About Me

Thank you for visiting!

My philosophy on food:  I don’t believe there is such a thing as pretentious or inferior food, its either good or not-so-good.  Whether its sweeping sauces, foam and 3 peas on a plate at a four-star place or a humble dish of mac n’cheese at home, I embrace all of it.  As long as it was made with love, thought and integrity, that’s all that matters to me.  In the end, I just want to cook and eat!

My love for food and cooking started as a young child, constantly following the footsteps of my mother on culinary adventures.  From the produce aisles of the grocery store to the chilled cases of the fish market and butcher, I learned to appreciate the quality of foods, the importance of where they came from, and seasonality.

In the kitchen, tenacity, patience and a desire to prepare foods conscientiously was ingrained into my system.  I have vivid images of my mother squatting on the floor, diligently working her way through a foot-high stack of dried seaweed sheets with the deftness of a surgeon.  She’d brush one side of a sheet with sesame oil, salt lightly, and with chopsticks, turn the sheet over to repeat the procedure.  The sheets would then be roasted, piece by piece, under the broiler.

Holidays and parties were always the greatest as well.  Christmas meant lots of cookies, spiced nuts and eggnog.  Thanksgiving was a perfectly crisp, golden turkey, stuffing, gravy, mash potatoes, cranberry sauce…you get the idea.  I consider myself truly lucky to have been exposed to all types of food as a kid.

Still, the parties were my favorite.  Parties meant community, a dozen or more women buzzing about the kitchen, skirts in a blur, to make a Korean feast for the small army of children that would be playing in the basement, and the husbands who smoked their cigarettes and drank Scotch in the living room.  I remember helping my mom the day before these parties.  Filling and rolling a hundred wonton wrappers with cabbage and ground gingery pork, mashing shrimp with garlic and smearing the paste between two bite-size squares of bread to be fried the next day, trimming chicken wings which would be cooked and coated in a sweet and spicy soy glaze.  One woman would bring her signature dish, Jap Chae, a stir fried glass noodle dish with strips of beef, sesame seeds and vegetables.   Another would bring these small beef patties, which were made with ground beef, onions, scallion and soy, and then dipped in egg and cooked in a pan to a light golden brown.  Dang, was I lucky.

When my teen years rolled around, I began to bake regularly on the weekends, preferably in the late hours of the night, finishing elaborate layer cakes covered in caramel and almonds or loaves of potato dill bread by 3 am.  Every Saturday afternoon one could find me plopped on the couch in front of the tv watching hours of cooking shows on PBS.  It was at this time that I also started my cookbook collection.  My first book was The First American Cookbook by Amelia Simmons, an interesting historical read which I had picked up in Williamsburg, Virginia when I was 13.  I remember baking my first pound cake out of that book.  Other books I loved were the Little House series, reading and re-reading the sections where Laura Ingalls Wilder would describe the meals and food.  How I would’ve loved to smoke venison the way Pa did in Little House in the Big Woods, or eat apples n’ onions like Almanzo in Farmer Boy.  (Yes, I’m a total cheeseball.)

Next came college.  The cookbook library grew, a few books departed, others entered, I still watched PBS Saturday afternoons in my dormitory common space.  Some days when I was feeling adventurous, I would cook meals in my little rice cooker in my bedroom, the most sophisticated meal being a Japanese curry with steamed rice.  It took a long time (not to mention it was a little awkward cutting vegetables and chicken on my desk with a cafeteria knife,) but it was so worth it.

Sophomore year in college was critical and changed my life forever.  All because I lived in an apartment with a kitchen.  I was cooking at least 4 to 5 times a week, honing my knife skills (with the knife Mom gave me and I still have it) and digging deeper into my books.  It was that year I began to contemplate culinary school.  Long story short, I finished up college, took a year off to do a stagiaire in Manhattan and packed my bags to head upstate to culinary school for two years.

As a young adult, I worked in several different kitchens here and there for quite some time, adopting a serious, intense approach to cooking (which will remain with me forever I fear, but still fun I hope!).  Made my way up to a Sous Chef position, but then got laid off like so many others in the culinary industry when the economy took a steep dive in late 2008 (here’s a tip:  never transfer to a new job at a new place when the economy is shaky;  promotions are great but seniority is everything).  I started this journal circa April 2009 as a good outlet to keep busy and learn a few new skills.  Little did I know how much I would enjoy the challenge of doing it.  Whether I am working part-time, full-time, double-time or not at all, this blog shall endure in some form.  Hopefully, people will find something of value here, be it miniscule.  I hope to learn from others as well!

So here I am.  I love doing this.  I’ve learned new things about food, recipe-writing, photography and also about myself.  I love finding people who love cooking as much as I do and interacting with you all.  At the end of the day, its the readers that make it all worth it.  Thank you.

Lastly, I’d like to give a huge shout out to my friend who helped me with the finer points of setting up this site.  OuiChefCook.com was a barren wasteland with no map before he arrived.  Thank you, Jerad.

If there are any questions, concerns or suggestions, or if you just want to say hello, I can be contacted at mrs_t@ouichefcook.com

Thank you,

Connie