The Allusive Dish: An Introduction

You're probably wondering what the hell is going on, and desperately searching for the back button on your browser.

Stop for a second, hear me out.

My name is Andy, and this here is the framework for my new food blog.  See, it all started with a series of vague pictures of my finished dishes, shitty photos I'd take with my cell phone camera and post on Facebook labeled food porn.  Often this would mix homemade junk food with my desperate attempt at "fine dining" leaving no distinction between the two and leaving many to wonder if I've completely lost my mind.  The purpose of this blog is to confirm that, 1. Yes, I have lost my mind, 2. My needs have evolved to reach a new medium of explanation and rationale, a place where I can convey my ideas and progress in a more complete form, and that 3. Somewhere there is a method hidden amongst my madness.

For those of you who that don't know this, I started my culinary journey at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City in 2010.  I began this being very aware of the risks and the competitiveness of the food industry, but I felt what many would describe as a deep passion for food, one which I hoped would overpower my deficiencies.  Through culinary school I found a creative and social outlet, one where my skills would be rewarded and my deficiencies were treated with the bluntness and honesty I needed to make me improve.  I accepted numerous volunteer opportunities for the James Beard Foundation, and was awarded the opportunity to work with many great chefs I would never have been able to work with otherwise.  I picked up a wealth of experience through these volunteer opportunities and others, as well as extracurricular classes, and was lucky enough to listen to, meet, and work with some of the top culinary talents in the country such as Grant Achatz, Marcus Samuelsson, and Michael Symon.

After culinary school I took 2 separate, very different paths.  I worked for a chef-instructor from ICE, Mike Schwartz, for a company called Bad Ass Organics which made raw fermented products, and did my externship with Ron Gallo, the chef de cuisine of JoJo, Jean-Georges Vongerichten's first restaurant in New York.  Between the two I gained valuable experience in working two very different sides of the culinary world, production and dining.  I had achieved a solid foundation in an established restaurant kitchen, and a sound understanding of a need for efficiency that I would desperately seek out as a cook.  After a brief stint as a Sous Chef at a restaurant (of which accepting the job was the result of successfully managing a kitchen during a party of 50) which I later left, I felt I had the confidence and the grounding I needed to achieve the goals I had set ahead of myself, and began to very seriously hone some of my finer skills in my own home kitchen.

So that brings us here.  The purpose of this blog will inherently reveal itself as it moves along, but let me start by saying the reasons for it are many.  The first reason is to keep myself in check, challenging myself to always make sure I'm moving forward.  The second reason is to educate, and to share what I've learned with others so that they can learn from it as well.  Finally, what I really hope to achieve is inspiration.  I'm hoping this blog will inspire me to write about what I've learned, and reinforce the process of learning. Through this, I hope it will inspire me to create new things, building upon the foundation on which I've already learned.  And of course, I hope this will inspire others, not just to cook, but to step outside their comfort zone and really think about what they eat, the way they cook, and how they can get better.

All in all, I hope you find this blog an enjoyable read.  As this blog starts off, we will begin with the basics and work our way up.  In order to become a better cook, its important to relearn what we know about basic cooking.  To create a great dish, we need to work on a solid foundation of techniques and knowledge.  And now, I hope you'll join me.  It's back to square one!