TDG: Desperate Measures: Cooking to Learn . . .

[Jinmyo]

But I still think there ought to be an easier way!

Anna, there ought to be. But there just isn't.

You can't know what you don't know. Knowledge comes about from experience. Experience is messy and takes whatever time it takes and is never finished until you die. We have to be willing to admit what we don't know and alwayus be willing to learn.

Of course, it is easier if you have a mentor. Or several of them. For those who did not have mothers or fathers or relatives who showed them how to cook (and I did not) and are not in the restaurant business, I recommend:

Don't know what the difference between salami and salumi is? Ask the guy behind the counter. Ask your fishmonger to show you how to fillet a fish. You liked that pho? Ask if you can help in the restaurant kitchen for a few hours. Shop in ethnic markets and ask questions. In the supermarket, talk to the head produce guy. Ask questions, ask to be shown. Listen to everyone but don't believe them. Keep asking.

Oh, and uh... Read eGullet.

[KNorthrup]

the Jamison breakfast book

Elephant Walk (Cambodian)

Nina Simond's Asian Noodles

Seductions of Rice

Flatbreads & Flavours

Rosengarten's Taste

the other AB

maybe Simple to Spectacular

Um, anyway, my mother taught me WITH a cookbook. Frequently a recipe that was new to her as well. So we'd cover both how to follow the recipe and what things are left out. When she was 'just' cooking, on the other hand, she rarely used a recipe.

[Richard Kilgore]

Mamster - very, very fine article.

This is one reason I find Richard Olney's "Simple French Food" such a wonderful book. For every topic he covers, he explains a good deal of how, what and why with multiple possible variations. He provides recipies, but gives you a broader context along with procedural detail that would be punishing in a less gifted writer. It is such a rich source of instruction and inspiration that I have read it many times...and continue to.

Edited June 8, 2003 by Richard Kilgore (log)

[mamster]

Oddly enough, Simple to Spectacular was sitting on the couch when I took the photo. I'm all for cooking with a friend or relative as long as you can keep from driving each other nuts.

Thanks for the comment, Richard. Olney is a treasure, and I haven't read as much of him as I should, although I did read some of his bizarro autobiography.

[fresco]

It sounds grotesque as I write it, but my impression is that home cooking in North America (and perhaps right throughout the developed world) is becoming more of a rarefied experience with every passing year. Despite the thousands of recipe books published every year,preparing meals from scratch has done an interesting class reversal.

Not long ago, every peasant family had probably two or more people who could cook, and cook well. Now, thanks to McDonald's with fast food and your local supermarket with prepackaged meals, an entire strata of society has mostly stopped cooking. Proficiency in the kitchen is now a mark of culture, up there with having read The Great Books, or knowing The Great Composers.

Perhaps someone from Europe can help me out here, but I have heard that Delia Smith has become the best selling cookery writer in France, because cooking skills were passed on from mother to daughter until about 20 years ago. When this generational exchanged ceased, there was no French version of Fannie Farmer or The Joy of Cooking to take its place.

Nor, despite the proliferation of even good cook books and the existence of the excellent eGullet site, is this situation likely to change. Once the two-income family became an economic necessity, food preparation rapidly passed from the home kitchen to the factory and centuries of skills and knowledge began to disappear.

Wasn't it McLuhan who observed that veneration begins when something has passed into obsolescence?

[Fat Guy]

Yes, eventually, the only people who will bother to cook will be well-to-do hobbyists.

[fresco]

Which will then spawn a novel by a foul-mouthed Glaswegian: Foodspotting.

[Richard Kilgore]

Mamster - I have not yet read the Olney biography, but am interested in it. If I recall correctly John Thorne's image of Olney was somewhat strained after reading it. Talent does not make one perfect.

[mamster]

fresco, I think you're right, but I don't think it's a bad thing. It's awesome that people have the option not to cook. If it meant that I no longer had access to quality ingredients, I'd complain about it, but I've never faced so much bounty in my life. Do I go to the huge gourmet store, the farmer's market, or the huge Asian grocery? How about all three?

