tmcguff : MyBlogHer Profile

Father  --  Dad  --  Passionate Home Cook 

I love sharing my passion for cooking through my 'instructional' and 'journal' blogs - Be A Better Cook and What Tom Cooked.  

I taught myself to cook by learning from a very small number of instrumental cookbooks and watching 1980's era cooking shows. All on PBS then, weren't they?. Anyone remember the Great Chefs series?

My bible became the New New York Times Cookbook by Craig Claiborne (with Pierre Franey). I must have cooked about half that book while I was single. I was also fortunate to discover and learn from all time greats like Marcella Hazan and Diane Kennedy. It turned out that being kind of a cookbook snob resulted in learning classic recipes and techniques that to this day stand the test of time. 

Somehow every step I took in the kitchen was accompanied by the thought "How would I explain this to someone else?". Not that I pictured myself on a cooking show (though I almost made it onto the first season of Master Chef). Those thoughts were always just there. Maybe some teaching desire came from my ancestors, who created the McGuffey Reader schoolbooks in the 1830's - Alexander Hamilton and William Holmes McGuffey. 

So I specialize in three decade old cooking. Nahhhh - no way. Sometimes I cook over the top, high-end, cutting edge. But I also have three kids. There's a lot of "plain cooking" in our house. So there's also a repertoire of solid basic dishes. Very often, they come from a very small number of instrumental cookbooks / sources. Sound familiar?  

Over the years I've honed those thoughts about teaching people how to cook, resulting in this  personal cooking philosophy:  

• Use fresh, high quality ingredients
• Acquire effective kitchen tools, not gadgets
• Develop solid fundamental cooking techniques
• Draw on a small number of highly reliable recipe sources

Happy to be sharing with you all.....Tom