lock out time to try something new
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- July 29, 2022
- 662
What makes a great cook? A friend recently shared a quote, which spoke of artists and creative types. They begin learning their craft recognizing what they want to achieve.
There’s an image in mind of what their creation should look like. Yet they can’t get there, it seems. Attempt after attempt, they come away from their own work disappointed in themselves, and most quit during this critical process.
I used to love to paint with oils. I studied the works of the old masters and bought the few meager supplies I could afford on my small kids allowance and paper route money. I eventually did OK on a couple of lucky pieces with lots of coaching from teachers and disingenuous encouragement from loving family but never achieved anything like that image in my mind of what my art should look like. I found another interest and put away the paint box.
Reading things I wrote 20 or so years ago, I recognize myself, but I also see how awfully immature I was. I’m still nowhere near where I wish I could be, but I’m still getting better, I hope.
That curve, getting to the point where one day you see you’ve gotten pretty good at your chosen creative outlet, is long and requires a lot of patience.
Jacques Pepin has said the way to learn to cook is to take the tools into your hands and get started. Repeat the steps again and again, over and over, until your hand develops the muscle memory of doing the task.
Cooking is about so many varied fields of study that it is not an easy thing to master. Anyone can learn to cook, of course, but to be exceptional is something else again.
You’ll need some grasp of science and chemistry, of nutrition and safe practices, of animal and plant species and their growth patterns and anatomy. You must learn of fats, heat sources, fermentation, the effects of freezing and how to sharpen knives.
There is an awful lot to learn and understand, and the only real way to get good at cooking is to keep at it, to keep learning and experimenting. There is no end to the process, and you never arrive at the finish line.
Even when you’re good, you may be limited by your own tongue; your ability to taste something truthfully and accurately is something that may be unteachable. There are many very skilled cooks who cannot distinguish between chicken and pork when blindfolded.
A well-developed, natural palate is like gold in the kitchen. It’s how you are able to recognize which flavors can be married and which are going to taste weird.
If you love cooking, you’ve already mastered 90% of what you need, for it is the love of creating things that others want to eat that should keep you coming back for more. You’ll need that love when you’re slogging through broken sauces, burned fish, uncooperative dough or the many little cuts, slices and burns your hands will take, no matter how careful you are.
I like to think I’m pretty good with a kitchen knife, yet I sliced the tip of my finger off a couple of weeks ago while shredding cabbage for slaw. The knife was the right-sized tool for the job, I’ve had and used that same knife since the Clinton years, it was properly sharpened, I was watching and paying attention, and I still cut myself badly enough to have to stop and treat it seriously.
When you do your own car repairs, your knuckles are gonna get busted and bloodied. In the kitchen you’re going to hack yourself up now and then.
Stick to it, friend. Keep blocking out weekend time to try something new. Keep failing and burning things and assembling things badly because that is how you get to the Promised Land.
If the neighbors have never come to the door asking what that explosion was, you’re not doing it right. When they do, just say you’re doing your learning curve, and when you get there, you have them over for dinner. They’ll look at your bandaged hands and understand.