What Kind of a Cook Are You?

[Chris Amirault]

I've been thinking about this question -- what kind of a cook are you? -- for a while now. Partly I've been wondering about my and others' choices in the "Cookbooks That Made You the Cook You Are" topic; it's interesting to see who chose certain traditions, who drilled deep in one area and who went for breadth, who lists references, etc.

I've also been talking to a lot of chefs lately, and they all have precise multi-word descriptors, 140-character tweets, and 30 second, 130-word-max elevator pitches ready to roll off their tongues, intended to give concise descriptions of the cooking they present at their restaurants. It's very impressive to me, as I tend to blather on endlessly even as I attempt to keep things succinct and to the point <-- e.g.

So I'd like to get a sense of how you'd describe your cooking. What words are important descriptors? What cuisines or styles would you stress? Pros, please educate us with your pithy perfection, and I'll try to share mine as I learn from what y'all post, pros or amateur.

[emilyr]

I cook for my friends and family. Simple as that.

[Chris Amirault]

And what kind of cooking do you, you know, cook?

[emilyr]

I'm willing to try anything once, but mostly I just want to make what makes people around me happy. Right now that's homey things like soups and stews, potatoes and meaty dishes. Home food. But when we get on a kick, I might cook all Italian for a fortnight or Mexican for a week. Then again, I'm not a pro by any means. I don't have a set cooking philosophy.

[melissafitz]

i am a nostalgic cook. nearly everything i make is an attempt to capture an experience from some significant (food-related or otherwise) time in my life. squash casseroles at family reunions, schwarmas from my time in riyahd when i was 12, cannelles from pierre herme, cassolets from toulouse. nearly every thoughtful meal i make is based on a past experience.

[Chris Amirault]

Melissa, that's just fascinating to me! I have a pretty barren food childhood, save for the odd Maine clambake with lobsters, corn, the whole nine yards, so I never would think of myself as nostalgic. I'm more often seeking to create new memories, not recreate old ones. I'd never have thought of this characteristic as a defining element of how I cook, but it clearly is.

Both nostalgia and the new can co-exist, I'd imagine. Grant Achatz has repeatedly declared his desire to evoke memory in many of his most famous dishes at Alinea, a restaurant that's at the cutting edge of gastronomy in the US.

[plum tart]

I think the new and the nostalgic can co-exist, they certainly do for me. I am constantly buying new cookbooks and trying new ingredients and then once a dish becomes mine and part of my repertoire I will become nostalgic about it and try to replicate my food memories of it, when I cook it a year later or two years later..

. I make a plum tart every August when the prune plums are ripe. The day I bake it has to be a particular kind of day - an end of summer day and then the nostalgia sets in and as I pit the plums, I remember the other plum tarts I have eaten or baked and the people who are part of those food memories. Sometimes I accuse myself of manipulating memory and time, but in the end, the plum tart is always beautiful and delicious and my family and friends always enjoy eating it.

[andiesenji]

This is a very pithy question, Chris. The answers will probably be varied and insightful.

Mine is rather prosaic.

I began cooking very early in life as I grew up in a household of people who could only be described as foodies. It was not just sustenance but also a subject for education as my grandfather was interested in the history of agriculture and animal husbandry. My great-grandmother was a collector of "receipts" and kept journals about her travels and sampling of new and different foods. Unlike many Victorians, she was a fan of ethnic foods and searched them out when traveling companions would stick to "real British food" even when in a country where interesting foods abounded.

I became a baker in the mid '50s as my mother owned a bakery (in Wisconsin) and sent me to baking school after I showed some interest in it.

The things I cook are foods from my childhood, foods that I have learned to appreciate over the years and ethnic foods that have caught my interest from travel and from people I have met.

I like to cook and bake "from scratch" things that are now available as mixes, "instant" products and things that are now rarely made at home.

Candied ginger and citrus peel, dried fruits and vegetables, jams, jellies, marmalade, mustard and other condiments.

I have resurrected and modernized some antique recipes that at one time were family standards. They are time consuming because when they were popular, servants were always available to do the work. Since I am now retired, I have plenty of time to play in the kitchen and I enjoy it.

