If You Can’t Stand the Heat…

If I had to choose the exact moment I started thinking seriously about becoming a chef, it would have to be the night a few months ago my girlfriend told me my steak au poivre was better than the one she’d recently eaten at a rarefied French brasserie.

I’d been hosting impromptu dinner parties for at least a couple years and become accustomed to recipe requests and collective praise of my culinary abilities over bottles of cheap red wine. But cooking was always a hobby, something to wile away the hours when I wasn’t out doing something important, like reporting a story or watching a television program about young chefs being judged by their food and ability to engage in drama.