Hope is the New Recipe
I watched and learned from several assured cooks while growing up in the 70s and 80s. My grandma Betty, Aunt Sandy and my mom, Peggy, made cooking look easy and practically effortless.
During summer visits to Texas, I listened to them talk about new recipes. Growing up I watched my mom pore over the latest magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and her favorite, Cooking Light.
Into her retirement my mom continued to buy cookbooks and watch her favorite chefs on PBS like Sara Moulton and our all-time favorite, Jaques Pepin.
I look back on her choice of favorite chefs and I see the common thread among them; humble confidence.
In neither Moulton or Pepin were there any showbiz antics, no “Bam!” or orange clogs. There was simple cooking and easy explanations of the how and the why.
“Here’s why we keep the heat low on the eggs.”
“Here’s why we add a touch of mustard to the vinaigrette.”
“This is why we pull the seeds from the middle of the cucumber.”
“Here is the benefit of clarified butter and how you can do it.”
Their instruction was peaceful. Their confidence put us at ease. They provided me with hope.
They made me think, “Maybe I could do that, too.”
My mom always deferred to her mom and sister as better cooks. Maybe they were.
There’s just something about watching my aunt Sandy make her Spanish rice that always fascinated me. How does she do that? Why does it always taste so good?
I used to ask her for her Spanish rice recipe and she always directed me to the method. “Oh, it’s just some of this, some of that, keep stirring, reduce the heat, put a lid on it and don’t burn it.”
So easy, so casual, so confident. Like she had done it the same way a thousand times. Her explanation always left me a bit lost.
While visiting my gramdma, Betty, on her farm in Texas I watched her cook everyday with ease.
The only time she consulted a recipe was for real scratch baking like her Angel Cake with four full sticks of butter. Baking is chemistry and good measurements are required. She knew that.
But that everyday savory cooking was all from the hip. It was intuitive method cooking from the gravies to the salads.
When she turned meat drippings into a velvety gravy with a ton of flavor in her cast iron pan, she was making one of the Mother Sauces. These sauces start as recipes in culinary school but morph into methods with endless variations by cooks around the world.
She, nor my Aunt Sandy, called it method cooking. That’s a term I came up with to describe this thing that eludes so many of my clients, patients and friends who want to cook more at home.
This is not a traditional, recipe-driven cookbook. Rather, it is a brief discussion of why so many people avoid cooking and how to fix that.
It is a discussion about shame and lack of knowledge.
It is a discussion about what we think we all should know but don’t.
Or should have been taught but weren’t.
It is a discussion about mom and dad and gramdma and grandpa and households and kitchens and pantries and dinner tables.
It is a discussion about what should have been but wasn’t.
It’s about misinformation, untrue beliefs, bad media, faulty science, marketing and the Food Network.
My hope is that you, the reader, will see yourself in some of the stories and give home cooking a shot or, if you’ve been previously disappointed, another shot.
Shame in the kitchen holds such power that I’ve written an entire book about it with the hope that the messages within will clear shame and doubt over your home cooking.
I’d love to see you cooking something very simple with confidence and pride and I’d like for you to share it with your friends and family or to just enjoy it alone.
The belief or mantra that “your home cooking is good enough” drives me every day to teach nutrition and cooking. I believe, and science supports, that home cooking is healthier and cheaper than outsourcing food to restaurants, fast casual, fast food and grocery stores.
What holds us back is often not a lack of skills, the right equipment or “I just don’t know what to cook” challenges but it is the bigger problem of self-doubt and worse; shame.
Brene Brown, the brilliant psychologist and social worker from the University of Texas, has foisted “shame” into the conscious of the average American and given us permission to examine it in our everyday lives.
Here, I’d like to examine shame within the context of home cooking and unpack its origins and complexities.
Driven by celebrity TV chefs and domestic goddesses (more on them later) Americans have been inundated for decades on the “right” way to go about cooking: the right recipe, the right knives, the right cooktop, the right bowls, the right ingredients, the right presentation, the right people at your dinner party, the right you.
If we can remove shame from the home kitchen and determine that “what I cook is good enough” we will do a lot more of it with joy, ease and pleasure.
There will be mistakes. You will burn something. You will cut your finger. You will make something that is just “so-so.” I continue to over salt food and burn dinner and I have been ardently cooking for over 45 years.
Your cooking is never a reflection of your self-worth. It is simply a snapshot of time where you combined ingredients. That’s it.
I split this book into two parts. Part 1 is “The Why” which breaks down why some of us hesitate with cooking be it shame, lack of skills, fear of a bad outcome, lack of time or that we don’t enjoy cooking.
The other part is “The How.” How do I work faster in my kitchen? How do I stock my refrigerator and pantry? What is “Gather and Arrange” cooking?
I will also outline “Method Cooking” which is simply mastering a few big “methods” or techniques. It removes reliance of the precision and fastidiousness of recipes and learning a few big methods means 10 instant recipes. they automatically
Beyond the how and why, the purpose of this book is to make you a more intuitive and confident cook who moves efficiently and joyfully in the kitchen.
Science shows us that people who cook at home have lower BMIs, better health outcomes and more money in the bank. Every single client I have coached wanted at least one of these. And every single client or student consulted me with the hope of making it better.
Hope is the new recipe.