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I’m 40 years old. I’m not a chef, I’m a professional amateur. This is how my friends call me for a fun. Anyway, I’m a culinary journalist. My everyday life is closely related to the media.
I develop food culture. My motto is to cook by yourself, meaning that people should stop buying ready-to-eat and vapid food, and to cook healthy and tasty food at home instead. It doesn’t cost much. My culinary community iCook is devoted to this.
For a professional amateur, experience and service record is the whole life. But if you try to find more or less exact date, when I started my culinary way, then this is when I was 6. At that time I started getting in my grandmother’s way in the kitchen. As a memory from that period I even have two notebooks with culinary notes and recipes, which I wrote down with my childish uneven writing.
The first serious achievement was my decision to attend culinary course at the Work Training Centre. I was at 9th grade then. If you remember we used to have such courses for the seniors at school, when one school day was devoted to some profession, which could be of use for the Soviet youth. Everyone decided to attend courses for fitters and motor mechanics. I chose to attend those for cooks, and I’ve never regretted about it. Then I even managed to have training in the kitchen of young pioneer camp as a cook’s helper. Those were real cook shifts from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. I will never forget this. It has never become my profession, but passion has remained. So, I keep cooking for my friends and relatives.
I like Thai, Italian and contemporary American cuisine. I think that both the Italians and the Thais have managed to create tasty dishes, to cook common products in a new and interesting manner. They have developed their cuisine and have given a lot to the culinary world. As for the contemporary American cuisine I like it in the area of high gastronomy.
Culinary is one of my hobbies. I’m also fond of music, journalism and kite surfing.
The basis of our dish is Eastern greens: mustard spinach or tatsoi and sugar pea pods. They create interesting texture of the dish and a very fresh taste. From Europe we have here Cherry, air-dried capicola and quail eggs. Yolk remained liquid, giving a bit of viscosity and soft flavour. But the main taste is created by the Thai dressing prepared from soy-bean and fish sauces, ginger, peanut oil, lime juice and citron. As a result, the dressing adds rich taste, and eggs and meat – depths and flavour to the greens. A bit of black sesame serves as a décor with light nut flavour, well combining with this sauce. This salad can be served any time of the year, since the ingredients can be found almost all the time.
Why did I choose this dish Thai-Italian Friendship? We are shooting in the country, and are short of time. And what can be better than tasty, crunchy and fresh salad?
