ABOUT THIS COOK:

I started life on an isolated farm in the middle of a forest, where my grandfather smoked bacon and kept bees and my grandmother grew vegetables for the family in her kitchen garden. It was what could be described as an idyllic life.

Naturally, as is the way of teenagers anywhere, I wanted nothing to do with this kind of thing and run away to London, England, where I fell in with entirely the wrong crowd and had a blast running warehouse parties, drinking with Australians and staying up way too late, way too often. In my spare time I made a career out of selling stuff to people through advertisements, first as an Art Director, then as a Creative Director in some of London’s finest ad agencies.

Now, older and sometimes a little wiser, I live in Toronto, Canada, where I am one of the owners of the Fisheye Corporation, a Connection Architect practice. In my spare time I am busy rediscovering the things my grandparents knew.

You can read more about me at my blog, stephensonandduess.com.

• What is the strangest food you have ever eaten?
  Anything in any British pub before 1994. Seriously. That was the year The Eagle opened, on the Farringdon Road in London - the UK's first gastro-pub. After that, nothing was ever the same.

• What do you cook when home alone?
  Pasta carbonara with home cured bacon.

• Your most treasured kitchen possession:
  My butcher block and Chinese cleaver. Bow before the mighty carbon steel.

• The ideal number of guests for a dinner party is:
  20 - 40. I love cooking for crowds.