Splash No. 173 - Cheffin'
Cheffin’
After years of experiencing watching every food show known to man and helping others cook by prepping vegetables, I found myself alone in the kitchen. This moment was an inflection point, one where I could finally feel like I had some sense of how to cook. I’d trained for years for this, watching every food show known to man, from the American Top Chef and Australian My Kitchen Rules to the Japanese Shokugeki no Soma and the random people on TikTok offering easy and delicious recipes. I had amassed a great deal of culinary knowledge, trying to eat widely and explore the gustatory landscapes of different cuisines whenever possible.
Despite my rich history in the gastronomic arts, I’ve rarely cooked actual meals. Yes, I can make some wonderfully light scrambled eggs and a near-perfect grilled cheese sandwich or a serviceable waffle. And yes, I’m an accomplished baker when I forget to get someone a gift and need to quickly whip up some blondies. Yet, none of these things feel like real cooking, the type that involves a diversity of ingredients, cooked at different points in a particular order to create something to be shared for dinner. I’d prepared dinners before, like tacos or pasta or veggie burgers, yet those largely relied on simply prepping a variety of store-bought ingredients. To truly feel like I could be a real cook, I had to be able to cook a meal in the same way that my mother did — with Indian food.
And so I stood in the kitchen with a single-minded purpose — I would make an Indian dinner for me and my brother. I would begin to catch up to his skill in the kitchen and finally rise past simply prepping ingredients for him to being able to serve us something to eat. The dish: paneer bhurji, a simple preparation of the classic Indian cheese using onions, tomato, ginger, garlic, peppers, and a few different spices. And prepare I did, after visiting multiple grocery stores to find the ingredients, shedding the appropriate amount of tears that an onion requires, dicing way too many tomatoes, and having no idea how much salt “to taste” was. I ended up with a completely edible dish, which was only lacking a bit of spice and salt, but otherwise resembled my mother’s cooking in the way that Taco Bell resembles Mexican food — vaguely, while still being delicious.
Here I stand, on the other side of cooking my first real meal, feeling a little bit too proud of following a simple recipe. But it feels like more than that, the first domino to fall in my journey as a cook. It’s a first that makes future meals seem more accessible. There was a time when it felt momentous to crack an egg without leaving a shell in, or to write a single newsletter, or to call the doctor to schedule an appointment (this one’s still scary honestly). The power of those momentous occasions is their ability to dispel the unknown and make the task seem easier in the future. Even though I might be getting ahead of myself by browsing the selection at chefuniforms.com, I also feel like cooking this meal will lead to many more. So for now, I celebrate this first meal and look forward to the ones that will follow.
Drops of the Week
SINGLE - "All By Yourself" by AIR APPARENT - hot new single by THE AIR APPARENT AKA ERIC PARENT AKA THE BROTHER MENTIONED IN THIS LETTER.
ARTICLE - "Why We Speak More Weirdly at Home" by Kathryn Hymes - my family and I speak in ways that are probably incomprehensible and it's great.
POEM - "Escape from the Old Country" by Adrienne Su - "Yet the land occupies the person even as the semblance of freedom invites a kind of recklessness."
With each day, we can move closer to a more equitable world. Reminders:
Donate to Help Afghan Refugees Settle in NorCal Mutual Aid Networks
Anti-racism resources
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Gastronomically,
Nikhil