When I left for college, I began to be exposed to a whole new variety of cuisines and to the challenge of providing meals for myself on a student budget every day. I then began to realize both that there were other spices out there besides salt and pepper and the occasional dash of onion powder or paprika. I then started to try teaching myself how to cook. I loved watching cooking shows on PBS (no food network yet) and became entranced with the seemingly glamorous world of professional chefs, without actually ever wanting to become one. Since then, I have worked to learn about cooking and techniques (as well as some recipes) and seem like I know a lot about the world of cuisine -- haute or otherwise.

The Real Meat
In order to sound like a chef (part of pretending to be an amateur one), you'll need to be able to season your speech with choice terms and start to understand all of the various techniques in cooking. This is not something that you will cram for like a test and get a grasp on in one day, so it's best to start setting up some good magazine subscriptions that will help your education. The first and foremost magazine to start with is 'Cook's Illustrated', which is a great guideline for techniques and core recipes. This is not really the fancy stuff, but the descriptions of the ways that the test chefs go about testing their recipes, correcting problems, and explaining techniques allows you to begin picking up some of the really practical advice you'll want.

You may also wish to get some of the basic books for your soon-to-be-enormous cookbook collection. Mark Bittman, the 'minimalist' for the New York Times, has a good standard volume called 'How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food' for a ton of great recipes (including boiling eggs and making bacon) as well as some good overviews of basic techniques and recipes that can be adapted or changed or used with slightly different ingredients.

If you want to start getting the feel for the worlds of chefdom and especially the seedier, grittier parts, you should definitely check out any of Anthony Bourdain's food-related books, especially 'Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly' and 'A Cook's Tour : Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines'. I recently read Jacques Pepin's memoir, 'The Apprentice : My Life in the Kitchen', which is also full of good stories and makes one feel less inadequate after understanding his over half-century of experience. In his television series with Julia Child, 'Julia & Jacques Cooking At Home', it is mind-boggling to see him butterfly or de-bone a chicken like it was made of butter. The accompanying book, 'Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home' is also great. Back on the technique and recipe side is a book from the same folks from Cook's Illustrated, 'The Best Recipe', which has the same recipes as the magazine, but without as much of the really valuable explanatory process articles.

There is an unexplainable shortage of DVDs of cooking shows, as I always love watching shows over and over again. I have been able to pick up Jamie Oliver ('The Naked Chef') in DVD form with 'Jamie Oliver - Oliver's Twist'. And, the Julia and Jacques series above is one of the best. Also, Alton Brown's series Good Eats (on food tv) is a great one to pick up, as his book, 'I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking', is a little harder to understand (although it is much less corny).

Finally, you can find many pretty magazinesto look at including 'Bon Appétit' and 'Gourmet', which don't really help you unless you know what you are doing, but they certainly look nice.

I hope this brief little guide helps in your journey to becoming a pretend amateur chef. As you learn to walk the walk, you should be able to talk the talk....