Welcome to Bacon & Thyme.
Welcome to Bacon & Thyme, a place for aspiring cooks of all levels. In time I hope to grow the website and youtube channel MakeSnacksNotWar to be a comprehensive online resource of recipes, cookbook reviews and recommendations, practical step by step lessons for basic, intermediate and some more advanced skills as well as being the home of The Bacon Blog.
I want it to be a place for cooks of all levels to start on the path to better cooking, grow their skills and become more confident, creative and resourceful cooks.
Everyone has their own path of course. My own journey, well that started a long time ago, in a kitchen not very far away…
As a boy of 14 armed with the energy and optimism of youth, a desire to cook and a pretty poor set of social skills I found my way into the now familiar chaos of the professional kitchen. My first job was (unsurprisingly) as a k.p with a small catering company in my village through the work experience program during high school. After a day or two I was allowed out of the sink and started prepping veg, helping with baking and all the other generally repetitive task that fall to the kp. I loved it, there was so much to learn. I watched, I listened and I tried my hardest to replicate what I was shown. All these years later that job remains a very special one for me, I was hooked from day one and that was that, I wanted in to the kitchen world and wasn’t going to let anyone stop me. After a few summers working for them in the holidays I finished high school and started catering college and my path on the road to chefdom had begun.
After college the usual route up through the ranks followed. The hard, long hours, days and years flew by. I got cut, I got burned, I got beaten and I got shouted at. And I got better, I got faster, I kept learning. I outlasted other chefs and I moved on when I couldn’t learn more. All the while being taught by the slightly insane, often manic, filthy-minded, foul mouthed, scarred, burnt and brilliant Sous chefs, Head chefs and Exec chefs who where my mentors - the Jedi Knights to my padawan status. 22 years later I certainly wouldn’t be half the cook or person (or Jedi) I am today without their knowledge, passion, willingness to teach and encourage creativity, occasional beatings, friendship and in some cases father figure status.
Now, I realise that not everyone’s gonna want to do that. Not everyone will want to throw themselves in the totally exhilarating but often heart breaking vipers nest of the professional kitchen, and with good reason. It’s hard. It’s high pressure, the hours are long, the pay is bad and you’ll probably develop several really rather nasty addictions. But this doesn’t however mean that you can’t learn to cook better, grow your understanding of food and the ingredients you use or gain new skills.
And that’s where we come in. I want to build Bacon & Thyme into an extensive online resource and pass on what I’ve learnt to anyone who wants to learn it.
I’m by no means claiming to be an expert in every area and one of the most important things to remember in the kitchen as well as in life is to remain as humble as you can, there’s always more to learn. That being said, you don’t survive 20+ years in the trenches without some minerals and a bit of know-how. So then, padawan, onto our first lesson…
Make Snacks Not War
Dan
