Kenji Lopez-Alt. His Food Lab cookbook has taught me a ton and he seems like a really good dude.
Edit: typo
“The Wok”, his newest book, is really good, too.
Would be nice if Ethan Chlebowski had more vegan recipes, but his techniques and recipe formats are fantastic for home cooking nerds that want the most out of the least. I’ve had success veganizing his recipes for myself.
I used to love watching Iron Chef Sakai. The Americanized shows never reached the grand level of the original show’s Iron Chefs, ingredients, and creativity.
Peak iron chef was when they had some kind of rare lobster and one chef boiled ten pounds of them to make stock for a soup. Like $10,000 of lobster for a soup. It was bananas .
I was reading about their grocery bill for the series being over $7 million. American Iron Chef has like 2/3rds of the number of episodes and spent probably only 1/3rd of the grocery bill. The creativity of the Japanese chefs matches that difference.
There is a Portuguese chef who runs his own craft chocolate factory and a cafe in my city in India. He is an incredible chef. I also love how he never sacrifices his artistic integrity for a quick profit. I love having food there often. It is an incredible fusion of western cooking methods with typical Indian produce. His name is David Belo.
Jacques Peppen Chris Kimball Ming Tsai Lidiya B (Anyone from pbs)
