Personal Statement

I’m a home cook who sort of enthusiastically jumped in with both feet after years of living with a partner who was jealous of the kitchen and didn’t really welcome me there. Upon breaking up and relocating to my family home, I was finally able to do all the cooking and food experiments I wanted to. I keep a Wiki on food, recipes, experiments, and various food and culinarily-related adventures. Did you know it’s possible to cut a potato into a linked chain? It’s very finicky but quite doable. I do various kinds of culinary experiments. I like to puzzle out menus for friends with dietary restrictions. (Does it seem like more people are allergic to more things these days? It doesn’t seem entirely bogus, but I am occasionally stretched to my limit of belief by some of the food sensitivities and allergies around the world.) For my part, strawberries give me severe asthma attacks, scallops make my tongue itch, and walnuts give me severe heartburn, though I try to eat everything else that I can, and occasionally retest these allergies too (though upon retesting, strawberries were perilous). But enough about allergies. I like to investigate new weird knowledge at the borders of home and culinary science. I own a consumer sous vide, and a used Big Green Egg. I experiment with and refine my technique at wok hei (a high-heat cooking method from China) while using my cast iron wok. I have a wok ring for the Big Green Egg (though, shamefully, I haven’t yet tried it). I’m mulling over making my own WokMon, a flame concentrator for Woks on conventional gas stoves. Have you heard of Herve This’ cold water chocolate mousse? I once experimented with that and 100% cacao chocolate and various alternative, reputedly low glycemic sweeteners to come up with a recipe that would fit a friend’s dietary restrictions (the anti-Candida diet). How about aquafaba (bean juice)? Did you know you can make a passable meringue with long-whisked, sweetened aquafaba? Do you make infusions or bitters? I do. Read/see more about that in my profile entry for Spirits & Distillation! Also I’m sure I’ll geek out on the methods for making limoncello over there too. I’m working on a cookbook. I hope I finish it ☺