If at first you don't succeed...

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.--Oscar Wilde

Years ago, on the night before our weekly grocery trip, when food items and meal ideas were running low at home and the dinner hour was looming large, I decided to take matters into my own hands and cook dinner for my family. I had this crazy idea that I would make orange rice and ham, so I typed that into Google for good measure. I was instantly assured that somehow, my makeshift recipe existed, at least in cyberspace. With a surge of confidence and excitement, I kicked everyone out of the kitchen and set to work. I poured orange juice into a pot of rice, added some salt and a half-cup of coriander seeds (the recipe called for coriander leaves, but I knew that every good cook improvises), and set it on the stove. Then, I poured orange juice over some ham slices on a pan and stuck them in the oven. I can still remember how, bursting with pride and joy at the thought of having created something so lovely, so nourishing for my hungry family, I carried bowls of steaming, fluffy rice stained the lightest shade of orange, dotted with green, topped with slices of browned, glazed ham, to the table.

Need I say that the rice was a bland mass of tangible disappointment, punctuated by the frequent, unpleasant crunch of tangy coriander seeds, or that the ham was dry, coated with crystallized, sugary, unappetizing crumbs?

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.--Charlie Chaplin

Over the next few months, I would repeatedly, stubbornly attempt to have my own way in the kitchen. There was the chalky lemon sauce that I wanted to serve with chicken (I had substituted flour for the requisite cornstarch), the pale-gray brownie-sponges that I made with my cousins (apparently, instant cocoa mix can never replace pounds of real chocolate), an overwhelmingly peanut-buttery Thai chicken (it turns out that heated peanut butter, soy sauce, and pepper taste exactly like hot, liquefied peanut butter), the charred remains of various other dishes, and one ignominious instance, a particularly low moment really, where I quite literally put my mother’s best pots through hell (I had set the oven to pre-heat without emptying it).

Aside from the inevitably disastrous finales to each of those early kitchen adventures, a few constants stand out: my family’s persistent, loving support of each of my abominable creations (my parents ate every last spoonful of my infamous orange rice, while my aunts, uncles, and cousins insisted on eating every little brownie-sponge in the pan, albeit with ice cream), and my own clueless, reckless attitude towards cooking. After a few weeks of self-imposed, embarrassment-driven exile from our kitchen, I would eventually return, again and again, each time with a new Internet-validated recipe to unleash upon my family.

Guard your roving thoughts with a jealous care, for speech is but the dialer of thoughts, and every fool can plainly read in your words what is the hour of your thoughts.--Alfred Lord Tennyson

At the heart of all of this nostalgic, self-deprecating rambling is my desire to share the lessons that I had to learn before I could even call myself a half-decent starter cook. Contrary to the popular mythos of the intuitive chef, learning to cook is a process that requires conscientious effort for most modern, kitchen-orphaned newbies. If one didn't grow up enthralled by a relative's skill in the kitchen, or simply never payed attention, cooking from scratch can be problematic at best, while new media-enabled cooking can be overwhelming. Google searches for recipes yield countless versions of each dish, and none but the most credible websites can make any guarantees about results and quality. Moreover, each one calls for knowledge of distinct techniques (such as braising and broiling) and skills (such as the all-important "knife skills"), and this information, while readily available online, is scattered across the Internet, rarely forming part of recipes. One click necessitates another, with each new page bringing new distractions and the infamous "too much information" or "information overload" effect of the Net Generation. All of which begs the question of whether it's truly possible to learn how to cook from this fragmented, dissociated, and volatile medium--expect more on this topic in the next few days!

