What is cooking? It's the manipulation of ingredients to make them edible. That's it. It can be done with the application of heat, salt, or acid (am I missing another?). But basically when you take away all the fancy BS that clouds cooking, that is the basic task:
Take ingredients, clean it and mess with it until it's edible, repeat.
However the magic come right there with the term "mess with it."
Nowadays, it's so easy to think that cooking is basically turning you pan hot, sear your protein, oven to finish, apply acid and flavor and liquid to remaining fat in pan, reduce, serve along side your favorite carb. (be it taters or bread or pasta)
However, what the everyday cook is missing the the inspiration that goes into the "mess with" part of cooking. Paul Bocuse wrapped fish with thinly sliced potatoes to give it a different texture - the exact reverse of the fillet of bass on top of mash you've had for so long in the late 90's. He flipped the script and made the potato the crunch. But that's old news.
I'm an amateur cook. Well, even though technically I've been paid for cooking for people that doesn't exactly make me a pro. I'm still a very green cook who's trying very hard to know what it is like to actually cook on reflex. So far in my own imaginary kitchen world I've only made it to a commis who manages to fill in on the saute station once in a while. That's about it. Even then, I feel myself limited to the searing of proteins while making the appropriate sauces that goes with said protein.
My biggest epiphany of cooking came when I tried to make a few dishes from the French Laundry Cookbook. That's when I realized that cooking is much more like making live theatre than the normal "cooking" you and I do in our everyday home kitchen.
Everything HAS to be preplanned and prepared. I do mean everything - from the marquee ingredients to the garnishes. Only at service do they all come together to make the perfect performance. But that's not the end of it. It's only the beginning. Because unless you're into the dinner party world, you need to replicate that performance again and again until the service it over. Then do it again next day! It would be the nailing your given lines on stage over and over again. That's why most chefs I know don't like hosting dinner parties. I mean, what kind of bullshit is that? lol.
I'm too old at this point to enter a professional kitchen and try to make a go of it as a career. As Cedric the Entertainer once said, "I'm old, body weary..." I don't think that's the way for me. However, my family DOES own a restaurant - and it would be unthinkable if I didn't try to use that kitchen to at least attempt to live out my dream as a cook. Lol just what do you serve at an Asian influenced french food into at an Americanized Chinese food place?
Anyways, I'm sure we'll figure something out. After all, isn't that what cooking it all about? I mean, you've got to be one HELLUVA cook to make chicken salad out of chicken sH&t.
And isn't that what cooking's all about?
