Been doing a ton of food research lately, and I guess it's a tech thing, because I wouldn't be able to do what I've been doing without tech. If I have a question, I Google it. If I need to watch a video, I type in the appropriate words. Soooo much am I learning in this way.
Used to be you had to go to cooking school or be apprenticed under a series of chefs in order to gain The Knowledge. Either that, or you worked your way up through the kitchen like one of my high school friends did (and he had the broiler scars to prove it) in order to glean mysterious kitchen secrets.
I remember him pulling shift after shift in that hot restaurant's kitchen and telling me about what went on in there but me and hot kitchens were never going to pair. I in my youthful arrogance thought I knew enough and was eating good enough(!).
Years went by. Food phases went by. Looking back, some of that was pleasant, some not. I'm at the point in my life now where I really like food and treasure every meal. It's not that I'm going to die next week (knock on wood), no, it's not like I'm up against Father Time and his cohort, Mr. Reaper. I've just come to realize that life is lived day by day and food is a recurring phenomenon to be enjoyed instead of....
...well.... ....you know how the food journey goes (I recall college dorm Ramen packets, among other 'foods').
You start of course as a kid, eating whatever Mom cooks and avoiding whatever Dad cooks, then sometimes putting something together yourself, something really, really simple. You're not thinking at that point about calories, sodium, sugar, or nutrition. You're thinking about stuffing your face until you feel full. Vegetables are passed over in lieu of sweets and the salt intake is off the charts. Portion size is completely irrelevant. It was absolutely nothing for me, for instance, to eat massive amounts of ice cream.
Growing up where I did dairy was big so, naturally, I consumed a lot of it. The food in those parts was, shall I say, 'robust'. Two to three squares a day and time for snacking inbetween. 'Cuz as a kid, then as a teen, you needed a lot of fuel (and burned it off quite nicely).
Every week we are tasked with shopping for food.
Kevin Laminto- Unsplash.com
Even though my Mom was a pretty consistently good cook I can't say I or the rest of my siblings grew up eating fine cuisine. Mom didn't have the budget or time for producing that but we did take time outs and hit the local 'supper clubs' in the area on a regular basis where higher-end fare was to be had. Every other week my parents treated themselves (and us kids, which I dug very, very much) to really good food so I knew that even though Mom could dish it up surprisingly well, others could do it better.
And then came my twenties and along with independence came fast food, frozen pizzas, and go-to grocery store bro buddies like Chef Boyardee, Dinty Moore, and Jimmy Dean. What was that song again…..?
“I eat alone, with nobody else. You know when I eat alone, I prefer to be by myself!”
Cookbooks were, in my opinion, ponderous things to read. TV cooking shows came on in the afternoon, along with the soap operas. Afternoon TV? Yuk!
Cooking duty may seem tedious and daunting…
KS Kyung- Unsplash.com
And who needed things like spices? Why would anyone even spend time cooking? If I could get it in a can, pre-made in the store's deli, from the frozen food aisle, or on the drive home from work, that was good enough for me.
But..... ....you kind of outgrow that after awhile, due to many factors. You find you don't know (or really want to know) what's in the food you're eating sometimes. You don't trust the 'cooks' in the fast food joints as much anymore, after some bad food experiences there, and the taste of the familiar repast is, though palatable, lackluster. Eating on the run all the time just isn't pleasurable, and you start to resent doing that. There came many realizations.
So what I started to do was I actually made the effort to put dishes together now and then. I got on occasional cooking learning tears but after learning how to make a few things my drive to learn more petered out. I got into the line of thinking that my recipe list and food prep knowledge was deep when it was actually very, very shallow.
Exactly how shallow that was, the internet pointed out. It did so acutely.
Trending now is fantastic food. The dishes being served up at hot restaurants across the land are amazing. Problem is, those restaurants are highly scattered. I believe I wrote about this before, how I kept seeing all these mouth watering burgers, enchiladas, pizzas, and whatever else being plated up and being almost angry that I couldn't be there, eating it.
But you know there is a saying, a cure, for that-
"Don't get mad, get even!"
So I'm getting even. Little by little, I'm learning higher level cooking skills. I'm sourcing better ingredients. I'm expanding my spice rack. I'm making newbie mistakes here and there but building on those.
I wish I would've started doing this years ago but the technology just wasn't there. I didn't have videos to watch and internet pages at my flour dusted (or oil-slickened) fingertips. I tell ya, I have learned more in the last few months than I learned in all my years of casual 'cooking' but there's a lot to learn still. I'm okay with that because my cuisine and cooking skills are getting better every day. Though it's never been a goal of mine, for the first time ever I think I could actually step up and cook for other people. I'd prefer not to but who knows? I'm not there yet...... .....but close(r).
Another thing I'm noticing is that there is a tribe of others out there doing this same thing, upping their food game. 'Foodies' is not what they are called, really, because many foodies only consume. I think 'home chefs' might better describe this tribe. They're onto skills-building big time.
But there is another tribe, far bigger, the one living the non-home chef life. The life I was part of for many a year. I still see 'em, idling in their cars six deep in fast food drive-up lanes, loading up their shopping carts with premade frozen food at the store, going to the chain restaurants with their kids in tow for some grub, and payin' hefty tabs after dinner out with their friends at the trendy new place in town, the place that knows just where to hit 'em, in the weak spots called taste, texture, color, and aroma.
…but the results far outweigh the effort.
Christine Siracusa- Unsplash.com
If you don't know how to make food, you're going to keep going back to your same old convenience sources. Premade food in stores, along with restaurant driveup, take out, and dine-in meals is big business. These providers know that people don't want to slave over a stove and that they're pressed for time. They also know that most people don't know how to saute, braise, or blanch, much less sear, rub, stir fry, roast, or (high level skill!) deglaze a pan.
Countering that, some would say it's also true that most people don't know how to pilot an airplane, build a deck on the view side of their house, fix the brakes on their car, or run a sewing machine. "Whaddya want from us already? Geez, give us a break!" they might say.
However, unlike those highly specialized skills, eating is something that you do a couple of times a day for your entire life, so it's a skill well worth learning. I don't know why it took me so long to get this but I finally got it. I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do.
An enjoyable 'ketching' up (forgive the pun) to where I don't need ketchup to flavor anything anymore.
Or hot sauce to mask the flavors of something I made/bought/microwaved/thawed and then cooked to where it would (one would think) be palatable.
If this is also the journey you're on, I heartily salute you:
"Prosit!"
Good times lie ahead.