Heat as a Rite of Passage in the Kitchen

https://enthucutlet.com/enthuoriginals/playing-with-fire/trial-by-fire/

by thunderbong • 3 years ago

75 29 3 years ago

jkingsman• 3 years ago

That was delightful and touching. Now I'm hungry.

ilyt2• 3 years ago

“Want to learn to cook?”asked my mother, as she handed me a damp yellow kitchen cloth. “Start with learning how to clean.

My start of the adventure with cooking was making pizza dough and in first year the most visible progress was smaller and smaller amount of kitchen covered in flour after finishing

The breakthrough was going from "follow the recipe" to "understand how it works" (even if only on the very surface) and a bit of experience of what tastes good with what, and that was pretty much transformation from "I can make a decent food from recipe" to "I can pick what I have in fridge/pantry, maybe go buy one or two extra things and make something half-decent".

Never really experienced cooking with my parents (just helping around the food) but that's coz at that age my cooking was mostly "well I want to eat some pizza" and I only started cooking more stuff once I moved out.

Swizec2• 3 years ago

The breakthrough was going from "follow the recipe" to "understand how it works" (even if only on the very surface)

+1 to this.

I had the traditional learn-to-cook-from-mom/grandma experience. You help around the kitchen, ask how to make a thing, and get "Oh that? That one's easy, you just take a bit of this, a bit of that, simmer here, simmer there, add a dash of this other thing, wait for a while, and voila. Couldn't be simpler". Then you do it and it's like you made a completely different dish.

Repeat a few times and voila, you can make the thing. The thing barely has a name, let alone a recipe. Oral tradition passed down through generations.

You'll learn what it's called when you go abroad and wander into a restaurant based on your corner of the world. Oh _that_'s what I've been making this whole time! Yeah you forgot <secret ingredient>, restaurant, my mom makes it better.

Reading recipes for this sort of dish is always funny. It's like people don't even realize that half this stuff is based on "Whatever is easily available in the area during $season". Oh you're making risotto in summer? Sure! Use these spices. Oh it's winter? Use these other spices. Oh you're in Tuscany? Add this. Oh no it's France? Use these. But it's all the same underlying structure.

ilyt2• 3 years ago

I wish recipes instead of usual waffle just had a paragraph of "why". The experienced can skip it, the novices will learn.

Like how you should only use 00 flour on pizza if you have hot enough oven while more usual flour works better if your oven doesn't go that hot.

I guess I should start looking for cookbook that goes into detail about process and not just dumps recipes on me.

Neoshadow42• 3 years ago

"and a bit of experience of what tastes good with what, and that was pretty much transformation from "I can make a decent food from recipe" to "I can pick what I have in fridge/pantry,"

This is where I'd love to get, but I have no idea how. I guess it's just experience and trying things out, but this is definitely the goal.

OJFord• 3 years ago

At enthucutlet we aspire to tell fun, unusual, heart-warming, and surprising stories in the vast realm of food in India. Organized into seasons like your favourite Netflix show, each edition of enthucutlet delves into an idea that is thought provoking and is at the centre of all the features in it. These are contributed by a diverse set of writers ranging from economists, to neuroscientists, to food experts and everyone in between.

I was tempted to say that's so niche, but India's so massive maybe it's not, either way - I love it, will bookmark/read more.

AlbertCory2• 3 years ago

Great article.

I wouldn't say I'm great, but a lot of my cooking doesn't follow any recipe very closely. I'm dead certain that when some recipe says "1/2 tsp of pepper" the chef who wrote it never measured it until asked to write it down. Then he or she tried it once or twice just to check that it really worked with 1/2 tsp. Then went back to just throwing some in.

I think it's actually more fun that the food isn't the same each time. Maybe in a restaurant people really expect it to be, but at home? Nah. It's a human activity.

culopatin• 3 years ago

And then there is me who thinks of a recipe as a formula for a drug and then gets disappointed when it doesn’t work out

throwanem• 3 years ago

Baking has that kind of precision to it, but cooking mostly doesn't.

balfirevic3• 3 years ago

I'm dead certain that when some recipe says "1/2 tsp of pepper" the chef who wrote it never measured it until asked to write it down.

Yeah, there isn't a correct amount of pepper anyway. You might like it more or less peppery. Not all ingredients are flexible like this, but many are.

Scoundreller• 3 years ago

And measuring flakes or grinds of something by volume will yield varying amounts depending on how it's milled or broken down. How hydrated it is. How packed it got during shipping.

One could measure by weight, but again, moisture will impact this. The genetics aren't well controlled, so the potency per unit weight varies, along with flavour profile. Some chemicals evaporate quickly, others slowly, and that can also change depending on humidity and temperature.

Pepper isn't 1 chemical. What grinds my gears is when someone says a recipe has too many flavours, ignoring that they've added hundreds of flavours via 1 ingredient.

rdp36• 3 years ago

sweet essay, living the life

Heat as a Rite of Passage in the Kitchen

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