First steps

Why hello! Thanks for stopping by 100 kitchens, a blog that I didn't expect to be writing but inexplicably find myself easing into on this cool spring night.

This is a story of food, as told through my experiences. Most recently this has been through the lens of cooking, but it started much earlier. I was lucky enough to be brought up in a home where my parents instilled great appreciation for food and the occasions that come with it. As the youngest of seven (yep, seven) I recall dinners being a time for our mob of a family to spend precious time with each other. It was often raucous; plates clanged about, tiny hands would knock milk on the carpet, and 7 hungry  kids clamored with mouths full of food.

Through all that somehow my folks always managed to put amazing food on the table that brought us all together. My mom was a culinary superhero. We weren't wealthy, but she knew how to turn ingredients into gourmet meals. What other kid could say he grew up eating broccoli with hollandaise sauce, or yorkshire pudding baked to perfection with drippings from a roasted prime rib? These are things that I still salivate over! But more than this I think that deep down my folks wanted us to cherish being able to share this experience with one another, with food being the common link to make that happen.

I took this lesson later into life. Now, at 28, I'm living in New York and have a whole new world of culinary experiences to appreciate and share. And even though I'll never be the superhero in the kitchen that my mom was, I'm trying to learn how to cook more so I can share similar experiences with the people I love.

100 kitchens is my part of that story. I'll be traveling around new york restaurants, pubs, food trucks, friend's houses, or wherever the wind takes me to find 100 food experiences that really stick with me. Then, in an effort to educate myself on how they were made, I'll try to recreate them in my own kitchen based only on the memory that lingers from an unforgettable meal...no specific recipe.

We'll see how this all develops--but for now it will be done by documenting my foray into unknown territory. This will be a long process, so thanks for reading. Hopefully you're having your own unforgettable moments with food and friends.