kitch•en mouth
[kich-uh n mouth] noun
1. Someone who often swears profusely, uses vain or foul terminology, and inserts the word “fuck” into their syntax as often as possible. This is a direct result of being immersed in a professional kitchen environment.
back in the restaurant days
A bit about me. My name is Mike and I’m super passionate (obsessed?) about cooking and food in general. I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember and several years ago I decided to go full-bore with it and took a divergent career path into the underworld that is the restaurant kitchen. While my stint there was relatively short (about three years) I learned more in six months than I had in all my time of reading cookbooks and experimenting at home.
Looking back on it I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I could cook some pretty nice stuff, but cooking at home and cooking in a restaurant are all together different worlds. Having no formal training or experience to fall back on I knew I had to do some quick learning if I was going to last any amount of time there. To supplement my woeful lack of knowledge I started reading and cooking anything I could get my hands on, but I wasn’t always able to find a resource to answer my questions, which was a major pain in the ass. Sometimes I just ended up doing something over and over until I found a way that worked how I wanted. If you’ve ever seen a real production kitchen in action you know it isn’t at all like what you see on TV. It’s hot, nasty, dirty, cramped work and the cooks that work there have all of these great tips and tricks that makes restaurant food taste so good and you won’t ever find in a cookbook. When I think about it now I wish I’d had a no bs resource that showed how something was done in full detail with all of the little tips and tricks you never see.
These days I still do the occasional wine dinner/special event/consulting gig, but after leaving the restaurant I really miss the creative outlet that I had in the kitchen. I guess I get that outlet here and I figured I do so much cooking and people ask me about it all the time that I might as well stop fighting it, so I started this blog. Now, cooking is a somewhat subjective craft and because of this there are often numerous ways to do something. What I present here is the way I was taught to do something or learned on my own, but everything I show I use on a regular basis. This means it has been rigorously tested in a commercial kitchen and gives me the confidence it will work for you also. I also wanted to show people that cooking is pretty easy and that you can make some really outstanding food at home if you’re willing to invest a little time and effort. I hope you’re as entertained reading Kitchen Mouth as I am with making it.