Some thoughts on food and cuisine...

      I've been working as a chef in Edinburgh for three months now, and have pretty much adjusted to the lifestyle which being a chef entails. Long hours and little sleep is the price for a culinary education in a top restaurant. As I've said before, my life completely revolves around food now so I'm happy. Wedgwood is a good place to learn and I am learning lots about food every day; my days off are spent reading books on food, cooking and taking photographs for this blog.
      I am endlessly fascinated by the degrees of complexity and inner-workings of cuisine on all levels. I love French style preparations like pates and terrines, which involve a bit of a process and are time consuming. Equally, I love simple yet beautiful preparations such as pasta carbonara which involve much less of a process and rely more on the high quality of the ingredients to ensure success. I appreciate the complex nature of French cuisine and the techniques it involves, and I wish to know everything about it. Such a large proportion of western-cuisine restaurants are built on the solid foundation of French cooking and so I feel it demands the utmost respect. Saying that, for this blog I think simple rustic food has more of a place. I love food universally, but I admit I have a penchant for simple dishes where the ingredients really speak for themselves.
      In considering what photograph would accompany this post, I ended up deciding that an onion would be an appropriate thing to have here: such a humble vegetable, so vital in so many recipes in so many cuisines. So there you have it: my formal appreciation of the onion.
      The thing that I love about food is that there is a virtually endless number of things to learn. For me, every day is a exercise in gathering knowledge and learning as much as possible. My plan is then to regurgitate that knowledge and stick it up on the internet for the world to digest.