Born in Brooklyn, New York, I learned about the variety of ethnic cuisine at an early age. Nothing like sharing a subway car with dozens of ethnic groups to make a little boy curious. My folks helped, taking me to a wide range of restaurants in The City, expanding my palate (and palette) at an early age. The cry was always "Try it! You never know until you do!". I was usually game, and never suffered for it. As a result, my adult cooking is always adventurous, seeking to blend all sorts of flavors that don't seem to make sense at first -- but if you've ever smelled your way through some of the ethnically mixed neighborhoods in NYC, you know of what I speak! Fish and seafood is soooo expensive these days, but it is my favorite! It is a challenge, to try to enhance it's flavor, without overpowering it's delicacy. My grandmother was an immigrant from eastern Europe, and cooked the most amazing traditional Jewish stuff -- Challah bread, mushroom barley soup, potato kugle. My mom never caught the cooking bug, so most of the recipes are lost. Very sad, grandma died before I was mature enough to preserve my heritage; but I feel like she looks over my shoulder when I cook, "Kibitzing". Her kibitzing I would listen to closely! Four course meal for my wife and her two friends. While it came nearly complete (dessert was an original -- one attendant was diabetic) from a recipe book, it was a complex assembly, and I pulled it off flawlessly! Oh, goodness! There are so many! Cooking is all about experimentation. Not everything is a masterpiece. The key to my enjoyment is to analyze the cause of the "failures", whether taste, execution, or some other intangible, and build on it for next time. Cooking is about building your sensibility and awareness; learning new techniques and flavors; about refining your taste and subtlety.