Читать книгу Buns and Burgers - Gregory Berger - Страница 7

Sometime in my high school years, back in the early ’90s, my family took a summer vacation to New Orleans. This trip, which seemed like it would be an uneventful sightseeing tour, ended up being a life changing adventure. There was gumbo. There was jambalaya. There was étouffée. At one point, the gumbo was accompanied by a full marching band playing “Saints Go Marching In.” The flavors of this trip awoke my taste buds, which up to that point were a little bit adventurous, but barely beyond a typical Midwestern kid’s palate. (I had tried shrimp but it was fried. I had seen an avocado, but never tasted one, and wouldn’t have been able to find the heart of an artichoke if the world depended on it). Bill Knapp’s chocolate cakes on birthdays and Marion’s Pizza were our equivalent of the French Laundry restaurant.

Soon after that trip, I graduated high school and went to college, where I honed my chicken salad (now with grapes!) and gumbo skills. I moved back home after graduating. That’s when the next big, lifechanging thing happened: The Food Network. For real, The Food Network. Before the channel morphed into a bunch of reality shows, there were actual people showing you how to cook actual food! I spent hours watching Essence of Emeril, Too Hot Tamales, and Grillin’ & Chillin’. Bobby Flay and Jack McDavid were roasting red peppers on a kettle grill. Emeril Lagasse was blackening shrimp and making a rémoulade. Susan Finnegan and Mary Sue Milliken were adding mangos to a salsa. Groundbreaking in my head! I would watch a show, run to the store and buy the ingredients, and then make it that same night for my parents. Nine out of ten times, this was a great success.

After that summer cooking so many delicious meals, I moved to Chicago. I applied to the Culinary Institute, but ultimately decided against it, choosing a day job in graphic design over the kitchen life.

Jump ahead to 2013. The previous fifteen years had been spent making a ton of great food. I’d become a fairly good cook. I read cookbooks, cooking magazines, watched the shows. But in 2013, I came across a copy of Michael Pollan’s book Cooked. One of the sections was about making sourdough bread. For some reason, this drew me the most. Then I immediately bought Chad Robertson’s Tartine, and began a baking quest. I collected natural yeast from the air, and pretty soon was producing some very nice loaves.