The Humble Gourmand

I wasn’t always aware of my fascination with food — eating it, reading about it, cooking it — but perhaps it should have dawned on me sooner. As a kid working my way through breakfast, after-school snacks, and weekend lunches, I always read while I ate, and most of the time it was a cookbook splayed open just to the left of my plate. A particular favorite was Kids Can Cook, which came with its own set of measuring spoons and contained what I considered highly sophisticated recipes for “Frozen Bananoids.” (They’re banana halves dipped in melted chocolate, rolled in coconut, and frozen.) Other times it was my mother’s Junior League of Binghamton compilation. I can still see the fat, jolly chef on the cover and my aunt’s swirling inscription on the title page.

As I grew up, newspapers and novels crept into my eating-reading repertoire, but the ubiquitous cookbook remained.

I don’t remember why I picked up the habit. I just liked it. Eating solo without a book made me feel uncomfortably unoccupied.

As I grew up, newspapers and novels crept into my eating-reading repertoire, but the ubiquitous cookbook remained. I must have inspected my mother’s red-and-white checkered Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book a thousand times before graduating from high school. There was Beard on Bread, the battered blue Congressional Cookbook, and a spiral-bound book of spattered index cards covered with my mother’s carefully copied script (where the real family treasures, such as this month’s lemon cake recipe, lurked).

Flash forward to age 24, when I take stock of life and suddenly wake up to smell the frittata: I’m obsessed with food. I had been perusing half a dozen food blogs and online discussion boards every day, and a pile of magazine and newspaper articles each week. I’d been relishing in the successes I’ve had in the kitchen with new or improvised recipes. I’d executed several highly successful dinner parties with three-course meals for more than a handful of guinea-pig friends. Perhaps most obviously, for years I had been compulsively planning what I will eat next, what I need from the store to cook it, and how it will taste.

Everything crystallized when I read My Life in France, Julia Child’s memoir of years spent in Paris, Marseille, and other European cities, where she stumbled upon and nurtured an unbelievable passion for food. Her initial experiences with special dishes and places, such a fromagerie, were described in what to me was drool-inducing detail: “On the side counters stood the cheese — boxes of Camembert, large hunks of Cantal, and wheels of Brie in various stages of ripeness — some brand-new and almost hard, others soft to the point of oozing.” She hears the advice of Chef Max Bugnard, her instructor at Le Cordon Bleu, who tells her, “You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made. Even after you eat it, it stays with you — always.” Several dishes popped into my head upon reading that line, with a memorable set of scrambled eggs, a juicy rare filet with Gorgonzola sauce, and a triumphant coconut cake all competing for attention.

After seven weeks at the famous Parisian cooking school, Julia “could whip up a pretty good piecrust and was able to make a whole pizza — from a mound of dry flour to hot-out-of-the-oven pie — in 30 minutes flat.” Impressive, yet daunting to the likes of me. But she was increasingly aware of an important truth about cooking: “The more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know.”

Indeed, it is an intimidating undertaking, especially for those who lack professional training, equipment, and experience in the kitchen. Complicating matters further, your average working professional lacks either the income or the time, or both, to undergo a Julia-esque transformation. I know I did.

When I’m still smarting from a recipe that flops, a little too aware of the pitfalls that match the highs of perfectly crafting a dish, it helps to picture Julia sitting in front of her typewriter, contemplating a 600-page manuscript of French recipes that needed Americanizing: “I girded my loins, spit on the old Underwood, and began to type up my suggestions — clickety-clack — like a determined woodpecker.” In other words, keep at it. There is a never-ending stream of techniques, recipes, ideas, and trends in cooking, and everyone has to start somewhere. Don’t be demoralized when you burn a sauce or improvise seasoning with disastrous results. In the face of such failures (you’ll have a few!), there is no need to resort to TV dinners, canned mushrooms, and fish sticks, which Julia aptly dismisses as “horrible glop.” There are pieces of this seemingly infinite universe that we can break off, study, understand, and practice — a few at a time — and become more conscious, thoughtful cooks, eaters, and drinkers in the process.

Photo from My Life In France.

1. rebecca

   December 21 1:51 p.m. 1

   I can't tell you how lucky I feel to be one of those "guinea-pigs" on many occasions. It's nice to have a friend that shares my love of eating and takes it even further by sharing this love with friends.

   Congrats on launching this great site and chapter of your life.

Post yours

You're not logged in. Would you like to register or log in?.