CHEF - EXPLORER

A Taste of the World

Books

By Mr Brendan Murphy

“Someone should write a book about

this crazy Industry!”

 

A TASTE OF THE WORLD

By Brendan Murphy

 

I have heard that exclamation many times over the last 30 years in which I have been employed as a Chef in the Hospitality Industry. And yes, a few books have been written, but not quite like this one! This is not a cookbook from a Celebrity Chef, but more of an exploration of what it’s really like to work in the Hospitality Industry, and especially as a Chef. Combine this with traveling and working all over the world as a Chef, Lecturer and Writer and somehow keeping nearly 30 years of diaries to research from!

 

The Hotel and Catering Industry worldwide is full of the same crazy characters that even the best imagination would be hard pressed to dream up! My Diaries are full of them, as well as true drama, humour and travelling that enthralled me over the years. From my College roots in Manchester, England, to the City of London, from the ski slopes of Switzerland and Germany to the Outback of Australia and from the Isle of Mann to the Greek island of Ios and Thai island of Phuket.  I have especially spent over a decade as a Chef in Australia from Sydney to The Great Barrier Reef in Queensland and in Perth, Western Australia where I arrived in 1990, and finally settled in 2002.

 

Food and cookery is also about life and culture, and as a chef working around the World I have learnt more about different peoples and their culture than I ever could have at school and college!

 

And the best is still yet to be because as a cook you NEVER stop learning.

 

Many years ago as an older teenager living in a grim city struggling with massive unemployment rates, I was on the dole and uninspired. I decided to hitch-hike around Europe. Suddenly I got a ‘Taste of the World’, just a taste, but enough to inspire me so much, that I felt unstoppable in my quest to become a fully qualified Chef and travel the world. Thirty years later, I may have slowed down a bit, but I’m still travelling and still tasting!

 

This first book in a series is as it is titled, just a ‘Taste’ of the World with great recipes and a brief cultural taste of each country concluded with a true story or cultural experience thrown in the pot with a dash of humour, to hopefully make it a richer experience for you, the reader, who is about to embark on a bit of Chef-Exploring of your own!

 

Food is the fuel of life, so if you prepare and eat GOOD food then you should be enjoying a GOOD life!

 

CHEF FOR STARTERS!

By Brendan Murphy

 

This book speaks for itself in that I describe how and why I became a Chef and how I was thrown in the deep-end! Based initially in the City of Manchester, UK in 1981 where I worked in my first ever restaurant. All the characters I introduce are true as well as the events that happen. I also describe the setting in detail too, which is the UK of the 1980’s and the way in which the staff and my friends of that era lived life to the full, despite Thatcher’s depressed Britain! The ultimate aim of the majority of the friends I knew then was to TRAVEL and ESCAPE the depression of the times, and some of us used the versatile Hospitality Industry to do just that!

 

I worked there for 6 months until May 1982 before Backpacking around Europe with my best friends for a 4 month adventure, changing our lives forever! We had discovered our own way out of our restricted homeland. Travelling through 12 countries and also working in kitchens on a Greek Island as well as in Germany, we had the time of our lives. However, our adventures were tainted somewhat by Britain’s ‘Falklands War’ which not only haunted us on our travels but killed one of our friends in the process.  This is all a true story and although the events digress from chef-ing into travel and drama, it is still part of the essence that is Chef-Explorer.

 

Returning to England,  I attended College from 1983-1985 to become a fully qualified Chef meeting more characters there and working all around the City of Manchester, as well as for a Chef Agency cooking for the Army in the Isle of Mann and on the classic ‘Pontins’ resort in Devon before qualifying in the summer of 1985 and heading for the big city of London.

 

 

A TASTE OF THE WORLD CUP COOKBOOK

By Brendan Murphy

 

Planned Release 2010!

 

Just in time for the World Cup in 2010. Join in the fun when Brendan combines ‘The World Game’ with Chef Explorer and creates a mouth watering mix of Football, Food and Culture!

 

 

CHEF DOWN UNDER.

By Brendan Murphy

 

Planned Release 2010!

 

In the mid eighties, my main destination was Down Under where my original friends from the ’82 trip (Covered in ‘CHEF FOR STARTERS’) had  already settled in Sydney, in 1987. We worked and travelled Australia from 1987 to 1989 and subsequently had the greatest adventure of our lives there. From spending Christmas 1986 in Gatwick Airport and BALI- Indonesia to arriving Down Under for A New Year and six months as an Agency Chef in the City of Sydney. Then a  NSW-Queensland Trip in an old Holden Kingswood banger which rivaled ’82 in its audacity.

 

Finally arriving in  Tropical North Queensland to scuba dive The Great Barrier Reef and working deep in the heart of the Daintree Rainforest at a new resort called Crocodylus Village. Then I lived and worked in  Cairns for over a year in ‘87-88. Outback Australia and Melbourne followed before returning  in the ‘90’s to the Wild West of Western Australia to live.

 

Also look out for ‘Way to Go’ Travel magazines featured article contributed from Brendan

Titled  ‘Crocodylus Village’!

 

To be published in March 2010.

 

 

 

 

 

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