“To be a superb cook dinner you need to have a love of the nice, a love of exhausting work, and a love of making.” — Julia Youngster
It’s honest to say that Military veteran-turned-home-cook-turned life-style/health coach Dustin Hogue lives by Youngster’s phrases. He has spent his adultlife doing good for nation, serving two deployments to Iraq, and good for household and associates, for whom the house cook dinner creates some fairly fancy dinner events.
Laborious work has been the driving drive by means of all of it, and if you happen to’ve been watching the Meals Community collection “The Julia Youngster Problem,” you’ll instantly see {that a} love of making is on the core of his cooking abilities.
These abilities have earned the Chicago-based Hogue a spot within the collection finale at 8 p.m. Monday, dealing with off in opposition to fellow Chicago resident Invoice Borman and Californian-by-way-of-the-Amazon Jaíne Mackievicz.
Within the collection, which takes place inside a down-to-the-whisk duplicate of Youngster’s kitchen, contestants put their spins on the recipes contained in her iconic cookbook (and culinary trade bible) “Mastering the Artwork of French Cooking,” utilizing the strategies Youngster made well-known by means of the guide in addition to her groundbreaking PBS cooking present, “The French Chef.”
Every episode options two rounds of competitors: The primary requires the cooks to create a dish impressed by one in every of Youngster’s, the second is a meal served family-style, that includes a second Youngster-influenced dish from every competitor.
The competitors is curated by head choose and celeb chef Antonia Lofaso and a collection of visitor judges. One cook dinner is shipped dwelling every week.
“There was all the time one thing in me that was interested in meals,” dwelling cook dinner Dustin Hogue says. Hogue, who makes his dwelling in Chicago, is competing on “The Julia Youngster Problem” on the Meals Community.|
The winner (eight contestants began the weekly competitors again on March 14) will get an all-expenses-paid, three-month cooking course at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, the identical faculty the place the late Youngster acquired her skilled coaching greater than 70 years in the past.
On the present, Hogue revealed his love of cooking means his family and friends are handled to a five- to six-course meal when invited to his home for dinner. Sometimes he hosts ticketed pop-up dinners. He’s additionally a yoga, biking and high-intensity interval coaching instructorat Studio Three in Chicago and the founding father of the Live Good Journey life-style program. He was launched to Youngster and her legacy in his 20s, principally by means of her cookbooks and watching YouTube movies of her present.
Hogue, who makes his dwelling in River West, not too long ago spoke to the Solar-Occasions about competing on the present and his love of cooking. Solutions have been edited for size.
Q. How did you come to make Chicago your own home?
A. I grew up in Kansas Metropolis. I moved to Chicago in 2011. I used to be within the navy out of highschool. I joined the navy to pay for faculty and deployed to Iraq twice. After my second time abroad I simply felt it was a superb time to maneuver as much as Chicago. … It’s probably the greatest meals cities on this planet. I like consuming [laughs], and there are so many good spots there.
Q. When did your curiosity in meals begin?
A. There was all the time one thing in me that was interested in meals. I grew up very humbly. We didn’t eat fancy stuff, simply quite simple dishes that my mother made with a ton of affection. She labored two jobs, and she or he did what she might. I might assist her cook dinner by chopping onions or bell peppers and issues like that. I used to be in elementary faculty. I used to be the child watching Meals Community as an alternative of cartoons. … I’ve all the time watched meals reveals. After my first tour I used to be working in Kansas Metropolis in eating places, tending bar and serving. I’ve by no means labored within the kitchen in a restaurant, however with serving and bartending you find yourself attempting a number of meals. It opened my eyes to a number of issues. As a broke faculty scholar it was extra accessible to be taught to make dishes by myself than to go to eating places. Once I first began cooking I wasn’t superb by any means, however I don’t like being dangerous at issues. If there’s one thing I latch my enamel into I put a number of effort into it. And so cooking has develop into a ardour of mine.
And I learn cookbooks on a regular basis. I’m all the time watching meals reveals. It’s my favourite time of the yr now as a result of all of the farmers’ markets are beginning, and I can go store. All of the elements change, and I like to experiment with what’s in season.
Q. I believe there’s extra to your cooking than talent, as a result of your dishes on the collection to this point have been extremely praised by the judges and your fellow rivals, and there’s an actual artwork to what you create.
A. The cookbooks I learn, I learn for the strategies which might be in them. Upon getting a toolbox of strategies you’ll be able to enterprise off and experiment. And I wish to spend time exterior my consolation zone in my life, not simply in cooking. That’s what helped me get higher with cooking. I’m OK with making errors and studying from them and getting higher, so long as it teaches me one thing about an ingredient or a brand new dish. Cooking is all about working with flavors and understanding how you can stability them and modify them.
Q. Did you be taught something about cooking out of your time within the navy?
A. Effectively, the meals we had was not the very best meals ever [laughs]. However they tried to offer us a wide range of meals, and we ate a number of various things. I don’t suppose I ate a ton of greens till I used to be within the navy as a result of greens at dwelling had been canned or frozen.
“The Julia Youngster Problem” is impressed by the late host of the PBS collection “The French Chef.”
Q. Do you’ve got a favourite delicacies?
A. I all the time wrestle with this as a result of my essential purpose is to cook dinner as seasonally and domestically as doable. I do love making recent pasta, however I additionally love Mexican flavors. I traveled to Thailand, so I like Southeast Asian flavors. I attempt to take my experiences and journey and have that information my meals.
Q. What made you determine to compete on the present?
A. Julia Youngster needed to make good meals extra accessible to dwelling cooks. And I see myself as a house cook dinner and as any individual who type of has that very same mission, in sharing meals with folks and letting them know they will make actually scrumptious issues at dwelling, and it doesn’t must be intimidating. The chance to go on this present based mostly on somebody who had the identical view as me and compete and cook dinner alongside different dwelling cooks who’ve the identical ardour was very enticing to me.
NOTE: Dustin Hogue is internet hosting three upcoming Step Exterior health occasions. For info and tickets, go to eventbrite.com.
