My name is Drew, and I am not not a chef. I am not a professional cook. I am not even a professor though my handle suggests otherwise. What I am though, is unapologetically curious. I love to learn and experience new things. There is such a dopamine rush, a glorious satisfaction in picking up a new skill or a new bit of information and such an eagerness to share my new knowledge to the world or more likely to my fiancée, my family and friends. Which I’m sure they get a little tired of. 

I want to learn so many different things, and I can’t always share with my friends and family my new found knowledge all the time, so I finally thought, if I’m really going to put effort into learning things, why not share them with others outside of my immediate social circle? Why not record my journey and process, and share with the world and see if it inspires others like me to find passion and joy in learning a new skill? Now I am not an expert in any of the things I plan on learning in this channel so anything you learn, will be most likely through my process of learning and the many different resources I will allude to or share along the way, maybe you can even share some too. There are so many things I want to learn how to do, but one particular subject I have gotten into has piqued my interest the most in terms of how much I enjoy it and how valuable that skill is in my life: and that is cooking. 

I’ve always really enjoyed food, I even to some degree have enjoyed cooking. But whenever I cooked or ate anything. I never really thought about it that much. Most of what I would think was this tastes amazing, or this tastes bad, or I think I burnt this. Of course there were things I could pick out like saltiness or sweetness, ,I never really thought much about the process of cooking food. Why food tastes so good or how to make food taste good. In a way I kind of just let myself blindly enjoy what I considered to be some sort of sorcery that would happen in the kitchens of my favorite restaurants. 

My parents did a fair amount of cooking, growing up. But I never paid too much attention to it. I liked to help every now and then, and when I got older I’d even occasionally cook a meal or two myself for the family. But I wasn’t so much focused on fundamentally understanding what I was doing, as much as just blindly following a step by step recipe and it turned out well because I was leaning too much on the work of others. Not that following recipes is a bad thing, I absolutely still do it today, but I definitely have a more curious approach to it. 

That is not to say I didn’t pick up anything, and that I haven’t been curious or interested about cooking before. But rather cooking was something I would think about and do occasionally, whereas most of the time my thoughts were focused on school, video games, sports, what girl I liked, etc. I remember meticulously watching everything my dad did when he’d throw some of his marinated chicken thighs, dry rubbed pork chops or some of his decadent garlic salted steaks on the grill. I would love to go outside with him and help him set up the charcoal in the grill, smell the powerful yet strangely enticing scent of the liquid lighter fluid drenching the coals for the incoming  FWOOM! Of the fire roaring to life and turning the charcoal into beautiful hickory or mesquite embers. Where we’d wait until my dad’s magical dad senses knew it was hot enough. I’d then watch him generously season the meat (except for the marinated chicken) and throw it on the grill until once again where his magical senses (with the help of a trusty meat thermometer) knew the exact right time when to take them off the grill, and to me, it always tasted like heaven with a side of a baked potato and green beans, or some rice medley from a bag. Little did I know that my dad didn’t have a magical sense for this sort of thing, it was knowledge! From years of experience cooking at a Mcdonalds and ChiChi’s (I’m sure I just made a lot of people feel old by name dropping that nearly forgotten restaurant chain) from when he was younger as well as cooking for us as a family. A lot of it was taught to him or just trial and error from doing something he enjoyed doing. Though to this day a small part of me still believes my Dad has some magical abilities when it comes to grilling, because even with all that I’ve learned, I still can’t seem to grill anything quite like him.  

My father didn’t only grill, he had a few indoor dishes that, to me, felt quite unlike many others, and I still crave to this day. Those being his homemade chicken and noodle soup and his one and only pork cutlets and mashed potatoes. His distinct chicken noodle was always made when one of us was sick, and I crave it even when I’m not sick. With the thick frozen egg noodles, cooked in the flavorful broth with bits of chicken and seasoned with onions, garlic, sage and black pepper. LOTS of black pepper. My dad loves black pepper, sometimes it felt he’d season things to the point where I was certain, he was only tasting black pepper. It was only recently where I began understanding the powers of black pepper and when used properly the flavor profiles it can unlock when added to a dish. Regardless of my opinion of my dad’s black pepper usage, that soup with a side of oven toasted french or italian bread, with a nice schmear of butter on top, was the perfect remedy when I was feeling under the weather. The amount of black pepper certainly helped to clear my sinuses and the warm flavorful broth with a slight earthiness added from the sage, soothed my aching throat and always made me feel warm and cozy. It never outright cured my sickness, but it always made me feel better.

