James Chen is a Certified Professional Chef (CPC) and graduate of Le Cordon Bleu Paris, with 18 years of kitchen experience spanning three Michelin-starred restaurants in New York, London and Tokyo. He has cooked for heads of state, developed menus for major restaurant groups, and trained dozens of professional chefs during his career.
After a decade at the top of the restaurant industry, James shifted his focus to culinary education — he firmly believes that professional cooking techniques, when properly explained, are accessible to everyone. His mantra is: 'The technique is the recipe.' Understanding why a step works is more valuable than memorising what to do.
At MyCookingCalendar, James writes about cooking techniques, world cuisine, fermentation and the science behind great flavour. His articles combine the rigour of professional training with the warmth of a patient teacher. He currently runs a culinary school in Portland, Oregon, and consults for food brands on recipe development.
Learn how AI recipe makers work, what makes a good recipe generator, and how to use one to create personalized meals tailored to your dietary needs, preferences, and available ingredients.
Master Japanese home cooking from scratch — pantry essentials, dashi stock, knife techniques, the ichiju sansai meal structure and the five flavours that define washoku. Everything you need to start cooking authentic Japanese food tonight.
Dashi is the foundation of Japanese cooking — a 20-minute kombu and katsuobushi stock that creates the deepest umami flavour. Learn kombu dashi, ichiban dashi, niban dashi and vegan shiitake dashi with step-by-step instructions.
Build the Japanese pantry that makes authentic home cooking possible — from shoyu and mirin to kombu and yuzu kosho. What each ingredient does, how to use it and what to buy first.
From Turkish kebabs to Korean bibimbap, Mexican mole to Thai green curry — a comprehensive guide to cooking authentic world cuisines at home. Learn the essential pantry staples, foundational techniques, and signature dishes of ten distinct culinary traditions.
Discover the depth of Turkish cuisine — from mezze spreads to slow-braised stews, charcoal-grilled kebabs to milk puddings. Learn the essential pantry, foundational techniques, and the cultural context behind Turkey's extraordinary culinary heritage.
Master Korean cooking from its fermented foundations — gochujang, doenjang, kimchi — through to iconic dishes like bibimbap, bulgogi, sundubu jjigae, and japchae. Essential pantry guide, core techniques, and the cultural meal structure that makes Korean food so satisfying.
Beyond tacos and guacamole lies one of the world's most sophisticated culinary traditions. Master the chile-based sauces, the masa technique, the mole tradition, and the regional diversity that makes Mexican cooking a UNESCO-recognised cultural heritage.
India's 28 states each have distinct culinary traditions — yet certain principles unite them all. Master the spice alchemy, the onion-tomato base, the dal traditions, and the regional diversity that makes Indian cuisine one of the world's richest culinary heritages.
Japanese home cooking — washoku — is built on a handful of foundational techniques and pantry ingredients that unlock hundreds of iconic dishes. This guide covers dashi, rice, miso, ramen, tonkatsu and more, giving you everything you need to cook authentic Japanese food in a western kitchen. Master these skills and weeknight dinners will never feel the same again.
Indian curry is not one dish but a continent's worth of regional cuisines, each with its own spice logic, cooking techniques and flavour vocabulary. This comprehensive guide teaches you how to build a curry from first principles — from toasting whole spices and building a proper masala base to cooking authentic regional dishes like rogan josh, dal makhani and fish curry. Stop following recipes blindly and start understanding why each step exists.
Thai street food is considered some of the world's most complex and satisfying fast food — but the techniques behind it are learnable at home with the right pantry and a basic understanding of how Thai flavour balance works. This guide covers the five flavours of Thai cooking, the essential ingredients you need, and teaches classic dishes like pad thai, som tum, green curry and larb from first principles. This is Thai cooking the way it is actually made in Thailand.
Korean cuisine is a vibrant tapestry of fermented flavours, bold spices, and communal dining traditions stretching back thousands of years. In this guide you will master the pantry essentials, learn foundational techniques like kimchi fermentation and gochujang-based braising, and cook two iconic recipes — bibimbap and doenjang jjigae — from scratch.
Vietnamese cuisine is one of the world's most nuanced and health-conscious food traditions, built on fresh herbs, light broths, and the interplay of five flavour principles. In this guide you will learn to make an authentic bone broth pho from scratch, build a perfect banh mi, and understand the regional differences that make Vietnam's food so endlessly fascinating.
