First Post and New Beginnings

A year ago this time I was in the second semester of my second to last year before graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, and I hadn't been happy for a while studying economics and international relations but I had decided to continue because I thought I had to, that it was the right thing to do with my life. I was 23 and it was about time I grew up and joined the real world, even if I wasn't passionate about it. What I was passionate about was cooking and food, but it had always been a secondary priority because I had a beaten path set. A couple months went by, and I was clearly unhappy with what I was studying and the more job titles I saw trying to find work for the summer made it worst. This was clearly not what I wanted to do. In april, I took a trip that changed the way I thought and felt about my life. I went to San Francisco for spring break, and I decided I would really like to go to sonoma or napa valley for a day and ended up going to Sonoma. The combination of the respect for the agriculture, and passion for the food and wine turned a switch inside of me and everything seemed to make sense. I wanted to become a chef. However, that summer I gave the benefit of the doubt to family pressure and that little voice inside my head that said find an internship/job related to my studies and make sure you dont like it. I did, and I hated it. That semester was my last, and I moved to Spain to start a new chapter.

This blog is dedicated to writing about the steps I'm taking towards fulfilling my goal. Also, I'll be trying to cook 1 or 2 recipes from books I have or from something interesting while browsing the net or may come across in my life every week and uploading the steps and results. Also I would like to add intermittent posts about news I see geared towards food related topics, and highlighting several organizations I find interesting, for example SlowFood or the MadridFusion convention in Madrid which takes place every January.

My influences have a wide range in terms of the type of cooking I like, but at the moment they seem towards experimental cooking: Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Grant Achatz, Juan Roca. At the same time I'm trying to have some balance and recognize that to be able to experiment with cooking I need to learn the fundamentals before I begin jumping ahead. So while I would love to cook from Blumenthal's and Achatz's books I've been cooking and learning from some more classic and tradition-centered resources and chefs such as Jacque Pepin, Thomas Keller (more The French Laundry and Bouchon than Per Se), Tom Colicchio, C.I.A. textbook, 1080 recetas, Culinary Artistry and Becoming a Chef by Dornenburg & Page. Obviously I've been influenced by Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking which I think is a great reference for explaining the whys and hows of cooking and sparked the interest I have in reading about Blumenthal, Achatz, Hervé This, Adria, Roca, etc.

Hope you enjoy the blog!