The Benefits of Cooking for Yourself
I love to cook. I love the person that I become when I am cooking. From choosing a recipe to market shopping to chopping ingredients to heating the pan to the lovely aroma of garlic sizzling in olive oil, every step is a journey of discovery.
I first learned to cook in high school. We had a home economics course and I managed to whip up a decently baked chicken a la king, just by following the instructions to a T. This was an epiphany because it validated for the first time the axiom “If you can read, you can cook.” It was not as hard as I originally thought.
One summer, I took a week-long culinary course for kids, even though I was already about to enter college. It was one of those strange circumstances that managed to work out when the age limit is 16 and you happen to be 17 and there is really no program for a 17-year-old and it was just me and my friend so they gave us two slots. Each day, we would discover a different country through its cuisine: Monday was for Italian, Tuesday was Spanish, Wednesday was Chinese, and so on. The instructor made us taste everything we cooked and let us keep the recipes. It was fun, and it triggered a lifelong passion for food and cooking.
Making magic in the kitchen involves many moving parts, and my favorite things each have a role to play: books, music, wine, planning, and organization. I…
