Seamus Mullen - Seamus Mullens Hero Food: How Cooking with Delicious Things Can Make Us Feel Better

I fell in love with Spain by accident. On the 40-minute drive from our Vermont farm (right), to my seventh grade class, my dad was teaching himself Spanish from Berlitz tapes, unwittingly subjecting me to learn the language. I hated it. I wanted to listen to The Cure and The Clash, not some canned voice with a Castilian accent: El ruido de la calle no me deja dormir. Fast forward: Im 17, thousands of miles away from rural Vermont and living with a host family in Burgos in the heart of Castilla y Len. Im learning more Spanish lessons, like drinking wine from a wineskin, sucking the juice from the heads of langoustines, downing shrimp (shells and all), and swallowing whole squid. Little did I know Id return years later to work in some of the best kitchens in the country, immersing myself in the world of Spanish cuisine.

My career as a chef most likely began at age six when I caught an eight-inch brook trout in the Ompompanoosuc River and proudly brought it home. My grandmother, Mutti, who grew up in London and studied at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, showed me how to . From there I spun into summer jobs cooking in local restaurants. When I went off to college in Michigan and had to work part time, it only made sense it would be in a restaurant.

The tiny little International Caf was near campus and always busy. One day I saw the chef, Kiki Babeluc, mumbling to herself, embracing some customers and screaming at others. I instantly liked her. Kiki became my first real mentor in the kitchen. Her fiery, stubborn character reminded me of my grandmother. We quickly became quite fond of each other. Kiki was an intense workaholic with a very solid repertoire of very dated, classic French cuisine.

I became increasingly less interested in academics and more drawn to food. I preferred to work at the restaurant or in my apartment, where I baked bread and made pasta. By the time I finally finished school, I had a mountain of debt and I needed to find a job. Badly.

I was a bit lost. I had an expensive and relatively useless degree in Spanish literature. Mutti sensed that I needed to get my life in order. As a graduation present, she took me on a wine-tasting tour of Sonoma. The more we drank, the more candid she became: Seamus, she told me, you are happiest when you cook. Its what you do best. Embrace it.

After several years of cooking in some of the best restaurants in San Francisco and New York and just as I was turning 30, I decided to return to Spain. Young cooks work for free as a stagier in all the good kitchens there, and I figured that no one would turn down free labor. So I saved my money and tried to find a stage in Spain, with no luck. I was intrigued by the then-two-star restaurant Mugaritz, near San Sebastin in the Basque Country. I decided I wanted to work there. After endless phone calls and unanswered emails, one day I packed my bags, jumped on a plane, and managed to talk my way into a stage. Over the next two years I worked in some of the best kitchens in Spain, first for free, then for pennies, and eventually for a meager, but livable, salary. I made many friends, and learned much, but eventually it was time to return to New York.

Back in the United States, Spain was hot, but people only seemed to know about so-called molecular gastronomyfoams and spheres or paella and sangria. Americans knew little of the deep traditional Spanish culinary roots of all that modern food. It was those roots I lovedthe little fried anchovies, the creamy chilled almond soups, the grilled octopus, meaty sausages, and baked rice dishes. In 2006, I was approached by the owner of an upscale Spanish restaurant interested in collaborating on another place, something more than just a simple tapas bar. In nine months, we raised capital, found a location, and opened Boqueria, a 60-seat restaurant in the Flatiron District of Manhattan, named for one of my favorite markets in the world, La Boqueria in Barcelona.

On November 1, 2006, Frank Bruni gave us a glowing review in The New York Times. It sent our kitchen into a tailspin. One minute we were serving 60 guests a night and the next, 260. I had never experienced anything like it. I was working the fish station and calling tickets to other cooks and the tickets just kept coming until they were floating all over the kitchen, drowning in chicken stock, catching fire in the broiler. Somehow we managed to survive. The more we practiced, the better we got at managing the hunger New Yorkers seemed to be acquiring for our Spanish food.

Eight months after we opened, the stress of running an incredibly busy kitchen caught up with me. I was exhausted. I remember calling my mom and telling her I felt like my body was broken and I needed a new one. Then I woke up in the middle of the night with an excruciating pain in my hip. I called 911 and spent the next three days in the hospital while doctors tried to figure out what on earth was going on.

After testing for everything they could think of, the doctors decided to give me an MRI. Suddenly it became clear why I was in so much pain: my hip was full of fluid, causing tremendous pressure on my sciatic nerve. A quick culture showed that my white blood cell count was through the roof, but there was no sign of infection in my hip. They couldnt figure out why I would have such extreme inflammation without infection. A few days later, my file made its way into the hands of Dr. Harry Fischer, the head of the Department of Rheumatology at Beth Israel Medical Center. He told me that he suspected I was suffering from a flare-up caused by rheumatoid arthritis. The minute he left my bedside, I Googled rheumatoid arthritis and quickly learned that this auto-immune disease causes the body to over-produce white blood cells and attack itself, leading to extremely painful, often debilitating inflammation. The more I read, the more I freaked out: What if I was not able to cook again?