I have pictures of me feeding deer and possums with baby bottles. I am such an animal lover.
As chefs, especially pastry chefs, your creativity plays such an important part in your daily work. We truly do have a blank canvas to work with every time we create a new dish.
When you think about French pastry, one of the most classic traditional pastries is the eclair. An eclair is like a blank canvas that can be easily adapted to any environment. Ingredients are the most important aspect of a perfect eclair, and they need to be used at their peak.
I'm very much half city and half country boy.
I see myself as half country boy and half city boy, so I need both to balance me out. I couldn't spend all of my time in either place.
My dad said, 'If you want to go out with girls and go out with your friends, get a job.' I found one at the local country club as a pot washer in the kitchen.
Just because you love to cook and you are good at in your home environment doesn't necessarily mean that you are cut out for competition. It is a different animal and requires you to approach cooking in a very different way.
I didn't come from a wealthy family. My dad told us if we wanted spending money, we had to earn it. So I developed an early work ethic.
I was an amusement and water park fiend as a kid growing up. I loved them. My brothers and I would go whenever we could. We liked all the super steep/fast slides and flumes where you would get completely soaked. Our absolute favorite was the tubes, though.
I want to do more TV and more books. I want to have my hand in different projects. I'm way too hyper; I'm just one of those people who has to have a lot going on.
Chocolate is one of the backbones of the pastry kitchen. It is one of the most important ingredients in our pantry. It is very versatile, it is complex, and it is extremely temperamental.
I really loved traveling the U.S. and seeing regional differences within the same country and how the same ingredients are used in very different ways. I love how the 'old guard' of cuisine are still pioneering so much of the direction of food today.
I like the Rockabilly look. My background is half Italian, half French. I wear cowboy boots and jeans.
Every few years, I change my look for the simple reason that I get bored. If you Google Image me, you will see so many different looks: long hair, short hair, clean shaven, beard, etc.
A savory chef must first master his knife skills and understand the basics of sauces and soups, etc., before he/she may move on to become a great chef. It is no different for pastry chefs. If you do not have a strong foundation and are a master of the basics, then you will never be that strong - you will never be a master of the trade - period.
When I was a kid, I would come home from school, and my mom would buy the industrial-size Famous Amos cookies or Chips Ahoy when I was lucky. And I would sit in front of the TV set with a glass of milk... and I would dump cookies in there, smash them with my spoon, and eat cookies and milk with a spoon watching 'The Dukes of Hazzard.'
My mom was a rescue veterinarian, and I grew up helping her nurse injured animals back to health. Any deer hit by a car, fox caught in a trap, whatever it was that got hurt, everyone brought them to my mom.
