Being a foodie in the Tampa Bay area can be frustrating. Where to buy truffles and turtle meat?
And it's not always a piece of cake being something other than a foodie and trying to follow a recipe in a celebrity chef's cookbook. What the heck is a free-roaming chicken? Why is everyone cooking with kosher salt all of a sudden?
Wouldn't it be nice to have a chef around to answer these questions and point you in the direction of hard-to-find ingredients?
Beginning today in Taste, a monthly column written by chef Gui Alinat (pronounced Ghee AH-lee-nah) of Dunedin will guide home cooks through the modern morass of cooking. Alinat's column will run the third Wednesday of each month.
As a personal chef for private dinner parties and a cooking instructor, Alinat, 32, travels all over the Tampa Bay area looking for ingredients. He will share his finds with readers along with exploring the world of what he calls "fake foods."
It may be a surprise to some cooks that most wasabi is just green-colored horseradish and that the balsamic vinegar we buy at the grocery store is good-quality wine vinegar flavored with herbs and caramel to mimic the flavor of the real deal. Alinat uncovers the impostors.
Readers can also send in questions via e-mail or regular mail for Alinat to answer. Instructions for submitting questions are printed at the end of each column.
Alinat, who moved to the United States from the Provence region of France about three years ago, did a brief stint as executive chef at Le Bordeaux restaurant in Tampa. Two years ago, he struck out on his own as a cooking instructor and personal chef.
He has worked as a chef in restaurants in France and England and has six years of culinary training at the Ecole Hoteliere de Marseille in France.
Today, in his debut column, Alinat bemoans the loss of the authentic American turkey.
