A Passion for Cooking

Learning from Mom

“Cooking is my passion, and I’ve always known that…” says Chef Keith Mosser, who feels more at home in the kitchen than anywhere else. Even as a child, Keith would pull up a stool next to his mom and he just had to help. That way, “I always knew where he was,” says Terri Mosser, Keith’s mom. As Keith was a free-spirited child who was prone to trouble, his mom was always looking to find ways to encourage his independence and give him boundaries without snuffing out his creativity and spark for life. “ He was a handful as a child, but Keith has always been a joy,” says his mom.” Keith’s parents are reminded daily of his childhood adventurous spirit, as they look at Keith’s 2 year old son Jackson, who is (as Keith says), “my mini-me.”

“So how and when did you decide to become a chef,” I asked Keith. The answer is a story so exciting and inspiring that it would make a great book one day…

A Future Chef

When Keith said he has always known that cooking was his passion, he really meant always. He doesn’t remember a time that he did not want to be a chef. As a small child of 6 or 7 years old, he remembers meeting a chef in an elevator while on a family vacation in Key West. Encouraged by his dad, he asked the chef a few questions and in the course of about 8 floors down, he got a brief run-down of what it takes to be a chef and what to expect when pursuing a culinary career. He still recalls some of the advice the chef gave him, like “stay single in order to learn more, because you can travel and a family can hold you back from that,” and “if you want to travel the world, this is the perfect occupation.”

Intent Focus and Broadening Horizons

International Interest

As a junior in high school, Keith dated a foreign exchange student for his first look into life abroad. After visiting some great culinary institutes in the states from Boston, MA to Charleston, SC, by the end of his junior year Keith’s mind was made up and he knew he was headed to Europe for a culinary adventure. Keith was so convinced he was headed in the right direction, offers for college wrestling opportunities and nothing short of bribes from family couldn’t even catch his eye to remain in the states. He stayed intently focused on his dream.

Keith’s parents wanted him to experience life in the kitchen so he would know what he was getting into. At the C.I.C (Catawba Island Club), and with one of two outcomes expected, Keith fell more in love with food and became more focused on the culinary arts, instead of being detoured by the hectic restaurant life.

Keith made the official announcement for his plans to travel abroad, right after high school graduation. He continued working that summer at the C.I.C. and then that free-spirited drive, led Keith to the airport with just 2 suitcases, 2 backpacks, and a one-way plane ticket to Germany only 2 days after his 19th birthday. Keith’s independent personality really sticks out here, as he wouldn’t even let his parents drive him to the airport for a final goodbye. He partied with his friends the night before and had a friend, along with his older brother Brian, to drop him off for a fierce reality check right off the bat. He boarded the wrong flight after arriving too early to the Detroit airport, and it hit him just then that he was really all on his own. Not speaking any foreign language, and with no return ticket, it was up to him to focus and stay on the right track if he wanted to succeed.

The International Scene

Upon his arrival in Germany, Keith discovered a new love…Techno music, which still lifts Keith’s mood at the first beat of the drum. Techno is now a family affair, as his wife and kids have grown to enjoy the pick-me-up tempos as well. They often “crank it up and dance around the house.” His favorite song is a techno re-mix by Nicol Sponberg entitled Resurrection. The family endearingly refers to it as “Techno God music.”

After a few weeks touring Germany, Keith took a 22-hour train ride to Florence Italy to begin school. By the end of September of 1997 Keith started school at Instituto Europeo. Keith rented a 4×8 foot room from a couple of bachelors he met up with, for about $303 a month. Carefully guarding the money he had saved while working back home, his budget was just $7 a day. By November Keith became familiar enough with the language that he spoke Italian a majority of the time from that point on. He learned not only Italian, but also a love for Red wines.

After finishing the first section of his culinary education in Italy, in 1998 he moved from Florence to Vienna, Austria, then to Berlin, Germany, then to Mallorca, Spain, and finally landing for a while back in Bad Kreuznach, Germany. All along the way, Keith picked up the tricks of the trade from each place he lived and worked, and really found a way to study the chefs he worked with and soak up their talents, and not just study food. Each time Keith moved to a new place, he still could just take what he could carry in his 2 suitcases and 2 backpacks. He couldn’t collect souvenirs along the way, as he had no place to pack them. This helped Keith learn to appreciate and not acquire. (He still doesn’t like “stuff,” he would rather see a clean counter and an empty cabinet than to have it filled with something useless.)

