At the beginning of the year, I barely cooked. I had maybe made pasta or cupcakes from Betty Crocker, but that was about it. Oh, and buttered toast and oatmeal. I finally used this as an opportunity to learn how to cook properly. If I can do it, you can too.
Logistics
Perishability was the first consideration. Anything that could be stored in the cupboard was superior to something that had to be refrigerated. Expiration dates that were furthest in the future were best.
So was ease of carrying. Dry goods, to me, were superior to canned goods. Why would I use energy to carry tin when cardboard packaging was far lighter? The other thing I took advantage of was having water delivered to the home via pipes.
Tea quickly replaced bottled drinks since you could create a six liter drink from ounces of leaves. (Go-to brands: Barry’s Tea & Yorkshire Gold for large batches and Taylors of Harrogate Specialty Teas for small batches. I did not have easy access to Mariage Frères.) It also had the benefit of being brought to a temperature that killed pathogens.
While caloric density could have been a consideration, I didn’t prioritize it because (a) it wouldn’t be healthy and (b) I would’ve just ended up with lard, which has the highest caloric density at 9 calories per gram.
The absolute basics
I started with first principles. Which dishes require the least ingredients? Pasta: water and flour. Shortbread: sugar, butter, and flour. I suspect the low number of ingredients drove the popularity of sourdough bread: flour, water, yeast, and salt. I didn’t actually make sourdough because I didn’t want to deal with the variability in outcomes caused by yeast when I was just starting out.
Inputs using the lowest number of SKUs is actually what’s meant by a “Mother Sauce”. The five mother sauces have the least complexity in terms of number of ingredients. The daughter sauces are then derivations of mother sauces. For example, when making macaroni and cheese, you start with the mother sauce known as Béchamel. It’s only three ingredients: butter, flour, and milk. You can then branch to daughter sauces once you’ve made the mother sauce. In this case, adding cheese turns Béchamel sauce into Mornay sauce. Once you know this, you will never touch Kraft or Velveeta ever again.
There’s a great series by Alex Ainouz on mother sauces that might be the best resource on the topic since Escoffier. It’s certainly the most entertaining.
Another thing worked on was aromatics. There is mirepoix, which is a French soffritto. What is a soffritto? An Italian mirepoix: onions, carrots, and celery. The main difference is the fat, with French cuisine using butter and Italian cuisine using olive oil. These aromatics form the basis of many dishes and have cousins in Spanish (sofrito) and Cajun (holy trinity) cuisine. While my local grocery store actually had ingredients for mirepoix/soffritto prepackaged, I bought the raw ingredients because my purpose was to use this as an excuse to work on my knife skills.
Which brings me to technique. Jacques Pepin literally wrote the book on technique. I was basically obsessed with making a French omelette that had some passing resemblance to Pepin’s. I’ve spent a lot of time on eggs because unless they’re boiled (you just need a timer), eggs extremely difficult to master:
Speaking of eggs…
Protein
The first time I heard of sous vide was from Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine. I did not go that route. While it looks like amazing food, working with liquid nitrogen and Pacojet machines seemed like the equivalent of diving into the Marianas Trench when you’re just learning how to swim. A sous vide bath would also require counterspace. So I went down the route of the reverse sear via Serious Eats. Other methods can be found here.
While protein can be intimidating, the main thing you need to know is it’s all about temperature. The best investment you can therefore make to perfect your protein is a meat thermometer (I personally use the ProNeedle).
And uses extend beyond just measuring the doneness of your meat. Does your carbonara become scrambled eggs? Target 65 degrees Celsius. What’s the difference between praline and brittle? Temperature.
Source local
I’m a block away from a great Italian market, so I went in search of ur-sources for Italian recipes. The best channel for authenticity is, hands down, Italia Squisita. They have an amusing series where Italian chefs have horrified Uncle Roger style reactions to YouTube videos of Italian dishes executed in less-than-authentic ways. But if you just want the recipes, here are the ones I’ve bookmarked:
Of course, your market will likely be different. So if your local market is French, go for French cuisine. If it’s Japanese, go for Japanese cuisine.
Efficiency
Efficiency of clean up is also an important consideration. Hence, minimize the number of cooking vessels by searching for one pan or one pot meals. I searched for an authentic paella Valenciana (which does not include seafood) and found a recipe from elBulli alumnus Omar Allibhoy.
Another efficiency gain comes from parallel cooking. Allhiboy has a recipe in Tapas Revolution that involves roasting potatoes underneath a suckling pig. This can get messy, so for roasting, I’ve just done chicken on a trivet, with the roasted vegetables becoming the side dish rather than the source for gravy. It’s also a good way to clean out the crisper if you have extra mirepoix ingredients.
In conclusion
I never expected to spend the year learning how to cook. But if you have to learn how to do something, why not learn how to do it well? You will, of course, be at a comparative disadvantage compared to Michelin-starred chefs who’ve gone to culinary school and spent years apprenticing at the toughest restaurants.
But we run even when we’re not Usain Bolt. We golf even though we’re not Tiger Woods. We race even though we’re not Lewis Hamilton. Why not cook?
Chef series worth checking out:
Practical channels:
Random recipes I’ve bookmarked but haven’t mentioned above:
—Italian Tries Domino's Pizza for the First Time | Italians Try American Pizza - YouTube. This is good, but I think the times are too high.