I'm Ed, I'm 28, I work in TV post-production in Soho. I wanted to be a chef when I was about 12, until I realised chefs work utterly hideous hours and decided that as long as I had a need to eat I'd have a need to cook. Instead I work awkward hours with television standards. I learned the fundamentals of my cooking ability at a young age from my mum as a result of making the step up from merely licking the bowl round to putting things in it to then be licked round.
I don't, however, have a definitive life-altering, character-shaping food memory. I don't have a food equivalent of hearing Iron Maiden for the first time at 8 years old. I don't have a romanticised moment on a par with the first oyster in Arcachon about which Anthony Bourdain writes to great fond extent. My first oyster was surrounded by all the romance of the Twickenham Loch Fyne restaurant in December 2010. My first taste of squid was some rubbish pub calamari that I'd thought was an onion ring.
Almost immediately after taking myself to Venice on a bit of a whim two summers ago I bought myself a pasta machine. Subsequently (and even more so since the publication of Theo Randall's Pasta) my food experiments have often involved making pasta in some way. Expect a lot of that to happen here. Whilst there is a side of me that is immensely satisfied by good, simple food (the sort of thing I hate hearing Gordon Ramsay call honest on nearly every episode of Kitchen Nightmares), the other side is totally distracted by food that allows the display of technical excellence. In that sense, I thoroughly intend to eventually use The French Laundry Cookbook as more than just a beautiful publication of food porn. I think it's harking back to the part of me that wanted to cook professionally.
I'm constantly extolling the virtues of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (I was considering posing entering a rural-looking building with The River Cottage Meat Book tucked under my arm for this, but decided against), looking up in great admiration and jealousy at Anthony Bourdain, being in a state of near-constant awe at Theo Randall's recipes, as well as telling anyone who'll listen at great length about my ever-increasing food-boner for Jacob Kenedy and his restaurant Bocca di Lupo.
