The Passion of the Cook
By Susan Rebecca White - November 17, 2008
More Posts by Susan Rebecca White
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April 28, 2009
I have always loved to cook.
My mother swears that I successfully cracked my first egg when I was two.
At eight I’d write the grocery list, and Mom would drop me off at the A&P while she ran other errands. Ladies would watch, bemused, as I tapped one melon after another, listening for the hollow sound that is the telltale sign of ripeness.
I fixed chicken with wild mushrooms for my grandmother once when she was babysitting, writing the menu on my mother’s thick stationary and beginning the evening by offering Grandma a cocktail.
I was eleven.
During college, while my friends were writing honors theses and getting into grad school, I was cooking them dinners of breaded chicken and mashed potatoes, brunches of grits casserole and fruit salad.
And then I married a man so crazy about food he drove ten hours to attend the country ham festival in Cadiz, Kentucky after being served his first slice of the salty, smoky stuff.
Is it any wonder that doing so raised my passion for cooking to a new level?
It was my husband who got me to pay attention to where my food was coming from. Now, rather than buy pork chops and flank steak at the supermarket, bleeding on their Styrofoam slabs, I buy shares of meat from a local farm. Though I know the animals were raised humanely, and I know the meat will taste delicious, I don’t know exactly which cuts of the animal I will get. It’s a grab bag of parts, not for the faint of heart, but a lot of fun for someone who reads cookbooks even while on vacation, far away from a stove of one’s own.
I’ll spend all weekend making a ragu from the tougher cuts of pork and beef, softening the meat by cooking it for hours with aromatic vegetables, butter, wine, stock and milk. This I will layer with homemade lasagna noodles, béchamel sauce and Parmigiano Reggiano, baking the casserole until it is browned on top, the white sauce bubbling beneath its crust of cheese.
To tell friends of this dish is to invite irritation.
“I just don’t have that kind of time,” they will say, while I cringe and apologize.
But honestly, one look at my filthy car, the growing mold on my shower tiles, my unfiled tax receipts (thank you automatic extension!) will tell you that there are plenty of other things I should be doing instead of cooking.
That’s the problem—and the blessing—of a passion.
My mother swears that I successfully cracked my first egg when I was two.
At eight I’d write the grocery list, and Mom would drop me off at the A&P while she ran other errands. Ladies would watch, bemused, as I tapped one melon after another, listening for the hollow sound that is the telltale sign of ripeness.
I fixed chicken with wild mushrooms for my grandmother once when she was babysitting, writing the menu on my mother’s thick stationary and beginning the evening by offering Grandma a cocktail.
I was eleven.
During college, while my friends were writing honors theses and getting into grad school, I was cooking them dinners of breaded chicken and mashed potatoes, brunches of grits casserole and fruit salad.
And then I married a man so crazy about food he drove ten hours to attend the country ham festival in Cadiz, Kentucky after being served his first slice of the salty, smoky stuff.
Is it any wonder that doing so raised my passion for cooking to a new level?
It was my husband who got me to pay attention to where my food was coming from. Now, rather than buy pork chops and flank steak at the supermarket, bleeding on their Styrofoam slabs, I buy shares of meat from a local farm. Though I know the animals were raised humanely, and I know the meat will taste delicious, I don’t know exactly which cuts of the animal I will get. It’s a grab bag of parts, not for the faint of heart, but a lot of fun for someone who reads cookbooks even while on vacation, far away from a stove of one’s own.
I’ll spend all weekend making a ragu from the tougher cuts of pork and beef, softening the meat by cooking it for hours with aromatic vegetables, butter, wine, stock and milk. This I will layer with homemade lasagna noodles, béchamel sauce and Parmigiano Reggiano, baking the casserole until it is browned on top, the white sauce bubbling beneath its crust of cheese.
To tell friends of this dish is to invite irritation.
“I just don’t have that kind of time,” they will say, while I cringe and apologize.
But honestly, one look at my filthy car, the growing mold on my shower tiles, my unfiled tax receipts (thank you automatic extension!) will tell you that there are plenty of other things I should be doing instead of cooking.
That’s the problem—and the blessing—of a passion.
