Meet the Chefs
My love for the kitchen began when I was very young, when I peeled mushrooms in my mother’s kitchen and baked muffins with obscene amounts of cinnamon. I loved the freedom of the kitchen and the miracle of making something delicious from raw ingredients. I became most serious about cooking at the age of 18 when I became a vegetarian. However, I forfeited my vegetarianism a few years later once I understood that loving food had to involve a sort of surrender to pleasure and to the senses. I love to eat, but I also love the process of cooking. Few things can bring me greater joy than preparing and enjoying food, especially with people I love.
My interest in cooking largely grew out of necessity. When faced with the cereal and toast monotony of living on my own for the first time, I gradually began to get more experimental with my staples of rice and store brand pastas. I learned how fun it can be to improvise on recipes. As a largely self-taught cook, my food still reflects a certain commitment to simplicity, but with a special flair (usually pesto). I now enjoy thumbing through cookbooks and trying new recipes, and I love to cook seafood and pizza. And my dog-eared copy of Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, a thoughtful gift from my cousin Ben, is never far from reach.
