I love this time of year. I admit it, I'm a creature of habit and routine of some sort suits my personality. It's almost like a mini-new year, without having to publicly state a resolution I may or may not be able to follow through. I can finally conquer my to-do lists and catch up with everything set aside during the summer. More often than not, the catch up includes experimenting with a few new cooking techniques or unfamiliar ingredients.Which got me thinking. While I'm not alone in my risk-taker status in the kitchen, I'm aware I'm not in the majority. Clients tell me all the time how their high interest in cooking is trumped by an overwhelming fear. The first time I heard this, years ago, I was shocked. Afraid to cook? My escape, my love, my creative outlet, my place ... to be ... fearless. Afraid? Huh?!
I recently came across the following list, "Why We're Afraid to Cook," submitted by the readers of Smitten Kitchen and compiled by the blogger. I could have paraphrased, but it hits the high notes so beautifully, I'm sharing the whole list (read it, you'll like it):
1. Our mother or mother-in-law cooks it better: Whether it is out of respect, deference or certainty that your version will pale, it seems that there are many of you who don’t even want to touch dishes that are others’ signatures.
2. The Food Police scared us: They’ve struck an absurd amount of fear into our hearts, now our panic over undercooked chicken and eggs or imperfectly canned food is so great, we cannot approach either calmly or rationally. (Don’t worry, I’ll get to all of these in time.)
3. It went really badly the last time (or times) we made it: So you’ve responded by keeping your distance. Had I not been actually forced by the deadline of the wedding and my desire to make a specific frosting for the wedding cake, I would have taken a year to get back to Swiss buttercream. At least.
4. We jinx ourselves: Failure is so often a self-fulfilling prophesy, wherein we are so certain something is going to go wrong, we indeed make some futzy errors. (This would be me, with phyllo, every single time.)
5. It’s hard to get our head around the steps: I admit, I feel more confident when I can remember a recipe without even looking back at it, because it is simple, or proceeds in logical steps. I always forget that I’m only expected to do one thing at a time.
6. There’s a very specific deal breaker: It requires pig’s blood, will stink up your apartment or serve 24 people. Kim Severson discussed these in a funny article in the New York Times last month, and she’s absolutely right. It only takes one word of some of these for me to flip the page and call out “next!”
7. We’re afraid of wasting an expensive ingredient: Many of you mentioned this in reference to large cuts of meat and good fish, where the price of making an error seems so steep, a flop is that much more of a risk. I totally get it as when I blow it on a pricey dish, I feel that much more awful about it.
8. Our skills aren’t where we wish they were: Recipes that require poached eggs, when you’re terrible at poaching eggs, just seem easier to skip. So can instructions that demand a fine brunoise or long, thin juliennes if you haven’t taken a semester of knife skills, or have a natural finesse in the area (or a really good mandoline, at least in the case of juliennes).
Sound familiar?
Enough of the diagnostics. We're here with the solution. Join us this fall for a new class, Six Basic Cooking Skills. We'll start with the biggies, including those knife skills, as well as the oft-mentioned, cooking with leafy greens. We don't know how you've lived without them this long (so sad).
We've also expanded our schedule and will offer the class on 2 separate dates, September 30 and October 20, 2010. Finally, in an effort to increase access to Essen, we've added a new tier to our pricing structure, Pay What You Can. We'll try it out for the September Class and see how it's received.
Let us know how these additions meet your needs. Enough with the reading. Get up and into the kitchen. We're here for you. Just sign up already!
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