Gleaning in the Woods
My cooking philosophy (me bragging), interspersed with photos of things I've made (also me bragging).
“Oooh, recipe?”
This is a question I get asked a lot by people who don’t know me well. It’s a very valid question to ask, but here is the thing: I don’t use recipes.
If that comes across like a brag, I want to make it very clear that it is, unequivocally, a brag. There are very few things that I feel I am truly good at. For your convenience, I’ve listed them below, in order of my confidence in my abilities:
Making paper snowflakes
Coming up with dumb jokes
Cooking (but not baking)
Arranging a gallery wall
Supplying costume pieces for friends going to themed parties
[redacted]
Chatting amiably with new people
Crafts but NOT arts
Insect identification (used to be stronger, this skill is waning)
I differentiate between cooking and baking because I am firmly not a baker. I would like to think - much in the same way that I believe I would be engaged by now if I lived in NYC (i.e. a theory based on no evidence) - that if I didn’t have celiac disease, perhaps I might have had more early success with baking, and might be one of queers who bakes sourdough instead of doom-scrolling.* But we will never know that, and I simply cannot bake a good baked-good, a fact which is especially annoying because placing a hot cherry pie on a window sill is exactly the aesthetic I strive for.
*That was one of the most convoluted sentences I’ve ever written and I want to apologize for that.
I recently made BOXED BROWNIES to bring to a friend’s house, and somehow they turned out so oily they were inedible. I decided to bravely try again some time later with a key lime pie. The filling was delicious, but the butter in the pie crust I used (which, to be fair, had been sitting in my cabinet for a while) had gone rancid, and it was, as you may have guessed, inedible. Yes, that wasn’t technically “baking,” but that honestly makes it even more embarrassing.
I have two possible explanations for this phenomenon - one, that gluten free baking is just a lot harder to do well, which has disincentivized me from taking the time to learn. And two, baking and recipe-based cooking is less of an art and more like math, or following a map. And I’m not good at either of those things. Actually, for your convenience, here’s a list of things I’m truly bad at:
Directional awareness
Digesting gluten
Stereotypical “Dad” knowledge (how to invest money, where to get your car fixed, which countries teamed up for WWI)
Math
Most things that could be described as “physical activity”
Remembering literally anything
[redacted]
Remembering literally anything
That’s it! I’m good at literally everything else.
Cooking, as I would define it, is really about learning what tastes good, and using that toolset plus instinct to create something palatable.
In Naomi Novik’s book Uprooted (which I liked, but if you’re going to read one, make it Spinning Silver), there’s a character who comes to magical abilities in an unorthodox way. When another (male, by-the-book) character blusters, asking why she can complete a spell that he can’t, she replies:
“It’s just—a way to go. There isn’t only one way to go.” I waved at his notes. “You’re trying to find a road where there isn’t one. It’s like—it’s gleaning in the woods. You have to pick your way through the thickets and the trees, and it’s different every time.”
Maybe I should start quoting this when people ask me what recipe I used. This is how I imagine the conversation would go:
Dinner Guest: “That was delicious. Do you have a recipe?”
Me: “No. Cooking for me is like… it’s gleaning in the woods. You have to pick your way through the thickets and the trees, and it’s different every time.”
Dinner Guest:
Me:
Dinner Guest: Thank you for having me over but I think our time being in each others’ lives has drawn to a close. I would wish you well, but I don’t.
At any rate, that really is how I cook. Yes, there is a research phase, in which I look at recipes or tiktoks and try to learn the flavor profiles and techniques of various cultures (related: if you’ve never watched a Maangchi video, you truly must), but I really try to avoid cooking anything where measurements can’t be eyeballed. My process is tasting, adding a splash of something, regretting said splash, trying to balance that flavor by adding something else, regretting that too, adding a third thing that makes it taste like food, then adding salt and sugar until it tastes good.
Good friends of mine will corroborate that eating at my place really is a gamble. I won’t serve you anything inedible, but sometimes I pin the tail right on the donkey’s butt and other times it ends up on the back leg. I also go grocery shopping like once every two weeks, so it really depends on what’s in my fridge the day of.
