Who We Are! Or: How I Came to Love Enameled Cast Iron

Hello and welcome to Boston Chef!

We are a married couple in Boston - Ashmont section of Dorchester via the South End to be exact. We are both professionals - but NOT professional chefs! So don't think we do this for a living and definitely don't try this at home... ok, you can try this at home - but don't say we didn't warn ya!

We, the Boston Chef, like to cook. We cook at home, often. Being broke homeowners, we can't go out as much as we used to, but we still like to eat well. So, we do it at home! And we do it on an almost nightly basis... cook, that is!

We are starting this blog to document our cooking successes and failures, influences, likes, dislikes, and everything in between. We plan on documenting what we're making in words and pictures, and invite you to comment on our entries and give feedback, advice, and lots of praise.

Ok, more about us? Recently married, relatively young professionals living and loving in Boston, both born and raised in New England (Maine and Connecticut), new homeowners, old cat owners... and avid cooks. Our cooking influences and ideas come from many different sources. First, we grew up in cooking households that included lots of boiled dinners and typical New England cooking (especially French Canadian- and Irish-derived) - but with some degree of experimentation and variation in those childhood kitchens, as well.

We also get ideas from the media - especially the Food Network (Alton Brown, Emeril, Iron Chef) and cooking shows on Discovery/Travel (Anthony Bourdain). Lots of sites host recipes we reference all the time: Epicurious, Cooks.com, About.com, Foodtv.com, the NY Times and Boston Globe's websites, etc. There are many interesting cooking sites available within "the blogosphere", too - see the still-growing link list on this page.

Additionally, we've both traveled pretty extensively and we take ideas from the places we've lived in and traveled to: France, England, Mexico, Costa Rica, Russia, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and more!

We will certainly tell you more about us as time goes on, if necessary. And if we're the only ones who ever read this, so be it! We need to document our nightly culinary adventures for ourselves as much as anyone else...

First REAL entry to follow... again, welcome to Boston Chef!