Cooking your own food: when was your "ah-ha" moment?

Epicurean Exploits - Food and Recipes
21

I use these a lot but have been tending towards seriouseats.com lately.

22

My mom always cooked and I started cooking when I was younger as well, so I can’t think of any real ah-ha moments either, but here are some things that really helped me along the way (some of which are repeats of what other said)

  1. Learn to roast a chicken
  2. Make your own stock (after all what are you going to do with that chicken carcass?)
  3. By fresh herbs (either in pots to use as needed or in smaller amounts at the store or farmer’s market). They make a huge difference
  4. Learn to braise correctly. (OK, wait until the fall and winter since it’s not what you want to do in the summer in an apartment). Nothing beats a great braise, but they need time and you need to learn to cook things on a low simmer or 250 degree oven (ie, don’t boil your braises or stews)
  5. Read a lot. The library is a great idea. I own a couple hundred cookbooks, but I still get cookbooks from the library.
  6. Cook as much as you can. It’s a craft. The more you do it, the more you’ll learn, and the better you’ll get.
  7. Make extra. Most of us have busy lives and it can make cooking every day a challenge. When you cook, make extra for the days when you don’t have time. Last night’s reheated dinner still tastes better than today’s microwaved dinner.
  8. Find a couple of dishes that you can make in 20 minutes or less for when you’re starving and don’t think you have time to cook. It will always be better than opening a can or microwaving something.
  9. Learn how to use a knife correctly. There are tons of great technique books that will show you how to use one. If you learn to use a knife well, you’ll spend less time doing prep.
  10. Don’t forget to have fun. You have to eat everyday. It can be another point of drudgery or a highlight of your day. Keep it fun and reward yourself with good food and good wine.
23

Great points Rachel!

I’d add “learn to work clean” … train yourself to clean as you go.

24

I took a basic sauce class which was my ‘ah ha’. Knife skills are hugely important as they save a great deal of time.

25

This technique for dicing an onion was a specific ah-ha that I remember:

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The intro of the RED Zone Channel… Sunday cooking is so much fun!!

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I’ll bookmark it, Kevin. Love the show.

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Fresh pasta for me, and the Italians, is not better than dry. The two serve very different purposes.There are certain dishes that cry out for dry; I’ll never be able to do without fusilli, penne, and shells, as they capture a chunky tomato sauce so well. Similarly, I love Linguine, and though I would always want my pasta al dente, it is harder to do with fresh. Of course manicotti, ravioli, cannelloni, and orecchiette here should be fresh, as egg pastas should be too.

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[winner.gif]

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Reading Tom Colicchio’s Think Like a Chef where the primary lesson is applying technique to ingredients to build a dish, rather than starting as protein centric and adding sides. Not only did it change the way I think about cooking, it even changed the way I shop.

31

The first ah-ha moment I can remember was when I started making my own fried egg sandwiches - at about age 5.
I’ve rarely preferred something cooked by another person since that time.

32

it’s hard for me to remember my first ah-ha cooking moment. I’ve been cooking for the family since I was — oh — maybe 13 or 14 (really simple stuff), and was afforded the opportunity to “help” long before that. The creativity and skill truly took off in college — out of necessity and interest. Cooking is my best “artistic” skill, and I wish I had the time to do it more than I presently do.

33

Not sure if it counts as cooking but it was the first time I realized it was possible to bake your own bread. This was one summer while I was in college and back in the day when non-supermarket bread was really hard to come by. I think I finally threw out my old falling apart 35 year old paperback copy of Beard on Bread a few years ago (I had long since bought a replacement) .

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I suspect that this may scare you more than inspire you, but my real epiphany was when I stopped life as a DINK and then divorcee who could shop daily and ‘do no harm’ to the finest, freshest ingredients, and began life as a husband and father of two on a much limited income. I now need to plan and cook ahead for my vegan wife and my two teens, one of whom only likes carbs (bread, really) and the other of whom only likes Japanese food. I feel much more like a true chef now, albeit without the staff.
Of course, it is well worth the effort!