Through a friend of a friend of a friend, Keith got a break in Bad Kreuznach. He had to work for free for a week as an interview for an internship. March 1, 1999, dates “the end of my culinary searching, and the beginning of my culinary drive.” Keith had found his niche, but he had to wait before starting on this new adventure, so off he went again. This time he ended up in Paris and discovered the vast world of French cuisine. In May he got word that he had been accepted for the internship in Bad Kreuznach that would start in September. One requirement was that only German would be spoken there, so Keith had to learn on his own. He started learning over the summer as he came back to America briefly to earn some money. When he returned to Fremont, some friends wanted to see what he had learned and they wanted him to cook for them. Keith remembers cooking lasagna for some high school friends, including April. “How funny is it now,” he accounts, “that I am producing a cookbook with her after all these years.”

A Tough & Telling Internship

Keith returned to Bad Kreuznach at the end of August of 1999, with those same 2 suitcases and 2 backpacks. Here he started the internship that changed it all. Because he earned so little money at this internship, he had to work on his days off and after school every day to make enough to pay his rent. He worked side jobs at many different restaurants including Schloss Vollrads, in Mainz-Winkle, on the Famous Rhein River, deep in white wine country.

Full Throttle Under Johann Lafer

After a year, Keith had finished this section of school and wanted to study more upscale and fine dining cuisine. A classmate was Keith’s “in” to the restaurant that changed his life and really forged a new path for him. Johann Lafer’s restaurant was the best of the best of the best! Johann was famous all over Europe for his fine cuisine, beautiful facility, and his stringent work requirements. This experience propelled Keith from just being a cook, to becoming a chef. This was a very FAST-paced place to be, Keith calls it “Full Throttle.” For 2 years, his days at Johann Lafer’s started at 6:30 am and ended not before 1 am, “Go, Go, Go” all the time! Everything, every day was made fresh. NOTHING was pre-cooked or kept overnight. Every morning raw ingredients were delivered, pulled from the cooler, and prepared, then at the end of the day all food left over was trashed. The food at Johann’s was prepared al-a-minute, meaning made to order, per order. If someone ordered pasta, Keith started cracking the eggs and measuring the flour to make the noodles. Typical meals here were 9-18 courses, and all recipes had to be memorized. There was no time to look up recipes, and it had to be the same every time!! At Johann’s, there was no room for error. If it’s not perfect, YOU FAIL, end of story.

Learning to Create Using His Senses

“It was not learning to cook, it was learning to create using every sense you have. Smell, touch, taste, sight, and sound. You become a culinary artist,” Keith said with a smile as he went back there in his mind. He can pull out seasonings and flavors by smell and taste. He can know when something is ready by the sound of the sizzle in the pan, or how it looks in the pot. He can tell by feeling the consistency if the batter is just right. Amazing culinary talents that Keith says are “gifts from God. Something I can’t explain, I just have a feel for it. I don’t know how, I just know when it’s right or when it’s ready.”

Just Keith’s Style

Keith immediately fell in love with this high-speed and high-stress lifestyle. It fit his free-spirited and determined personality perfectly. “Learn, learn, learn, faster, faster, faster, and cooking in a dead SPRINT, 18-hours a day,” is how Keith lovingly described his journey here. “This shaped my life very dramatically,” he says. “Even down to the German language. German is a very harsh sounding and to the point language. In this career you just say it and do it, no time to worry about the what-if’s. I live that way now. Just do it,” Keith says. “Anyone who knows me, knows exactly what I mean, I just give it to you like I see it, very straight forward. I joke with people and say ‘if you want it black and white, talk to me, but if you want it pink and fluffy, talk to my wife.”

Top in His Class

In June of 2002, Keith passed the last of his tests with Johann Lafer. He finished at the top of his class with an A average. He is the first American to complete an intern-ship at Johann Lafer’s. He was also chosen as the student counsel school representative.

To graduate, there is a series of four tests, and you can take the tests two times. If you don’t pass the second time, you start the three-year internship all over. All the written tests were in German. With German being such a complex language, you can say things many different ways. When small aspects of the language are changed grammatically, it takes on an entirely new meaning. Not a difference in dialect, but like the difference between Chinese and Japanese. In order to pass the written exams, Keith had to be as fluent in German as if it were his native language. Again, there was no room for error.

Thai/Asian Influence

In July of 2002, Keith started a new job at “Die Ente, (The Duck)” a high-end Thai/Asian Restaurant in Wiesbaden, Germany. The chef there had studied and cooked in Thailand for a long period of time for very prominent Thai officials. This is where Keith picked up his Thai/Asian culinary influences. Even here, Keith continued to work on his days off to afford his rent and other bills.