Sure, I'd be delighted if the average person were as excited about cooking as I was, or if they had my taste in music or movies, but there's little to be gained from going back to a situation where people have to cook to survive, and it's not possible anyway.

There are probably people who would like to spend more time cooking but absolutely can't afford to take the time. I'm a little skeptical of what these people are using their time for now, but I do feel sorry for anyone who is honestly in this situation.

[Anna N]

There are probably people who would like to spend more time cooking but absolutely can't afford to take the time. I'm a little skeptical of what these people are using their time for now, but I do feel sorry for anyone who is honestly in this situation.

I can't speak for all of the people who don't have time to cook but when I look around at my friends and relatives they are spending the time when they would like to making dinner on long commutes to jobs that keep them away from home for too many hours each day. When you are on the job til 6 or later and still have a 90 minute commute it's hard to work up much energy or enthusiasm to get a meal on the table. The work day and the work week seem to be getting longer and longer and the commutes worse and worse. Food becomes merely fuel to keep going to face the next day. And a "drive-in" fill up seems to be their best option. Anna N

[fresco]

Mamster,

The President's Choice 10-pound Club Pack of three-cheese frozen lasagne isn't my idea of a good time, but I guess I'm glad it's there for people with no time or inclination to cook.

Obesity may be a problem for a complex variety of reasons (including a Food Guide that was, if you'll pardon the expression, grossly oversimplified) and a country that still consumes a diet more suited to an older, agrarian time, but I think you can easily make the argument that people are better fed now than at any other time in history.

I'd rather not see the cooking skills of the average person atrophy to the point of uselessness, but other people mourn the decline of literacy, or carpentry skills or whatever. It's probably not dangerous to the human species when these skills wither away, but it does make the world a less interesting place.

[tighe]

While I agree with mamster's premise that absolutely anyone can become a competent cook with a little practice and the right learning resources, I'm a firm believer that natural talent plays a large roll in really good cooking. [WARNING: sports analogy coming] I could memorize Tiger Woods' book on playing golf, get hours of personal instruction from him and/or his coach, practice until by hands bled for years and never be anything like the player he is, although I might be a better than average amateur.

My mother is probably the most naturally talented cook I've ever known. I can count on my hands the number of times I saw her use a recipe or cookbook when I was growing up and she never had any real training (she certainly didn't learn it from my grandmother!), but she had an uncanny ability to take whatever random selection of ingredients were available and make something really, really good out of them.

[Katherine]

There are probably people who would like to spend more time cooking but absolutely can't afford to take the time. I'm a little skeptical of what these people are using their time for now, but I do feel sorry for anyone who is honestly in this situation.

People I know in this situation have made the judgment that they "don't have time to cook" based on the complexity of recipes in the glossy coffee-table cookbooks they tend to buy. I think the large number of cookbooks of this type available tends to intimidate less-experienced home cooks, who feel the bar is so high that they rarely make the attempt. Even more discouraging to them is that when they do make the attempt, they often fail, as these books were meant to be visual inspiration, ie, food porn, not working cookbooks.

I gave a cooking lesson once to a woman who had put off trying bread-baking because the "ultimate recipe" she had gotten somewhere required a bunch of ingredients she had to shop for, and 5 rises. I tried to show her that making bread dough is something you can "just do". In an hour and a half we made pizza, and I showed her how she would go about using a simple dough for other things. Last I heard, she was putting off making bread again until she had acquired the perfect sourdough starter.

And yes, these are people who watch 4 hours of TV a night.

[fresco]

Watching television is something that is easy to perfect.

[cakewalk]

Oh boy. I just keep thinking, have you come to bury recipes, or to praise them? There seems to be such a mixed message here. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) I keep thinking about the "original" thread on recipes here, where I had the pleasure of listening to all these professional chefs talk about how "unnecessary" recipes are. (Really. ) And now I read this article that tells me, if I follow a recipe and it doesn't come out good, how dare I blame the recipe! The recipe is wonderful, the problem is me! (Okay, sit back down, I'm exaggerating. It was a good article, with much food for thought, or thought for food, or whatever.) But you get what I'm saying.

