Cooking....How Do You Do That?

Often, when I am reporting to someone about a wonderful meal I've concocted, the person on the hearing end asks, "How did you learn to do that?" It comes up so often I've had to prepare an answer. That required some thinking, but the answer is actually pretty basic. Cooking is like much in life...a combination of art and science with a bit of experience thrown in.


I've learned the art by watching and reading and listening to others. Food magazines. TV shows. Cookbooks. It showed me techniques, ingredients and flavors that might go well together, and even highlighted the dreaded "trends" that seem to come up in the culinary world. (Zucchini carpaccio anyone?)


The science is actually more difficult for me (and most of us). There are techniques that have to be learned. Knife skills. The internal temperatures to which meats should be cooked. How to poach an egg. Those are the building blocks that become a part of any cook's arsenal--whether they are following someone else's recipe or creating one of their own.


And of course, both the art and the science get better with experience. The recipes that end up here are what I call "bloggable." There are lots that simply never make the cut--whether due to their shortcomings or mine. I've learned that if you're not failing in the kitchen, you're not succeeding either...because you're not cooking.


Interestingly enough, as I was thinking about all this, I found a passage in a cookbook that says it far better than I ever could. This is from the foreword of Chez Panisse Cooking by Paul Bertolli:


Developing skills and technique in the kitchen has much to do with practice, like any physical activity requiring coordination. Yet it seems more to the point to address the question of how one develops a feel for cooking or how to arrive at the point when the recipe can be put aside and instinct and confident intuition take over. Good cooking is in the very best sense a craft, involving the heart, head, and hands simultaneously. It is important to know what you are doing and why you are doing it, to keep your knives sharp and to teach your hands, above all, to remember that you are preparing food, not culinary artwork, that is to be savored and shared with others at your table. Cooking is a commonsense practice, not an alchemy. Listening and watching closely while you cook will reveal a richly shaded language understood by all the senses--the degrees of a simmer, the aroma of a roast telling you it is done, the stages of elasticity kneaded dough, the earthy scent of a vegetable just pulled from the ground--it is everything to mind these details. This is cooking. Following a recipe rigidly is a dry, mechanical exercise unless you re-create it yourself by asking questions along the way, remaining alert and responsive, and making judgements of your own.


Exactly.