Welcome to Chef Hacker Kitchen! We are glad you are here. Hopefully you are glad you are here too. Perhaps you are wondering exactly what this place is.
I Can Help With That!
This is a set of web properties – a blog, a video site and social media pages all dedicated to exploring and expanding the food that we create and share with our friends and loved ones. This exploration could take many forms like sharing favorite recipes, talking about cooking styles and preparation techniques, hacking old familiar dishes with unusual ingredients, discussing pros and cons, common wisdom and debunked myths. Anything that involves food, cooking, serving or eating. And pictures! All kinds of pictures. And videos! Food, food tools, food ingredients, food clothing, food prep, cooked food, raw food. ….well….you get the idea…. Consider this your place for improvisational verite cooking!
Hop In
As that other Jersey guy said, “The door’s open but the ride it ain’t free”. Food is not a spectator’s sport so when you come here be ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work! If you are like me then cooking is a labor of love – so share it! Try some of these recipes then tell us all what you think. Or better yet, add a few hacks of your own and give us all of the juicy (or dry) details. If I write something you don’t agree with let me know! Have a food prep video of your own? Send us the link so we can share it! But what if you are internet bashful? Ok……well, truth is this ride IS free if that’s what you’d like it be, so feel free to just look around if that’s your pleasure.
Why are we here?
I’m not referring to the big metaphysical question, I’m just talking about why Chef Hacker Kitchen is here. The motivation for creating Chef Hacker Kicthen was simply a desire to share some of the eccentricities of cooking that I have experienced. Beginning with watching my Mom working her magic at our kitchen stove, moving through my formal culinary training and my experience as a culinary professional and on to my personal home cooking and baking. Over the years I was sometimes asked by friends to share a recipe for a dish I served them but since I rarely adhere to a recipe my answer was always the same. I would tell them that it’s not really written down and that I often vary things and then I’d give a fast explanation of how it’s made. Then I’d explain my cooking philosophy which deals with knowing techniques, general flavor profiles, classic dishes and experimenting with different combinations of all three of these. Although these were my sincere sentiments at the time, I’m now sure that, to the person who simply asked for a recipe, this was a fully unsatisfactory response. So one of the drivers to create this site is to have a place that I can point to when people ask me for a recipe. My hope is that they can get the requested recipe along with an understanding of how the recipes came about and hopefully this will encourage them to experiment with the combination approach to cooking themselves. I also realized that I can not be the only person who applies creativity and culinary skills to common dishes – in fact I have worked with many who do. One shining example was a part time cook I worked with who created a soup he called “Italian Clam Chowder”. (A wonderful Northern Italian version of New England style chowder. This rich dish shares it’s colors with those of the Italian flag! Hopefully I’ll have a video of this one soon.) I wish I could recall this cook’s name as I’d like to honor him by adding an “ala [his name here]” to the end of the dish’s name, but alas I can not. This, by the way, is another reason why I am not good at giving out recipes; I have a poor memory. …but back to motivations…So once I realized that there are others like me I decided that Chef Hacker Kitchen would be a perfect place for all of us culinary experimentors to banter about ideas and “publish” our results. It could be like the New England Journal of Medicine except it is for Chef Hackers instead of Doctors.
So, I admit that Chef Hacker Kitchen’s raison d’être is not quite as interesting as the Answer To The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. (which we all know is 42) However, it does let us know who we are, why we are here and where we are going, which are the thee questions that George Harrison once said we all want to answer. At least I think those are the questions Mr. Harrison shared. See above regarding my poor memory.
Do you feel this is a good and reasonable goal for Chef Hacker Kitchen and do you think my alter ego, Chef Hacker, along with your help can pull it off? Let us know your thoughts.