competition that the television world demanded. These dishes and their creators would then join the judges of the competition at a great banquet honoring those who had made a difference in their communities in whatever year the competition had been held. The one thing that these programmes didn’t show was the pitfalls of the industry. It was more than content to show the showmanship and glory of the industry but none of the hard work that had got these chefs where they were. It was hardly a balanced view. Having seen the side of the world of cooking that the TV was comfortable showing I was introduced to the side that it wasn’t, by way of Anthony Bourdain’s autobiographical epic ‘Kitchen Confidential.’ I was thrilled by this, I was told the story of a man far older and far more cynical than I was, who had seen the world from behind a serving hatch, had seen humanity at its best and its worst, had worked, drank, laughed and loved in the microcosm that was New York. One day soon I will write about Bourdain in full and describe one of the most brutal, most honest, most reluctant and one of the best journeyman chefs the world has ever known. I remember taking his book into secondary school with me, eager to continue reading Bourdain's great adventure and a teacher picking up my copy and being horrified by the obscene descriptions of life on the pass and the colleagues that Bourdain found himself “in the trenches” with. My shock that she had read these descriptions quickly gave way to laughter at the look on her face as she read
though thankfully not aloud. I think it’s safe to say that as much as that book intrigued me with its perspective on life and the trials of a man that had been through a hell of his own making and somehow made it back, it did not inspire me to become a chef and probably never will. Bourdain and his stories carried me through much of the rest of my food journey to date and was, as always, reinforced by my mum’s experience and skill to create breathtaking dishes every single mealtime. That was until I moved out for university. I was now alone with the memory of all of the good food that I had ever tried and practically no idea how to create it. The first time I made spaghetti Bolognaise for myself, muttering “that’s bloody good” as I went, I knew I had to teach myself to cook all that I had seen in the best way I could. Over the two years that I was at uni, I managed it and returned home, albeit slimer than I had ever been but with an appetite for more.
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