Which Cuisines Suit You Best as a Cook?

[Chufi]

Inspired by the wonderful Thai cooking at home thread I cooked a 'sort of' Thai dinner tonight. It was fun and it tasted good, but as I was cooking, I realized how insecure I was about what I was doing. This cuisine feels totally strange to me. I had to check the recipe over and over, I felt I could not trust my own judgment etc. The same thing happened when I was cooking an Indian curry a couple of weeks ago.

Now the obvious answer would be that it's all about practice and getting used to new ingredients and procedures. I'm sure getting practice would help, but I'm thinking maybe some cuisines just suit some people better than others. I've done other 'complicated' and new things that came natural to me from the start. When I started experimenting with Middle Eastern dishes, I immediately had a feeling for the spices, the flavor balance etc.

When I made my first mole, ofcourse I had to check the recipe but it made sense in a way a Thai recipe just doesn't (to me).

I'd be interested to know if anyone shares this experience

[canucklehead]

As a chinese guy - cooking Italian and Indian feels much more comfortable to me than cooking chinese.

I've always felt like Italian food shares the same philosophy as cantonese food - emphasis on freshness and having a light hand with the goal of bringing out that inherent liveliness in the food. Marcella Hazan's description of good pasta ("lightness and bouyancy in the mouth") was exactly how a chinese person would describe good noodles.

But wierdly enought - cooking chinese food is very nerve racking to me. I tried to cook a meal once and everything just tasted like soy sauce to me - terrible! I think it is because I love cantonese food that it is a crashing disappointment to me when I f*ck it up. I am trying to get my mom to walk me through cooking things and setting it down on paper though - before its too late.

[fifi]

What an interesting topic. It really got me to thinking.

I was raised at the knee of some wonderful Southern US cooks so that is kind of natural. Then, while in college, I learned at the side of a wonderful Cajun/Creole cook so I can morph around in that cuisine without any real effort. I toyed with Chinese for a while but never went very far with it. Now I think that I gave it up because a home kitchen just doesn't have the high BTU burners for stir frying and other special equipment. I prefer to eat Chinese out at a good restaurant and be done with it.

Of course, Tex-Mex figured in there and that is pretty basic. But, that got me more into "authentic" (whatever that is) Mexican Cuisine and I had a lot of fun "learning" that. It is so varied as to ingredients and techniques that I will probably never quit learning.

Some of the techniques from southeastern Mexico, moles and such, prepared me to get into Thai cooking. I do have to say that I had to work at some of those techniques in both cuisines and I still have to read a recipe pretty closely. I am sure that will happen when I get into Indian as well.

The one constant here is time and repetition. Those things that I have been doing the longest I can execute without a recipe in sight. I make a mean pot of chicken and dumplings and a bang-up pot of gumbo without a book or measuring device in sight. Same with Tex-Mex. Mexican, I still need a book but I am confident with "tweaking" a recipe. Thai . . . more reliance on a book and I will start with the recipe at first. I am beginning to get more confident with "tweaking" the hot/sour/salty/sweet balance. Indian, I will be glued to the book for a while, possibly forever.

[chefdg]

I think I tend to have multiple personalities in cooking, I just try to imagine myself being in the region (european, asian ect.) and do what they would do.

[PCL]

I share similar sentiments wiht canucklehead. And I don't have high BTU burners... yet...

Chinese here too, but I don't think Chinese when I cook. It's a saute this, braise that, roast, grill, deglaze, reduce all the way. Italian, French... been doing offal recently.

But I digess. I agree with Chufi et al. I can do Chinese, but I need to THINK about it. I've worked in a Japanese kitchen, was profficient, but NEVER do it at home. Must also say that I found it uncomfortable in that kitchen. I love Japanese food, but couldn't cook it without hesitation. Made work tough, but it was character building.

[Shalmanese]

Chinese who prefers to cook French. I love the refinement and subtle layering of flavours only achieved over multiple days and multiple steps.

I still can't "get" italian. I'm less enamoured by "perfect" ingredients that good technique.

Indian is something I would love to get but I haven't had time to study in depth. The role of spice as the centerpoint of cuisine is interesting.

[ellencho]

I am ethnically Korean, and am most comfortable with asian cooking, nearly any cuisine, but mostly Thai cooking. Especially making the curries/stews. However, when it comes to Indian curries, I'm all thumbs. Some flavor is always a bit "off" or too raw tasting.

Also, I'm a big ol' Northerner, but I'm quite comfortable making foods that are normally associated with southern cooking, such as smoked meats/bbq, biscuits, and braised veggies.

Edited March 10, 2005 by ellencho (log)

[NulloModo]

I grew up partially in the deep south, and my father and mother spent most of their lives there, so I have a strong background in southern cooking, and feel completely at home with it (other than biscuits, which never seem to rise for me).

