Max is a self-taught cook who has been in the restaurant industry for seven years. He got his start cooking and running kitchens in Boston, and Dartmouth, Massachusetts, before moving to Providence, Rhode Island, and ending up in Chicago. Though he has had some success in restaurants, earning a James Beard Award nomination, and winning a Starchefs Rising Star award, He is now glad to be taking a step back from the kitchen to be able to connect with the passionate home cooks that come to learn at The Chopping Block.
Recent Posts
Duck Confit is Easy, Actually: Part One
In my experience, many people tend to think of French food as "fancy" food. It's true that a lot of classic French preparations are complex or labor intensive, and it's easy to think that because ...
The Best Dish for Clearing Out Your Fridge: Fried Rice
Fried rice has a lot going for it. It's fast, it can be made with just about any set of ingredients, it's cheap to make, and—above all—it's totally delicious when made well. Unfortunately, I find ...
The time has finally come for most of us in the northern U.S. to harvest the last of what we can from our summer garden. Personally I pushed it as far as I could (to the extreme detriment of our ...
That’s right, more wok content. If you’re a devotee of The Chopping Blog, you may be familiar with my previous work regarding the most versatile pan (that should be) in your kitchen: the wok. In my ...
Previously on Cheese Trials: I decided to try my hand at cheese making, something I’ve never really attempted before aside from the very simple ricotta that many cooks learn to make at restaurants. ...
Now that we're coming to the end of summer I keep hearing people talking about ‘spooky season’. Well, I love All Hallows Eve as much as the next ex-goth, but there’s something that I look forward ...
As a self-taught chef, I quite literally wouldn’t have a career if it weren’t for food and cooking books. There are few resources as important in developing an understanding of the different ...
I talk a lot to students about the importance of using fresh spices. So many people have little plastic jars of ground spices in their pantries that could be half a decade old or older. At that ...
This time of year a few things are true: it’s hot, too hot to cook certainly; if you have a garden and made the mistake of planting mint, it has gone absolutely berserk; and sometimes everyone in ...
As a chef there are a lot of things most people just buy that I’ve tried to make from scratch. There are the basics like bread, ice cream, or mayo, but I’ve also made my own croissants, emulsified ...
