Purpose and Goals
March 3, 2008
My primary goal is to really learn how to cook. I want to be able to make meals from scratch without a cookbook. I want to know what spices go well together, how to make a good vinaigrette, and the basics behind a pan sauce. I am not opposed to recipes; I use them frequently and will present quite a few on this site. They usually lead to quite delicious food, but I want a deeper knowledge of why you do the things you do when cooking.
My goals for the site are as follows:
- Learn to cook: I want to be able to create meals without recipes, to know what I need to buy at the store, and to expand my knowledge on food and techniques.
- Educate and learn: I want to present what I learn to you, the reader, both to help others and get feedback from you to help me learn even more.
- Cook: I want to make cooking and the preparation of fresh food a part of my life, not a once a week affair.
These are certainly broad and a bit vague. Maybe these are my meta-goals. But still, you can cook your whole life and never learn everything there is to know, so perhaps it makes sense not to place a defined finish line. In the future I plan to create more specific goals that will help me accomplish these listed above.
My posts will cover six broad topics:
- Recipes - simple and complex
- Techniques
- Food Profiles - individual and groups of foods, what they are and how to use them
- Food History and Science
- Kitchen Maintenance - equipment reviews, cookbook discussions, stocking your kitchen, etc.
- Personal - my attempts at cooking, incorporating cooking into your life, celebrity chefs, health, food and frugality
Again, broad, but I hope these topics will be both informative and interesting. You need a little bit of everything if you want to do more than just follow recipes. I want to build a skill set and knowledge base from which I can create my own meals, and these topics will hopefully lead to that end.
Well, now that you know where I am headed, I hope you will stick around and enjoy.
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March 3rd, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Good Luck Andy with your new web site, and thanks for adding me to your blogroll!
Cheers, Kathy
March 4th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Start with recipes, do them as described then start ringing in variations on them.
You want one or two good cookbooks, personally I would say The Joy of Cooking - the current edition, different editions of JOC are of different quality. The one from the 1960s and the one to follow that are also good. The one prior to the current one is not so good.
As a second one, Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol I, by Julia Child. This is essentially the Master work.
Any of the CIA cookbooks are good, both the ones for home use and the professional ones. All of these have a lot of space devoted to technique. JOC should be read as a book.
Later pick up a copy of McGee, this is the best text on what is going on in the saute pan that exists. It is quite technical in nature and is not a cook book but a book on the chemistry, physics and biology of cooking.
Explore websites and blogs. http://www.cooksillustrated.com/ has an excellent BB for cooks.
Good luck
March 4th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Thanks for the friendly comments and advice!
March 5th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Re: Spices that go together
The key is to be able to tell by smelling a spice whether it belongs in a dish. After a while you’ll just know.