Tangled threads, pulled into a net

[pecunium]

So, the "what would you like to do with me," post led to a question.

How did I come by my cooking skills, formal training, or self-teaching.

The answer is self-teaching.

It's probably come up before, in bits and pieces, but what learned of cookery I learned, mostly, from books.

And painful practice.

"On food and cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" by Harold McGee is probably where my real journey began.

Before that I was an adequate slapper together of a small handful of family recipes. I could also follow a recipe. I'd made a cake from scratch (not so successful) and had mixed results with paté a choux for eclairs.

Afterwards... I was trying all sorts of things.

Why? Because I'd been shown the manual. Go to a restaurant, and like the meal? "I can do that and then I'd look at a recipe for it (or something similar), and try to figure out what wasn't there; to match what I'd liked (the gulyas leves at Paprikas Fono (now, sadly defunct) in Ghiradelli Square, had more lemon zest, and something else... Ah! that's the secret, the paprika has to be toasted in oil; then you sauté some of the potatoes in it.

Bread was easy, and brutal. A simple loaf was nothing. But the crumb was flat, lacking in flavor.

My mother had a recipe for dill-bread. Then it disappeared. I tried for 3 years to figure out what was missing. I figured it out, mostly, when I realised it needed milk. Last year I finally realised it needed scalded milk.

I bought more how-to books. The Time-Life Good Cook series. Tom Colicchio's "Think like a chef, The Bread Bible, a copy of Escoffier, and Larousse.

When I read a description of a meal (say the orange-gingee chicken in Early Autumn by Robert Parker) I gave it a try.

I ate a lot of mistakes.

I do a lot of "classical" western cooking, because I like it.

But I also like mexican, and greek, and chinese, and japanese, and thai, and indian (which reminds me, I need to call Bajun, and get his mothers recipe for curry... Nepalese... mmmmm!) and, and, and.

When I have money, I take people to dinner.

I agree with Nero Wolfe, no one should be hungry. I don't have a Fritz Brenner to make hospitality trivial, so I get to play at it myself. When I made lobscouse I'd never had it, but I knew what I wanted it to taste like, and I played with how many juniper berries I added (a lot more than they asked for).

That may be the secret of my cookery... I can, in the way Ansel Adams saw pictures before he made them, taste what things ought to be, and can deconstruct how they came to be when someone else has done the cooking.

If anyone ever wants to cook with me, just ask me over. I'll bring the knives.

Comments

[zoje-george.livejournal.com]

Ah bread, so easy to get so wrong. You learn to love those mistakes.

C'mon over, and bring our knives; they're in storage in Wisconsin.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

That's one hell of a side trip.

But oh, the shopping...

I wanna.

:(

TK

[zoje-george.livejournal.com]

Trash would be thrilled to take someone else on a tour of his favorite spots in the market.


Psssst, you used a close italics tag instead of a close /a tag on your Nero Wolf linky there.

[geekchick]

If anyone ever wants to cook with me, just ask me over. I'll bring the knives.

I'll clear some counter space. And as a small bonus we now have one local-ish Penzeys, soon to be two.

[satyrlovesong.livejournal.com]

My knives are in horrid repair - perhaps I could cook and you could sharpen them?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I don't know... how well do you cook? :)

On the flip side, I like sharpening knives. So long as they aren't horrid knives (too hard, or too soft, but too hard is the real bugbear) I don't mind sharpening them.

If it's less than four, it won't take more than a couple of hours to fix 'em.

TK

[satyrlovesong.livejournal.com]

I'm a passable cook. I grew up in a transplanted Southern family, so the food of my youth included any combination of pork, butter, cheese or cream - learning to use a steamer came in college and I don't think my mother has forgiven me yet. I spent a semester teaching in south India while in college, and learned a few things. I'm fairly hopeless with pie.

I have dinner parties every two months or so, and people actively seek invitation - so either I'm a decent cook, stock a fine bar, or have interesting friends. Mostly likely all of the above - but perhaps you'd rather have some of my honey porter? It certainly beats Coors. ;>

My knives are Henckels, their mid-tier variety - two french chefs, a small cleaver, a paring knife.

I'm enjoying reading you. At the moment, I have a variety of questions but I think I'll read back for a while and see if those questions are answered - RTFM, so to speak.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Feel free to ask.

If it's something I've really answered, I can point you to it (there's a lot of writing in the past four years).

If it's a really good question, I might be pressed to think about it again, and come up with a more current answer.

It might make the basis of a new post.

Because I am sure there are lots of people (for sufficiently small values of lots) who have the same questions.

Those are decent knives, tolerably hard, and (not to beat you up) fairly easy to maintain.

The reason I say I'm not beating you up is that 1: most people are never taught the way to maintain, and 2: the equipment to maintain is hard to find.

TK

p.s. Never underestimate the power of good company; and a decent bar.

[satyrlovesong.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

Oh, you can't beat me up that way. I know where I excel, I know where I have little natural ability, and the rest I can learn. *cheeky grin* I actually switched the offer from food to beer because that way I could watch and learn rather than be distracted by cooking - on the lines of "teach a man to fish". My grandmother sharpened our knives growing up, but I had a bit of a knife fetish from a young age and wasn't allowed near them.

In fact, all the boys I dated in high school gave me edged weapons for gifts instead of jewelry. I appreciated it more.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Well, then, where do you live, since I am assuming the offer/request, was made in good faith.

TK

[satyrlovesong.livejournal.com]

Made in good faith, but distant. I'm in Davis.

[satyrlovesong.livejournal.com]

How did you end up a Russian linguist? I realize it's the most understandable language for you to have learned based on your age and our military situation circa 1985 (taking a stab at your HS graduation date) - everyone I knew wanted to learn Russian then. I even took a stab at it, but see note on natural abilities... the Cyrillic alphabet made my head ache and my hands cramp. Of course, it didn't help that my Russian tutor was a lovely multi-lingual lady and that we chose to do our lessons at the pub. . . and pretend to be French, so we could discuss those around us - but I digress. What did you end up doing with your new language?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Davis is doable. Too far inland to invade when we make the two-week horse trip this august, but doable.

The folks who invited me to Viet-nam, asking me to stop off in Wisconson, on the way, that was distant.

TK

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I joined in '93.

I was going to be a paralegal.

My recruiter (Nat. Guard) had just (like the week before) gotten a brand new unit.

I passed the DLAB, and the options were for languages I didn't really want (Arabic, Chinese, Farsi) or closed to the one's I did want (German, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese).

Since Russian was on the list of languages I did want, and an option, I took it.

Cyrillic is your friend. It makes a word look the way it sounds (tsar and czar are both wrong, царь covers the sounds, jus right).

I've used it to translate, got a job because someone thought his bosses were talking about his while he was in the room (they weren't), take four trips to Ukraine, worked a missle defense exercise with the Russians, done some reading, and been able (to non-russian speakers) pretend to be from Russia/Ukraine because I can fake an accent.

TK