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?

Healing with Chicken Soup: Part 1

The past few weeks have brought the world a lot of pain and tragedy (a lot more than usual, anyway). In fact, if you visit any major news website (such as here or there), you’ll see in stark reds and whites headlines burdened with telling unsettling stories about the monstrous things that are plaguing the world. The microscopic monsters (known collectively as the flu) that have been making me miserable for the past weeks pale in comparison to those other trials and tribulations.

Courtesy of Past Expiry Cartoons

Naturally, these events have me reflecting on how precious life is, on how we should never take anything for granted, not health, family, peace, or even food. It turns out that even chicken soup has its merits. Scientific, healthful merits. It is certainly powerless to save the world or fix its problems, but it comforts me to know that chicken soup (the literal one, not necessarily the literary, soulful ones) can help you and me the next time flu bugs pay a visit. 

Many of us take this time-honored, classic comfort food for granted, dismissing its healing powers as the stuff of backwoods myth or Old World folklore. We tell ourselves that what makes it so comforting is its warmth and mildness, the ease with which one can prepare and consume it when down in the doldrums of sickness. Or perhaps we simply associate the humble chicken soups in our lives with the nurturing care that we have received from a loved one over the years. Writer Peggy Orenstein, for instance, sees chicken soup as her grandmother’s legacy:

“It may not be jewelry or candlesticks or a graveyard of ancestors, but it is what I have to pass on: Chicken soup. A legacy of making much out of little, a legacy of love that will cure whatever ails you.” 

In the article "Soul for the Chicken Soup," New York Time’s writer Ed Levine would have us think what Molly O’Neill writes in the “New York Cookbook”: “Chicken soup is synonymous with New York City.” In a fanciful elaboration of her point, O’Neill says: “An epicurean archeologist could piece together a social history of the city, simply by studying the permutations of its chicken soup.” On the other hand, NYT writer Jennifer B. Lee commented in her article "Soup's On! (And It's Not Your Grandmother's)": “A mock court once […] [ruled] that chicken soup deserved the title of ‘Jewish penicillin'.” And if we are to believe the sometimes dubious Wikipedia, this comfort food, give or take a few ingredients, can be found anywhere from China and Taiwan to the United Kingdom and Ireland, from Poland and Romania to the United States and Canada! Interestingly, Ornstein’s grandmother’s Eastern European origins are reflected in her particular recipe for the dish:

“My grandmother’s recipe for that iconic dish was simple, a peasant’s meal: they made do with little in the Eastern European shtetls, so a chicken, a few carrots, an onion, the crumbs that made the matzo balls were all stretched as far as possible.”

Wherever you get your chicken soup, whatever secondary ingredients and steps you use to get that final classic broth, rest assured that the tradition of looking to chicken soup for help with our miscellaneous ailments has your grandmother's blessing, along with that of the scientific community. For a discussion of what these lab-coated, chicken soup-wielding scientists had to say about it, along with help making some of your own, check back in the next few days for part two of this post!

Dear readers, wherever you are in the world today, I hope that you are healthy and at peace. If these things are out of your reach at the moment, you have my sympathy, my best wishes, and my hope that you can turn to something for solace, be it a higher power, a loved one, a silver lining, or even, simply, a bowl of chicken soup.

Eye Candy

At this point in time we have enough evidence to show, even if it was never in question, that all of our senses play a role in eating and cooking. Before we’re even served a meal, we can smell how delicious (or off-putting) it will be. And if one is cooking or within hearing distance of the kitchen, the sizzle of oils, steaming pressure cookers, bubbling sauces, and kitchen timers all form a familiar and inviting harmony. With our eyes we savor the sight of a feast and we’re tempted to take more than enough. We relish the warmth of a dinner roll, the cool feel of a beverage, and finally experience the chemical reactions that reward us with taste. All of this isn’t gluttony (more on that article in a future post!); in moderation, it’s human nature. However, when translated to the worlds of paper or pixels, food loses much of its sensory effect over us while gaining a different kind of power.

Exhibit A

Television shows dynamically capture the sights and sounds of food, while cookbooks and blogs showcase static representations of it: two-dimensional formulas, descriptions, and photographs. How do we reconcile societies that are exponentially ‘farming out’ their cooking duties while increasingly churning out consumers of two-dimensional food-themed media? I’d argue that this is symptomatic of our media-driven world: we’re conditioned (see exhibit A) to become spectators and virtual participants. Some children play more sports video games than actual sports. People of any age socialize online. Although I couldn’t find conclusive statistics, I’d say that travel shows attract a lot of people who can’t or simply don’t actually travel. This virtual aspect of our lives isn’t innately a bad thing. Part of being a mere mortal is accepting that one cannot do everything, and people have been living vicariously since the dawn of art, music, and literature. When our health and that of others is at stake, however, it’s a very different story.

There is nothing wrong with reading about a blogger’s latest culinary exploits, watching a cooking or culinary travel show at the end of a long workday, or collecting cookbooks like baseball cards. There is something troubling about losing the will to act on what we watch or read when it comes to food because it correlates with handing over the pots, pans, and all control over nutritional value to an arguably dangerous food industry. And that correlates with expanding waistlines and malfunctioning vital organs everywhere.