The first time I ever baked bread (we're going back about 30 years here), I used a very simple recipe from a book called The Sunset Cookbook of Breads (I still have it). Six simple steps, with pictures and everything, and -- voila! -- a loaf of bread that was damned good, if I remember correctly. And then I tried the challah, and the cinnamon raisin bread (which had to be rolled out, oh my), and pita, etc. All I had was that book, no one taught me. If that first recipe had been more complex, I would never have done it. I suspect a lot of people can identify with that. Now I may be wrong, but why do I get the feeling that many of you would scoff at this kind of thing? At that time, I would not have been interested in reading about different types of flour to use, or oil, or yeast, and what the different properties of these things would bring to the whole enterprise. Too complicated. Paralyzing, in fact. Just give me the basic steps and let me learn what it feels like to produce a loaf of bread. (It felt great, BTW.) These days I would like to know more about those details, but back then? No way.

That recipe from the Schneider book on vegetables sounds wonderful, and I can certainly see why it attracts you as "what a recipe should be," but can't you realistically see what it would do to most beginning cooks? I love the concept of cooking to learn. Making mistakes is invaluable to the learning process (not just for cooking, of course). But so is success. And often that can mean being unadventurous, at least in the beginning. And many people never pass the beginning stages. I cannot view that as something to deride.

The thing is this: you can cook well with just a basic recipe and not much understanding of the ingredients you're using. Yes, you certainly can. But the details, such as what FG is talking about (and I do hope you find a publisher; it's not that "nobody wants to read that," but I don't think the beginning cook is your market), will teach you to cook better. And I think those details will teach you to understand WHY the stuff you're cooking is suddenly better. And that's a very big deal indeed, because that's what enables you to experiment. But I just don't agree that the novice has to have all that under his belt before trying out a simple recipe. And viva la simple recipe!

There often seems to be a lot of ambivalence on this site -- people are appalled at the approach to food and cooking and eating that is prevalent in American society today, yet they seem to scorn those "baby steps and training wheels" that people need to move beyond that prevalent approach. And the truth is that a lot of people may always need those training wheels. So what? Not everyone is going to become a gourmet cook. That shouldn't have to detract from the enjoyment they might get from cooking simple things, even if they have to follow a recipe word-for-word to do it.

I didn't mean for this to be so long. I guess I want to understand the general "complaint" here so I can try to understand the solution. But I understand neither.

[Katherine]

Cakewalk, I agree with you completely. A major problem is that so often recipes are written unnecessarily imprecisely, when in fact the writer knows exactly what they intend for you to do. Gimme a break, if you know what type of chocolate works, tell me!

Compounding this is the fact that a publisher would never dream of limiting the market of a book by letting naive potential buyers know that the recipes are only intended as inspiration, and shouldn't be followed precisely, but with lots of judgment. I think that books should indicate somewhere the level of expertise required, so that a beginner won't buy an expert or intermediate level book expecting to open it and make dinner.

There are plenty of basic technique books out there, from the Sunset books, to Fannie Farmer and Joy of Cooking. Nobody wants to read such unglamorous books, but glitzy picture books have no room for basic technique, with one recipe facing a full-page photo.

[fifi]

yay Katherine... I was just about to post almost exactly the same thing. You said it well.

[mamster]

cakewalk, I feel your pain. Seriously, your post made me think a lot.

Some recipes are definitely better written than others, and I'm not trying to excuse careless recipe writers. If it sounds like I don't have one central argument, it's because my feelings on this subject continue to evolve. Probably I made this piece too general when it could have been more personal.

More than any other single influence, Cook's Illustrated taught me how to cook. I've made probably over a hundred recipes from the magazine, and I can't imagine going a week without making something I learned from CI or a variation. I think of it as about the best beginner's resource you can have outside of a personal trainer (cooking trainer, not fitness).

But in cooking from CI, I made mistakes. A lot of mistakes. A lot of going out for pizza because I screwed up. I'm not a brilliant natural cook like tighe's mom. Luckily, I never had illusions that learning to cook would be easy, but I still felt like quitting many times. What if that Sunset bread hadn't come out well? Or if it had come out as the author intended but you didn't like it?

