The Making of a Chef - Kitchen Skills

As the story goes, I was about 5 years old and my mom was away on a trip.  My dad did not enjoy cooking and was relatively hopeless in the kitchen aside from making omelettes, yet unable to remember whether to put the egg into boiling water before, or after the water started to boil.  So, with my mom out of town, he preferred taking me to the diner in the plaza by our condo than attempting to fix me something to eat.  When he asked me what I wanted to eat, I replied, "Soup, please."  I was a polite child.  "Adam, why don't we go to The Kingsway to order something?"
"No daddy.  I want soup."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes daddy.  Soup please."
"But Adam... I don't know how to make soup."  He felt that this line of reasoning would allow him to sidestep my insistence on having soup.  He would have been better off suggesting I order soup at the diner.  But my reply demonstrated that I was neither intimidated by, nor ignorant of how to manage your way in the kitchen.  "Just read the instructions on the can, daddy."  That settled that.

As I got older, since my dad and I rarely helped in the preparation of meals, we often ate out to give my mom a break.  Also, my father loved exploring Toronto's culinary scene, and was quick to bring us to fancy places, or well reviewed places if he managed to read about them.  I remember eating out was often an experience.  The rotating restaurant atop the Harbour Castile Westin, or the Old Hsin Kuang Restaurant were just a few of the places we would visit, and it perked my palate.  

As I got older, in high school, waiting for my mom to get home from work to eat often resulted in a growling stomach, and so I started making Kraft Dinner in my early teens, giving me a head start on university students.  It didn't take long before I graduated to Hamburger Helper.  I then realized that I could buy my own pasta, my own sauce and spices, and started to make interesting discoveries about flavour, noting that it tasted better if the meat had a chance to brown, and if I used too much beef at once leaving little room for evaporation, the resulting juice boiled the meat and was less flavourful.  

We continued to eat out as a family, and as my palate became more sophisticated, and I was able to identify the ingredients in dishes, I was able to go home and replicate them.  When I was at Ryerson, my friend Sathis from school (who was visiting from Singapore on an exchange) prepared a meal for me, and taught me how to make an Indian Curry dish.  When I started making it for my dad, he noted that we no longer had to visit Indian restaurants since he loved my curry meals so much.  I also received some culinary inspiration from a close Persian friend, Mehrdad who taught me the secrets of cooking fluffy basmati rice, and how subtle flavours in food could be just as wonderful as pungent flavours.

There was a certain degree of fearlessness in the kitchen, and I was lucky to have started experimenting early in my youth.  Our trip to New Orleans when I was in University resulted in a shopping spree of spices which would be added to spaghetti sauces, not to mention a variety of scotch bonnet hot sauces.  By now I had a high tolerance for heat.  But I was first introduced to spice when I tried tabasco sauce for the first time in an Italian restaurant, and loved how vinegary it was. So, I bought some. In order to get more vinegar flavour, I kept adding more and more, even though it meant managing more and more heat.  Eventually, I got used to it.  My buddy Fred in Bradford loved hot wings and deep fried them to perfection and doused them in Frank's Red Hot.  Coupled with the spices and hot sauces from New Orleans and my love of vinegary Tabasco, I was well on my way to having a high tolerance for spicy heat.  I've done both Armageddon and Death wings at Duff's.  But I moderate the heat these days to avoid burning a hole in my tongue.

Although I haven't stopped cooking over the years, I recently started upping my game.  I'm also starting to embrace recipes and modifying them as necessary.  I also no longer snub my nose at recipes with few ingredients that seem simple, but which deliver a solid punch of flavours.  I recently added Sous Vide preparation to the repertoire and will be spending the year learning some classic techniques and recipes with a focus on sauces and preserving.  The last part so I may require even less use of a car and always have good food on hand.

As far as cooking courses go, I did take an Indian cooking course at George Brown and took my indian food to the next level.  I also took a one day course at The Little Mexican Cooking School in Puerto Morelos, Mexico.  To this day, I try not to order fresh fish ceviche for fear it won't be as good as mine.  But I can't take credit for it.  The recipe was given to me, and it's pretty simple.  I think perhaps restaurant just overthink it.

I hope you will comment if you enjoyed reading this, and share a link to your favourite recipe or your own adventures in the kitchen!  What do you enjoy most about cooking?  How did you get involved in food preparation?  Or how did you manage to get this far without learning how to cook?  Please comment below!