Welcome to Ken's Cuisine: Your Food Adventure Starts Here

Okay, first off, I have no idea what that soup is in the picture above. AI put it there (the picture, not the soup...well, I don't think AI made the soup...but these days, you never can tell). Anyway, that's just a quick caveat to explain why this post isn't about a cup of rather dubious looking soup.

So,what is this post about? It's about good cooks. Not great chefs, not food celebrities, not about anyone "famous." It is rather, about the good cooks who just get busy in the kitchen and turn out delicious and amazing meals on a regular basis. I actually wrote a blog entry back in the day about this topic, but it has since been lost in the mists of time (sic transit gloria mundi).

So, what is good cooking. I've seen it defined as "picking the finest quality ingredients and preparing them simply, to let their quality shine through." That looks very well on paper, but honestly, my reaction to that is "stuff and nonsense." Getting out of the way of the ingredients is taking the cook out of the kitchen. To me, a great cook is someone who can take simple, available ingredients and make something wonderful from them-something that is more than the sum of its parts.

The good cooks that put me on my path were people like my grandmothers and my mother. Women like my great-aunts and aunts. Most of them were mothers cooking for their families and communities. The did a days work as farmwives, nurses, editors (it wasn't all rural), etc. And then, they turned their hands to getting dinner on the table or packing lunches or starting off the day with a good breakfast. They didn't always have premium ingredients or enormous variety. Sure, the farmwives had access to some amazing fresh produce, meat, and dairy in their seasons. But they were also limited in other ways. Grocery stores weren't always conveniently nearby and they mostly were just that: a grocery store, not a supermarket.

So, in this world of cooking, you used what you had and what you could get. But you used technique and skill to turn your ingredients into something great. In the summer, you take the massive over-flow of fruits and vegetables and preserve them in so many delicious ways: jams, jellies, pickles, canned stuff (anything and everything that could fit in a Mason jar was canned). Veggies and fruits were picked at the peak of ripeness and then frozen for use later in the year. And when the time came to use them, they were wonderful reminders of summer at a season that might otherwise be looking a bit bleak.

On a budget, you don't always have the option of buying prime beef or a fancy capon. Sometimes, what you can get is a cheap chuck-roast or a package chicken thighs. But with some imagination, some careful handling, and some care, you could produce a pot roast that was a miracle of unctuous deeply-browned richness or a simple chicken pot pie that exuded a sense of creamy comfort. It might be a simple trick of when you add the vegetables to the roast or adding just a splash of mushroom tea to your pot pie. It could be the choice to add a few tangerine peels to the beef or take the time to make a puff pastry case for the pot pie. It might be the creative flash of inspiration that led someone to layer the sliced pot roast with rice and cheese and tomato sauce and make a pseudo-lasagna or that decides to add apricots and black olives to the chicken with some warming spices because of something the cook read about in a story set in Morocco.

Good cooking is in the hands, guided by the senses, inspired by thoughts and dreams and the desire to create something better than "good enough." In the film Babette's Feast, inspired by the story by Karen Blixen, the titular character, a good cook as well as a grand chef, says "throughout the world sounds one long cry from the heart of the artist: give me the chance to do my very best." A good cook is an artist, and however simple or humble their kitchen, they will take the chance and do their very best. My hope is that you will find that voice of the artist inside yourself and that cooking will give you a chance to do your very best also.