Learning Through Stories: How Did You Learn To Cook?
Today begins the second round of the Learning Through Stories project on the Brilliant Blog. (See here and here for stories from the first round, about learning to ride a bike.) A lot of scientific research—and our own experience—demonstrates that we understand and remember material best when it’s presented to us as a narrative, or when we tell our own story about it. So, once a week, I invite you to share your stories of where and when and how you learned something in particular. And I’ll be asking you to do one additional, perhaps challenging thing that is nevertheless the key to the exercise: to draw out a generalizable lesson from your story that could apply to the learning of other things, and could be used by people other than yourself.
The question this week is: “How did you learn to cook?” Please write your answer below, and try to include as many details about when, where, and how it happened, as well as what lesson you can draw from it. I’ll start:
I learned how to cook at the advanced age of 20, when I met a man (now my husband) who owned cookbooks and knew how to make chili and deep-dish pizza and sauteed red peppers. Intrigued, I started reading his cookbooks (the one I remember best is Trattoria, by Patricia Wells), and trying my hand at the recipes. I had a lot of knowledge and skills to master (What were oil-cured olives? How did one use cilantro?) but I was motivated by the desire to impress, and nourish, my new boyfriend. I made one dish, pan-seared chicken with sage and lemon, so often we got sick of it. But master it I did, and to this day I can make it without thinking twice.
One of the most important steps I took as a budding cook was to start reading the magazine Cook’s Illustrated; it’s a fantastic learning tool because it explains why things work and don’t work in the kitchen. Its writers try, and fail, and learn from their failures; sometimes they consult the test kitchen’s in-house scientist for expert opinion. It’s a model for how to improve at anything, and it may be a testament to my own growing skill that I now do all the cooking at our house. My husband has bequeathed his copy of Trattoria to me.
OK, your turn! How did you learn to cook?
I experimented. I remember the first thing I made myself as a kid. BBQ hotdogs. I thought, “I like barbecue sauce and I like hotdogs. How about cut up the hotdogs, cook them in sauce, add some oregano, parsley, pepper flakes. This is going to be great!” I ate it, but wow was it horrible. Since then, being an only child of two working parents, I found myself experimenting a lot in the kitchen. Eventually, I was grilling, sautéing, and baking…finding recipes in books and trying them out. Then tweaking them. It all came down to having confidence in the kitchen, confidence is trying new things. Sometimes it didn’t come out right, but then you knew what to change for the next time. I’ve recently starting making Maryland crab cakes from scratch. I followed a recipe or two to start, but now that I have the basics, I make it how I want it…no recipe needed.
When I was 12 I had both knees operated on at the same time and had casts from my hips to my ankles on both legs for 24 weeks. Couldn’t play sports for an entire year. Came across a cookbook that had a cool cover and started cooking everything in it. Pound cakes, Wonton soup from scratch, Coq au Vin….Most important ingredient in every meal– My mother’s patience. She’d return from work with amazement in what Learned to do and how messy I was doing it. Pound cake used a dozen eggs every time I made one. And needless to say flour everywhere and lots of dishes. Took me a while to make the connection of cooking AND doing the clean up.
Bizarre as it may sound, in April, at the age of 50, I learned to cook while completing a month-long fast. It was my first lengthy fast and undertaken to heal chronic digestive problems. I fasted on distilled water only for the first 26 days, then a few days of fruit juice and broth. During this time I obsessed over food and for the first time in my life I began watching cooking shows on TV — in fact, I watched them one after another. It was a kind of gastronomic pornography to me. When I ended my fast, I shopped for groceries as well as various cooking utensils and pans. Inspired by the cooking shows, I copied what I had seen on TV and found I liked the control cooking my own food gives me over what goes into my body. Learning to cook by not eating. It’s not for everyone.
I learned to cook at my mother’s elbow, watching her and helping make the Sunday lunch particularly. Mum decided to teach me to cook specific meals when I was 11 and ‘mince and tatties’ was top of her agenda. She went off to play golf and I decided to surprise her and make the mince while she was out. I managed all the rest well but couldn’t find onions. After searching around the kitchen I found a ‘net’ of what I thought was onions but was actually daffodil bulbs. I persevered thinking the ‘onions’ seemed different but at least they didn’t cause tears to stream down my face like the last time. when the family returned and I served up the masterpiece, Mum asked where I had found onions as she didn’t think we had any….and the rest is family history.
Reader Ann Blackman submitted this story:
In junior high home ec, in the bright, spacious, scientific-looking test kitchens, I learned the importance of nutrition, accurate math skills and physics in cooking. I also realized my mom had already taught me these things in what I eventually realized was one of the best examples of problem based learning I have ever experienced: My mother taught not only by showing and instructing but also giving us all space to create on our own. When some thing didn’t work out, she always talked through what modifications could be made or what needed to be done differently the next time. She is the person that instilled in me the confidence to modify a recipe, make do with what is available, and just simply to have fun. It is one of my greatest honors to have her at my house at Thanksgiving, which for us, is a meal based in tradition along with a healthy dose of innovation.
I learned to cook by helping my mum in the kitchen. She is a genius when it comes to throw things together that you can find in a fridge and make a great diner out of it. I learned from her, that accuracy in measurement in cooking is not as important as it is in baking (which I love to do too, btw!), you can always adjust by adding a bit more fluid or flour or whatever…
Since I moved out, I love to experiment whenever possible – mostly with things I come across at markets and shops, or try a new take on something I already know.
