Savouring the Start: How I became a Personal Kosher Chef
I wasn’t always a personal Kosher chef. The truth is the person I am today is not the same person I was yesterday and tomorrow I will be a completely different person to the one I am today. That is what it means to grow.
This is my story of how I got to where I am today.
After I finished high school in 2016 I decided I was going to rebel. This something that I only realised years later through many hours of self reflection; growth. I thought that there was nothing worse than a desk job. Accounting, marketing, law, it all bored me to no end. So I decided I was going to do something crazy. Something so wacky and out of this world, almost literally.
I went to flight school.
I take to the skies
It was not an easy path though. For anyone youngsters thinking of following this career path, bear in mind that it is extremely expensive and extremely difficult. To become a commercial pilot flying a big Boeing or Airbus across countries and continents, takes literal years and hundreds of thousands of rands, if not millions. As such it took me a long time to complete the first phase of my training, private pilot license. I paid for it as I did it along with the help of my parents. However because of the nature of flight training I only obtained my PPL at the beginning of 2018, taking almost exactly 2 years to complete the program.
2020: When the world stood still
The year in which the world stood still. We were sent home scared, terrified and with no idea of what would happen next. As I sat at home unable to continue my pursuit of my commercial pilot license I, like many, started looking for things to occupy my mind and my time.
I turned to an old passion of mine. One that had sat on the back burner since my rebioullous days of flight school began.
Cooking.
During the 2020 level 5 lockdown, whilst we were all stuck at home, I cooked. I cooked so much for family. Bread, pizza, bagels, pretzels, steaks, stronganoff, doughnuts, roast chicken dinners and so so much more. I started watching food YouTubers and growing my culinary skillset.
All of this cooking and baking for my family took me back to my childhood. My mom taught me how to cook, along with my Granny and our domestic worker who has, at the time of this article, worked for my family for more than 30 years. Together they taught me so much about food and cooking.
All of this brought back 1 powerful memory that had been lost amongst my rebellion and dreams of the sky.
The rat
In 2007 a little studio known as Pixar released what would become and is still today, my favourite movie of all time. Ratatoullie.
I cannot remember exactly which movie cinema I was in. I beilive it was the newly opened Greenstone Mall in the Ster-Kinekor there. However it may possibly been at Nu-Metro in Balfour park. I digress. I remember going to see this movie with my Granmother Maureen, I was 8 years old at the time. I remember watching this movie with awe. I was dumbfounded, to say the least. Still to this day I remember so vividly the scene in which Remy, played by Patton Oswald, is sitting up in the ceiling with the ghost of Chef Gusteau, played by Brad Garret. There Remy explains each different chef and their position in the kitchen below.
I can recall this scene so vividly. It was at this exact moment that I decided that I wanted to be chef. I can’t tell you exactly why nor can I tell you what exactly appealed to me about being a chef but what I can tell you is that I was hooked. If you ask my parents they will even tell you that I held onto this dream for a long time. I think that it was in around Grade 10 or 11 that I started thinking about flight school and the dream of being a chef faded from my mind. BUT it was still there, looming in the background waiting to be re-awoken years later.
Don’t believe me? How’s this for proof?
Chef Dan 13 years old
So I decided there and then during that 2020 lockdown that I was going to go to culinary school. A lateral career shift as I call it. Everyone I spoke to about doing this thought I was insane. During the height of the largest of pandemic in recent history. When the entire world was put on hold, I decided I was going to cooking school.
Entering the School of Culinary Art
Culinary school taught me so much. Maybe not a whole lot in terms of actually cooking but it taught me about the industry, it taught me how to deal with people in a high stress, high paced working environment. It taught me to excersize my creative muscles as well as my actual muscles. Standing for hours on end each and every day is tiring. Culinary school gave me the opportunity to work at some of the best restaurants and hotels in Johannesburg. But when I was working those long an hours on a Friday night, while my family sat at home enjoying a shabbos meal, something did not sit right within me.
A call from Above
It was in 2022 then that I got a call. I cannot discuss the exact details as the participants still to this day wish to remain anonymous but I was given a chance to work for a non-profit organization who were making Shabbos meals and distributing them to less fortunate members of the Jewish Community here in Johannesburg. It was then during this time that I started reconnecting with my Jewish heritage and culture that I had all but completely lost during my time working in the food service industry. I started going to shul on a regular basis. I stopped eating pork and shellfish. I learn’t more about what it meant to be a Jew and how to channel it. The one thing that I did continue to do even during my time working in the hotels and restuarnts was Teffilin. No matter what, I woke up each and every morning and donned my Teffilin, given to me by my late grandfather Ashley. I am so proud of that. So proud that I was able to continue this in the face of the adversity of the cheffing industry. Also a topic for another day.
Today I am proudly a Personal Kosher Chef
Fast forward to today. I market myself as a Personal Kosher Chef. I now am what one would call a Ba’al Teshuva. I have returned to the ways of Hashem and I have incorperated this into my career even. I keep shabbos, kosher, etc. I have even at the time of writing this, just obtained a Mashgiach certification. Making me one of the only, that I know of, professional religious kosher chefs with formal kashrus training in South Africa.
It has been a long road to get here. Frought with many hardships, sacrafices, losses and victories. But that, I believe is what growth is all about. I would not be the person that I am today were it not for everything that I have been to up until this point. Even the “bad” experiences in my life were meant to teach me. They were put there by Hashem in order for me to grow.
The future of Chef Dan
I will leave you with this parting thought. No matter where you are or who you are, stay true to yourself. Stay true to your beilifs. Maintain your sense of who you are deep inside. That will always rise to the surface above everything around you, if you let it. Use every experience no matter good or bad as a lesson to learn and to grow.
Thank you so much for reading this first ever post on my blog, Nerdy Noshing Notes. Going forward I hope to use this blog as a platform for recipes, food science topics and stories of my time in the industry.
I cannot wait to share this with you. If you have anything in particular you want to see on my blog please feel free to send me an email.
