Biggest Change in Your Cooking?

[SuzySushi]

Interesting thread!

The biggest change in my cooking over the last 15 years was, then I was single and cooking mostly to please myself. As a result, I was much more experimental. Now that I'm married and have a family, I need to take their food preferences into consideration. For instance, my husband dislikes chicken thighs, so any recipes I have using dark-meat only have been shelved. We recently found out that my daughter is highly allergic to pine nuts, so they no longer enter my kitchen (although I still have a batch of pesto frozen that I intend to finish when she's not home). My stepson was a vegetarian for several years while he lived at home, so that changed meal plans.

[jgm]

I think you have hit on the important thing. It is not where you are now, but where you are in the journey. And it is a journey. If I ever felt that I knew it all, had nothing else to learn, nothing new to explore, I think I would slit my throat! That is one of the magic things about food. It is needed. It is life sustaining in so many ways. And the variety is endless.

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This is so true. If I needed a reason to live, cooking and food would be it. Life is so much richer when you have a passion. I feel like life is more exciting now; there's always something new and interesting to look forward to. I overheard someone say a few days ago that if she weren't employed outside the home, and had to stay at home all day, she would be bored to death. I can't imagine it!

[Daddy-A]

It's been said before ... but the biggest change is that I am cooking. The last 10 years have been one revelation after another for me, my most recent being that I can, in fact, succesfully deep-fry Of course I have to fight the no-fat monster that still lurks in the back of my mind, but as long as I don't choq down on Arnacini or Frites every day I can handle the guilt.

Other revelations have included: the joys of grilled (eggplant) & roasted (cauliflower) veggies, the stinkier the cheese the better, and cooking with gas.

A.

[crosparantoux]

25 years ago I taught myself to cook, working through every single recipe in Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking. Living in the SF Bay Area, we have superb produce from tiny, conscious farms, great fish, meat, etc. I ate a lot at Chez Panisse back then and picked up their philosophy of simple treatment of perfect ingredients. The result: great meals, but boring (to me, not the guests).

In the last two years, things changed dramatically. With years of travel and solid tech skills under my belt; a new, perfect kitchen; and kids who are now a little older; I’ve decided to create my own unique cuisine: something no guest would expect or make. It’s refining the Asian mix of my childhood with the Bay Area’s seasonal ingredients, all done with classic, very careful, refined technique. The El Bulli 98/02 DVD is a huge inspiration. There’s new ways to look at each piece that goes onto a plate. The actual act of eating has become an interesting thing to play with. My kids’ curiosity and naiveté helps to push creativity. It’s still ingredients based, but now the process of cooking and presenting food to friends has become really fun and new. A few weeks ago we started on Ducasse’s English version of the Grand Livre. Now the kids are learning the chemistry of classic saboyans and reductions, but with a 21st century twist. We’re using them on any strange new vegetable from Chinatown and the Berkeley markets, or under meats and fish cooked with new methods for which there is little guidance (sous vide, for example). The world outside my kitchen is changing rapidly. Realizing that and having fun keeping up with, and pushing, the evolution (while not forgetting the roots) has been the biggest change to my cooking in the last couple of years.

[TJHarris]

I think that the two biggest changes in my cooking over the last few years is an increase in seafood on my menues and using more slow techniques such as braising and smoking.