The upsides are that I can make Thai food that tastes like takeout without looking at a recipe, and that I can take three random leftovers and create a meal out of them (like that Snack-Off competition show Chrissy Teigen hosted… or was that a fever dream?). The downsides are that sometimes I make large portions of something simply mediocre, and that when I make something exquisite, I most likely will never be able to recreate it. I once fried shishito peppers with leftover kebab meat and I was blown away by how good it was. I tried to make it again a few months later and it was just okay, a tragedy I would put at the same scale as losing the Library of Alexandria (side note: “The Library of Alexandria” would be a great name for a drag webseries).
This “gleaning in the woods” method of cooking was learned wholly from my mother, who is both an incredible cook and baker (which should be illegal). I think I’ve seen her use a measuring spoon like twice. When my dad recently forayed into cooking and made a timpano, he meticulously measured out one cup of cheese to sprinkle between layers. My mom and I laughed haaaard at that. Ultimately, he wins, because all he has to do is say the word “insurance” and we’re toast.
Cooking has become a core part of my life, so much so that I didn’t even really consider it a “hobby” - it doesn’t feel like something I could or would ever give up. If someone offered me a free personal chef, I would immediately try to exchange him at the Imaginary Free Employee Store for a chauffeur, or a butler (one of those sweet old British guys like Alfred), or a prostitute (also one of those sweet old British guys like Alfred).
Having a personal chef would remove the process, which is not only my chief hobby, but is also my number one form of meditation. Turns out, occupying my hands with chopping while The Simpsons plays on my laptop is the perfect combination to turn my brain off for a few hours, much in the way that I assume transcendental meditation works for other, less neurotic people.
I would also turn down this personal chef offer (seriously, please stop trying to talk me into it) because I’ve realized that I place a lot of my value in a relationship on my cooking abilities. A few years ago I briefly dated someone who was objectively a better cook than I was, and it turns out that I hate that. Like, what was going to keep him coming back? Paper snowflakes? I don’t think.
You may, at this point in the essay, be wondering what my point here is. As you may have guessed, I really, truly, deeply, just wanted to make sure that everyone had seen the pretty photos of food that I’ve made. But since you asked so kindly (and eased up on that weird personal chef prompt), I do have some advice for people who want to get more into cooking:
If making things pretty and posting them is an incentive to get yourself cooking more interesting things… there’s no shame in that! In my experience, people actually really like to see pretty food (especially pasta… bitches love pasta) on their social media.
Garlic confit is so easy to make, so good, and looks impressive.
If you don’t like salads, try making them without greens (or doing cabbage, arugula, or spinach instead of lettuce and kale).
Cooking non-western food is a lot easier than you think it is, and you should try it. It just might entail some trial and error, and going to a new grocery store.
Buy your burrata at Trader Joe’s or Costco only (it’s so much cheaper). Also, you can just put it on a plate with a few other ingredients and some bread and people will think you are Giada de Laurentiis.
If you’re more artsy than scientific, try making more intuitive meals like stir fries and soups. If you like following directions, try getting more acquainted with your oven (ps, if your oven scares you, get a toaster oven - it can do basically anything an oven can and is much less intimidating).
Fresh herbs make everything taste better and look fancier.
That said, people who insist that you use only fresh herbs, garlic, ginger, etc. should not be listened to (at least, if the effort is preventing you from cooking fun things).
Don’t replace everything in a recipe for healthier or more commonplace ingredients and then wonder why it tastes bad or inauthentic.
That mango peeling hack with a cup works! Most of the other hacks don’t (learn from my mistakes; don’t shake up your garlic cloves in a tupperware).
Johnny
latkes, salad, and indian platter all look amazing. a fun and cheeky read. I’ve tried putting intuitive cooking into words for people, but this spoke to it beautifully. thanks for sharing :)
How are your food photos always so beautiful? Obviously there is attention to compensation, but are you relying on natural light? I think I’m always led astray by cooking in the evening, well after sunset.