The cover of my new book, out on October 14, 2014. Published by Ecco.
Welcome to all the mistake-makers of the world. I've come to believe that people who make mistakes, and are willing to embrace them in order to correct them, are the greatest people in the world--risk-takers, learners, achievers, dreamers.
I'm new to this way of thinking, and it's changing my life.
Here's how I got to this point. A couple of years ago, something began to trouble me. I'd been Editor in Chief of Food & Wine Magazine for almost two decades, but I consistently made mistakes when I was cooking for my family and friends. Every meal had an I-can't-believe-I-just-messed-that-up moment. It seemed like a cosmic joke. How could someone (me!) know so much about food, be friends with the best chefs in the world, eat out all the time, and still get tripped up in the kitchen?
To find out and to improve, I decided to tackle my problem head-on. I contemplated my options--cooking school, hours of instructional video on YouTube, cooking shows--but then figured out the right choice for me: enlist my favorite chefs to identify my errors and show me how to fix them. At some point along the way I decided I wanted to share the amazing lessons I was learning, and that's why I wrote my first cookbook: Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen.