Ahoy there mateys!
Like I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been kind of back and forth between my career as an artist and my career as a chef. For the first time ever, in regards to cooking, my passion and skills are matching each other and are both at a high level. So basically I’ve decided I’m not going to hold back my culinary career any longer. The only thing that has been holding it back is myself. Whereas in comparison with my art career, there are other things holding me back, and there are hurdles that are going to take time to overcome. I’m not going to keep waiting for my art career to happen when I already currently have what I need to make a name for myself as a chef. If and when my art career can take off, that’s great, but I need to live in the now. For that reason, I’ve decided to step up to the plate, have some confidence, and let myself shine as a chef. With that said, this is what I’ve been up to.
I’ve applied to Chopped and am applying to Guy’s Grocery Games, and maybe some other shows. It doesn’t really matter which one, but I would really love to compete on the Food Network in some capacity. I’m very competitive and creative; I get to be creative every day now at my job. I’m cooking at a restaurant located inside of a Whole Foods Market. It’s a very unique opportunity to be able to directly interact with my customers, get to know them and their tastes, and be able to cook custom dishes for them. I love when customers bring me items from the seafood counter and ask me to prepare it for them. I’ve even had an octopus brought over for me to prepare!
I feel like this job has prepared me for an opportunity like this, especially GGG. For the chefs that usually compete on that show, it’s a once in a lifetime experience. For me, I already do that every day. I want to prove to myself that I can truly compete at this level. Also the money could do so much for me if I won, as well as one of my favorite charities.
The other thing I’ve been kicking around is the idea of bringing Maki Zavelli back to life. I’m not officially announcing the return yet, but I can say it definitely looks like it’s happening. I’m just taking it one day at a time right now. One thing you may notice if you’ve seen the old version is that I’ve re-designed the site. I am still kind of working on it, and making sure the bugs are fixed, but I’m happy with the new design so far.
I recently had my friend Rachel take some portraits of me at work in my element so I could use them on my Food Network applications. Everyone seemed to like this portrait the most so it’s the one I used for Chopped (below). It definitely tells the most about me. I personally like the ones with the red snapper though. (see previous post and about page) It was a lot of fun to be able to do this shoot at work and bust out my snazzy royal blue chef coat that I haven’t donned in ages!
The good news for the blog is that I have to submit photos of 3 different dishes for the GGG application so that means at the very least I’ll have 3 blog posts of dishes I’ve made in the next month. Also since this Lobster Tail Bouillabase was intended to be one of them, but I wasn’t happy with the look of it, (delicious though) it doesn’t end up counting as one of the 3. I really just HAD to have some big, juicy shrimp in this but we only had little ones that kinda shriveled up when cooked. Fortunately, the other day we had some beautiful, big shrimp for sale and I made a shrimp dish that I’m very happy with and I’ll be posting the photos from that probably this weekend. Maybe you can look forward to a Bouillabase post in the fall or winter.
For now though, I’m looking forward to a good (long) night’s sleep. I just finished working a whopping 9-day stretch. This means I have the weekend off even though I didn’t request it off.
Oh also the title of this post is a reference to the best video I’ve seen all year (and I’m a total YouTube nut so that’s saying a lot). I’ve been bothering all my co-workers to watch this, but they all always forget so maybe if they see it here, they’ll finally watch it >_> (Julia Child definitely won) Bon Apetit!
Until next time,
May the fish be with you!
-Maki Zavelli
Maki Zavelli 