As a kid, I'd accompany my mother to her job at the racetrack, where she would lead the horses out to the starting gate, writes Michael Hunter of Studio City, California. Eventually I was helping out in the stalls, and when I got older, I became a jockey. My mother was also the person who, in a roundabout way, inspired my other passion: cooking. I'd come home from school, and she would have prepared something from a box or can. I didn't always like what was on the dinner table, so one day I asked her to buy me a cookbook. Pretty soon I was making dinner for us almost every night. Now, after seventeen years of racing horses and cooking for family and friends, I'm making the jump to professional cooking. These beans are particularly delicious with Michael's Sugar-Seared Salmon with Cream Sauce.