Exhibit B

A lot of factors have combined to dissuade us from actively participating in our kitchens. As we discussed in last week’s post, some argue that they simply don’t have the time to cook. The ease and convenience of paying for a pre-made meal rather than paying for fresh ingredients and investing the time and energy required to produce something edible is another very real reason. Moreover, much like the world of Hollywood, the world of cooking has its own celebrities (see exhibit B). And while many people idolize these celebrities enough to emulate them, others are content to admire them from afar. The food itself is as glamorized as any celebrity: it’s

Exhibit C

prepared by pros with gourmet ingredients (or faked with some very inedible ones), set up with props and lighting to its greatest advantage, and photographed and edited with the finest equipment. Food preparation industries benefit from this surreal approach to cooking (see exhibit C), while celebrity cooks, foodies, and gourmets (where these are distinguished from the average home cook) seem to revel in the chance to tell their millions of viewers: you can look, but don’t touch!  

Narrating Food: Part 2

It was one of those days when the clock hands moved at glacial speed, when the pause between each tick and tock was audibly longer than usual. Now, as you make your way home in exasperating traffic, you note how the sun is long gone into another horizon, how tempting the roadside neon signs advertising quick, inexpensive meals are. You love a home-cooked meal as much as the next person, but you give in, picking up a ready-made drive-thru meal or stopping a few minutes to “grab a bite.” At home, at long last, you take a glass of wine from your impressively equipped kitchen and put your feet up in front of the television to watch an hour or so of cooking or culinary travel shows, or maybe you pick up the latest celebrity chef’s cookbook from your bedside table and lose yourself in reading their stories, mentally going over each step in their recipes…

Last week, our cursory overview of the history of food narratives brought up the paradox that this scenario illustrates: even as food-preparation technology advances and becomes accessible to more homes, even as cookbook sales rise and cooking blogs flourish, “home cooking continues to wane,” as Rose Prince notes in her article for the Wall Street Journal “The Decline of European Home Cooking.”

Cynthia Bertelsen, of the Francophile food blog Gherkins & Tomatoes explores in her essay “Philosophy of Food and Cooking, Writing and Life” “why a country that prides itself on efficiency and speed and no-fuss […] wants to read about food and oogle [sic] beautiful pictures of it instead of cooking it or even eating it.” Bertelsen states that reading about food is "safer than the actual act [of cooking]" and concludes: 

Everyone eats. Eating really is universal and reduces life to a common denominator. In ancient times, the saying goes, once two people ate together, no longer were there strangers sitting at the table. In today’s world, stuffed with distrust and rising xenophobia, food may be the only common ground left to us.

The act of eating itself may be a universal common denominator, but the acts of obtaining and preparing food are far too complex to reduce to a unified plane. Whereas Bertelson’s argument is ultimately a philosophical and abstract explanation of the allure of reading and writing about food, other authors have tackled the practical side of the paradox, exploring the reasons why people who theoretically love cooking aren’t doing so.

Rose Prince, mentioned earlier, and Pete Wells, of the New York Times magazine column Cooking with Dexter agree on at least one of these reasons: time, or rather, the lack thereof. Prince declares that “in every European country, families—especially women—complain they simply don't have the time.” She surmises that “the changing role of women in European society in the past 40 or 50 years” has significantly contributed to the decline of home cooking. (Do you support “the accusation that liberated women (who gave up cooking) inadvertently generated a modern irresponsible food industry”? True or not, you can count on a future post about this controversial idea.) 

Rather than arguing the time defense for only women, Wells is adamant that both women and men don’t have time to cook anymore. In his article “Cooking With Dexter: Busy Signal,” Wells endearingly admits that his column about “meals prepared by a working father who cooks […] hasn’t exactly worked out that way.” According to Wells’ own two-years experience with the column:

When people say they’re too busy to cook, it isn’t like when they tell their doctors they exercise three, maybe four times a week. They mean it: they’re too busy to cook, or at least too busy to cook dinner every night of the week before the children go to bed.

The underlying problem is again, work, or rather, the excess of it:

Since the golden age of home cooking — if there ever was such a time — parents work more. And more parents work. If you add up the hours worked by all the adults in the average American household, the change is profound, epochal. In many families, there is nobody around to do housework of any kind, including buying and preparing food.

People love reading and writing about cooking and eating: both are universal and essential. Yet, people are cooking less and eating less healthily: theoretically, it's safer to read about cooking than to engage in it; in more practical terms, there's no time for it in the modern household. Julia Child summed up the paradox nicely when she contended: "Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet." Food and its preparation can be as beautiful and alluring as a ballet. Both usually attract large audiences, not of professionals, but of the enthusiasts that appreciate the art, that secretly yearn for the skill, but that simply don't have the time. 

