How To Cook

I've been talking about this off and on with a few friends lately, so I thought I'd share some of it here.

I didn't grow up in a home where food was important, other than just trying to have enough. Powdered milk and government cheese, and that awful black-and-white "Value Checked" box of cornflakes were standard. Fruit was so precious that it was ingrained in me to only eat one piece a day, a habit which I only broke about a year ago.
Although I'm sure I had favorite foods, I only recall eating as being a massive inconvenience. Mealtimes were stressful, and I don't remember eating many things I actually liked, much less looked forward to. It was mostly a problem of resources, but overall, I didn't really have a positive experience with food.

I didn't cook much more than pasta until I was in my early 20's. I think the first thing I baked was chocolate chip cookies, from the recipe on the Nestles package, and I was surprised at how much better they were than any packaged cookies I'd had. From there I branched off into pies and cakes. I'd always bring desserts to potlucks, telling people that while a chicken dish might be delicious, EVERYONE remembers cheesecake.

I didn't start seriously cooking until my son was a toddler. Being responsible for his nutrition really inspired me to cook more, and better foods. I read books about food, watched TV shows about it, and talked to people who cooked a lot. I learned to listen to my body and how it felt after eating certain foods, and not surprisingly, I preferred fruits, veggies and sea creatures to cheese, red meat, and bread.

So I started cooking. I made lots of dishes, lots of mistakes, and kept cooking. Just like with so many other things, if I just kept at it, it got easier.

One of the most common obstacles people have to cooking is time. I share Anthony Bourdain's aversion to the Rachael Ray style of cooking. I think he said something like, if you're buying chopped up onions, you're not cooking.
Oh wait, here it is...

"We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So…what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could–if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better–teach us–and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion–you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit..Sleep…sleep…” "

From a guest blog post on Michael Ruhlman's blog from Feb 8, 2007.
http://blog.ruhlman.com/2007/02/guest_blogging_.html

I think if buying chopped up onions gets you in the kitchen instead of passing out the Lunchables, then that's great, but don't STAY there. You're only going to get better at it by doing it. That's kind of my mantra. For everything.

A meal that used to take me 2 hours to get on the table now only takes about 30 minutes. Practice, practice, and more practice is the way to go.

Start with a good, basic cookbook. I'm partial to Joy of Cooking, because it teaches you about the food, and uses ingredients and kitchen tools you probably already have.

Just keep cooking.

And thanks for reading.

Oh, I also like what Bourdain said about Paula Dean in the same blog post, mostly for the John Waters reference.