So, let’s start from the beginning. What is A Home Cook’s Tour? This blog is my attempt at sharing everything food-related through my eyes, the eyes of a home cook. This will include cooking, recipes, kitchen tool and gadget reviews, local restaurant reviews, and more. Why the name? This name may sound a little familiar to you and that’s because it should. A Cook’s Tour is a book and the first show by Anthony Bourdain, my culinary inspiration. Without No Reservations and Parts Unknown, I do not know if I would have become as passionate about cooking and food as I am now. These shows and Anthony Bourdain have opened my eyes to the world of food. Food is truly one of the only things the world has in common and cooking is a universal language. No matter where you go in the world you will find a chef that is passionate about cooking and willing to share their local cuisine and practices with you. These shows had me drooling and checking flight costs as Anthony traveled to locations all over the world sampling cuisine I could only hope to try. This inspired me to study abroad and it was a great experience expanding my palette and cooking knowledge from the great food I got to try all around Europe. Unfortunately, my idol has recently just passed and as an act of remembrance, I decided to name my blog after his first show. Since I have no formal culinary education, I consider myself a home cook, hence A Home Cook’s Tour.
I didn’t start life with a passion for food. I was actually a very picky eater only comfortable with foods that contained bread or cheese. The usual lunch for me in grade school was either a cheese roll-up, (shredded Mexican cheese melted on top of a tortilla in the microwave and rolled up), or a peanut butter sandwich, and a granola bar. Safe to say I wasn’t coming near anything with the name like shakshuka, or confit byaldi. As a matter of fact, I had never cooked anything besides eggs, ramen noodles, or my coveted cheese roll-ups until I moved out for college. In my freshman year, my culinary knowledge exploded. I was out on my own, no more mommy to make dinner and I was footing the bill now if I decided to eat out. So that left one option, cook for myself. Conveniently at the same time, I got into nutrition and fitness. There are infinite amounts of YouTube videos from fitness influencers showing you how to meal prep for the week and hit all your macros. So, to make things easy I would follow their tutorials or just search google for “healthy meal prep recipes”. This led me to mainly making baked chicken, brown rice, and broccoli or some variation of this combination. I worked with this for many months which led to great gains in the fitness department, but my newfound culinary interests wanted some more, different flavors, more technical cooking and knife skills. I wanted to impress people with what I could make for them to eat. Around this time, I discovered Parts Unknown on Netflix and as I mentioned earlier this transformed the way I look at food. It was no longer just fuel for the body but an art form. Instead of the same chicken, rice, and veggie, I started making a healthy version of Chicken Tikka Masala after watching the episode in India. This started the long process of where I am today still trying to progress as a chef and make more technical dishes. Through this process, I have learned a lot and I want to share my experiences and opinions with you. With that short bio of my entrance into the world of cooking and how I’ve gotten to the place I’m at now, welcome to A Home Cook’s Tour
A Home Cook's Tour 