Every cooking tradition in the world starts here. Before the stove, before the oven, before the salamander and the induction burner and the sous vide circulator — there was fire. There was smoke. There was the smell of something cooking in the dark.

I come back to the campfire the way some people come back to church. Not because it's practical — it's not, it's slow and unpredictable and you have to pay attention every second — but because it reminds me why I cook.

The embers in this photo are from a fire I built on a ridge above the valley. I'd been hiking since morning. I had a cast iron pan, some elk sausage, a few potatoes wrapped in foil, and a bottle of something good. The sky was clear and the stars were starting to come out and I sat there for two hours just tending the fire and watching the food cook.

Nothing I've made in a professional kitchen has ever tasted as good as that meal did.