Now his family-famous pork cutlets, if you want a meal that’s going to put you down for a nap by half time of the Sunday Colt’s game, this is the meal you’ll want to make. This is a meal his mother used to make for him and his four other siblings, because it was an affordable meal that could feed 7 people easily without breaking the bank, but my dad doesn’t make it very often, though while it is not an expensive meal, it takes a little work to tenderize the pork. I remember waking up to the sound of my dad, aggressively hammering at a pork tenderloin with a meat mallet, and having done some the work myself, it’s quite a work out getting the meat to the right thickness, my arms were always sore after helping him out with that part, where then the meat would be lightly floured and then pan fried in a shallow pool of canola or sometimes even peanut oil. Then all the yummy frond and fried pork that stuck to the pan would be turned into a delicious gravy that would end being served on a mound of instant mashed potatoes and a side of canned green beans. We enjoyed it so much, some of my dad’s siblings would come over so he could teach them how to make their mom’s famous and beloved dish. I’ll admit to some people, this dish is definitely missing some sort of acidic element, but to us it was the perfect combination of salty rich creamy goodness. The acid was probably usually balanced by a nice sunday soda or juice of some kind, and my dad would usually have an ice cold beer to eat and watch number 18 throwing the ball to number 88 (yes I know their names, but any colts fan will know what I mean) for a colts touch down against our much hated rival, the new england patriots. And I just remember trying to watch the game, with a belly full of pork, gravy and potatoes, and rarely did I make it past the second quarter before I fell into a satisfying post meal nap.

I also have fond memories of my mother’s cooking. She always managed to make the best grilled cheese and tomato soup. The smell of the toasted butter on a slice of american white bread, with a small stack of craft singles gluing them together with their processed gooey goodness. And the acidic and creamy aroma of the Campbell’s tomato soup. She’d serve them up with a side of Ritz crackers that I would always crumble into the soup to give some extra texture and an extra slice of kraft singles to tear into to pieces and drop into the soup for even more cheesy goodness. There was nothing quite like dipping that perfectly toasted sandwich into the soup and taking a bite that combined all the flavors at once like an explosion in my mouth of salty, buttery, creamy and tomatoey goodness. I now know it really was the simplest of ingredients, canned soup, processed white bread and kraft singles. But when you add a mother’s love to something, no matter what it is, toa child that dish is worthy of a Michelin star(not that I knew what that was). That isn’t to say my mother didn’t cook with fresh ingredients. It was an extra special night whenever my mother would bring out her Grandmother’s pasta sauce recipe. Her grandmother was from southern Italy and as anyone raised in a household with Italian heritage will tell you, there is nothing quite like a pasta sauce made by a true Italian grandma, or in my case she was my great grandmother. But watching my mom make this sauce, once again, it felt like magic. I remember being all the way up in my room and being able to smell the mouth watering aromas of the garlic, the onions, the basil, and coming down into the kitchen just to be even closer to that cozy aroma (and maybe to sneak a taste if I could). I’d watch my mother chop up her favored banana peppers ( her own addition to the sauce), fresh and canned tomatoes, all sorts of different spices and seasonings and even whole chicken legs into this glorious pot that in some ways felt like a cauldron of magical italian ingredients that goes perfect over a penne pasta with grated parmesan cheese on top. She’d roll her hand made meatballs made with beef and italian sausage, my favorite part being the meatballs coming out early and getting to taste test them, of course, all I could really say was “Yum!” That sauce would stew for hours, just absorbing and mixing all of those wonderful flavors together, until it was finally dinner time (or on the case of sunday dinners 1pm) we’d sit down at the table and enjoy my mom’s wonderfully cooked meal with a side of store bought texas toast and some Ekrich smoked sausage to go along with the meatballs and the sauce. It was always delicious. And once again, I still can’t make it quite as good as my mother, and I sure she feels the same about her grandma, there is definitely something special about eating food that was lovingly made for you. I remember driving from indianapolis to cincinnati on sundays and having a small maybe 1200 square foot home filled with a bunch of family I didn’t know the names of or how i was related to them. I’d be playing with whatever toys I brought or more often than not, playing pokemon yellow and sapphire on my gameboy sp. While the adults chatted and my great grandfather watched bowling on tv (much to the dismay of my sunday football loving father) asleep in his recliner chair that smelled distinctly of old people, while the woman cooked in the kitchen, or more like my great grandmother cooked, and the rest of my aunts and mother helped with what their grandmother would allow them to do. But whenever we sat down to eat, I remember the look on my mother’s face as she took that first bite into the pasta sauce she’d grown up eating, and the joy it brought her, the same joy it brings when she’d make it for me. 