China's culinary landscape is not one cuisine but dozens, each shaped by climate, geography, and centuries of distinct tradition. From the mouth-numbing heat of Sichuan peppercorns to the pristine seafood broths of Guangdong, this guide charts the techniques, ingredients, and philosophy behind China's most celebrated regional cooking styles.
Peru has emerged as one of the world's most admired food destinations, built on the ancient foundations of Incan agriculture, the flavour of ají amarillo pepper, and the creative fusion of Indigenous, Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish influences. This guide explores the techniques and traditions behind Peru's extraordinary culinary identity.
India's food culture is among the most diverse on earth, spanning climates from Himalayan to tropical and cooking traditions that differ so dramatically between regions they might seem to belong to entirely separate nations. This guide navigates the essential distinctions between North and South Indian cooking, explores the extraordinary diversity within each tradition, and provides the techniques and recipes to bring India's great regional dishes into your kitchen.
The Maillard reaction is the single most important chemical process in cooking, responsible for the golden crust on bread, the sear on a steak, and hundreds of complex flavour compounds. Understanding the science lets you control colour, aroma and taste with precision.
Fermentation is the oldest food preservation technology in human history, and modern science is revealing exactly why fermented foods taste extraordinary and support gut health. From the lactobacillus cultures in sauerkraut to the aspergillus oryzae mould that creates miso, this guide explains the biochemistry in practical, actionable terms.
Sous vide — cooking food sealed in vacuum bags in precisely temperature-controlled water — produces results that are impossible to achieve reliably with any conventional method. This complete guide explains the physics, gives precise time-temperature tables, and shows you how to combine sous vide with traditional techniques for extraordinary results.
Microgreens are among the most nutrient-dense foods you can eat and among the easiest to grow at home. This complete guide covers the best varieties, the science behind their extraordinary nutrition, the exact growing method, and how to use them in everyday cooking.
Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago nation and one of its most culinarily diverse — 17,000 islands, 300 distinct ethnic groups and a spice-trade history that shaped global cooking. This guide explores the layered flavours of rendang, the perfect nasi goreng, the art of the satay skewer and the essential bumbu paste techniques that underpin it all.
Filipino cuisine is a vivid tapestry woven from Malay, Spanish, Chinese and American threads, producing dishes that are simultaneously sour, salty, sweet and deeply savoury. From the tangy tamarind broth of sinigang to the crackling skin of a whole roasted lechon, the archipelago's 7,000-plus islands have given the world one of Asia's most exuberant food cultures. This guide explores the pantry, techniques and iconic recipes that define Filipino cooking.
Malaysian cuisine is one of the world's great melting-pot food cultures — a vibrant collision of Malay, Chinese, Indian and indigenous traditions that has produced dishes of extraordinary complexity and depth. From the coconut-fragrant rice of nasi lemak to the smoky, wok-charred flat noodles of char kway teow and the sour-spicy broth of laksa, Malaysia's food reflects its multicultural soul with every mouthful. This guide navigates the essential pantry, foundational techniques and iconic recipes of this spectacular Southeast Asian cuisine.
Caribbean cuisine is an exuberant, historically complex food culture shaped by the intersecting legacies of indigenous Arawak and Taíno peoples, West African enslaved communities, European colonisers and South Asian indentured labourers. From the smoky, allspice-spiked heat of Jamaican jerk to the flaky roti of Trinidad and the coconut-scented rice and peas of the entire region, Caribbean food is bold, generous and full of history. This guide explores the essential pantry, techniques and dishes that define one of the world's most vibrant culinary regions.
Uzbek cuisine is Central Asia's great culinary tradition — a celebration of rice, lamb and aromatic spice forged along the ancient Silk Road trade routes. Discover the essential pantry, five core techniques and two full recipes from this deeply hospitable food culture.
pH is one of the most powerful and underused tools in a cook's arsenal. From the vivid colour of red cabbage to the tenderising effect of a citrus marinade, acids and bases quietly govern some of the most dramatic transformations in cooking.
Umami was described by Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda in 1908, formally recognised as a basic taste in 1985, and is still misunderstood by most home cooks. This guide explains the science of glutamates, synergistic compounds, and how to stack umami for extraordinary depth of flavour.
Spices are concentrated sources of volatile aromatic compounds, alkaloids and antioxidants. Understanding how these molecules behave under heat, in fat, and in combination explains why toasting spices works, why chilli heat is different from pepper heat, and how to build complex spice flavours.
