When I was younger, I’m thinking around the age of 17 although at 28 my memory really isn’t what it used to be, I decided to throw together dinner for myself and the family. Now, this wasn’t all that unusual as dinner at the West household often consisted of the “fend for yourself” recipe that it seems so many families have adopted. I’ll take the time to defend my family and their poor dining habits in another article, for now let’s continue onward. That night I made some sort of Italian style chicken, or at least that’s what I called it. For the life of me I cannot remember what was in the dish, but I remember it being made of a hodgepodge of ingredients in the kitchen. What I remember most of all is my mother asking me, “How did you do that?”
What she wanted to know was how I created a dish out of the vast emptiness that the kitchen became the night before grocery day. Since then I’ve perfected my risotto, learned on my own how to break down a chicken, dabbled in the lost art of a gallontine and in general grown as a home cook. I’ve read the gear advice of Alton Brown and the god of presentation Chef Morimoto. I’ve completed le techniques, and still have found no use for bunnies made of nasty black olives. And recently I’ve begun a professional relationship with the kitchen. My answer today, with a decade of cooking experience behind me, is the same as back then: I don’t know.
Perhaps you’ve just finished your expensive trip to a Cordon Bleu school and want to proclaim that I should know if I were a good cook. That’s all well and good, and I’ve read Larousse (among many others). I think the real answer is that not knowing why I can gather ingredients into something tasty is what keeps me so interested in cooking. Just imagine that tonight for dinner you could have something you’ve never ever tasted before. Aren’t you just a little exhilarated by the thought?
To me cooking is a natural extension of the person. It tells the diner who you are, and therefore forces the serious cook to consider exactly what they are serving. Even on those nights when I’ve tossed basic pasta with oil, garlic and pecorino for dinner I like to think that what I’m saying to my wife is I did my best for you. Other nights we eat a slice of Tombstone pizza and spend the evening exchanging throne rights.
Just as my wife is confounded with my ability to toss crap into a pan and use my magic salt to turn it into a delicious glazed pork chop, I am equally confuzzled that people claim to be cooking inadequate. There isn’t much left for the modern chef to invent. Even the most unique and amazing dish has its basis in now ancient cooking techniques and rules. Therefore all but an elite percentile of human cuisine is written in a cookbook or on a 3×5 card somewhere. And if you can read you should be able to cook.
I think embarking on this little blog endeavor has opened my eyes a smidge to the error in my reasoning. Now I have to, for the first time ever, sit down and write out recipes. I don’t have a card collection with all my favs. No, all my recipes exist in my head. Worse yet, there are absolutely no measurements in there. I’m doubtful you, Dear Reader, will find any use in me telling you to put “some” cumin in your Summer All Purpose Dry Rub. Every cooking event that happens is different, even when it’s the same dish you’ve cobbled together 30 times. So I can now understand that the real problem isn’t following a recipe, it’s dealing with what happens when everything goes wrong.
What do you do if your onions are supposed to be sweating but you clearly hear a lot of sizzling, and boy oh boy that’s a lot of browning going on for only a minute in the pan? Can you save the dish, or do you throw it out? My answer is you only throw it out when things have burned. Caramelized onions are tasty, so you go ahead and snub your nose at any cookbook that tells you a caramelized onion in their recipe means you have failed. No, you’ve just put your own spin on it.
That’s what cooking is all about, isn’t it? You take the time to put something together and eventually tweak it just how you’d like. When you serve up the dish, even if it’s a good ol’ American hamburger, you’ve placed a little piece of yourself on the plate. I guess I should call up my mom and let her know that on that long ago night I just put my own spin on Italian chicken. It may not answer her question, but it’s better than admitting I don’t know how I do what I do.
