I love cooking, but because my mom is too much of a bimbo and my dad too much of a “manly man” to ever step into the kitchen, I never had the chance to learn from them. I grew up on delivery, takeout, eating out, and the incredible food made by the amazing woman who cooks for our family. I became deeply interested in cooking at the start of my teenage years and taught myself through the internet, books, that same woman, and other relatives.
I started as a kid with simple things. Cooking and frying eggs, pimping an instant soup, etc.
Then they had a real chef in a weekday afternoon TV show. I started emulating his job, learned about using the “claw” to cut vegetables, how to make soups and sauces from scratch, and what spices to use.
When I was a teenager, I was visiting relatives, and a bunch of farmers wives were peeling and cutting onions en masse. They invited me to join, more for the fun of having a young man on the table. This was a time and culture where a male had no place in the kitchen, so imagine their surprise when I got a different knife out of the kitchen, sharpened it, and started cutting up onions way faster than they did…