Where the hell have you been?

We’ve all heard the question, slinking in late at night, breath stinking of cigarettes and booze. That tender lump about the size and shape of a large class ring just peaking on the forehead. Or maybe hickeys blooming across your neck like rude, exotic flowers.

Okay, some of us have heard it.

Fine. I’ve heard it.

It’s a question that doesn’t necessarily expect an answer, dripping as it is with obvious disappointment. But it’s one I’ll try to answer here, since I’ve all but abandoned this blog after returning from the Wildacres Writer’s Workshop in North Carolina.

I’ve been busy.

I’ve been working on a novel for several years now and have just completed what I hope is the final round of major revisions. I’m excited. Now I’m cleaning up a few loose ends and adding a line or two of explanation here and there throughout the piece. Then it’s agent time (I hope).

I’m still thinking about food, still cooking, still doing my best to make meals for my family and myself. Meals that are simple, delicious, and make the most of every ingredient. I just haven’t had the time to photograph and write about it. But I will. I love it too much to stay away for very long.

Recipe 'deal breakers': quit complaining and just cook

With the recent firestorm surrounding Kim Severson’s "Recipe Deal Breakers: When Step 2 Is 'Corral Pig,'" I was ready to hate the article. I was ready to cast Severson as a lazy whiner and rail against her unwillingness to go the extra mile, but it’s not as bad as all that because at one point she describes Melissa Steineger’s realization,

[The recipes from Coyote Café cookbook] went unmade until her cooking skills improved and she had an epiphany: she could substitute.

"That freed me," she said.

As cooks--as people, one of our most valuable skills is critical thinking. It’s what enabled us to survive when we realized the old spears didn’t work against mammoths. Something must be wrong. Let me think about this and figure out what’s next. It’s what spurred the invention of the atlatl, and it’s what enables a cook to substitute bacon for pancetta. Is it going to taste exactly the same? No, probably not. Will it taste close enough for most people? Yes, I imagine it would.

This is one of the wonderful things about learning to cook. Anyone can follow a recipe to the letter. It’s one of the reasons baking is so popular. "Just tell me exactly what to do, and I’ll make it happen." Baking recipes are precise, and if you follow them, you will end up with something that has a flavor and texture just like the real things. Unless you’re trying to bake at high altitude or in very low or very high humidity. But cooking--good cooking relies on, among other things, the cook’s ability to think fast, to make changes and adapt as the need arises. Scared by "serves 18"? Divide everything by three and the recipe will serve six. Keep the leftovers for lunch. If a recipe calls for julienned carrots and you don’t have the time, inclination or skills to do a good job? Give it a go anyway. No one ever learned anything by not trying.

What really struck me as pathetic were the comments people left. Refusing to cook food you don't like doesn't mean the recipe is too difficult or "too fussy" to make. It just means you don't like certain foods or have made choices about what you'll eat. People who wrote things like, "Butter" completely missed the point (and should be kicked out of the kitchen). And "meanwhile" as a deal breaker? How does this person get anything done? While waiting for the laundry to dry, does she sit and stare at the wall? I also don’t understand people who shy away from words like, "just" or "quickly." It’s food on fire. Pay attention to it if you have to. And if it all goes to shit? Think about what went wrong and don’t do that next time. Then order a pizza.

Michael Pollan lectures on food vs. nutrition

Another in the wonderful At Google lecture series.

Michael Pollan is one of the preeminent thinkers on food today and has earned accolades for his books, including The Omnivore's Dilemma and his latest, In Defense of Food.

From Culinate: Rules for the home kitchen

An excellent article and 8-item list (though I tend to hate n-item blog lists) from Eric Gower. Of note? Number 5:

5. Be fearless. Courage is crucial to cooking well. As in many areas of life, fear of doing things incorrectly induces paralysis; this is devastating in the kitchen, because we wind up being too hungry to deal and just go out, order in, or pull out the TJ’s quasimeal.

But how is fearlessness learned? By not caring. It sounds paradoxical, but think about it: What’s the absolute worst thing that could happen by taking risks with your cooking? That it ruins the dish? Well, yes, but you will have learned something valuable in the process. And if you’re anything like me, you abhor wasting food, and will do everything in your power to bring it back from the brink.

