File under "Chef's Secrets"

An Introduction

The question, posed in a glossy, gastro-porn, food mag, directed at the ephemeral celebrity chef for our current month, is set forth in a sidebar labeled "Chef's Secrets" or some such, and reads thus: “What do you eat at home?” I, though neither ephemeral nor celebrity, have too been faced with the same question, as have all the chefs I know. The query is often followed by an answer suggested by the inquirer: “It’s probably just two minuet noodles or cold cereal or something, right?” Underlying this is a desperate desire to believe that no one can possibly enjoy what they do for a living – the last thing a plumber wants to do when he gets home is fix his own faucet, a secretary pay and file bills, an electrician change a bulb, a chef cook dinner. And, as if to satisfy this collective desire, the magazine chef du jour invariably responds that he or she rushes home to eat a packet of stale choc-chip cookies with out-of-date whipped cream in a can.

Bullshit.

Do you want a real chef’s secret? We eat like fucking kings.

So, here we go. What follows promises to be an incredibly incomplete and sometimes infrequent food diary, a collection of the highlights (and otherwise) from the meals of one hungry chef – namely me.