35

Beard on Bread is one of my greatest treasures … so many superb recipes but more so, Beard is so encouraging I tried everything.

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Hmm. You have seen this guy’s bathroom, right? [wow.gif] I’m hoping Mark isn’t moved now to post pictures of his kitchen!

More seriously, I agree with all the above. Seasonal cooking is key for me – as someone who cooks from scratch most everyday, changing one’s recipes as the new vegetables in season arrive is key to keeping motivated and interested. For example, I love the first batch of roasted root vegetables in the fall, while just now we are finally enjoying fresh tomato/basil salads in the heat of summer.

And, if you have access to outdoor space (when I lived in an apartment, I grew peppers. eggplant and tomatoes in pots on a small balcony), growing your own foodstuff is very gratifying.
That is yet another step – when you realize how much better your home-grown vegetables cook up than anything you can buy.

37

Yes, one of the all time great cookbooks IMO. I haven’t done as much bread baking in recent years but as soon as the hot weather breaks I think I’ll pull it out and bake some of my old favorites.

38

I will get to your question in a moment, but first - - - Where is the “Ugh I’m choking” emoji? Flour? A history lesson. Fettuccini Alfredo was popularized in the US by Jackie Kennedy in the early 1960s. Camelot and all that. In 1976, at dinner with my parents, my wife and her mother after we both graduated from Boston University Law School, we went to a restaurant to celebrate. Some of us ordered Fettuccini Alfredo and they prepared it tableside using a wok and a butane burner. It was mid-afternoon and a bit slow, so the head chef came out and did it for us. I got up from my seat and watched. After preparing the basic sauce with butter, pepper, cream and just a touch of cheese, he thickened it with what he was supposed to use - freshly cracked and separated egg yolks. I said it was a great technique and looked really good. He said he did it the same way for Jackie Kennedy. I have since prepared that and other cream sauces the same way. When we make Alfredo sauce with fresh pasta in the parking lot at out tailgates before jets games, that’s what we do. How do we separate the eggs? It’s easy. You just crack it in your hands and let the white flow through your fingers onto the asphalt!

My ah-ha moment was the summer of 1966. I was on an American Youth Hostels bicycle tour of Cape Cod. We had to buy and cook our own food. When it was my team’s turn, we went to the store and bought ground beef and tomato stuff and spices and rice and we invented chili over rice based on some recipe we found on the back of a package. How was I supposed to know that millions of other people made it too? It was really good and easy and fun to make. We had so much fun that the next day we went to the north side of the Cape and collected bushels of Mussels and brought them back and scrubbed and steamed them and ate them with butter. The Mussels were free for the taking, so we saved money and got to get lobster the next day.

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As I think we have discussed before, I still have my first edition “Tassajara Bread Book” in paperback. I got it in college in the early 1970s. Somewhere in it is one of my all time favorite sayings. Something like “There’s no such thing as failure. Just the invention of a new way to make bread.” There is even an illustration in it of how to braid a challah - four strands and six strands. I can still hear myself going “over, over, under, over” to get the braid right. I’ve only done the six strand once or twice - in requires a massive amount of bread and makes a really long challah. I suspect that the Tassajara commune had a lot of Jews.

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I was thinking of those photos when I posted - figure Mark in particular needs to learn the clean as you go lesson! His toilet is the stuff of nightmares and he never learned the lesson I taught my son which was to always clean the bathroom at minimum if you are going to invite dates over.


Jay H - I had Tassajara and liked it a lot but nothing compared to Beard for me. I did however do a lot of challah … loved making big challah wreaths for dinner parties.

And like Jay M - I’ve fallen off on my bread baking (when my kids were young and I was being homemaker, I’d do 3 or 4 different breads in one day to take us through the week … Beard’s Oatmeal bread from one of his other cookbooks was in the mix along with Beard on Bread selections. But your comment made me think too of cranking up the floured kneading board as soon as the weather cools. We’ll have to start a bread porn thread!