We have just lived through a tidal wave of cooking obsession. Thanksgiving, with all its turkey tips and side-dish recipes, can feel like overkill, particularly if you have been at this for a while. I try not to be snide; I remember the good old days when helpful hints and cooking instructions were appreciated. But that was back in the '70s when I was a young woman. A time when "aged" cheddar seemed gourmet, when asparagus tips were all the rage, and cooking with
Julia was neither popularized nor parodied. It was an age of innocence, an age when you did not have to hide the Cool Whip.
Not that I am advocating for a return to Cool Whip and Velveeta, nor to the fancy foods made popular during the first wave of fine dining (we of a certain age have eaten our share of smoked oysters), but rather to a time when we could enter into a kitchen without fear, confident of our capacity to cook in the first place.
I'm not sure when we traded in our ability to cook plain and simple for the culinary complexities of the modern mouth, but ask almost anyone if they can bake a potato and I bet you'd be met with a blank stare. Yes, we know where and why to buy and eat grass-fed beef, but still don't know how to cook it. We are learning how to preserve, ferment, cure, culture, and brine but these are more hobbies than efforts to turn raw ingredients into mainstays of our daily menus. We know why today's pork can have fat again and why a layer of nearly an inch around a chop might be delicious but, as my mother said to Portland's premier pork hawker, "Do me a favor, for $8.00 a pound, you eat the fat." Which is to say, old-world cooks can separate out the good from the goodish.
You see, Mom had been raised in a world where money was scarce and cooking, day in and day out, was the logical response to the need to feed a family on a limited budget. She was not a fancy cook but a skilled one. If she wanted to eat fat she'd get it from the chicken schmaltz that floated to the top of the soup she made. She knew how chicken backs and necks, bought at a fraction of the cost of a whole chicken, could be turned into great soup (though these days chicken necks and backs sell for $1.99 a pound. What's up with that?), how to butcher out larger cuts into smaller ones when the big roasts went on sale, how to bake easy everyday cakes and, ultimately, how to get everything to the table at the same time, a skill that only time and practice allows. But again, she was a cook — an everyday, plain and simple cook. A dying breed.
To a certain extent I have followed my mother's food steps. As a child I watched her in the kitchen. I shopped with her in the markets. Over time I was given kitchen tasks; most likely, the ones she didn't want to do herself (chopping chicken livers, onions, and hard boiled eggs together until smooth was tedious work but I loved doing it). As a young woman I cooked through the first wave of fancy cooking — Scallopini, beef bourguignon, and mile-high cheese cakes. Later, and mostly because I did not know what else to do, I opened my first café. It was road-house cooking — plain, simple, and occasionally inspired. But when folks started referring to me as a chef I was quick to correct them. I was cook, not a chef. I was a cook born into a proud history of cooks, good cooks, great cooks — day in and day out in-the-home cooks. Bringing my pots and pans to the marketplace hardly changed that fact.
Later still, after turning in my professional apron, I started cooking in my home again, day in and day out. Though I was now growing, preserving, fermenting, culturing, and brining my ingredients, it was only after years of getting comfortable in the kitchen. If today I have become a "householder," it is because turning stuff into other stuff keeps me from shopping my way to sustainability.
But I could not have learned any of it if I had not been raised in a culture that made cooking a practical art and not a fancy one. I doubt I would have had the courage to try it on. It would have seemed too hard. Which is the point I am trying to make.
Next year, or from this day forward, in lieu of the fancy foods, try on the basics. Roast a plain chicken, steam some vegetables, make a simple stock, and bake a potato. Go into the kitchen. Get to cooking as if frugality and stewardship matters (which it does). Trust yourself. I know it can be daunting if you did not have someone showing you the ropes, but give it a try. Do like Mom did and bake a potato nearly every night for dinner. You just might show the next generation how good simple cooking can be. Only then should you try on flights of fancy which, if you have done your homework, can happen quite easily without a recipe. That was the exact approach I took the other day when a group of cooks and writers... (to be continued tomorrow)