I also have some fond memories of cooking with my mother, I particularly remember two dishes in particular that were both only made once. One of them was homemade pretzels, that I believe were for some school project, and of course every 8 year old’s dream dish, Creme Brulee. The pretzels were quite fun mixing the dough together by hand since we didn’t have a stand mixer. As a matter of fact, I have never once used a stand mixer, my mother had an electric hand mixer gifted to her I believe by her grandmother, but everything I have ever baked or made was always mixed by hand, I think is a good sign as to why I never became a baker, since mixing things by hand is, to put it lightly, a huge pain in the ass. It was interesting learning to blanch the dough in a solution of boiling water and baking soda filled by an egg wash, which certainly was my first time experience washing raw dough with egg wash and sprinkling some kosher salt (a box of which I believe was purchased for this project which my mother still has to this day) on top and baking them in the oven until they were a perfect dark golden brown. The smell was heavenly. The smell of freshly baked bread is difficult to describe, yeasty(in a good way)? Bready? Freshly baked bread smells warm, cozy, it fills your heart and soul with joy and your brain with a dopamine rush that sometimes can’t be matched by other foods. It smells like bread, pretzels of course also have a distinct smell. And that smell is of course, german.There is nothing more german than the smell of freshly baked pretzels (except maybe sauerkraut).  Of course I’m kidding, but when we pulled those out of the oven, I could hardly keep myself from grabbing on immediately and biting into it. It’s a good thing my mother didn’t let me, knowing that a third degree burn in my mouth would certainly ruin the taste of the pretzel and more than likely the entire experience to begin with. But there is something about baking bread that makes me so impatient. Once my mother was sure the bread was cool enough, I took no time, grabbing one and taking a big child sized bite. The outside had a beautiful slightly crunchy and slightly chewy crust, and as the salt began to dissolve on my tongue, I was reaching into the soft fluffy interior that filled my mouth with the flavorful gasses hidden in the pockets of the gluten that formed in the baking process. Of course I didn’t know about the flavorful gasses of bread as an 8 year old, it was just the taste of bread. That information was something I picked up much later, when I was up late watching netflix and ran across a particular documentary called Cooked written and starring Michael Pollan, an incredible journalist, who I will talk about later as one of the first to truly open my eyes to the power of food and the culinary arts. I don’t think I’d be able to recreate that experience of making and eating those homemade pretzels if I tried. Cause I honestly doubt they’re as heavenly as I remember them being, but I think it was going through the process and the experience of making it all from scratch with my mom, that made it extra special and made the food taste better than it probably actually was. 

The next dish that I remember making was none other than the world famous Creme Brulee. Now I don’t know what sparked my interest in this dish as a child. I assume I had heard about it on various television shows that I watched or my parents watched. Or read it on menus. It was always talked about as this incredibly decadent, delicious, hard to make, expensive dish. To me it seemed comparable to that of the ambrosia of the Gods this unfathomable unobtainable delicious treat (of course if you ask Percy Jackson it tastes like warm chocolate chip cookies). So, bougie as I was,I  was obsessed with trying this dish. Now I knew I was probably never gonna get to order it at a restaurant, even by early 2000s standards creme brulee was an expensive dish. It is tedious to make. Even if my parents would have let me, even I was weary of the price tag, which at the time seemed like a lot! And still is in some ways. So the only option I had was to beg my mother to help me make it, so I could finally see what all of the hubbub was about (Edit: My Mother says I have had it at a restaurant, and loved it, hence my obsession for wanting to make it. But I don’t remember it, so take my memory with a grain of salt). She finally agreed. What was funny to me is that it seemed like my mother didn’t fully understand my obsession with this dish, to her it is really just a custard with some melted sugar on top, nothing special. And I have had custard pies before, and I’ll admit I wasn’t a fan of them. They sounded great on paper, always described as rich and creamy and sweet, one of my favorite combinations. But in the execution of the ones I tried, it tasted like egg whites with a bit of sugar in them which I honestly thought was gross, I think it’s why I still am not a huge fan of the flavor or texture of egg whites today. But I was sure creme brulee was different. It wasn’t as eggy and it had such a special cooking process, I guess you could say this was the first time where I expressed interest in a dish because of the work and time that was put into it. So we set out, and I am pretty fuzzy on the details but I believe I remember separating eggs, and mixing that with cream and sugar, at one point we put everything into these cute little ramekins and put those ramekins in another pan filled with a small pool of water. Baked them in the oven for like an hour, pulled them to set for what felt like another hour, maybe even refrigerated them at some point? And then the classic sprinkling more sugar on top and melting and toasting the sugar on top into a glass ceiling you can crack and break into with a spoon. I don’t quite remember how we toasted the sugar. I don’t recall us ever having a blowtorch, and I don’t recall using Gordon Ramsey’s patent pending hot spoon method. That is something I will need to ask my mother if she remembers and editing it into this. 