Too salty? Add some sliced potatoes, which will absorb the extra salt. Too bitter? Consider adding a sweetener like jam or maple syrup. Learn to “repair” mistakes you make. So much about cooking is about salvaging things that go wrong. Along the way, you learn. But you have to be bold and take some risks. It’s just food, after all. [ more... ]

Fearlessness is one thing I've tried to incorporate into my own cooking. There's nothing wrong with messing up. In fact, messing up should be expected and even welcomed. Those mistakes can be the greatest learning opportunities. Remember my potato cakes? Though it took over 12 hours of thinking about it, I was able to solve the problem and came up with a delicious snack I could be proud of. I was also ridiculously proud of myself and tromped around the kitchen clapping like someone enfeebled. So go on. Take risks. Put fennel in your lentils (actually, don't). Just stop being afraid of the kitchen and get to it.

Cleanliness is next to...

This post marks the beginning of an irregular series of blog entries about the other things cooking can do for us. I hope to convince more people to cook. I've learned a lot by cooking: about food, the environment, and myself.

I often think about transferable skills. It's probably a holdover from my days as a professional resume writer. I had to wrangle people's previous work history into transferable skills they could use to get hired in a new career. So it is with cooking. I think cooking can teach us a lot. It can teach us about health and living well. It can connect us to the land and to our families and friends. And it can teach us about time, productivity and clutter.

When I was in college, my apartment was never cleaner than during finals week. I used to think it was procrastination, plain and simple. After reading Michael Ruhlman's Making of a Chef, I'm not so sure.

Chen was behind in his prep; his mise en place was everywhere but en place and his station was a litter of kale and spinach scraps and shallot cores and burnt paper towel that he'd been using to light burners. It was easy for this to happen. When you were swamped, you could not rationalize spending time to clean up what just going to become a mess again.

I think many of us probably feel this way when we're on deadline. In college, it was the paper due, or the upcoming test. Now it's the back-end database or the front-end entry screen or that troublesome piece of .css that must be finished before the site can be delivered to the client. Or it's simply getting dinner on the table. We can't possibly spare the precious minutes it would take to clean, can we?

But Chef Turgeon walked by and said, not for the for the first time, "Chen, you gotta keep your station clean." Turgeon saw that Chen was frustrated and didn't feel he could take the time. Turgeon, knowing Chen had no time to spare, stopped to chat.

Productivity Professional and Internet Comic Merlin Mann wrote about his war against clutter on 43folders. Generally, clutter--physical clutter--in our world bogs us down. It makes it hard to think, hard to achieve the "mind like water" state so often talked about in David Allen's Getting Things Done. By eliminating clutter we free ourselves to work more efficiently. We can work smarter, quicker and are unfettered by the visual blight clutter causes.

At work, my desk can become a mess. Same with my countertop at home. But I never feel better than when I clean it.

"You know in the weeds, in the shits?" Turgeon asked Chen. Chen nodded. "When I was in the weeds, when I was really in the weeds, I'd stop. I'd say, 'Gimme a second.'" Turgeon had looked up at an imaginary expediter and put his hand up like a batter asking the ump for time to step out of the box. Turgeon had an actor's body language. He was on stage; his movements were big, a caricature of what they were meant to portray. "Gimme a second," he said, hand raised, head down toward his station. Then he reached below, pulled a blue Handi Wipe from the sanitation bucket and again, slowly, exaggerating with large round shoulder motions, he wiped down Chen's station, thoroughly and methodically, till it was a clean open field of stainless steel, saying, "And I'd wipe down my station." Somehow he managed to convey service swirling around him, as he ignored it to methodically polish the stainless steel station.

The demo over, Turgeon tossed the wipe into the bucket, stood straight, and said to Chen, " 'Cause when you're in the weeds, this clutter starts to build up." He put his palms on the station and then lifted them slowly to chest level. "And if they cut you open," he said, "that's what your brain would look like."

That's what your brain would look like. Truer words were perhaps never spoken. We can't function with clutter--aural, visual, or mental. When I cook, I also clean. I establish my mise en place, crush the garlic, dice the onions, and while I'm waiting for them to brown, I clean. I wash and rinse the small ramekins I used for oil, onions, garlic. I wipe down the counter and cutting boards. I make sure my surroundings are clean before moving on to the next step. You'd be amazed at the cleaning you can get done while waiting for water to boil.

Cooking--learning to cook has made me more conscious of my surroundings. I have a better understanding of time and being able to use it to its utmost effectiveness. And just as I can't cook well in a cluttered kitchen, I know I can't work well with a cluttered desk, or write well with a cluttered office. So next time you find yourself in the weeds, in the shit, take a second. Wipe down your station. Get rid of the paper piles, coffee cups and Post-Its. Clear out your surroundings. As you do so, you'll also effectively clear out your mind, enabling you to work better, faster. The productivity equivalent of the Six Million-Dollar Man.

And next time you cook? Use those stolen moments to wash a pan, wipe the counter, or toss scraps into the compost container. Getting it done while you cook means you won't be thinking about it while you eat.