1. What is your favorite dish to cook?
Any fish because of the versatility and variety.
2. What is your top tip for festive cooking?
Selected dishes you can execute well and are in the theme of the meal.
3. What is your most treasured item in the kitchen?
My tasting spoons. Taste is the most basic measure of cuisine.
4. What are you most looking forward to about The Inn Crowd coming season?
Looking forward to new guests in interesting locations and cooking new dishes.
5. What new ingredient or ingredients are you inspired by right now?
Hagfish. Well, not really. I might need to invent a way to make this edible for a national cooking show.
6. What would be your "last supper" request?
It would be a long menu! Some of the dishes are French onion soup, roasted Bresse chicken with truffles and tart tatin.
7. Who most influenced your cooking style?
Chef Albert Roux of Le Gavroche fame. I worked there three years and partnered in a restaurant for ten years.
8. What do you consider your signature dish?
My cultured abalone with a dill beurre blanc sauce would be my first choice.
9. What three cookbooks are your essential library?
I have well over 2,000 books. Tough choice. Escoffier Guide Culinaire, Joy of Cooking and Larousse Gastronomique.
10. If you weren't a chef, or in the food business, what would you be?
I would be in the arts, either musician or sculptor.