If my memory serves me correctly, I really enjoyed the creme brulee, though I think the sugar was a little too burnt and bitter for my liking. The rest of the dish, for the first time being made by an 8 year old and his mother, was pretty good. It was creamy, sweet, and rich. But I also remember feeling slightly disappointed. Now that could be because my mother and I aren’t chefs, but also could be the fact that it was built up so much in my head and in the media, it was never going to be able to live up to those heavenly expectations of an eight year olds imagination. And I have not made creme brulee ever since. But I admit, I have recently been more interested in giving it another go, to see if I can finally satisfy the glorious expectations of my 8 year old self.  

As you can see I’ve always expressed an interest in food, and even some in cooking. Food has always been a comfort to me, though I’m not sure I ever truly understood why. Even now I feel I struggle with the question: why do I love food? Why do I feel such a connection, such joy and comfort in eating a nice warm bowl of shoyu ramen, taking that first bite of a perfectly cooked steak seasoned with nothing but salt? And it was only recently that I really started to enjoy cooking. Most of the time, I only cared about the end result, hence why following a recipe felt so comfortable, it was the promise of a good end result, without trying to truly understand the steps and the process it took to get there. It got me to the thing I like: good, or more often than not “passable” food. 

Usually when someone decides to make a career out of something, they talk about how they’ve been passionate about it, ever since they were a kid, they’ve known it’s what they’ve wanted for their whole lives. At least, that’s a fallacy we’ve been engrained to hear from passionate people on television. But it wasn’t like that for me, as I suspect it is for a lot of people. A love or enjoyment of something doesn’t always breed ambition. Ambition has to be nurtured and fueled. Plenty of people are happy just enjoying a hobby of something they like and doing something else professionally. And at first that is what I thought cooking could be for me. I can’t exactly tell you the moment that I started to have the desire to increase my culinary prowess. I think it happened slowly, over time, as I started cooking more and more meals for myself and for my fiancee, I started to have this desire of making the food better than “passable” I wanted to make food that could make her knees weak, to make her immediately want to go back for seconds as soon as she took that first bite (two successful dishes that come to mind are a curry breakfast risotto and a quick and easy smoked sausage jambalaya. She sure loves her rice dishes. New challenge: make it happen without the crutch of her beloved tempest that is known as rice.). I began to question why I was doing certain things from the recipe, understand why certain steps should happen at certain times, and what happens if I add ‘this’ ingredient? Before I knew it, I started to realize how I actually started to enjoy the process of cooking, and understanding what was making the food taste good. And the enjoyment of creating something delicious, using certain techniques or cooking methods to make food taste the way I wanted it to, is such an unbelievably gratifying process. I realized I was asking more questions of my parents about why they did certain things with cooking. Some of it was something that was taught to them, and others were things they found along the years of cooking for each other and my brother and me. Originally I think I wanted to make cooking feel easier. I wanted to learn so that I didn’t have to think as hard when making meals, and I wouldn’t have to stress about whether I was doing it right, and if it was going to taste good. I wanted to lessen the amount of time it took to cook things; I wanted to become more efficient at this part of my life. I knew I could never avoid it, because we have to eat, and unless you have the money, you can’t eat out every meal. Nor should you. Not to mention that for many many reasons, knowing how to cook is an incredibly valuable skill that is critical to our survival. I could go on and on about the importance of cooking, which I’m sure one day you will get. But for now, let’s just understand that I began to understand the importance of  the cooking process and what exactly makes food taste so amazing. 

