I don't know about you or how you got into cooking, but I am a rank amateur i.e. I never actually trained to be a cook or a chef, nor have I ever worked in a restaurant in a cooking capacity (I've washed a few pots and served a few tables, but that's another story!)

Back in 1988, I met a guy who was a world class chef and a phenomenal character. His name was Karl-Hermann Wadsack and his restaurant was "The Three Lions" in Stuckton, near Fordingbridge in Hampshire, England.

Nearly twenty years later, I have the privilege of publishing his first recipe book/course online at How To Cook Like A Pro

We met because I was best friend's with his son (we were pilots in the RAF together). At this point in my life, I was even unsure about "weird" food like garlic and ginger (I grew up in 70s Britain; give me a break) but Charly - his nickname - soon taught me some essentials about cooking that I have never forgotten and which have earned me the title of best cook in my circle of friends and family over the years. Why? Because he taught me how to cook like a pro, and once you get the fundamentals, there's almost nothing you won't be able to cook!

Most of us foodies got into cooking because of helping our mothers out in the kitchen, and then perhaps graduated to cooking from recipe books - in my case I had a mother who boiled all the nutrients out of the veg and recipe books from the 50s, so I needed all the help I could get. The hardest thing about modern cookbooks is how they either focus on quantity (does anyone really want 10,000 recipes?) or on fashion (Jamie Oliver is fun, but his recipes are a bit too trendy and fussy for me). The key is to get no-nonsense, quality and hard earned experience from the mind of the chef onto the page in the clearest format possible. These recipes, when followed with the care that went into writing them, should produce world class food - every time!