This one is definitely not a disaster, Great Recipe from a Great Cookbook

I thought about writing my next installment, titled Holy Moly don't eat that Cannoli, but decided to talk about an actual successful dish. Unfortunately, I have misplaced the recipe for this successful dish, which was seared scallops with poached pears in a red wine sauce. Sounds like a weird combination in my head too. However, I made it and it was absolutely spectacular. You can find the recipe in this cookbook. If you like fish this is an absolutely must buy book. I would try and recreate this dish, but quite frankly I can't try and figure it out because my wife is allergic to seafood. Cooking this dish might just send her into anaphylactic shock and personally I'm not ready to see that just yet :) So, I guess I have two options, its gonna be holy moly don't eat that cannoli or This Gnocchi is Yucky. But I am gonna let you decide which one you want to hear first. Both are doozies and I will give you a guaranteed winner of a recipe for both. Let me know which you want by commenting or sending me an email. I will post the results on Sunday with the new entry.

Influence Part II

So after my month long journey in France and Southern Germany I had found a new appreciation for wine and food. The relationship between food going from raw ingredients to what is on the plate is really inspiring. To take something so simple as a beet or a potato and elevate it into something so sublime as to make you want to lick the plate is a complete power rush. I poured over those Grand Diplome cookbooks. Tasting each recipe in my mind. It was about a year later that I made my next cookbook purchase. It was pure artistry. Jean-Louis, Cooking with the Seasons is a feast for the eyes. I didn't really care about the recipes at all. I just wanted to look at the pictures and imagine what they must taste like. If I had thought that my trip to France was filled with ingredients and animal parts that I never thought I would eat, this book way outdid even that. There was a recipe that called for Geoduck. What the frig is that? I found out later its a type of clam, but seriously, where the hell was I going to find one of those. Not long after or how I remember it, Jean Louis was a guest chef on the David Letterman show. Low and behold what was he going to cook, but a Geoduck (pronounce gooey duck). If you have never seen on I can only describe it as looking as if you might have castrated a horse and clamped two shells where the balls should be. Gross looking was putting it mildly. Letterman had a fair bit of fun with that one. I'm trying to track down the clip of that, hopefully I can. However, this was the true start of my collecting cookbooks. I have way too many at this point and I will get to some of my favorites and even let you know which ones to avoid. Let me know what your favorites are and what are some of your favorite recipes. My next installment is my perfect French Toast recipe.

My Influences Part 1

My friends have often heard the story of how I became the cook that I am. All the credit goes to my parents. At an early age they gave me free reign in the kitchen to cook. While some kids played with their food, I cooked mine. I didn't have to cook, but if wanted to eat something edible I did. It wasn't until I got to my second year of college that I learned that chicken wasn't supposed to be completely black on the outside and vulcanized on the inside. To my mom's credit, she only cooked the chicken the way my father liked it. It was broiled, broiled again and broiled some more. I wasn't always sure whether or not to eat it or use it to light a fire in our charcoal grill. I rue the day my father bought a gas grill, then we had super carbonized chicken. This may seem pretty horrible but it wasn't always so bad. One day my mother decided to buy some really expensive cookbooks. They were the Grand Diplome Cookbooks. Really french and fancy. It had all sorts of stuff that I was hoping my parents would try and cook. Indeed, they actually did. However, if you are going to choose a first recipe, why choose Duck? I remember waiting hours for my parents to complete the process of making duck with cherry sauce. For all intents and purposes it looked great. The sauce was very tasty. Then came the true test, the duck. Well, lets just say that duck is sitting on shelf somewhere in Spencer Stores saying squeeze me. You couldn't cut it or chew it. Thankfully that was their one and only true disaster out of that cookbook. The only sad thing for me was I was already going to college by the time they learned how to make food that was truly edible. While they may have grown into better cooks now, the did like to eat out and eat well. My true culinary epiphany came on a trip right before Senior Year Highschool. We went to France and Southern Germany and got to stay in places that only the French knew about. It was quite amazing. I bought my first cookbook in France. It was the German version of the recipes of L'Ousteau de Baumaniere. I learned so much from the chef. He was extraordinarily personable and free with his time. He told me that he did not become a chef until after he retired at the age of 60. That always gives me hope and about 15 years to go. The food was outstanding and I ate things I never thought I would even see on a plate. Pigeon, Lobster souffle, all sorts of sorbets. I ate my food, my parents and my sister's leftovers and their desserts most nights. It was amazing. It started me on my culinary journey that continues today. I have countless cookbooks that have helped mold my tastes and I will shares those with you shortly. I hope people will post their own experiences on how and why the love to cook or why they don't. I personally hate the dishes, but it is a labor of love. Keep me posted and I will keep you posted.