I have friends that are vegan and trust me to cook for them. Also I have friends who do not eat certain things because of religious reasons and they trust me to cook for them.

I love to cook the "homey" things that remind me of my childhood and better still, serve them to friends who had different experiences and who will share their family recipes.

I love to cook exotic things that I never heard of prior to the internet and I have learned that some of the ideas I had about some of these foods were totally wrong because the people who wrote about them or told me about them, many years ago, were biased.

I cook because doing interesting things in the kitchen is an adventure for me.

[Moopheus]

I once described my dietary preference as "dessertarian," however my wife insists that we also have some vegetables.

[Chris Amirault]

Andie, your description of your cooking strongly resembles the one I have formed based on your posts here. Your cooking harkens back to a time when people filled their larders with their own goods out of both desire and necessity, and you always seem to make the case for accommodating the requirements of your guests and friends.

I cook because doing interesting things in the kitchen is an adventure for me.

Seconded.

[Special K]

I think I am a deliberate, even meditative cook. I can and often do turn out a good, quick meal for the two of us, sure, but I'd much rather take the time to plan a feast for a crowd; shopping, measuring, chopping, slicing, dicing, and then cooking low and slow, filling the house with good aromas. I like to set the table with the best china, and carefully match the wine to the food, and it's nice if there are (unscented) candles and flowers . . . The whole time I'm playing in the kitchen I'm thinking not just of how good everything is going to taste, but also of how pleased and relaxed the people at my table are going to be. This is why I love putting together holiday meals - everyone expects the cook to pull out all the stops, and I love pulling out all the stops!

If I had the time (and OK, the money) I would do this every day. I welcome every chance to cook this way. If there's no holiday, or no guests, I'll do it for just we two, and freeze the leftovers. Or I'll make stock. Same thing - the same motions and good smells and time, and all along I'm thinking of all the good meals that the stock will be a part of one day.

My Mom, who has zero interest in cooking (or in eating, really, except to survive), recently tried to give a nod to my love of cooking by sending me several different kinds of scone mixes - "just add water!" Ah, Mom. She really means well; she just doesn't understand what I mean by "cooking." To her, cooking is the work someone has to do in order to feed hungry mouths. To me it is much, much more. It is love.

[Anna N]

I cook because it's an ever-expanding hobby. Even if one day I were to acquire every gadget known to humankind I could never, ever run out of new ingredients to try, new dishes to make, new cuisines to explore. There is always a new skill to master, a new flavour profile to tempt. And in the process of enjoying myself I bring pleasure to my family and friends with the results of my own enjoyment - now how great is that?

[snowangel]

I love to be adventurous. Primarily SE Asian or Chinese. I don't hesitate to try something new on guests. I love to entertain. I make all of my own kitchen/food related presents.

Oh, and a recipe is just a starting point.

[Lindsey]

I am very lucky to come from a long line of wonderful cooks who learnt to cook by taste it seems to me. I was shown at a young age the importance of layers of flavour, be it sweet or savoury. I have taught a few cooks in my lifetime and have found it almost impossible to teach this 'taste' which seems to be learned at an early age (if you are lucky enough to be in the family of a cook). I remember watching food being tasted at almost every stage, added to and tasted again and to explain this magic in words is far too hard!!!

[maggiethecat]

I am a cook who focuses on the local,sustainable,organic, and expensive, while fusing the Uzbeki/Uraguayan cuisines of my grandparents.

[Lapin d'Argent]

I'm a maturing, opinionated, meditative, but joyous cook. Cooking is very primal for me -- I feel that we should pay more attention to the quality of our food, air, and water. My cooking has become simpler over the years; I'm less interested in "show-off" cooking and elaborate techniques than I am in where my ingredients come from and what they have to teach me. Cooking is a dialogue that the food and I engage in with fire as the mediator. It's about transformation -- often in unexpected and delightfully surprising ways. But it's also about community, whether recipes handed down from family members, ingredients purchased from neighbors at the farmers market, or insights learned from online friends around the world.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

[melissafitz]

chris -- the funny thing is that i grew up with a parents who were very unremarkable cooks -- one of my mom's "go to" dishes was a ground beef patty, topped with a slice of onion and a slice of potato, wrapped in tin foil and baked in the oven. it was grey and horrid. but, in spite of this (or maybe because of it), i have always attached a lot of meaning to various food experiences i've had -- from the sublime, like lespinasse, to the more pedestrian (and yet, sublime), like crown burger in salt lake.

