For sophomore Ian Chin, a typical dinner in Booth Hall is roast chicken with fresh herbs, pan-roasted potatoes, and a simple cucumber and gherkin salad with homemade vinaigrette. Not exactly the typical college meal.

Chin, an English and textual studies major, is often seen in Booth’s eighth-floor kitchen, usually at 3 a.m., cooking up a storm of fresh and fragrant food. Not exactly the average time to cook, either. He began cooking last semester when he discovered that Booth’s eighth floor had a kitchen in its lounge. Chin finds recipes online or suddenly recalls the ingredients to a certain recipe and isn’t able to sleep until he cooks it up.

‘I think everyone should try to cook. It’s very comforting, fun and (it) brings people together,’ Chin said.

Quite a few Booth residents have befriended Chin while he was in the midst of creating his dishes. Benjamin Young, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, smelled something cooking one night and discovered Chin baking bread down the hall. Young said he now hangs out in the eighth-floor lounge a few nights a week, waiting to eat Chin’s food. Kate Karst-Gwilt, a sophomore biology major, met Chin when she needed to borrow his baking pan. Chin is bubbly, friendly and very social, she said.

Chin, a third-generation Chinese-American, calls Manhattan’s Lower East Side his home. He is a fan of nearby Chinatown, which only helps drive his passion for cooking.

‘There are wonderful and fresh ingredients at very good prices. I love looking at the produce, fish markets, and I like the crazy Chinese dried ingredients, like dried scorpion,’ Chin said. In addition to Chinese, China also has a penchant for French cuisine.

He only recently became inspired by high-quality cooking after seeing the movie ‘Julie & Julia,’ which stars Meryl Streep as famous French-cuisine chef Julia Child.

‘I researched her, bought her book and made a couple recipes,’ Chin said of Child. ‘I’ve always liked the flavor of French cooking, but I’ve never made it before. It turned out pretty well. It’s amazing to me that she started so late in life and became so big and famous.’

Chin’s love for Child extends further than just the kitchen – Chin dressed up as the queen of cuisine for Halloween and at the Totally Fabulous Drag Show last week, where he even made mayonnaise on stage.

‘For Halloween I wore a button-down shirt, bought a wig, fake pearls and I made a skirt,’ Chin said. ‘We went to some parties and some people guessed I was Mrs. Doubtfire, but a lot of people got that I was Julia Child.’

Friends and fans said Chin’s food tastes great and are impressed by his ability to make meals from scratch, especially since he only started cooking at the beginning of his sophomore year,

‘It’s crazy. If you taste his food, you’d think he’s been doing it his whole life,’ saidAnthony Tamborino, a junior television, radio and film major and a fellow Booth resident. ‘He wants to make everything from scratch so everything is natural and homemade,’ Tamborino said.

Making things from scratch, especially cheese, is daunting, Chin said. He must go through an extensive process that includes fermenting natural and raw ingredients to make the cheese. Chin has also made tomato sauce, pasta and mayonnaise from scratch.

‘I tried to make cheese once to see if the recipe would work. The second time was for pizza,’ Chin said. ‘The first time I made cheese, I used 2 percent milk, which made it taste like chalk. The second time I made it, the cheese didn’t melt very well.’ Chin is also a fan of Child’s theory of using real ingredients such as butter and whole milk instead of low-fat substitutes like margarine and skim milk.

Chin’s cooking schedule and menu can often be spontaneous. During a recent trip to P&C, he found tripe and cow’s stomach and decided to make tripe stew.

‘I made tripe with wine. It was stewed with carrots, onions, celery and a pig’s foot – that adds a nice fatty flavor,’ Chin said.’There was about a bottle of wine, some herbs and beef stock.’ Chin said that tripe is an acquired taste but that he has come to like it.

Although Chin loves making obscure and complex concoctions, his favorite food is an omelet with scallions or chives.

Beyond cooking, Chin likes to share his culinary practices with everybody on his blog, bakingchin.blogspot.com. Chin started the blog in September and posts cooking techniques, baking tips, recipes and pictures of his latest cooking adventures whenever he tries something new.

‘It’s a blog about my life with food and the things I make,’ Chin said. ‘I think food writing is fun. I think it’s a nice outlet and it’s fun to share recipes. I try to put a recipe on the blog for just about anything I make.’ Chin said he hopes that the blog inspires people to try cooking and tell him how it works out.

Recently, First Year Players, the drama organization in which Chin is involved, held an auctioned date event with its chef crewmember. Chin was auctioned off for $40 by his friend, Stephanie Cuevas, a senior psychology major. Chin was requested to cook Cuevas a ‘turducken,’ a feast consisting of a turkey stuffed with a duck, which is then stuffed with a chicken. The meal took eight hours to prepare, Cuevas said.

‘I think when you cook for someone you give them a piece of your heart,’Chin said. ‘I think cooking is one of the best things that’s happened to me this year.’

jwong04@syr.edu

Published on February 23, 2010 at 12:00 pm