My whole life I have been considered a picky eater. To this day, I have never eaten: sushi, Thai food, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, or any fruit that wasn't mashed, juiced, or baked in a muffin.
When I started actually cooking for myself, my tastes tended to go towards chicken in a frying pan with some kind of pasta. Maybe rice if I was feeling especially culinary. I can remember sitting down to a meal of chicken and spaghetti with my then-boyfriend, now husband and thinking "I have to do this every night for the rest of my life or I'll starve to death."
Starving to death seemed like a not-so-bad idea.
Then, I hit upon a revelation. Cooking could be fun. Cooking could be a skill I could learn. I could make food that tasted good and actually have fun doing it. I started reading Bitten and the NPR cooking blog. I asked my mom for recipes. I cultivated show-stopper meals (lasagna with homemade pasta dough and tomato sauce). I even started a blog.
But there was a problem. My recipes still tended towards the chicken-and-pasta spectrum. Everything I made did the backstroke in butter. If there was an ingredient I didn't like (lots of things, but mostly onions), I cut it out of the recipe. My food tended to be bland, if enthusiastically made.
And there I could have stayed, but then I discovered something that changed the way I thought about food: it could taste really freaking good.
I know! Withhold rolling eyes, please. What I mean is, food that's prepared well with good ingredients will usually taste delicious. And I like delicious. Following recipes takes some skill and knowledge and time (or, if you're Thomas Keller, some yet-to-be-diagnosed food-based masochism), but generally, a good recipe followed to a T will produce really delicious food.
This is what I learned, and armed with this new knowledge, I set off to teach myself how to cook. Really cook. As in, follow a complex recipe and emerge with a better understand of food, flavor, and technique.
My big goal is to be able to walk into any kitchen and create a fabulous meal from just stuff in the pantry (almost did it a few months ago with a tomato, pepperoni, and smoked paprika pasta...).
My little goal is to keep me and my husband alive.
And so, to both those ends, I try out new recipes every week. I use every top-of-the-line appliance from my bridal shower stash. And when the husband and I sit down to my latest creation and take the first bite, the number one question we ask is:
Did it make the list?
