Early Spark
I started cooking when I was fifteen. I was obsessed. Jamie Oliver inspired a lot of people; before that, the celebrity chefs weren’t targeted toward my demographic, but he inspired a whole generation. I wanted to cook, and my dad got me the Anthony Bourdain book to try to convince me not to be a chef… It did the opposite.

From Policy to Knives
You’ve got to approach cooking with a level of professionality that I never did — I was just dipping my toes in and following the university route for the rest of it. I ended up working in policy, for the UN in Geneva. I took a knife-making class and really fell in love with it. The process of starting the day with nothing and ending the day with a product is so empowering. A file that exists in the ether is so different from something tangible — something you can hold in your hand, where the material has a story that you become a part of.
Cooking, for me, is how I express love and admiration for people. When my wife gave birth to our first child, I cooked a different dish every day for her for six months. Every single day we had something different, because my wife had brought a life into the world. It was a powerful period — to be so devoted to cooking for that long.

The Beauty of Simplicity
I generally push myself, so settling on one thing is hard, but I would say I fall back on basic but unforgiving recipes. A good pasta pomodoro is a notoriously hard dish to get right — because there’s nothing to it. It’s either brilliant, or just really okay.
A basic stir-fry, too, is hard to get right. I learnt in China, and the guy explained to me that growing up, he was too poor to add more than about two vegetables to a stir-fry. The fundamental triad would be in there — ginger, garlic, spring onion — but beyond that, maybe snow peas and broccoli if you were lucky. On a very special day, you’d have some protein. I like basic dishes where the ingredients sing.

Food as Connection
I feel the act of cooking is the act of love — and that can be for strangers as well. I often have thirty or forty people at the house, some I’ve never met before. I think there’s something really poetic about human meals, about the relationships that can come out of that.
I’ve got a Jewish background. Shabbat every Friday night is big — we have a lot of traditions. Something that forms a big part of these traditions is challah — an eggy loaf that’s been folded and plaited together. Accompanying that, from as young as I can remember, there were pickles, dips, and spreads. As a kid, you always over-stuff yourself with the bread. It’s that good.