I always loved & enjoyed eating , but I never thought of becoming a chef, I grow up in a middle class family home, my mother did not know much about the world of cooking, but she was good at what she was doing, especially her couscous, I remember as a kid, I use to watch he making couscous by hand using three different types of sieves, there is no way on earth we can compare the couscous we buy from shops to the home made one, fresh, soft, the smell of it, every grain is similar to the others in shape & size, rest in peace my beloved mother & may god bless your soul. As I got older I immigrated to England UK I was introduced to different varieties of cuisines "Indian, English, Chinese, and Thai etc….. & I started cooking as a chef, watching all the big chef on TV, Gordon Ramsey, Keith Floyd, Gary Rhodes, Rick Stein, Marco Pierre White, I also worked for Gary Holly Head, I realised that there are a lots of similarities & differences of course between all cuisines, still I found cooking very simple & easy, the hardest part of it was to learn what works with what, combining recipes & spices, it takes skills, knowledge & practice, the chef needs "smell, taste & the eye for the details”, also it’s very important to love what you cook & more important make sure the people you feed love as well, and learn how to take criticism from other chefs, that helped me ameliorate the standard of my cooking. To the young chefs coming up out there, never be scared to ask reasonable questions, but think first before you ask you might know the answer, always pay attention to every thing, focus on learning the basics first, once you master them, the rest will be easy.
S.Mhamdi
In the memory of my beloved
Mother God bless her soul
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