The Formative Years

I never considered myself a "Cook" or "Chef" until the last couple years of my life, and even then, I've been tentative to call myself such. I've mixed a mean cocktail and made a killer Fried Rice dish, but never really figured out what I was doing until recently. There were infrequent spurts where I'd help my mother in the kitchen after graduating High School or seeing Alton Brown make something awesome on Good Eats, but I never really mastered the concept of "cooking" like my mother understood it. I never thought that I would have to.

Early on in my cooking experience I quickly found that baking was not my forte, being a 15 year old wanting homemade cookies I decided to make my own. Two long hours later, I had a cooking pan filled with liquidy, salty dough because I didn't understand the difference between tea-spoon and table spoon. The first time I cooked something successful on my own was probably when I was 20 (that's not including microwavable meals) and that was because of a video-game. Yes, I literally learned to make Fried Rice from Cooking Mama NDS. After I lost my high-paying job that implied that I didn't need to finish college, I started to learn to cook. I began cooking Fried Rice and attempting other odd creations that almost never went anywhere. One of the few creations that persisted in my repertoire was my "Gyro Burger," which was a Lamb Burger seasoned similar to a Gyro and topped with feta cheese, tomato and onion and Alton Brown's Tzatziki Sauce.

When I finally left my parents' house for college at a proper university I found myself mired in cheap beer, microwaveable meals and Easy-Mac. My first night living alone, I literally spilled Easy-Mac all over my brand new couch while watching Star Trek: The Original Series. There was very little real cooking going on in my life for the longest time. I ate like a college student and lived like one, too. I became a vegetarian for a mixture of weight control and to impress a girl that I knew. This stuck with me for a long time and I found myself eating seafood for the first time in my life (growing up, I never enjoyed eating sea-food). I bought cook books all the time, but never took the time to cook food, but I kept inventing new variations on my old favorite: fried rice.

One variation was Curried Rice Noodles. I would use Rice Noodles that softened in ice water and then fry them in curry, cumin, garlic and soy sauce and add onions, peppers and carrots. The food was ok, but nothing to amazing.

I began dating another girl within the year and tried to impress her with my cooking and made an elaborate meal out of my Irish cookbook that consisted of stuffed cod, bacon wrapped lemon juice braised scallops, bread pudding and a whiskey cranberry sauce (I would go on to use that sauce as an inspiration for later sauces). I spent hours that day preparing food according to a cookbook and found that I enjoyed my time in my nice, spacious kitchen. It was that day that I really fell in love with the idea of spending time in the kitchen, the only problem was: I didn't know how to really cook. The dinner went very well and everything was very delicious. After that day I went on to develop my own "low-fat Bread Pudding", but never bothered putting the recipe to paper. Maybe I'll give it to you guys in the coming posts. I started to cook for my girlfriend frequently. Stuffed shell pasta, baked mostacolli and other easy recipes were made.

Following that, I started to fall in love with the Chili Pepper. On the night of my 22nd birthday I ate at a Mexican restaurant and started trying the Habenero sauces on the table and found that I LOVED the taste and could tolerate the burn in order to get a taste. I started experimenting with Chili Peppers and found that I could actually produce a decent hot sauce. It was about this time that I started watching Food Network almost nonstop and developed some important recipes in my repertoire.

Shortly there after I started experimenting more and found that I could create recipes that actually won me rewards (a $50 Sur La Table giftcard for this) and ended up the number one burger on Recipes Wiki for a while. I fell into a niche of making hot, spicy food. And then I learned about Southern Cuisine. I fell in love with the accessibility and comfortable attitude that items like Corn on the Cob and Blackened Catfish offered. I found myself niched by my own attitudes. I made Fried Rice and Southern Food constantly.

That was one feisty burger.

It wasn't until 2011 started that I really found myself branching out from my old methods. The first of such was the sudden idea to make Gnocchi. But, what kind of sauce should I use? I just started throwing things into my Calphalon. It started with Bacon, then onions, then vinegar, then tomatoes, then Bakon vodka, then Morningstar Farms Sausage. What was this mess? Who knows?! So I threw in a bunch of spices and let it cook. After about 15 minutes it was a thick sauce that tasted pretty good and I realized just what a "reduction sauce" really was. It was the first time I really did anything culinary. And it started a chain reaction. This was the day that my cable bill became almost entirely about Food Network.

When I moved into an apartment with my long-time girlfriend and we had a dishwasher I wasn't afraid of making a mess and had someone to cook for constantly. The first thing I made for her? On Superbowl Sunday I made Sloppy Joes and Plantain Chips. She came home from work to find a good Game Day meal with a Latin twist with some nice cocktails awaiting her. That time spent cooking for her and her reaction to my food was what sealed the deal. I would become the Pantless Chef. Now I just had to figure out what to keep cooking.