LEARNING TO COOK
Sitting here reading about the passing of Julie Powell, who you may remember from the movie Julie & Julia. Julie's claim to fame was blogging about her project to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”.
I am reminded of my early years learning to cook. I pretty much fed myself during the last few years of high school. I was a semi adult at this point, youngest kid and my brothers had long since left home. My parents figured their term was up and set me up with a credit card and a car.
I could have driven up the road to the regular grocery store, but I was a teenager and therefore lazy as hell. So, despite said car, I shopped at the grocery store across the street from my school - a bottega for the ultra rich, nouveau and old. This store in the eighties, was ahead of the curve on non seasonal foods shipped in from across the planet (peaches came individually wrapped, the size of baseballs) and show off cuts of meat (Wagu anyone?). These days its not even as Bougie as a Wholefoods, but at the time was really ‘gag me with a spoon’ worthy. Example: They hired a private crossing guard who routinely stopped traffic in the middle of rush hour to let the Chanel suit wearing, Jaguar driving, matrons exit the parking lot without having to wait.
As such, my shopping and eating habits were more akin to a wealthy New Yorker who blithely selected largely prepared high end food that required little more than a fry pan. All of which to say, that though I fed myself from an early age, and got comfortable in a kitchen, I didnt really cook until later in life when I was in graduate school.
When I was writing my Masters thesis, I didn’t know anyone in the city and M was away at work or travelling most days. I was a person who literally invited the door to door solicitors inside to “hear more”. Cooking dinner was my social event of the day (week/month). So to avoid the scorn of the MS-dos cursor, and provide an excuse to visit the deli counter guy, I dove into teaching myself to cook.
My tactic was similar to Julie Powell’s. I bought a copy of Bon Appétit and a copy of Gourmet each month and I cooked my way through them. Escargot on a Tuesday night? Sure why not? Ingredients that required a four hour shopping outing and random ingredients from ten different stores/neighbourhoods? Ideal! Three layer cake with elaborate filling, icing AND a ganache? For two people? Bring it! I no longer had my parents credit card, and was surviving on student grants and loans, but I was a product of my upbringing and every dime went to ingredients.
Even then, when I had no idea what I was doing, I didn’t follow (or read) the recipes. The results were often spectacularly terrible - especially given that I continually ruined expensive ingredients I couldn’t afford. I learned everything the hard way. For example, I learned to tighten the pour holes on the top of the blender when making spinach soup that sprayed up like Vitruvius and coated every inch of there kitchen (including ceiling) in dark green goo. I still haven’t learned to make the three layer cakes, but have long since decided to lean into that as my ’signature weakness’. (One year when I actually achieved a passable birthday cake, the girls were disappointed.)
Circling back to Julie Powell and her year of cooking French food…Julie took on the project as a means to recover from, or at least distract herself from, her 9/11 PTSD. Learning to cook served no such restorative function for me, but I can certainly relate to how immersing yourself in creative outlets can help the soul - even if you are terrible at it. And you never know where seemingly random endeavours can lead. Julie became a famous “blogess” and Nora Ephron made a movie about her. But even if Julie Powell’s project hadn’t had that outcome, she at least upgraded herself beyond IchiBan noodles.
This rambling does feel like it has a moral or message. But ignore that! Julie, & I, were distracting ourselves - and that is the ultimate/only purpose of this “story".