One of my most inspiring mentors is the talented Chef Tom Colicchio. Unbeknown to him, he has shaped my views on cuisine largely for the better and helped me throughout my career on grasping the importance of evolving within the kitchen. The single most valuable lesson he has taught me is that no chef ever “finds” his or her style. To find your style is pure myth. The only thing you find is a temporary emotional connection to a specific style of food, and although the same approach in technique may be carried out all along that doesn’t mean it is your style. Instead, it is simply your interpretation of how things work and why. To say you found your style is a cup-out, a sure trip into a dark alley where you are to find yourself alone and very quickly pigeonholed with restrictions that do not merit your full capabilities. Chefs are ever evolving creatures.

Finding your character, on the other hand, is a hurdle crucial to a chef’s successful or tragically destructive career. If food is an expression of the heart, then it must come from a good heart for it to be good food. If the chef is a selfish, miserable bastard then the food reflects that. Food is pure, it is honest. Good character is important to leadership. No one wants to work their ass off 10 to 12 hours per day for someone who doesn’t respect their opinions. No matter how widely popular the chef is, if he doesn’t take care of his own people first, those people will plot to destroy all that he has worked to accomplish. And justifiably so. Cooks know Cooks get bitter, retaliation begins quietly and before you know it you’re knee deep in a soup sandwich of treason and scrutiny. I’ve seen it happen a dozen times. I have been that cook.

I’ve always been the youngest in charge. It doesn’t necessarily bother me as much as it bothers everyone else. The beautiful thing about the kitchen is that talent and experience is superior to education and age. The kitchen is not a democracy.  The kitchen doesn’t care where you are from, or who you know. The kitchen has no memory of how many praises you’ve received. It doesn’t ask your politics or religion. All it cares about is how hard you are willing to work to get where you want to go.

Dear Amélie,

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while. Until you came along I haven’t had a reason to do so.

I have always been fascinated by watching people’s hands. Studying the movements that go into practicing a craft. The craftsman’s passion grooved into every wrinkle. Worn from years of repetitive movement. Molded and scarred. The love for what they do transcribed from their heart, as a painter’s vision onto canvass.

Last summer I spent a week at a bakery. Flour dusted floor and the scent of baked yeast brought be back to a time of youth I had nearly forgotten. Your great grandfather was a baker. For hours, through the crack of an old kitchen door I would stare at him as he worked. The smell of marzipan and toasted sesame seeds lingering close. Once a month the kitchen became his laboratory. A rolling cart that he would stroll down to the town square, displaying a collection of stamps and coins he sold to pass the time of his retirement, became the stage for bakery items of all proportions.

Pastries, breads, and holiday confections.

As people passed, hands exchanged a couple of coins with his for sweet morsels of caramel and crusty baguettes. Once a month, he was taken back to his own time nearly forgotten, when a younger man sold baked goods door to door. Flour dusted shoes and dough molded hands.

That one week spent at that tiny bakery I will treasure as one of my most favorite past times. Each morning as the sun rose outside, French men spoke of soccer scores, bad politics and the weather. As I watched, contents from mixing bowls came out of the ovens transformed into substanance for the mind and soul.

I studied the baker’s hands, as they seemed to know what they were doing all on their own, distanced from the rest of the body. Delicately and expertly they moved in gracious strides. Each movement with purpose. No wasted energy.

When we cook I like to keep you near. Watch you as you watch us. I know that you will not remember these days but I hope that subconsciously you are beginning to appreciate the humble act of cooking as a family. The smells that linger beginning to become familiar to you.

The sizzle of a hot skillet startling you into tears makes us laugh each time. As we know that those tears will turn into smiles soon, knowing that dinner is not far away. I want to share stories with you. Together making little memories in our own kitchen. Sharing the secrets of a perfect cupcake.

Your flour dusted hands and chocolate covered cheeks.

I try to be a good son, stopping what I am doing from time to time and visit mom. This happens about once a month and by the time the trip is over, I return home with so much food that I feel as if I were still a starving college student on a cheap beer diet.

 Fortunate to have been raised in such a food obsessed family I quietly valued moms cooking over dads. It was just simple, to the point, at times bad for you and most of all comforting. Like all good moms her attempts to send you into a diabetic coma are relentless. Many of my favorite foods come from that kitchen – the caponatina, marinated peppers and olives, fried artichokes, bucatini Milanese, sugo, bollito, and the list could go on for days.

 I still stand transfixed as I watch her kneed flour into dough, or listen to her careful instructions on how to clean a still warm-from-the-kill fluffy little bunny.

I can’t ever recall her flinching at the sight of a burn or cut, unlike veteran self proclaimed bad-ass cooks she is virtually fearless in the kitchen – this woman can cook.

 We often talk about various degrees of cooking, what I’m doing and how she thinks my lean towards the less traditional more contemporary style of cookery has betrayed millions of my countrymen. We argue about work in the kitchen, and share recipes but what I truly miss is having the time to cook with her. She is my constant reminder of how simple cooking really is. I sometimes laugh as we cook together, as she never seems to measure anything but manages remember exactly how much of each ingredient a recipe calls for.  

 I’m not big on sweets, unless it comes in a glass spiked with bourbon you can keep your cream and sugar all to yourself.  One of my ultimate, shameful weaknesses is mom’s biscotti. I could hide in a corner and eat the entire jar. These things are so good they could make Jimmy Hendrix feel as if he were running through fields of clover again.

 The following recipe is in grams. When it comes to baking the metric system ensures precision, giving you better chances at a uniform end product… plus this is mom’s recipe and she refused to convert for me.

 Biscotti

 500 g flour

300 g sugar

3 eggs

1 packet yeast (1/4 oz)

50 g butter (softened)

250 g chocolate chip

300 g almonds

1 tsp almond extract

1 tsp vanilla extract

Sift flour and sugar together- set aside. Separate the egg whites, reserving the yolks. Beat the egg whites to a soft peak- set aside.

In a second bowl place the butter, and stir in the egg yolks using a wooden spoon. This is a very sticky dough, use your hands and you’ll be washing half the batch down the sink.

Once the butter and egg yolks are incorporated stir in the yeast and the remaining ingredients. Fold in the flour sugar mixture by thirds.  Once everything is well incorporated, delicately fold in the egg whites.

On a well lubricated baking sheet, divide the dough into four giant cookies. Bake at 350 till cookies are cooked through- about 15 minutes, maybe less, maybe more. Allow them to rest, and slice them into ½ to 1 inch thick slices. Lay them back into the baking sheet and reinsert into the warm oven, allowing them to dry and stiffen up further.