I started visiting or revisiting some of the sources I had previously seen that had good information about cooking, how to cook, and the philosophy and history of it. The first thing that came to mind was a docu series on Netflix called Cooked, created by Michael Pollan. I also remembered that that series was based on a book of the same name, also written by Michael Pollan. Both are excellent and explore different aspects of the history and the cultural significance of cooking. Michael Pollan is not a chef, but he is, like me, a seeker of knowledge, and unlike me, he is an award winning journalist and best-selling author. But I figured since Michael had a similar question about learning more about cooking, its history, its culture, and its importance; I figured it was as good of a place as any to start to learn about appreciating food and where it comes from. In his book he explores the subjects for his food by following the four classical elements: Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Being a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender (There is no correlation, but I do own an ATLA cook book I plan to utilize in my Journey to Chefhood) I was instantly interested, and he explores each element from angles I wasn’t expecting. Fire, lead him specifically to southern style bbq and cooking over a flame, that one makes sense. Water, Is about using water as a cooking method to make stews and the important role it played in history and in the home. Air is where it became a little more unexpected, which was Bread. Bread is so amazing because of the air trapped inside the gluten full of delicious and aromatic gasses that give bread its distinct smell and flavor! Finally, Earth is about fermentation, because fermentation is utilizing nature to help make food delicious, cheese, and alcohol and so many things utilize yeast and decay to turn foods into funky, tasty delicacies all around the world. I can’t recommend the book and docuseries enough, and I plan to revisit both of them once  more and do a deep dive on how I can use the information from them to improve my own cooking knowledge. 

After finding Cooked, it naturally led me down the route to discovering one of my favorite chefs and food journalists, Samin Nosrat, author of Salt, Fat, Acid and Heat. Also the creator of the docuseries of the same name. I originally learned about Samin as she appeared in the docuseries Cooked as well as in Michael Pollan’s book, and Michael helped Samin write Salt, Fat, Acid and Heat. Samin’s documentary is just as invigorating and awe inspiring as Cooked, as she expresses such a love for food and understanding where it comes from, often learning how things make it from farm to table. Her book is, how do I put this lightly, Perfect! It is jam packed with information and really acts as a guide for new and aspiring cooks to understand the fundamentals of cooking in the form of Salt, Fat, Acid and Heat. She provides a lot of her own personal experience, talking about her learning experience working at Chez Panisse, and all the little mistakes she made along her cooking journey. Samin Nosrat is a huge inspiration for why I have decided to document my journey, and an inspiration for doing this at all. Her personality grabs my attention, and her attention to detail and explaining how every step in cooking a dish matters, and while there can be ways to fix mistakes later, a lot of times it’s better to learn good habits to avoid those mistakes all together. She teaches by learning, and that is my entire schtick with this whole Professor Drew name. I am not a professor, but I hope that others can learn from my own learning experience. The show is a really great celebration of food, but the book… The book is pure gold! I also plan to revisit this book, probably a physical copy (since I am listening to the audio book) And I am scouring that book for every bit of useful information I can grab from it, and I am taking it to heart. I tape to my walls if I have to. Samin’s word is Law (Not really, but her advice is incredibly useful).

I have also taken to binging many cooking competition shows, while they are dramatized, plenty of them hold a lot of useful information. Some favorites of mine are MasterChef, The Final Table and Great British Baking Show (Really only for the baking, I still can’t get over the trainwreck that was Mexican week last season or a few seasons ago). I also follow a lot of cooking YouTubers: Mythical Kitchen, Joshua Weissman, Max the Meat Guy, Guga Foods, Nick Digiovanni, Gordon Ramsay (I dabble in the British version of Kitchen Nightmares too).  There may be a few more I’m forgetting off the top of my head, but I have been trying to absorb as much content as possible and taking what I learn and applying it to dishes I make almost every single night. And I have to say, I have seen improvement already. But I want to do more. As the title says, my goal is to be able to call myself a chef, and I have a lot to learn before I get there. If anyone has any suggestions for more material I can use to learn more about cooking it would be greatly appreciated. 

As you can see, I have a long relationship with food and it feels like something I have gradually been getting more and more passionate about. When I go out to eat, which is rare these days (Saving for a wedding, weee!), I try to really pay attention to the food I’m eating. The texture, the flavors, the ingredients, the cooking methods. Everything I can find out, I take notes. I’m trying to understand why certain things are done with food. At home, I am rotating recipes, trying to perfect a few to have some dishes I know I can nail. I’m getting pretty close with my Pot Roast, I have a charming breakfast risotto that my fiancee really likes. I even made a curry version of it recently that worked pretty well, and recently made a batch of Butter Chicken that was pretty promising. 

I love cooking and I appreciate you taking the time to share in this process with me, reading about my journey. I hope you can take something away for your cooking journey or any other skill you want to try and master.