Troy Patterson

I love to cook as much as I love to eat great food.
Cooking has been a passion with me since I was around 12 years old. I love the smell of fresh produce, I love the atmosphere of a dinner party, I love it when I come home from my day job, the kitchen is my domain whether it be for 20mins or 3 hrs. As long as I have a glass of red wine in one hand and a kitchen utensil in the other I am 100% in heavenly bliss.

I fell in love with cooking when I turned 12 and started cooking lessons at my school for 1.5 hrs per week. My teacher would start off earlier in the week with the cooking demo and normally on Thursday or Friday I would cook the dish normally with another student in my cooking class. Following that I would normally repeat the dish on the weekend for my mother and father (sometime with success sometimes not).

When I finished school I wanted to become a chef however due to the climate in the early 90’s I couldn’t get an apprenticeship so I went and worked in retail and I guess my passion for food left me. A few years later I began working for a company in Sydney that specialised in employing apprentice chefs and leasing them out to the industry giving the apprentice a taste of all different types of cuisines, restaurants and colleagues. Here I worked closely with a lot of top chefs from some of the best restaurants and I fell in love with food again.

6 years ago I left sunny Sydney and moved to London where I began working on a food and drink exhibition for a large event organiser. Here I had the opportunity to work more closely with suppliers, growers, farmers, producers, importers etc etc from all around the world.

For the past 4 years I have been living in Munich, I am now married and have manged to create myself a dream kitchen where I can cook my heart out. I travel as much as I can around Europe however I am constantly pulled to spend vast amounts of my time in Italy………. I am not sure if it is the splendid red wines or the mouth watering olive oils of Umbria that do it or if it is the local produce or the simple lasagna that has been cooked in a little Taverna that I would class as one of the best meals I have ever eaten…

I started this blog a few months ago as I wanted to write a book. I think up until now I have started around 10 novels and have always stopped at around page 50. I know this blog isn’t a novel however in October I was in Hollywood on business where I picked up the fantastic book by Ariel Gore “How to become a famous writer before you’re dead”. Ariel tells you to just write, to get in the habit of writing and this is when Urban Apprentice came to life. I thought that bloging about what I love most in life (along with my love ones) food, lifestyle and everything else that I connect to my passion.

So I now thank you for following me and hope that you enjoy this adventure along with me. Please tell all your freinds about my blog as well, actually tell teh world. The more people that follow me the faster I can get advertiseres and sponsors and stop working full time and concentrate on my cooking eating and writing (in that order). Maybe one of the people you tell is a publisher who would like to offer me a book deal. You just never know

Eat well

Troy

PS Don’t forget to email me, troy@urbanapprentice.comif you have a favourite cafe, hang out, bar, deli or anything related to food that you would like me to highlight in the Urban Eats & Drinks section of my blog. Of course full accreditation will be given to you.