ChefTommyBTC

Private chef 12+ years. Cooking professionally 22+. 
Classical French training, came up in California cuisine through the farmers market. 
Trained in Michelin-starred kitchens. 
Court of Master Sommeliers certified. I write about food, wine, winemaking, and Bitcoin.

Lightly roasted local rock cod, carrot hummus, piperade, a chickpea salad with fermented Corno di Toro peppers, and grilled asparagus with fresh Corno di Toro. Peppers three ways. Poured the 2019 Bott Frigyes Muzsla with it. Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Blanc off a hill above the Danube in southern Slovakia. Six days in open vats with what they call the hamburger method (layers of foot-trodden whole clusters and whole berries, semi-carbonic), then 18 months on the lees in old barrels, bottled unfiltered. Golden in the glass, showing its age. Dried stone fruit, pear sliding into apple, dried flowers on the nose. Soft and round on the palate, but the acid is high and keeps pulling you back for another sip. The lees are what tie the nose and the palate together. Here's what I keep thinking about. A dish and a pairing get built the same way. Half of it is planned, half of it is decided in the moment. The fermented peppers were a call I made weeks ago. You can't rush a ferment. You set it up right and you wait. Same with a bottle like this. Someone decided years ago this wine would sit 18 months on its lees, and time did the rest. Fun part, 2019 was only the second vintage of Muzsla. The family took years working out their style before they made it. But the char on the asparagus, how much lemon goes on the cod, how heavy the hummus goes down, that all happens at the stove, tasting as you go. And that's where the pairing actually lands. The acid cuts through the ferment and the lemon, the lees texture sits right on the hummus, the dried fruit meets the sweetness of the roasted peppers. Plan for the long game, then stay present enough to adjust when it's right in front of you. Works in the kitchen. Works with Bitcoin too. Low time preference, but you still taste as you go.

Grilled West Marin grass-fed tri-tip, red wine marinade. Chimichurri with Meyer lemon-macerated alliums and tallow-fried garlic chips, built to lift beef this good without getting in its way. 2003 Araujo Eisele Vineyard Cab, same vintage as my first year in a kitchen. Ready from the first pour. Elegant. Everything here took time. The grass, the wine, the cook. Time is the one ingredient nobody can print. 🍷🥩

Private chef 12+ years. Cooking professionally 22+. 
Classical French training, came up in California cuisine through the farmers market. 
Trained in Michelin-starred kitchens. 
Court of Master Sommeliers certified. I write about food, wine, winemaking, and Bitcoin.

I'm a chef, not a cryptographer. But nobody explains quantum in plain language, and that's most of why the panic works. So I tried. Liquid, Coldcard, qubits, and why freezing Satoshi's coins is the wrong answer to a real problem.