Hello World! It�s me, Chef John�the man behind the hands

I knew this day would eventually come. I realized I couldn�t hide behind George Clooney�s photoshop�d photo forever. When I first start filming and posting cooking videos on the internet about a year ago, I made the decision to never appear on camera. I wanted to be the anti-Food Network Chef, which seemed to be more and more about the Chef, and less and less about the food and the cooking. I also found that most of the amateur cooking videos people were posting looked like audition reels for Hell�s Kitchen. So, since I wasn�t going to appear in the videos, I decided I would just remain completely anonymous. I liked that people would email asking for pictures of me. I liked being mysterious (I had never been mysterious before).

So, why show myself now? I have too. I have recently been contracted to do some �professional� cooking videos for several online outlets (to be named later), and as part of the production I must be seen introducing the recipes. Since I knew it would only be a matter of time before one of my blog visitors saw me on one of these other sites and recognized my sultry voice and nimble fingers, I decided to out myself today.

By the way, just because I�m now using my real photo on the blog, the video recipes will not change. I will still never appear in the recipes, mugging for the camera nor doing puppet shows with an oven mitt. I will not deviate from my original vision of what these videos should be about�the food.