Feral Chef

Last night I had dinner at Dad's. He made a great bell pepper and shallot risotto. I felt like maybe I was in a foreign country - the way he made risotto, the ingredients, and most of all his bizarre cutting prepping techniques. I name him The Feral Chef. Being a surgeon he knows how to handle a knife, being also a carpenter he knows how to be efficient, but since he's a self-taught cook, he doesn't know the "normal" way you cut an onion. He cuts off the rooty ends first, then cuts it into rings like onions rings, then makes a tower of the rings, then cuts that into rough pieces. And maybe the strangest to me was that they don't refrigerate their Parmesan cheese. Instead they have a "Parmesan Cheese Cover" on the counter (can you say Williams Sonoma?), so the cheese was so rock hard even with a fancy grater all I could make was cheese dust that seemed to disperse around the room from our breathing.

And he wasn't stirring his risotto constantly! What would Marcella say?

But I am dedicating today to the Feral Chef's risotto that turned out great and wasn't made in anyway like how I would make it.