Creating in the Kitchen

By Pamelagrace Beatty

It all started like this:  My guy-friend at the time kept telling me about the wife of his bestie who could cook amazingly well.  He said she cooked all sorts of dishes and each one of them was delicious!  Of course, I wondered if he was trying to tell me something about my cooking. He probably was…  One day we were invited to dinner at his bestie’s house.  I was so excited that at last I would get to meet this marvelous cook and sample her cooking.  I couldn’t wait.  I had wondered for some time how she got to be such a good cook and where she got her recipes.  Did she start cooking at a young age?  Did she go to culinary school? Was she a closet chef and had always wanted to be a real chef but settled for just cooking for her family?

Had she tasted wonderful food in restaurants and then come home and developed the recipes all by herself?  How did she get to be so good? Perhaps she was just naturally talented and let her nose and sense of taste lead her to creating those magnificent (according to my guy-friend) meals.  I was quite intent on finding out her secret to success and figured meeting her at her home would answer a lot of my questions.

We arrived at the bestie’s house the day before Halloween.  The couple had a darling, energetic, creative, Halloween enthusiast daughter who was ten years old.  Her father had allowed her to decorate for Halloween.  The decorations started with cobwebs and graveyards in the front yard.  Then there were cobwebs and witches on broomsticks on the large porch which spanned the front of the house and spread wildly into the inside of the house. In every room there were various pumpkins with grimaces on their faces, more witches, a few skeletons and more cobwebs.  I adored her immediately. Then I met her parents.  They were nice,  a mixed-race couple; he was black, and the mom was not.  I wasn’t sure what she was, Latinx, Italian, Portuguese, Hawaiian…I just couldn’t tell and didn’t want to be rude and ask. She was warm and welcoming, and she could cook so that was all that was important at that moment.

She hadn’t started dinner yet. I guess we were a little early.  Her husband suggested my guy-friend and I have a glass of wine in the living room amidst the pumpkins and witches. We accepted. However, when the two besties started catching up on all they had missed since last seeing each other, I meandered into the kitchen.  It was beautiful and large, and It had one of those little islands in the middle that allowed for chopping and storage. There was lots of terra cotta and steel ( the appliances).  I loved it.  She had large, pretty jars of herbs and spices and an array of pots and pans hanging neatly from the ceiling. I was very impressed.  They were the expensive, matching kind that looked very professional.  She was busy chopping vegetables for the dinner and something was quietly simmering on the stove. I tried not to look too impressed. I felt like the first time I saw skyscrapers as I walked down the streets of New York City.  I was in complete awe at seeing such tall buildings, but I didn’t want to look like a country bumpkin (oops, sorry bumpkins) on my first trip to a real city…which, in fact, I was.  So, I smiled and tried to surreptitiously catalog everything in the kitchen and everything she was doing with the food.

Then, my eyes landed on the books she had in her kitchen.  There were several shelves filled with cookbooks.  COOKBOOKS!!  So, she wasn’t just a natural chef or brilliant technician with food.  She had help!!!  She got recipes from cookbooks! No wonder she had such variety and skill.  She had cookbooks for Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Southern, Indian, and more mundane books like for salads, desserts, appetizers and more. I was stunned.  Heck, I could cook if I had all of those wonderful books and followed the recipes.  Hey, wait a minute!  I DID have lots of cookbooks, I just didn’t use them.     

The meal was, in fact, delicious. And I learned a very valuable lesson. We have everything we need and frequently overlook that fact.  When I got back home, I took out some of my newer cookbooks and paged through them. I had my old trusty basic cooking book my grandmother had given me when I moved out on my own.  I had specialty cookbooks like the main meals served at the Hearst Mansion and Maya Angelou’s favorites. I also had the salads, appetizers, desserts, Indian (my favorite food), Mexican (I still can’t cook good Mexican food, so I do take out), and more.  And I became a better cook.

That guy-friend is way in the past, but my cooking has steadily improved.  I got so good I have been able to cook some of my favorite dishes that I’ve had in nice restaurants like braised lamb shank in my Instant Pot (oh, I love that pot and am continually thankful to the friend who talked me into getting one), and the pan-fried oysters I used to drive an hour and 45 minutes to have at my favorite restaurant in a town north of here.  What has been wonderful about following the recipes in the cookbooks is that I have also learned more about cooking in general.  When I started cooking, I prepared what my mom had cooked as we grew up.  I didn’t, however, watch how she cooked stuff, so I was guessing all the time. I didn’t know cooking techniques like saute-ing, braising or layering and timing.  The cookbooks have taught me that and more. I was also inspired to broaden my knowledge and improve my skill because I was cooking for my parents and an elderly aunt and uncle whom I loved dearly.  I wanted them to enjoy their dinners, and I realized I needed to expand my cooking portfolio (giggle).  That too, made me a better cook. I got so I could just make up a recipe and it would be good! 

Then came sheltering in place and the boredom that came with being stuck in the house.  You would think that would encourage me to cook even more, yes?  Well…no.  The ones I was cooking for had passed on except my dad. He prefers his own cooking. I was not that inspired to cook for myself, so the cookbooks were getting dusty.  Then, my father talked me into downloading an app called “Tasty” which he just loves because he had been doing his own cooking since my mother had passed.  It has loads of recipes and includes videos of how to cook the food and a list of ingredients to buy from the store.  You can even order the ingredients online if you shop at Walmart (which I don’t).  It is so much fun going through their list of different recipes!  It’s easier than taking down all my cookbooks and paging through them for something new and different to cook.  I love watching the videos because they make creating the dishes look like so much fun! And even if the dish doesn’t turn out perfectly (the baked chicken with asparagus and provolone cheese was a bit of a challenge) it is still cool to try the new dish, and if it’s at least edible, to try harder the next time.  In fact, the Internet is a great cookbook substitute.  Now when I want to cook something I’ve had in a restaurant, I look up multiple recipes online and see which one calls to me.  Way fun.

So, I am valiantly trying not to gain weight as I explore new cooking horizons, and having so much fun being creative in the kitchen!

Carpe Diem

Pg