I'm trying to argue a middle path here; I'm about equally annoyed when a professional chef says to throw out your recipes and when a beginner cookbook says, "Cooking is Fun and EZ!"

[KNorthrup]

I can't speak for all of the people who don't have time to cook but when I look around at my friends and relatives they are spending the time when they would like to making dinner on long commutes to jobs that keep them away from home for too many hours each day.  When you are on the job  til 6 or later and still have a 90 minute commute it's hard to work up much energy or enthusiasm to get a meal on the table.

This is exactly why my mother taught me to cook. In the 5th grade. So that for most of the next seven years, when she and my stepfather got home, dinner was ready. Not everyone has that option, but I'm glad she used it. And published recipes were a very important aspect of that, since she wasn't there to coach me through it each night. We had an active subscription to the Time-Life Great Meals in Minutes series and that worked very well for both a beginner-level cook and a few diners with fairly conservative, traditional, middle-America palates. Bon Appetit was equally reliable.

[Anna N]

...If it sounds like I don't have one central argument, it's because my feelings on this subject continue to evolve.  ......

But in cooking from CI, I made mistakes. A lot of mistakes. A lot of going out for pizza because I screwed up. ....

Like Mamster, my feelings on the subject continue to evolve.

While once I would have argued vehemently that all recipes should be precise and detailed and pretty much wrapped up with a money-back guarantee of success, I am much less sure of my stand now.

One thing I have learned is that the recipe writer is not always at liberty to be as detailed as they might like. There is such a thing as "word count" imposed upon them by the publisher. They are forced into a sort of shorthand in order to stay within that word count often at the expense of clarity.

And we all approach food and cooking with a certain amount of baggage as it were. When I was learning photography, for example, I knew that the garbage can was my best teacher. In other words, I had no compunction about "wasting" film, photographic paper, darkroom supplies, etc. in the process of learning how to do it reasonably well. With food, that ability to regard the garbage can as a teacher is much harder to accept.

Unlike the testers at CI, I can't use up 10, 20 or more chickens in order to perfect a recipe. It's not just cost, though that is a factor, but the whole emotional thing of "wasting food". Having been raised in post-war Britain when food was still tightly rationed, I still regard a recipe that calls for 12 precious eggs as ridiculous. Intellectually I know that eggs are now cheap and plentiful but emotionally - that's a different story. Then too, I am daily confronted with graphic photos of starving children even as I cook so the emotional baggage is hard to leave behind.

Further, where in any other hobby I accept and expect wastage, when it comes to cooking I expect to feed someone with the final result. In other words, personal satisfaction with the result is not enough. Mamster may be able to send out for pizza when his experiments fail, and I have fallen back on that idea as a last resort, but with limited time and resources I expect to have an edible result.

I am edging away from that idea now as I learn to cook. I am trying hard to detach the desire to learn from the need to feed us! I am trying to see cooking as I would any other hobby and making dishes that become adjuncts to our meals so that the failures are only steps in a learning curve.

I see this thread now not as a "them against us" argument with winners and losers but as an opportunity to think out loud.

Anna N

[mamster]

Then too, I am daily confronted with graphic photos of starving children even as I cook so the emotional baggage is hard to leave behind.

What you need is new posters in your kitchen! How about a grinning Jacques Pepin?

I see this thread now not as a "them against us" argument with winners and losers but as an opportunity to think out loud.

Me too. I hope the old high school speech team gene hasn't flared up too much.

[reverendtmac]

I could memorize Tiger Woods' book on playing golf, get hours of personal instruction from him and/or his coach, practice until by hands bled for years and never be anything like the player he is, although I might be a better than average amateur.

