The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

destiny. Since that day, since the first time I wore that silly
baseball hat and the T-shirt that identified me in no
uncertain terms as a Knight of the Round Grill (seriously), I
was a cook. It didn’t matter to me that I knew nothing about
cooking and that my job mostly consisted of flipping
asparagus spears with my double-fisted spatulas. I knew
right then that I’d discovered what I was going to do with
the rest of my life.
I was ravenous. I tore through every cookbook I could
lay my hands on. Going to the beach? Forget the Frisbee—
I’m bringing Pépin. Friends heading to a movie? I’ll be in
the kitchen with my dog-eared Chinese cookbook. I worked
in restaurants as much as my class schedule would allow,
making up for lack of experience with brute force and sheer
willpower. Unfortunately, what with trying to attain a degree
and a decided lack of a cooking mentor (the closest I had
was our fraternity chef, who was better at snorting coke off
the piano than tourné-ing a potato), cooking for me was
filled with an endless series of unanswered questions.
Why do I have to cook pasta in a huge volume of water?
Why does it take so much longer to bake a potato than to
boil it? How come my pancakes always suck? And what’s
really in baking powder anyway? I made a pact with myself
then and there that as soon as I was finished with college,
I’d never again do anything that I didn’t enjoy doing. I’d
spend my life trying to answer these questions that so
fascinated me. The fact that cooks make very little money
and work crazy schedules—I might not see my friends and
family on holidays ever again—didn’t deter me. I’d found
my passion, and even if it made me a pauper, I’d be damned