"Culinary"
of or for cooking
"Grimoire"
a book of magic spells and invocations
Culinary Grimoire
I don't know what I am doing. I don't know what exactly the culinary grimoire will become. Currently it is my portfolio, my current projects and what crazy ideas await in the future. I am unsure of who I will become, the people who will be next to me and of course what food I will create. I do know that I have always had a strong desire to teach, tinker, create, explore and provide hospitality ever since I as a kid. In 9th grade of tech school I came up with the idea of a master document or archive. Something that held all my knowledge of cooking. From stocks and sauces to butchery and plating I wanted to catalog it all and I did for a time. Life is never simple and unfortunately I lost that entire document. I had other ideas and trials with similar different formatting about nothing felt good enough or right to me. Now almost a decade later I am ready to try again. This time I want to build something that is stable, tested reliable. Culinary knowledge is growing and changing all the time and I am not equipped with the experience, team, lab or community to build the idealized version of what I want from the Culinary Grimoire Archive. For now the Culinary Grimoire is an Idea, a goal to chase and a diary. A place I can gather updates on my projects, write, and test out archive entries and gain feedback. I still have a burning desire to teach tinker and create, the only question is how? I have decided to start small by moving into a firetruck. Well I actually decided to write the basics of basics, then start the Culinary Grimoire Archive, then Scholaris but hey life is never simple right??!!!!
Basics
of
Basics
is an elevation of the idea of this mysterious pocket notebook I acquired years ago that has helped me more than a few times in the kitchen. I am creating a pocket notebook that is dense in information while being approachable. I want this to be in everyone's knife bag, to be given out on the first day of work or class. I plan on integrating high quality video guides and walkthroughs using q-r codes on the pages. The Basics Of Basics is designed to help you gain confidence by educating you on objective techniques and safety practices, while giving you the conceptual knowledge to cook as freely as you decide! I want to empower you. It helps your mindset go from only understanding how to make a soup but how heat works with food. How water content effects cooking, how different food groups generally act. How to cook vegetable types as a whole versus how to cook a carrot. Cooking is scary. You are dealing with hot metals, oils, sharp objects, personal maybe professional expectations, expensive ingredients and its overwhelming. Cooking is also life. It's culture, emotional and physical nourishment, it is what allowed our species to dominate the planet. And it's ok to not to know what you are doing. I don't need to turn you into a chef, I need you to try and cook something. I need you to have the confidence in yourself cook for someone you care about. I don't care who it is, I hope you include yourself in that list, and I need you to be ok with failing. I have burned plenty of food, stained clothes and oh god I've dropped raw eggs on the floor which are especially hard to clean. I have fucked up plenty of times. I have gotten burned, nicked fingers all the usual. It doesn't matter because it's all worth it for one moment. The moment someone takes a bite and smiles. That moment, you'll feel it. When you add a little salt and taste again, when your coworker is taken back to their home country across an ocean and several deserts all because you used spices from that area. I will help you, I'm still developing the content format and style, the raw content is almost done. Formatting and testing plus the video production side still takes a significant portion of time.
Scholaris
How the hell to I begin? Once converted it will serve as a mobile test kitchen, one of my restaurant concepts, media production office, workshop and house. It's a firetruck command center from the late 80s and so much more that if you are at all interested please the entire process will be documented in relevant videos. I will do a quick summary of my plans with this van. First you need to understand this is not some VW hippie or candy stocked windowless cargo van, this is a command center on wheels. Measuring about 150 square feet, including the cabin plus outside storage, it is about 8 ft tall, wide and 18ft long. That is the bare box dimensions not including insulation. It is a room on wheels with tall ceilings and plenty of ground clearance. The kitchen, my dream mobile test kitchen will be ridiculous, stupid, expensive, performant, cool and worst of all rational. Worse for my wallet and sanity that is. I plan on fitting a wok stove, wood fire grill, deck oven, at least 4 burner gas stove, 2 burner induction stove, tandoori oven (yes), massive sink, garden, fermentation chamber, dehydrator, combi oven (sort of), lots of counter space, dishwasher, natural lighting, and much more. The layout is still in development and won't be finalized for a while. The problem is I own this thing. If I want to put a window here or a desk there I can. I have limitless ideas and solutions but I'm still working out how all the pieces will fit. I know they will fit. I was holding out for the right vehicle and thought I would have years to save the money and gain the knowledge to pursue this dream. I found her when I wasn't searching for a van, I knew when I saw her from the back, she was the one for me (the back door was massive). Out of all the hundred of listings, all the contemplation about the "right" vehicle, questions I didn't even know existed I had found my answer. On a damp rainy spring day, I picked up my closest companions and went to meet her. Tucked away in twisting mountainous backroads of Pennsylvania, through a small gravel community, littered with potholes, in this forest she lay asleep waiting to be found, waiting to be loved. Seeing her in person I was in awe. My first impression was "she's big". Standing in front of her maw I was dwarfed by this retired hero. Then I stepped inside and realized yes, this was it, this was the one! This would be the foundation for a no compromises build. Saying this van is unique wouldn't do her justice. I have a tendency to find broken or discarded things in this world and have a good sense of what can be fixed with a little patience and care. That feeling was immense and overpowering, but she had to run. She wouldn't start right away so I helped the owner get her running. Not even 20 minutes after meeting I was already unscrewing something and tinkering. Then with a little help of starting fluid she roared to life! After that I left to the bank and retuned with $1000 to put a hold down. The rest of the acquisition was a long story on my part but 3 months later I had her, paperwork and all. About 3 months and a dishonest mechanic later I moved in. December 15th 2024 my journey in Scholaris had officially begun. It didn't take long for things to go wrong. It didn't take long for her name to mean more than student in a culinary sense, I've learned much by being with her. It didn't take long to love this firetruck.
