Or does it? As I am having an extremely hard time wondering where to begin this post.
Recently my life took a couple of twists and turns leaving me wondering where the next fork in the road would lead. I returned from Italy a little over a month ago, working as the lead assistant at a culinary school in Calabria. It was the first rung in what I hope to be a long ladder of culinary and food science education. Partaking in a three month program in another country is something that leaves your knees a little wobbly when you return to reality, in this case the United States.
During my time in Italy I became obsessed with researching the "whys" behind cooking. I found myself constantly referring to the two books that I had brought on my trip, Herve This' "Molecular Gastronomy" and Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking." When you take a course such as the one I was enrolled in, where the instructors have more knowledge than we had time to even brush the surface of, I was constantly leaving the laboratory with questions. Between the books and the Internet, I was able to answer some of the questions for myself that would have encompassed an entire lesson. Questions like: Why do you add salt to a dough once the gluten begins to form, Why should different gelatos be displayed at different temperatures, What makes cooking sous vide (in my case suoto vuoto) yield such tender cuts? The list goes on and on and every time I found the answer to one item the flood gates would open to one hundred other questions. I found myself in my spare time working the equation of freezing point depression for gelato recipes and using pearson's square to blend flours in order to reach a perfect protein content for different recipes.
So here I am. Ready to leave restaurant kitchens in order to pursue another outlet of food production. One that requires as much research as passion. The business aspect behind a food production facility intrigues me, the science intrigues me and the change has me scared. So here goes nothing.
Through this blog I hope to document the research that I do for my new job, or quest for a new job. One that allows me to research and develop for retail outlets and chain restaurants.
I would like to continue my education in food science and hope that this opens the doors for me to do so.