I live in the shadow of Philadelphia, and around here there are Italian-American joints every quarter mile down the road, heck, I have eight of them (and this doesn't count strictly pizza joints) I can think of off the top of my head that will deliver to my apartment, and I don't even live in a very densely populated area, just normal suburbia. So, with all that around I have eaten lots of this type of food, and am comfortable cooking it. I am much less comfortable with authentic Italian, but I am not that interested in it anyway. I would much rather use tons of garlic and onions and load up huge platters with lots of tasty things than worry about sourcing the freshest ingredients or matching local wines to dishes, etc.

I am still learning Thai. I have loved it the couple times I have had it out in L.A., but since there are no Thai restaurants anywhere near me, I haven't had a chance to eat it in a while. I also just don't have the stuff onhand to make most of the recipes, and too much of it can't be stored indefinately. If I could get bags of dried lemongrass that would last forever in my pantry, canned bird chiles, jarred galangal, and freeze dried thai basil or something, well, I might be more willing to play around. As it is, I am just not motivated to go out and buy a bunch of ingredients for one recipe when I have all of the ingredients to make lots of others already in the pantry.

I've never been comfortable cooking Chinese, but I've never really tried. I've always been happy with the quality of the local delivery/take-out joints, and again, I'm not looking for authenticity, I love americanized Chinese food. While on asian cultures, I have miserably failed every time I've tried to do something Jaoanese. I have eaten at Japanese restaurants some, and I love sushi, and like tempura, but other than that it has been more miss than hit. I mean, the stuff tastes decent and all, but I'm not a huge fan of sublety, and from what I can tell Japanese cuisine seems to hold that in high regard.

Along the same lines, I don't have the patience or the desire to cook French most of the time. I will admit that some of the hearty Bistro food looks very good, and the technique simple enough, now that is my kind of cooking. However, if any recipe demands I chop each vegetable just so, combine this with that first, and then with the other when they all end up int he same pot by the end, well, I'm just not going to do it that way, I don't have the patience for it, and I just don't care. Technique isn't fun, and I like cooking to be fun.

Now, where am I happiest? Without a doubt, I am most comfortable in American-Mexican and Tex-Mex. I can throw chiles, chile powders, spices, sour cream, cheese, and etc around with wild abandon, and no matter what I do, it tastes great. I love to make Chili, not this thin red beef only texas stuff mind you, but thick dark brown bean and beef enriched sludge that blends Texas, Cincinnati, and any other style you could imagine. I love to make enchiladas or chile rellenos and load'em up with hot sauce and sour cream, seeing all that great cheese oozing out. No subtlety, just flavor on top of flavor, lots of textures, and lots of condiments, salas, sour cream, guacamole, mole, hot sauces, etc.

I also like Indian quite a bit, and I feel fairly confident in it, however, again here I don't try for authenticity. I love British style vindaloos that nearly burn your tongue off. I love generic 'curries' that probably have no counterpart in India. I might like authentic Indian too, I have just never tried it.

[helenjp]

NulloModo, Japanese cooking is not necessarily subtle -- there's a good ole peasant tradition too, which means upending the soy sauce bottle and the sugar sack over every dish, at least until the week before payday!

When I first lived in Japan, I had no oven, and only very basic equipment, and also a burning desire to cook Japanese food. When I returned to NZ, I literally couldn't think how to cook a "normal" dinner. The first cake I baked back in NZ was mysteriously flat...

But next time I moved to Japan, I had to hunt through all my cookbooks to remember basic Japanese combinations of seasonings - things that I cook nowadays entirely by eye and taste - because my palate had lost its "memory" of the correct Japanese taste.

I think it's really hard to cook a cuisine that you have never experienced. I cooked a few things that I read about in novels before I ever came to Japan, and they were (let's be charitable) laughable. I just had no idea what I was aiming for.

On the other hand, I've never lived in the Middle East, yet I enjoy cooking and eating Middle Eastern food....is it because it sits between the bread culture I grew up with and the rice culture I live in??? Is it because it's so close to Europe?? Is it the predominance of lamb, which for NZers of my generation was the most usual meat??? Who knows...

I like Indian food too, but I don't feel as confident as I do with Middle Eastern food...I think maybe the techniques and seasonings are just too far removed from European or East Asian food for me to develop an instinct for it.

[ratgirlny]

For cooking, I definitely feel most comfortable with cuisines of the Mediterranean - southern Italian, Greek, and North African. I just feel like I instinctively know what it should taste like. Also, I find it easy to cook when getting good results is mainly based on good veggies, olive oil, and plenty of garlic!

For eating out, I feel most at home with French bistro style cooking, and Korean food. For some reason, I find the two cuisines similar in that they are very "homey" and comfortable. Korean food, especially, does not stand too much on ceremony.

[Kevin72]

Italian cooking for me, probably to a fault. I've tried to get into other cuisines but they just don't grab me the way Italian does with its microregionality. I've also found that I don't really want to do the "pantry overhaul" that would be required of shifting to a radically different cuisine, like say Chinese. I'm trying to branch out and am starting with two somewhat similar cuisines (i.e., not much of a change needed for pantry goods on-hand): Greek and Spanish.