Growing up, my family always struggled financially. I had working parents, and two older brothers. My brothers and I were always into sports throughout every season, it goes without saying that my very dedicated and selfless parents gave any extra free time, or any extra money to make sure that we had everything we needed to be successful.
With little time to spare, and even less money, certain amenities fell to the wayside. Cooking times had to be short and were rushed (unless it was Sunday) , and as we grew as a family my mother, father, both of my brothers, and me all worked. I found myself in local pizza shops and doing whatever outdoor work I could turn up.
These were the conditions that would create an atmosphere for a young child (me) to wonder if there was a lot more to learn about food. Did it all really come from this person "Tyson" whom I had never met, the idea of a burglar stealing hamburgers from a clown also seemed a little bit ridiculous to me as well.
Luckily for me, from the depths of the lower middle class I discovered a wonderful thing called The Public Broadcasting System. I share this story with all my friends, there was no cable in my house, but we did get PBS. Saturday morning you wouldn't find me channel surfing from Cartoon Network, to Nickelodeon, you would see me plopped down watching Julia Childs, Jacques Pepin, Lidia Bastianich or the more contemporary and eccentric Chef Eric Ripert.
This was childhood for me, seeing these people being beamed through my television with these wonderful stories, techniques, and most importantly ingredients I had never seen. I would sit all morning and watch these people create dishes from thin air it seemed, it was almost like mysticism and alchemy. None the less, they left there impression, and I still to this day read their books, and watch there shows when I can to find culinary inspiration.
People often speak of books transporting you into these lush wondrous planes of existence, and distant lands that one can only dream of. I feel that this same concept can easily be applied to the kitchen as well. With the right ingredients, patience, and technique food can literally hold the history and hopes of an entire people in one dish. You can stand above it, stir it, smell it, taste it, and share it with those you care about most. In this way, I feel that cooking is a comparable if not superior to reading when it comes to the exchange of knowledge and experience. The world awaits discovery one dish at a time. I will brave this journey in hopes of finding truth, purity, and technique.
My kitchen really is small, and the world is very large.
