Do your boiled eggs come out like old shoe leather? Is your broccoli flaccid?

Swiss chef Rene Notter may have some ideas.

The 55-year-old started the website ABC of Cooking four years ago to offer home chefs tips and tricks.

“It’s not meant for professional chefs,” said Mr Notter. “I do simple things.”

He said even some professional chefs can mess up something as simple as boiling an egg.

“You never put an egg straight out of the fridge into boiling water,” he said. “The egg should be at room temperature.”

He started the website after a 30-year career in the Bermuda restaurant industry.

“I am now a merchandiser at John Barritt & Son Ltd,” he said. “I was tired of working nights, but the website allows me to keep my hand in.”

One of his posts talks about how to avoid food contamination.

“I wrote that one in November 2016 after I became really sick from food poisoning,” he said. “I ate rotten lamb. I didn’t realise when I was eating it because it was well seasoned. ”

After his recovery, he learnt that cross contamination is one of the major reasons for food poisoning.

“Chances of it can be reduced using a colour-coded cutting board system,” he said. “Yellow boards are only for chicken, for example, white boards for sandwiches and red boards for beef.”

His website has followers from all over the world.

“I love sharing my talents,” he said.

He was born in Aargau, Switzerland. His parents ran a mechanics shop, but he lacked any mechanical ability.

“Today, my wife is still waiting for me to hang pictures on the wall,” he said.

In school, there were two things he was good at, football and cooking.

“I was the school’s top striker,” he said.

He dreamt of becoming a professional footballer, but adults talked him out of it saying there was no money in it.

“Just ask Messi if he has enough to live on,” Mr Notter laughed. “I think I could live on $40 million a year.”

Now he contents himself with watching the sport on television.

He first came to Bermuda in 1983 at age 21, fresh out of cooking school.

“I came here to get a bit of experience,” he said. “I intended to stay only a short time and then move on to Monaco to perfect my French.”

But things didn’t work out that way.

“I met my wife, Sheena, and the rest is history,” he said.

In the 1990s he opened Genesis, a restaurant in the Washington Mall.

“We’re born again Christians, so we didn’t sell any alcohol,” he said.

He struggled to keep Genesis going, and it folded after three years.

“My parents always said owe no man nothing,” said Mr Notter. “It turns out they didn’t know anything about business. I was trying to run the business from my savings and when the business went down, I went down too.”

A catering arm of the business was more successful, and he became well known for making soup and fish cakes.

“Some of my customers called me ‘Mr Fishcakes’,” he said.

Over the years he worked in a number of local restaurants including Inverurie, Red Carpet, and the St George’s Club.

“Inverurie had the best brunch on this island,” he said. “Every morning I had to make 150 omelettes.”

That’s how he knows the right way to boil an egg.

“It took me about 15 seconds to peel an egg,” he said.

“I loved making brunches, but I was never very keen on desserts.”

For more information visit www.a-b-c-of-cooking.com.

Rene’s tips on how to boil perfect egg

1. Take your egg out of the refrigerator an hour before you use it and let it warm to room temperature.

2. Put it into boiling, salted water with a little vinegar.

3. Cook large eggs for 12 minutes and small eggs for ten minutes.

4. When the timer goes off, drop the eggs into ice water gently.

5. Peel them while they are still warm. If you roll the warm egg on a cutting board, you should be able to pop the egg out of the shell with a little squeeze. If you put it in the fridge and then try to peel, it won’t work as well because the egg will stick to the shell.