Hey all,
My name is Kevin and I am a 56 year old that wants to take my nominal cooking skills to a higher level.
I have been in the Aviation industry for the last 34 years but prior to that was in the (what we called then) Food Industry.
I was on the food purchasing side for a five star hotel so I got to learn a lot about quality and cost but more important I learned how food should taste.
Alas a "friend" (still not sure if I should bless him or curse him) led me astray and I got involved with airplanes. I have reached the end of my aviation career and now I want to focus on food again, not for a living but because I want to learn to cook food in a way that brings pleasure, not just to sustain my body. I do most of the cooking in my home and can follow a recipe with the best of them but I lack understanding of many of the basic skills and terminology so I can not do many of the dishes I would like to try. For instance just what does it mean to do a reduction and what is a reduction actually used for?
I thought about going to a culinary school butt, after reviewing and visiting several of them, I decided that my goals were not quite in harmony with what they wanted to teach me. While I could learn the techniques I never got the feeling I would learn the whys and whats. So off I went to the internet to see what I could find. I found many "online schools" willing to take my money but never got a warm fuzzy about them. To many of them seem to want to just teach you recipes, not skills. But then I hit it big, I found this site. I think this is just what I am looking for. The information seems concise and in depth and your delivery of the information is easy to understand and follow. I am excited that I found this site.
I do have one question for you. When it comes to learning something new I am a process type guy, step 1 step 2 step 3 etc. After completing the knife skills series is there an order I should follow with the other series that would best help me build on my skills to prepare for the next series?
Thanks for the time and effort you put into this site.