[Kerry Beal]

Experimental on the one hand - always trying to reproduce what I taste or hear about - especially fun if someone says it can't be done at home!

On the other hand, repetitive - there are certain foods that just belong with certain occasions and to muck with it just upsets my universe - i.e. gotta make trifle for christmas dessert (of course that doesn't mean there won't be another dessert too). Knee jerk response to seeing seville oranges in the store - marmalade season - if I don't buy them it will haunt me until I go back and get them. When I go north I tend to make the same items over and over to take to work - gingerbread, blueberry buckle, impossible pies, cookies and the same items for entertaining dinners - paella, vietnamese chicken...

However when I go north I always take something experimental along to play with - thereby introducing a new item to be repeated in subsequent years.

[Marlene]

I'm a maturing, opinionated, meditative, but joyous cook. Cooking is very primal for me -- I feel that we should pay more attention to the quality of our food, air, and water. My cooking has become simpler over the years; I'm less interested in "show-off" cooking and elaborate techniques than I am in where my ingredients come from and what they have to teach me. Cooking is a dialogue that the food and I engage in with fire as the mediator. It's about transformation -- often in unexpected and delightfully surprising ways. But it's also about community, whether recipes handed down from family members, ingredients purchased from neighbors at the farmers market, or insights learned from online friends around the world.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

Bingo. How well said, and pretty much describes me as well.

[Wholemeal Crank]

Cooking is my primary creative outlet these days, because it is fun to do, fun to share, and everybody's gotta eat.

[haresfur]

I am mostly an improvisational cook. I like to throw things together, to make a nice meal out of whatever is in the house. I often can't leave recipes alone - except for baking and sometimes not even then. I try to cook relatively healthy food - vegetarian if I'm not too lazy, but at least low saturated fat. My father loved to cook, which was unusual for men of his generation. I cannot match him in his ability to mess up a kitchen (but he did it with flair). The family recipes are important to me but I don't feel bound by them. If I'm making up a dish I may tell people that it is an old family recipe so they don't dare criticize it !

[JTravel]

What wonderful answers.

I guess I am like a lot of cooks, trying to taste lots of new things and trying to make some at home. Unlike a lot of you I no longer entertain, I was always good with the cooking but not with the "getting ready".

Now as a "getting old" lady I do find a lot of nostalgia for my Mother's old recipes. I just baked a pan of the dinner rolls that MUST be served at every holiday gathering. My Mother's recipe, from her mother. My sons think that they are the only rolls to have. I hope they remember me fondly, as I remember my mother when I bake them. I am on a baking jag lately, no-knead breads, crackers, sweet breads and tonight a cottage cheese dough to be filled with jam. I do love to play around with flour!

So I'm a somewhat skilled everyday cook, who can bake, and who has a new favorite cuisine to study up on after every trip.

[Peter the eater]

What a question.

Don't most Society members spill some if not all of those beans when they join?

I'm with Wholemeal Crank in that cooking is both creative and necessary. Actually, I like all the answers so far -- cooking with an eye for geography, history, adventure, ecology, etc. Even Uzbeki/Uraguayan fusion sounds unimaginably delicious.

[sparrowgrass]

Oh, you guys!! You are lyrical and nostalgic and inspiring--but not Tweetable.

I cook because I love to eat, and I love to share!

[MattyC]

I've actually thought about this from time to time, and honestly I think my own answer to myself tends to change a little bit every time lol

Above all else I call myself a 'playful' chef. I have fun with what I do, and I like to show that, as well as have people feel the same way. If you don't have fun then there isn't a point to it, and that goes for anything with me.

As for 'What' I actually cook.....I operate on such opposite ends of the scale at times i've always found it a little hazy. One hand I tend to use a lot of chemicals, techniques, styles, etc that are very modern and influenced by anything, but i'll flip it around and bust out a classic blanquette de veau, homemade cheese on baguette I baked, grape and leek tarts, etc, the next day. I guess summing it all up i'd just go for 'Modern french bistro' fare.