Healing with Chicken Soup: Part 2

"I live on good soup, not on fine words." -Molière

Had “the greatest of all writers of French comedy” known that scientists had taken his lauded soup to the laboratory in order to measure just how good it could be, he might have enjoyed quite a laugh at their expense. My grandmother, and generations of people extending into antiquity, would surely have joined in the mirth. Soup, particularly chicken soup, is easily one of the most universal and ancient of “comfort foods,” as we established last week, and therefore, you too may readily find folly in the group of scientists who cooked up batch after batch of it, ran experiments, and published their findings in the October 2000 issue of the journal Chest in the impressively titled article "Chicken Soup Inhibits Neutrophil Chemotaxis In Vitro" (available online here). Before we adopt Molière’s stance on “fine words,” however, let us allow for the curiosity in all of us, scientists included, who yearn to know the whys and wherefores of even the most unquestioningly accepted bits of wisdom.

• In an article titled “Cold remedies: What works, what doesn’t, what can’t hurt,” where would you guess that the Mayo Clinic staff files chicken soup? Perhaps surprisingly, they include this remedy under the subheading “Cold remedies: What works,” along with water and other fluids, zinc, and humidity. They explain that “generations of parents have spooned chicken soup into their sick children” and that “chicken soup may be soothing because of its possible anti-inflammatory and mucus-thinning effects.” If you take a moment to read Chest’s findings, you may recognize their contribution to the latter part of the Mayo Clinic’s reasoning.

• The article “What to Eat When You Have the Flu,” from the online medical reference WebMD, asserts that “chicken soup is a must with cold-like symptoms” and candidly cites Chest’s study.

• In her post “The Science of Chicken Soup,” NYT Well blogger Tara Parker-Pope presents an overview of the “handful of scientific studies [which] show that chicken soup really could have medicinal value.” While she ultimately qualifies that “none of the research is conclusive,” Parker-Pope reasons with an “it can’t hurt” outlook when she concludes that “at the very least, chicken soup with vegetables contains lots of healthy nutrients, increases hydration and tastes good, too.”  

Science, old wives and their tales, health columnists: all widely acknowledge the competency of this classic comfort food, above all others, in comforting (excuse my redundancy), and perhaps even curing, the ailing. All the more conspicuous, then, is this dish made by its absence from many foodie and gourmet blogs. It would be impossible to examine each of the millions that Google and Technorati searches yield, but none of my favorite food bloggers (who shall remain anonymous in this admonishment) have ever given any virtual presence to the chicken soups that they must have prepared and consumed in their lifetimes. As a declared starter cook, and as I’ve freely confessed before, I rely on the online community for a lot of my inspiration and instruction in the kitchen. Imagine my chagrin when, after finishing off a few day's worth of both my mother's and grandmother's chicken soups, I turned to the Internet for what I had hoped would be a well-rounded array of recipes, techniques, and stories—but instead found faceless, so-to-speak, recipes on generic websites, scientific studies, and medical advice. 

The above-mentioned websites and research article added scientific merit to what was till then common sense to me, while OChef.com taught me "The Nuances of Stock, Broth, and Consommé.” The Home Cooking section of About.com overwhelmed me with their list of chicken soup recipes, none of which I felt the least compelled to try in my surly, sickly mood. I was forced to give up my streak of independent, yet virtual community-enabled, cooking when my mother and grandmother heard of my dilemma and supplied me with a fresh batch and their traditional recipe with ever-loving, mother-knows-best smiles.  

                   

All a very educational experience I assure you, and yet, but for my mother and grandmother's intervention, all lacking that special touch, at times heart-warming, at times indulgent, with which food bloggers infuse the oft taken-for-granted preparation and consumption of food. 

All of which brings me to suspect that, for all my quoting Molière, I may just live off of fine words after all.

Turning full-circle to my past posts on the glamorization of the food writing world, why do you think that modern writers shun traditional comfort foods? Why is it that there are countless posts on specialty soups and chicken dish variations, but rarely any on the humble chicken soup? How do the most sugar-coated (no pun intended) of these virtual realities, where people ostensibly make and eat these fancy dishes on a daily basis, affect their audience, who always comment “I can’t wait to try this” or “This looks great!” while perhaps never going out of their way to actually make them?