Chillies are among the most rewarding crops a home grower can attempt — producing continuous harvests of extraordinarily flavourful pods in a huge range of heat levels, colours and shapes from a single plant on a sunny windowsill or patio.
Heat, water, and oxygen all destroy different nutrients in different ways. Understanding which cooking method best preserves which micronutrients — and when raw food is not actually superior — changes how you plan and cook meals in ways that matter nutritionally.
Sous vide delivers restaurant-quality results at home by holding food at a precise temperature for a precise time — exploiting the physics of protein denaturation, enzyme activity and pasteurisation. This guide covers the science, the equipment you actually need, critical time-temperature tables and finishing techniques that make sous vide food exceptional rather than merely safe.
Samin Nosrat's four elements — salt, fat, acid, heat — are not a stylistic framework; they are descriptions of the underlying physics and chemistry of flavour perception. Understanding osmosis and salt diffusion, the role of acid in flavour balance, fat as a flavour solvent, and heat as a transformation tool allows you to season every dish by principle rather than by guessing.
An estimated 50% of people in Western countries fall below recommended magnesium intakes, yet standard blood tests routinely miss it. Magnesium participates in over 300 enzymatic reactions. This guide covers deficiency causes, symptoms, the best dietary sources, and why different supplement forms have radically different bioavailability.
Tempeh and tofu are both made from soy, but their processing is entirely different — and that matters enormously for protein quality, digestibility, gut health, and flavour. Here is a deep dive into the fermentation science behind tempeh and why it often outperforms tofu on key nutritional measures.
Braising transforms the toughest, cheapest cuts of meat into something extraordinary — fall-apart tender, richly flavoured, and deeply satisfying. Understanding the physics of collagen conversion, fond development, and temperature control turns a technique that looks like magic into a repeatable science.
The eight great spice blends of world cuisines — garam masala, ras el hanout, za'atar, herbes de Provence, five-spice, Old Bay, berbere, and baharat — are not arbitrary combinations. Understanding the fat-soluble chemistry of spice blooming and the flavour architecture of each blend transforms how you season food.
Intermittent fasting has been studied in hundreds of clinical trials. This evidence-based review covers the 7 most robustly supported benefits — fat loss, insulin sensitivity, autophagy, brain health, longevity pathways, cardiovascular markers, and inflammation — with an honest assessment of the strength of evidence.
The Zone Diet, developed by Dr Barry Sears, prescribes precise macronutrient ratios — 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, 30% fat — at every meal to control eicosanoids and insulin for optimal performance and fat loss. This guide covers the block method, food choices, the hormonal science, and evidence for and against.
The Sirtfood Diet claims that specific 'sirtfoods' — including dark chocolate, red wine, coffee, turmeric, and kale — activate ancient longevity proteins called sirtuins, producing rapid fat loss without hunger. This guide examines the sirtuin science, the complete food list, the 3-week plan, and what clinical evidence actually supports.
High-protein diets consistently outperform standard diets for fat loss, muscle preservation, and long-term weight maintenance. This complete guide covers the optimal protein intake for your goals, the thermic effect of protein, the best sources, timing strategies, and honest assessment of kidney and bone health concerns.
Learning to cut properly is the single biggest upgrade any home cook can make. A professional chef explains the 7 essential cuts, the correct grip, and how a sharp knife changes everything.
The biggest barrier to a consistent plant-based diet isn't motivation — it's preparation time. This practical guide from a professional chef shows exactly how to batch-cook a week of varied, nutritious vegan meals in a single Sunday session.
Most home cooking fails not because of bad recipes but because of poor seasoning. This guide from a professional chef teaches the four elements of seasoning — salt, acid, fat and heat — and exactly how to apply them.
The secret to great cooking isn't just what you cook — it's how you cook it. This professional guide explains the science behind the six core cooking methods and teaches you when to apply each one for maximum flavour.
Everything you need to know to make fresh pasta at home — without a machine, without fear. Fettuccine, pappardelle, ravioli and more from just flour and eggs.
The biggest difference between home cooks and professionals isn't technique — it's understanding flavour. Learn the layering method that transforms every dish you make.
Gluten-free baking is notoriously difficult — but it doesn't have to be. This complete guide explains the science of gluten, the best alternative flours, and the techniques that actually work.
Everything you need to create and maintain a healthy sourdough starter from scratch — the living culture that makes sourdough bread possible. No special equipment required.
The average household wastes 30–40% of the food it buys. These techniques — used in professional kitchens worldwide — help you use every part of vegetables, meat, fish and herbs to reduce waste and eat better.