On cooking and recipes...

I thought that, for those who aren't already used to being frustrated at getting an "ummmmm..." in return for a polite request for a recipe, I would take a moment to explain food, cooking, recipes and where they fit in my world.

By the time I was able to get my nose up to the counter, my Mom had me cooking and marketing for good food.  I say marketing, not shopping, because I was born and raised in South East Asia and many of my earliest memories involve trolling the early morning wet markets for fresh ingredients. 

Chicken?  Yes, I'll take that reddish brown hen over there, running around in the corner - she looks healthy.  Then off to pick out vegetables so fresh sometimes there was damp dirt still clinging to roots.  Fish only if it looked like it still had a flop or two left in it.  Need some pork?  It came off of a freshly butchered pig that still looked just like the animal pork comes from, and spices were ground while you waited for you custom blend.  "Curry for lamb, ah?" and the Serganoon Road spice seller would shuffle around his burlap bags of whole spices concocting the best mix for you before grinding it under your sneezing nose. I didn't grow up in a world where spices came out of a red and white can, vegetables from a stay fresh freezer bag, or meat from a row of uniform plastic wrapped trays.  Oh hey, we need to get back to the chicken guy, I bet our bird is ready to go home - featherless, innardless, lifeless but otherwise intact from beak to claws.

I grew up understanding and appreciating that which all of our food comes from: the earth, the ocean, the lives, the labor and art of harvesting and butchering. 

I also grew up in a food loving family and a family who loved through food.  Not fancy food, just real good eats.  I grew up surrounded by the best of not just South East Asia, but the American Deep South from my father's family roots and the American Mid-West from my mother's side.  I moved to the United States the summer of my eighteenth birthday, a US citizen who had never lived here before.  My introduction to local food was horrifying since it came in the form of the worst sort of college cafeteria food. If it had not been for the kitchens full of cooks in my extended family of relatives and friends, I may have concluded that there was no edible food in these United States. 

What I know how to cook, really know, I learned from watching cooks who didn't measure and whose recipe collection existed between their ears or, if it was complicated, was represented by a collection of yellowed paper scraps and index cards that may, or may not, come complete with detailed instructions or precise amounts ... or amounts at all, for that matter.  Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, roommates, in-laws and out-laws - they all taught me a different style, a different art of cooking.

Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with cookbooks.  And there are a different set of things I cook that I learned from books and formal recipes.  When I share those, I'll be sure to explain where the recipe originated.  I'm a big fan of citing my sources (one too many rounds of graduate school, I supsect).  

As I got older I also became more and more concerned with the decrease of real food and the increase of food science.  I started making more basics from scratch when I could: granola, biscuit mix, bread and found that not only were they cheap and easy, they beat the commercial options to smack and back on taste.

All of these influences have woven together over the years and made cooking and sharing what I have made with my own hands a way of living and loving: a celebration of life, family, friends, and an appreciation of all the world has to offer.  Which isn't to say I don't have Doritos for dinner or coffee (just coffee, thanks) for breakfast some days.  

L'chaim!