Great post on a seriously important topic. I feel like cooking well is a bridge guys have to cross to be true, functioning adults. Never seen a girl, or guy friends for that matter, not like a dude that knows how to prepare food.
For an account to follow entirely devoted to cooking, I recommend ppl follow Myles Snider @mylescooks here and on Twitter. I’ve been able to take tons of his advice and run with it. If you’re here some of your mutuals probably already follow him
Thank you, once again, for writing such a needed and intelligent piece, and for also including so many practical tips. I hope this isn’t annoying, as I tend to leave long comments when something really makes me think. But here it goes…
You wrote: “I got lucky in this area. My mother is the best cook I know… I watched her cook as a kid and learned a lot from her.” I believe that makes a very big difference later in life, witnessing someone you love pour care into the meals they prepare. It creates skill, but also reverence. A respect for food AND for ritual.
I grew up in Romania in the 80s, when it was still communist. There were no shortcuts back then. You ate what you cooked. Most people grew their own food. My grandmother had a large farm and didn’t need to buy anything. She worked the land until her late 80s.
I still remember helping her collect beans one summer. We walked through a field where bean stalks wound their way through tall corn. My legs were scratched, and I had cuts all over my hands from the sharp leaf blades. The sun was HOT and I was sunburnt. We dried the pods for days in the sun, then beat them with wooden bats to release the beans. My hands were blistered and sore, and in the end, we had just two buckets!!! I remember thinking that beans should cost THOUSANDS.
But that night, when we boiled, then mashed them with fresh garlic and salt and spread it on homemade bread… it was the best thing I had ever tasted.
I share this only to emphasize even further the point you made, which is that we have lost our relationship with food. Most of us no longer know what real food looks like from seed to harvest. Everything is so readily available now, so effortless, that we forget the beauty of the process. And perhaps even more importantly, we no longer eat together in the same way. We eat distracted, on the go. We don’t make meals a shared ritual like it used to be.
And yet, as you said, meals don’t need to be complicated. When quality reigns, simplicity shines. This phrase I once heard, and I believe it applies to everything, and specially food: “Simplicity is a luxury only quality can afford.”
Excellent piece, MG. My luck was that my mother was not a great cook …. And it drove me to be more self-sufficient. Eating out at excellent restaurants helps develop your palate - along with being genuinely curious about the distinctives of a regional cuisine.
Also, digging into ingredients that are unique to your locale really elevates the simplest dishes. Here in Texas, that might include Noonday onions, lady cream peas from Canton, hill country peaches, etc.
Looking forward to reading more from you on this topic!
I usually never go the racial route, but another tip I would recommend is having friends and acquaintances from different cultures whom harbour different palates.
For me, because I’m Sudanese and Jewish, my palate and the dishes that I elect to make are heavily reliant of Mediterranean simplicity and also, North African spices and herbs. I’ve made friends with people from South Korea, France (where I was born and raised for 5 years, which definitely left a culinary mark on me,) Jamaica, Guatemala and the UK.
Food is communal…If you want to make great food then you need to care about people. You need to want to make people transport back into their memories, to a point in time where things were bliss. I’ve trained formally at culinary schools, specifically Le Cordon Bleu and I was a Chef de Partie at 2 Michelin restaurants here in Melbourne, Australia.
Having an orderly and friendly home in general, bleeds over into the quality of food that you produce. It’s not just about the quality, the technique or the taste of the food, although that’s quite important. It’s about the atmosphere.
Creating the right backdrop can make or break a dinner party.
Great post on a seriously important topic. I feel like cooking well is a bridge guys have to cross to be true, functioning adults. Never seen a girl, or guy friends for that matter, not like a dude that knows how to prepare food.
For an account to follow entirely devoted to cooking, I recommend ppl follow Myles Snider @mylescooks here and on Twitter. I’ve been able to take tons of his advice and run with it. If you’re here some of your mutuals probably already follow him
Thank you, once again, for writing such a needed and intelligent piece, and for also including so many practical tips. I hope this isn’t annoying, as I tend to leave long comments when something really makes me think. But here it goes…
You wrote: “I got lucky in this area. My mother is the best cook I know… I watched her cook as a kid and learned a lot from her.” I believe that makes a very big difference later in life, witnessing someone you love pour care into the meals they prepare. It creates skill, but also reverence. A respect for food AND for ritual.
I grew up in Romania in the 80s, when it was still communist. There were no shortcuts back then. You ate what you cooked. Most people grew their own food. My grandmother had a large farm and didn’t need to buy anything. She worked the land until her late 80s.
I still remember helping her collect beans one summer. We walked through a field where bean stalks wound their way through tall corn. My legs were scratched, and I had cuts all over my hands from the sharp leaf blades. The sun was HOT and I was sunburnt. We dried the pods for days in the sun, then beat them with wooden bats to release the beans. My hands were blistered and sore, and in the end, we had just two buckets!!! I remember thinking that beans should cost THOUSANDS.
But that night, when we boiled, then mashed them with fresh garlic and salt and spread it on homemade bread… it was the best thing I had ever tasted.
I share this only to emphasize even further the point you made, which is that we have lost our relationship with food. Most of us no longer know what real food looks like from seed to harvest. Everything is so readily available now, so effortless, that we forget the beauty of the process. And perhaps even more importantly, we no longer eat together in the same way. We eat distracted, on the go. We don’t make meals a shared ritual like it used to be.
And yet, as you said, meals don’t need to be complicated. When quality reigns, simplicity shines. This phrase I once heard, and I believe it applies to everything, and specially food: “Simplicity is a luxury only quality can afford.”
Excellent piece, MG. My luck was that my mother was not a great cook …. And it drove me to be more self-sufficient. Eating out at excellent restaurants helps develop your palate - along with being genuinely curious about the distinctives of a regional cuisine.
Also, digging into ingredients that are unique to your locale really elevates the simplest dishes. Here in Texas, that might include Noonday onions, lady cream peas from Canton, hill country peaches, etc.
Looking forward to reading more from you on this topic!
I usually never go the racial route, but another tip I would recommend is having friends and acquaintances from different cultures whom harbour different palates.
For me, because I’m Sudanese and Jewish, my palate and the dishes that I elect to make are heavily reliant of Mediterranean simplicity and also, North African spices and herbs. I’ve made friends with people from South Korea, France (where I was born and raised for 5 years, which definitely left a culinary mark on me,) Jamaica, Guatemala and the UK.
Food is communal…If you want to make great food then you need to care about people. You need to want to make people transport back into their memories, to a point in time where things were bliss. I’ve trained formally at culinary schools, specifically Le Cordon Bleu and I was a Chef de Partie at 2 Michelin restaurants here in Melbourne, Australia.
Having an orderly and friendly home in general, bleeds over into the quality of food that you produce. It’s not just about the quality, the technique or the taste of the food, although that’s quite important. It’s about the atmosphere.
Creating the right backdrop can make or break a dinner party.
Have an Italian mother who’s OCD makes her hate cooking, ate out my entire youth. Thank God my genes kicked in during college.
A few chapters in to “the devil in the kitchen" and I see why you love it. Passion, excellence, and artistry personified.