Open Writing

When a previous marriage ended in divorce, circumstances forced me to take up cooking for the first time at age 50. It was not that I had purposely tried to avoid culinary responsibility, but my ex-wife is an excellent cook and didn’t take kindly to “team cooking.” Opportunities to learn therefore were limited. I was, however, permitted to share in the selection of recipes and to do some of the grunt-work of food preparation as long as I did it somewhere other than the kitchen.

As a child, I had been my mother's kitchen helper, but like my ex-wife, my mother was also a superb cook, and to make matters worse, only rarely used a recipe. Years later, I tried on a number of occasions to persuade her to write down recipes for my favorite dishes, but her instructions were quite useless to a novice like me. When one is new to the game, "a pinch here and a handful there'' are not the kind of parameters that provide the guidance one needs. She relied so much on the look and feel, and even the sound of her culinary efforts that I eventually gave up on my attempts to archive her gastronomic treasures. Sadly, she took all of her wonderful recipes and methods with her to her grave.

And so it was, with only flimsy experience that I embarked on my new role as single Dad/cook to a ravenous, teenage daughter. No anorexic she. My early attempts were predictably indigestible, and it was a long time before I got the hang of even the most basic dishes. Through most of the early learning curve I hated cooking and looked upon it as a tedious chore. Fortunately my daughter, and later my present wife, were ideal subjects for a novice chef.

Not only do they have hearty appetites, but they will eat almost anything as long as they don't have to do the cooking. I tried to use recipes of course, but was ignorant of the fact that not all recipes work, and so I often lost what little confidence I had gained when a carefully executed recipe produced a failure. If that were not enough to sap my resolve, I found that many cookery books were more confusing than helpful, until I discovered well organized publications that I felt comfortable with.

Eventually I found my way, as many cooks do, to "The Joy of Cooking'', and although I turn to other cookery books for specialties such as wok dishes or Indian food, "The Joy'' has become my steadfast support. You want to know how to skin a squirrel? “The Joy of Cooking” will tell you, with diagrams!

The other major mistake I made on my journey toward competency, was to believe that I could produce the dishes and meals that my mother and ex-wife cooked, by tapping into the impressions retained in my memory. I used to have a fairly sensitive palate, but it has been dulled by the passage of years and by too many cocktails, making it almost impossible for me to accurately identify the constituents of a dish. This led to some spectacularly odd concoctions, and I cringe now at my naiveté. Not only were my analyses of the ingredients faulty, but so were my attempts to reconstruct the methods and proportions.

I have a theory that the kitchen god eventually rewards those who persist by granting small, incremental successes, and eventually accords permission to proceed at will. Imperceptibly, as I gained experience, I actually started to enjoy cooking, and it ceased to be a chore and a source of tension. In fact I found it to be therapeutic in times of stress, particularly food preparation for some reason, perhaps due to my previous experience as su chef to my mother and ex-wife.

My wife, who rarely cooks, is an avid fan of TV cooking shows. On the odd occasions that I watch them, I am struck by the degree to which they are aimed at viewers who are already competent, or those, like my wife, who simply want to be vicarious chefs. Only rarely these days do I see shows that try to inform and educate the novice. In the past there were two notable exceptions: Jeff Smith, known in the USA as “The Frugal Gourmet,” and Julia Child. England’s “Two Fat Ladies” were also helpful and hugely enjoyable, and I was saddened to hear of the death of one of them.

Anecdotally, I feel that there must be a whole audience of people like me who have had cooking thrust upon them by changes in later life. These are the needy folk who want to know how to peel and chop an onion without crying like a baby, how to make sauces, how long to cook meats, and what the differences are between sautéing, frying and searing etc. Many people I know who are fearful of embarking on a culinary adventure, often attribute their diffidence simply to concern about getting everything in a meal to come together at the same time.

While Jacques Pepin has nothing to fear from my improved culinary competency, I think my declining enthusiasm for restaurant dining pretty much coincides with my growing enthusiasm for spending more time in the kitchen. For the $7 to $12 they charge for a mediocre glass of wine in a restaurant these days, I can put together a pretty appealing dish. Not only that, but my kitchen is infinitely more peaceful than threading my way through traffic and struggling to find a parking space to eat out. Bon appetite!

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