And since I started doing this, I also started to become quite a bit sophisticated as to how food is supposed to taste and hence prefer my own cooking to fast food, because the latter cannot meet the expectations of my tastebuds.
I also had cooking classes back in school, of which I still have the book as it contains a lot of basic recipes. I remember it to have been an easy class because I already learned a lot from my mum. *g*
How I learned to cook as a child: 4-H, Brownies (the girl’s group, not the pastry), a grandmother who talked while she was cooking and loved what she was doing, a cookbook for kids with lots of pictures, and an early fascination with nutrition.
I still appreciate the notion of cooking (and own many cookbooks). The actual action step? Not so much.
My dream would be to have a cook who would execute the ideas I find or imagine. Cooking is a grand idea in theory but a chore in practice.
As I advanced into that middle age decade and watched my mother grow older and crankier,I realized I had better learn how to make those famous “nani ribbon cookies.” I had already learned how to make those Italian staples of lasagna, chicken parmigiana and of course homemade tomato sauce…but the ribbon cookies …hmmm nana wasn’t going to let me just take a recipe. No, this recipe had to be learned by doing…by watching first, then doing! The whole event took place on that familiar kitchen table. Ingredients were measured in handfuls and pinches. But the critical learning was not about the measuring of ingredients ( I could eyeball the handfuls of flour and convert to cups etc), no it was about “feeling the dough.” Yup, you didn’t get it right unless it felt like a babies bottom! Well I learned what that felt like…and each Christmas when My daughter and I carry on the tradition, we don’t use kitchen aid mixers, we measure with our hands and we work the dough till it feels like a babies bottom. And we laugh and long for those days when nana made those cookies with us. Three generations…and quite sure it will again be passed on….with a great story to go with it.a d…luckily all captured on an iPhone!
I learned to cook out of desperation at age 14. My mom is from Norway and Norwegian cuisine is an oxymoron. AND she was into Adele Davis, so everything was covered in wheat germ. My younger brother and I started watching Graham Kerr, the “Galloping Gourmet” everyday after school and I stole Family Circle Magazines out of doctor’s offices for the recipes. I started cooking almost all our meals then and haven’t stopped 44 years later (well, I don’t cook for my parents or brother’s family, but I do for my own and anyone who comes over). I asked one of my daughters a few years ago if she had a favorite recipe that I made when she and her siblings were growing up. She told me, “I don’t remember a lot of specific things, but I do remember that everything was REALLY yummy.” Good enough.
It all started when I travelled abroad for my graduate studies. I had hardly any culinary skills and I mistakenly thought that I could survive on microwave cooked meals. It wasn’t tasty nor nourishing and I decided to take the risk and try out the kitchen tools. I looked for the simplest way to prepare a balanced meal and with some tips and tricks from my mother, I finally succeeded in preparing my first dish; peas and fried chicken! It took me hours to prepare it that by the time I was done cooking it, I felt full even before tasting it!! This feeling was worse than all the challenges I faced to prepare this dish. I insisted to sit and eat it and WOW it was delicious! The amount of dish-washing that I had to do that day was unmatched, but that aside, it felt good to finally realize that I can cook. Yes, I know it’s one dish, but still I can cook!
I kept cooking the same dish for a couple of days until I managed to get it ready in less than an hour and I learned that continuously repeating a skill helps you to master it. I always remind myself with this story when I embark on learning a new skill in any area of life.
I then decided to take on a new challenge and try cooking other dishes. I then challenged myself to cook desserts and this was super rewarding.
One area I still want to explore is baking. I tried it once before and the results were devastating to say the least. Hopefully soon I can find some time and a simple recipe to start with.
When I graduated from college and moved four hours from home, I carried a dozen or so of my mother’s favorite recipes with me. I was a slave to them—measuring out exact proportions, triple-checking the oven temperature, and timing the cooking to the minute.
I’ve been teaching another young woman to cook this summer, and I’m reminded how my cooking habits and those recipes have changed over the years. “Oh, a handful of this, a pinch of that, and seasoning to taste,” doesn’t do it for her. It’s sort of like teaching someone to drive a stick shift for the first time. They must be told exactly when and how much to let out the clutch while simultaneously giving the car gas, shifting gears, and turning the steering wheel. It helps to have clear, basic instructions when learning any new complex task. But with regular practice, it becomes second nature and you learn to enjoy the ride—taking adventures along the way.
So we pulled out my mom’s recipes, stained as they were, and a few of my own, and she happily set about measuring ingredients for dishes that will, undoubtedly, evolve and become her own in the coming years.
I learned a lot from watching my mother and grandmother cook. When I went out on my own I had a few things that I did well enough. But I really learned a lot by watching cooking shows. When I was a kid I loved to watch Graham Kerr. When I got older I enjoyed the cooking shows on PBS including Julia Child’s. The early Food Network had many informative shows that emphasized how to cook as opposed to how to eat which is now their main focus.
But above all the book “How to Cook Everything” by Mark Bittman was a revelation. It really is an encyclopedia on introductory cooking. He focuses on technique so that once you know how to prepare a certain cut of meat for example, you’re free to try endless variations. I highly recommend it for any aspiring cook.