Narrating Food: Part 1

"No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers."-Laurie Colwin

Hieroglyphs from the Tomb of Seti I

The diffusion of every kind of narrative in every age of history occurs through a variety of mediums. Thus, the history of the cultures that have inhabited our world can be read in everything from cave drawings, hieroglyphics, and scrolls, to sculptures, paintings, and architectures, to oral stories, letters, and books. We undertake every venture in life surrounded by these stories, and they alternately inform, guide, caution, and prescribe the steps that we will take. The medium and the message transmitted vary with the indelible passage of time, but we can be sure that narratives themselves will always accompany us. 

Prometheus Brings
Fire to Mankind
by Heinrich Fueger, 1817

Have you ever considered the narratives of cooking and eating? Some of these narratives are ancient: just think of Eve biting into the forbidden fruit or Prometheus stealing fire from Zeus and handing it to mortals, arguably setting in motion the birth of cooking. As with many narrative threads in history, the visceral story of food and its preparation has been transcribed into modern language: consider Gerber baby food, the cafeteria food that you ate for about thirteen years in public schools, and all of those brand-name products and fast food meals that you’ve consumed throughout your life. Media-saturation is a part of modern life, but certain traditional narratives remain constant.

With food being so central to the sustenance of life and so easily enjoyed as well, it is no wonder that people have put words to its tastes, smells, and textures, recorded its chemical compounds and formulas, and widely distributed this information. Food and fiction writer Laurie Colwin said that no matter how alone a cook appears to be, one is generally surrounded by “generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.” 

Still Life with Coffeepot,
by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

Just the other day, I found myself literally surrounded by these people. Julia Child was prompting me to make something delectable and French, James Beard was arguing for the richness of American cuisine, and myriad unknowns tempted me with collections of what appeared to be the rest of the world’s recipes. Nearby, Cheryl Mendelson was casting her vote for home cooking from her 800+ page tome on home economics. I was in the library, you see, gazing in wonder at the sheer volume of words and pages dedicated to making things to eat and eating them. 

Among all of these books, it was easy to see what Colwin meant. The narrative fiber of humanity runs strongly through kitchens and time, connecting us to all of the cooks ever written about, their stories and their recipes. Yet, these countless books only tell a meager half of the story to modern audiences. Although decidedly less tangible, dedicated television shows and networks, websites, and personal blogs add audio and image to the narrative. How is it, then, that “although a large, enthusiastic minority of home cooks grow more and more sophisticated, the majority become ever more de-skilled” (as Mendelson affirms in her book Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House)? On next week’s menu: an exploration of this paradox. 

The end is where we start from

    Welcome to The Starter Cook! I'm Ariadne Gaskell, a foodie and home-cook newbie (emphasis on new) with a budding passion for all things sweet, salty, and savory (emphasis on sweet).

   You may well question how anyone can harbor a passion for food—isn’t it simply a basic necessity of life? Take, if you will, a mental inventory of the world around you: the truth is that we take this elemental part of our lives for granted far too often. In America, for instance, ever-expanding fast food chains and prepared-food aisles in supermarkets mirror the changing pace of life, the shifting values of an entire population. As author Thomas McNamee asserts in his article “Cooking,” from The New York Times, these trends go hand-in-hand with “the chain-linked epidemics of obesity, diabetes, arteriosclerosis and cancer.” Alternatively, in her article “The Decline of European Home Cooking,” from The Wall Street Journal, Rose Prince reasons that issues such as social and economic restructuring after World War II, including urbanization and female liberation, placed European families at the risk of “rearing a generation of ‘kitchen orphans’ who have never seen their mothers use the oven.”  

   In light of the sobering realization that cooking and eating have taken such a markedly negative turn, the phenomenon currently sweeping through bookstores, television-attuned homes, and the Internet is particularly astonishing. McNamee remarks: “while accurate statistics don’t seem to exist, the cooking sections of bookstores look to be overflowing [and] sales of a hundred thousand copies aren’t uncommon.” In addition to bookstore aisles, food has entire television networks, with their scores of celebrity chefs, dedicated to it. Moreover, anyone with access to the Internet has—literally, at their fingertips—a wealth of individual blogs cataloguing food that is made, photographed, and written about by authors that range from professionals, epicures, and gourmets to home-cooks, foodies, and hobbyists.

   Prince rightly argues that there is no substitute for the traditional process of learning how to cook from one’s parents. Nevertheless, as I reflect on the current relationships with food in the world around me, I feel grateful that there is a community of food lovers on print, on television, online that generously share their advice, recipes, and even gorgeous food photographs, that stand in for the cultural, communal traditions of buying, making, and eating food which seem to have disappeared and left us orphaned in the kitchen. I hope to explore the intricate evolution of this relationship throughout recent history: how passed-down recipe cards and cookbooks switched places with television shows, networks, websites, and blogs to provide inspiration and education for anyone around the world who wishes to rebuild their relationship with food. If you, dear reader, are among the novices like me, or are perhaps orphaned from or out-of-touch with the wonder of a home-cooked meal, take heart in T.S. Elliot's wise words, quoted in this post's title: "What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."