Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
What makes a good cook? My husband and I discussed this recently. Is it the ability to read a recipe? If that was the only criteria, anyone that could read would cook well. After a bit of back and forth, we decided that some of the ingredients that make a good cook are:
- Enjoyment of eating – seeing eating as something more than just filling the gap, a mechanical action that has to occur in order to live.
- Aesthetic hunger – often described as an appetite, or longing, for food.
- Make cooking limitless by liking a variety of foods, prepared in different ways. I’ve read about people who only eat 4 or 5 different foods. Trying to cook well with only 4 or 5 items would present a challenge for the most seasoned chef (especially if those foods in combination would not result in a pleasing dish).
- People who cut out entire food groups from their diet make cooking limiting, to say nothing of the potential long-term consequences to their health.
- A desire to create.
- An interest in food. Some people just do not like food or even see food as the enemy.
- A willingness to experiment, to see beyond the recipe which, I always say, is just a guideline.
- An understanding of ingredients, a basic knowledge of how they work (i.e. what makes baked goods rise) and an idea of appropriate substitutions if one doesn’t have the requested ingredient on hand – nuts are nuts, cheese is cheese, and so forth. A slight alternation in flavor may occur with substitutions but may not result in a critical change to the overall dish. (Sometimes substitution experimentation is done through trial and error.)
From what I’ve observed in our circle of friends, the people who truly seem to enjoy eating make the best cooks over those who view food as merely a means to an end (i.e. staying alive.)
That said, we could cure world hunger if a pill was developed that made one feel full, and gave one all one’s nutritional and caloric needs for the day. And just think of all the time we would have for other pursuits.
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What do you think makes a good cook? Join in the discussion by leaving a comment!
