@Chef David Hub-UK
I am a Welshman now living in Ipswich in the UK. I trained myself as a web designer and worked for several years as a freelance designer creating websites for the smaller businesses and enterprises all over the UK. I still do web sites for small businesses but my main job now is running my own recipe and cooking web site – www.hub-uk.com I started Hub-UK (www.hub-uk.com) in Spring 2000. Originally I created it as a portal, as I found the general access portals of the big ISPs annoying. Did you realise you can choose whatever you want as your Home Page without it affecting your access to the internet? Having created a portal for my own use I thought I should make it available for others to use and as such I should make it more interesting! Having loved to cook from about the age of twelve but always had the annoying habit of never writing down recipes, I decided to provide a recipe page. The rest, as they say is history. Along the way I have been lucky enough to build a team of contributors without whom the site would never have been half of what it is. I am not going to mention names here because you will find ample evidence of their contributions throughout my site and there is nothing worse than causing offence by missing someone's name out. And what is my claim to fame? Not a lot really - I did two six month stints over an eighteen month period as a kitchen assistant in Raymond Blanc's Cheltenham Brasserie, le petit Blanc. It gave me the opportunity to learn more about cooking and gain in experience, as well as realise what dedication goes into becoming a chef. Then, of course, there was the added bonus of getting the opportunity to spend time talking to the great man himself - you do not realise what is meant by the expression 'the love of food' until you have met someone with such a passion for it as Raymond Blanc has. One of the great honours in my life is to have met him. Hub-UK has now become very much part of my life, and part of my family's as they have to endure the continual experimentation with new recipes - mind you, you will not hear them complaining very often! Hub-UK is for everyone and anyone can get involved so if you have a favourite recipe Hub-UK would like to hear from you. Send it to me. And these days the site has expanded to include details of cooking vacations and cooking schools.