To pick up on that, and to try to drag it back towards the kitchen - that's exactly like saying you could go to culinary school, do stages in a bunch of three-stars, sous at a bunch of ultra-super-great kitchens, etc ad nauseum - and still not turn out like Thomas Keller. Keller and Tiger have something the rest of us don't. I don't know as much about Keller as I should, but as a nine-handicapper going towards scratch, I've put some time into learning about Tiger...and while he's got some amazing physical tools and a body of knowledge/experience about the game that's unparalleled, what makes him demolish tournaments is creativity and self-belief (unteachables). He knows he's gonna beat you, you know he's gonna beat you, and you know that he knows that he's gonna beat you. From what I've read about Keller - same deal. Firm and total self-belief in what he's doing and the way he's doing it, added to a willingness to experiment (and through that: to fail), and a body of experience that allows him to cook intuitively.

There is a 'recipe' for a golf swing, as well; one glance at the golf section at your local B&N or Borders or Chapters/Indigo will tell you that. Some of these 'cookbooks' are good, some are, well, not so good; some are exactly like the recipes you find in your cookbook, leaving out things that you really need to know (ie: wanna swing like Tiger? Better be over six feet tall and be flexible enough to touch your elbows behind your back.) The instruction industry has been struggling with the same problems the cookbook industry has - people buy a book, don't quite follow the system or just don't have the tools to do so, and then blame the author...but is there a middle road, as Mamster suggests, something between Golf for Dummies and Hogan's Five Fundimentals? I think so, but I haven't found its culinary equivalent. A guy named Dave Pelz has created two Bibles, one for putting and one for short game stuff (chips, pitches, and shots within 100 yards). His approach is to be as clear and as explanitory as possible - and to create technical solutions that almost anyone can execute well by studying where people have problems. He presents methods that, if followed, are the foundations of a good stroke - and from there, through experience, you can adjust what you need to. Alton Brown seems to try to do this, too...the recpies in "I'm Just Here For The Food" are all clear, tight, and adjustable once you know what you're doing, but are always preceeded by the information you need to know (how heat actually cooks something, why and what you'd use that particular method for...) Maybe the only problem with this approach to cooking as compared to golf is that golf can have quantifiable results (how close to the hole are you? What have you left yourself with?) whereas cooking's much more subjective (how does this taste? Look?) But there's no such thing as perfect, and attitude goes a long way in both...

(I'm gonna stop visiting Starbucks...too early for this kinda thought )

[Carlovski]

For most people, eating well needs to be a balance. If you don't have time to cook every night (Or just don't want to) fine! If you have time to shop you can have bread, cheese, salad etc (Admittedly, this is not as good in winter!). If you haven't had time to shop then hopefully you are near a decent takeaway, or you have something you made last weekend in the fridge/freezer. Then when you do have the time and/or inclination to cook, you can cook, and enjoy doing it, not because you have to, but because you want to.

This is basically the same opinion that Nigel Slater makes in the intro to his Fabulous book 'Appetite'. Appetite at Amazon I heartily recommend it to anyone, who like me never likes to leave a recipe alone

[Jim Dixon]

If you don't have time to cook every night (Or just don't want to) fine!

I cook a lot and seem to spend a lot of time at the table telling our guests that it isn't really so much work, that I truly enjoy cooking. I think that's another factor in becoming a good cook...does cooking make you feel happy?

I also own many cookbooks and love reading through them, but rarely follow any of the recipes closely. I'll use them as a guide or maybe find a combination of ingredients I hadn't thought of before.

When I started writing recipes for my site, I realized that the foods I cooked were more improvisational, so I came up with this:

Recipe Disclaimer

I put recipes on Real Good Food because I like to cook and want to help other people make things that taste good. I've made everything here, and the recipes that get published are usually the things I'm eating regularly at home.

I never measure anything, and the recipes are written from memory. They should be pretty damned close, but there's no guarantee anything you cook will come out tasting like what I made.

I've always viewed recipes as rough guidelines anyway. Unless you're baking, the exact proportions don't matter all that much.

Use the best ingredients you can afford.

Taste. Try whatever you're cooking as often as possible, and adjust seasonings accordingly.  Cook stocks long and slow (I usually make soup at least a day ahead of when I plan to eat it, because it always tastes better after resting).

If you make something here and it's a complete disaster, feel free to complain about it, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Jim

[debbie]

I am a mathematician, home cook, professional cook. Cooking and math are not spectator sports. You must wrestle with the angel (or angle).