35 Interviews in 15 Days!

After traveling and studying the European Culinary circuit for six years, in 2003 Keith sent out 75 resumes in 13 different countries. He also looked up the top 50 restaurants back in the states and boarded a plane to visit and interview in as many world-class restaurants as possible. From New York City, to San Francisco, to Honolulu, to Detroit, he had about 35 interviews in 15 days and then returned to Germany. By July of ’03, Keith decided to make the move back to the states. In February of 2004, on a whim he moved to Georgia with his twin brother, Kevin. Keith thought he may experience life on the east coast for a year or two and then head out to the west coast. In Atlanta he started a new job as the fine-dining chef at a 4-star destination resort called Chateau Élan. It was there that he met his wife, Mindy. After over six years of hyper-speed, Keith embraced the opportunity to settle down with a family.

Family, Friends, & Food

Healthy Holidays

Now back in small-town Fremont, Ohio, Keith and Mindy love to have people over and they enjoy entertaining. Mindy also loves to cook, but says with a grin that she, “isn’t upset to have a chef-prepared dinner every night.” It’s also understood that they host holidays and family events at their house. Their dream kitchen would have an abundance of counter space and two dishwashers. Keith and Mindy say their dishwasher is always full and runs at least 2 or 3 times a day. The Mosser household is accustomed to preparing three meals a day. Along with creating new recipes daily, all that cooking leaves many dirty dishes. “Preparing three healthy meals a day can be time consuming unless you have a good system. That system is what Keith has implemented in our house, and what he hopes to pass along to others through this cookbook.” According to the Mossers, “there is no place for less-than-nutritional processed foods when you can whip up something really good with such little effort.”

The School Lunch Dilemma

“The school lunches are horrendous. They are often full of processed foods with no nutritional value, so we pack Kennedy’s lunch for school every day,” says Mindy, and that is often the topic of discussion among the teachers, they have been told. Mindy is often asked, “What was in Kennedy’s soup today,” or, “Can I have the recipe for that?”

World Class at Home

Literally around the world and back to Fremont, Ohio, the “die-hard” culinary artist, turned family man, father, and husband cooks for his own royal family daily. It was this adventure of raising a healthy family, and the inspiration from The Healthy Edge, that drew all of Keith’s culinary experiences into focus to create good healthy food the whole family can enjoy. Keith’s time in the kitchen now is creating new recipes and healthy foods that he can feel good about eating and sharing with others.

Healthy with a Garden

In addition to cooking, Keith grows dozens of heirloom, organic vegetables in his back yard garden. He likes the excitement of starting from seeds and growing healthy and un-altered vegetables that he can use in his recipes. “Our family favorite,” he says, “is the asparagus. When in season we eat it fresh from the garden every day. It grows up to 8 inches from morning to dinner time, amazing!!” His seven-year old daughter Kennedy loves to help Daddy in the garden. She plans to have a vegetable stand in the front yard this summer to make some spending money. She promises to help in the garden every morning.

Passing on the Legacy

...to his children

Keith’s two-year old son, Jackson is right by Daddy’s side every chance he gets. Many of the recipes and pictures in this cookbook were completed with Jackson’s help. You may even see his little hand in a picture or two. Keith’s desire is to leave a legacy with his kids. He wants to pass along his knowledge and love for food, both cooking and gardening, to his children. Even if they didn’t chose the career path that he did, at least they will have that part of Daddy to take into their own families one day.

“Teaching my kids to love good healthy food is a great gift. We have already seen how they have influenced their friends and teachers to want to learn how to cook and eat healthier. Using my love for food and the talents God has given me to be able to create anything in the kitchen, I can help others improve their health and quality of life. That is combining my passion with my purpose,” says Keith.

...to others

To take another step toward helping others, Keith has recently started a new business called Cooking with Keith. He offers personal cooking lessons, cooking demos, small catering, private chef packages, and his newest adventure is this website which will be a resource for those wanting to learn how to cook healthy, and those who are interested in new recipes and how-to videos, updated at least monthly.

The Most Important Things in Life

When he does find a few minutes to slip away from the kitchen, Keith enjoys playing with his kids, and taking his motorcycle out for a spin. The kids like to suit up and hop on with Daddy too. Whether it is just down the driveway or around the block, Jackson and Kennedy are so giddy to “go for a ride with Daddy.” Jackson squeals and says, “Daddy mo-ky-cle.” Keith’s favorite things are God and spending time with family. He gets down and plays with his kids every day. He chases them around the house, gives piggyback and horseback rides, flies kites, and lots of tickles and laughs. The Mossers say their house is loud and busy. “People don’t just sit around and color here, it’s a lot like the kitchens in Germany, go, go, go, learn, learn, learn, laugh, laugh, laugh, and fun, fun, fun.”