EPTSo here is the story about how I fell in love with cooking, and what I want to eventually do with it, the goals I've set for myself, etc, etc...
I actually used to hate cooking. A lot.
Growing up, it seemed like a chore; my mother always made me help her cook since as I turned 12, she wanted another pair of hands in the kitchen, since my older brother "had stuff to do." Since I always got my homework done and was playing Halo, she saw this as an opportunity to get me to help. I resisted as much as I could, and eventually, she dropped it, but I had to endure a few years of helping in the kitchen first.
I hated it so much. Most of it was just peeling certain parts off certain vegetables, inspecting all the leaves and picking out the wilted parts, washing, cleaning, washing, more washing, cutting, cleaning, more washing, more cleaning...it was basically all the parts that weren't fun.
Eventually, I found fun in cutting - since it became a game to see how fast I could cut while still being accurate. To this day, I'm still not that fast, but I'm getting better...I'm thinking about purchasing a steel mesh glove so I can just go crazy with it :D
Anyway, eventually, my mom got too busy to pick me up after school, so I would be home for a few hours on my own, and I'd usually be hungry. I exhausted the supply of snacks rather rapidly, which led be to have to cook things for myself.
At first it was nothing more than heating up frozen foods like tater tots, hash browns, and chicken wings, but eventually I moved on to the first thing that I'd ever learned - making a scrambled egg.
I hated all the cutting and the prep and stuff, but I noticed that I really actually enjoyed standing in front of the fire and all that. It was a lot of fun, I had to be vigilant, I had to watch for exactly when the egg was done, and it was pretty cool! And the best part was, I had complete control!
After a while, however, I got really busy with school and so I didn't get to really cook anymore, except during the summers, where all I did was cook, since my mom had to work and my brother was never home. It would only happen if I was up to it though. If I wasn't, I didn't cook, and I just ate a simple meal.
My first few culinary experiments were disasters. I kind of just threw things together and hoped for the best, but as time went on [with a few tips about stir frying from my mother], I began to be able to make things happen. Stir frying was relatively simple, and I eventually got the grasp of it, and once I got really fast at prep, it even became fun in a sense.
I loved tossing the food up from the pan, though I didn't have a wok at the time, so I could really toss very high nor at the right angle because of the shape of the pan. But still, it was fun.
Anyway, then senior year came, and I was too busy. And whenever my mom asked me to cook, I wouldn't want to. Mainly it was because it wasn't what I wanted to make, and it wasn't how I wanted to make it. My tastes were very different from my mother's, and although she made really good food, it just wasn't what I really wanted to eat all the time, since she made her meals healthy - which came at the cost of richness and savoryness at times.
I wanted to make "fun" dishes, like Fried Chicken, a lot of the dishes we had at Chinese restaurants [which were kind of greasy], stuff with XO sauce [which not only was a pain to make, but also made a mess], French and English dishes [which were calorific and a pain to make and made a big mess], and things of that nature, but my mom would never let me, because of the reasons stated above.
Eventually, I went to college, and I had to eat the revolting dorm food here...and I stopped cooking.
Then, one day, I remembered the old Swedish Regular Ordinary Meal Time videos that my friend had showed me. I watched all of them, and had my share of laughs...
...but it got me thinking. Cooking really does look like fun, and it really is a lot of fun, if I get to make what I want. I'm in college now. I can do and make whatever I want!
But I also didn't know much about the subject. I didn't know a lot about ingredients, methods, or even many of the dishes out there.
Then came the book that changed my life.
I called up one of my friends, a huge foodie, and asked him how to get started, and he loaned me some books on the art of cooking, so whenever I had time between classes, I pored over them, learning, soaking up knowledge...since that's what I want to do when I want to get better at something; I read. I went through books like "On Science and Cooking" and "The Fat Duck Cookbook," and I took up a particular interest with Modernist/Avant-Garde Cuisine, since I am a Math Major and have studied Physics/Chemistry/Biology, and it floats my boat much better than relying on recipes and what other people tell me.
So now I have a relatively good knowledge of how cooking works, how heat affects materials, as well as modern methods of cooking.
Then I decided to put my skills to the test. First I tried making Christmas dinner for my brother, which failed miserably. The books taught me about techniques, but nothing about proportions and flavoring - and so I tried to make this fried pork ball stir-fry dish that end up terribly, leaving my brother complain and QQ for hours, and actually go out and buy food. That's a terrible insult, and I was pissed - so I decided to consult some old traditional Chinese cookbooks and TV shows for inspiration, as well as proportioning.
Then came New Years dinner. Everyone was a bit skeptical because of my bad reputation thanks to my brother, but I made eight dishes that night, with the theme being "A Night in China." I cooked eight Chinese-style dishes, with a wok that I had bought that night, though I made some adjustments to fit more modern techniques.
-宮保雞丁 (Kung Pao Chicken)
-Red Shrimp
-蔥爆牛肉 [Stir Fry Beef]
-粮醋排骨 [Sweet and Sour Sparerib]
-蒜泥白肉 [boiled pork with special sauce]
-四川白菜 [Szechuan Bok Choy]
-魚香豆腐 [Tofu with Szechuan style sauce]
-椒鹽排骨 [salt and pepper fried ribs]
Were the dishes I made that night. Good thing I had a piece of paper with all the instructions on it, because we managed to serve the dinner on time...it was just dish after dish after dish after dish...though we had to do the 椒鹽排骨 since we had to shallow fry in the wok, which would've been awkward if we had done it first. All in all, it ended up pretty well - but I wasn't satisfied with my cooking. Everyone was really happy with it, but I felt like I could've done a LOT better.
First problem? Time. A lot of time was wasted, and I could've been a lot more efficient. Part of it was that my helpers could've been faster, but part of it was just I did not have an efficient system for assembling the dishes and whatnot. I'll elaborate more on this later.
The 宮保雞丁 (Kung Pao Chicken) had a really good flavor balance. I took the flavor balance from a chef, and adjusted it to meet my needs [so slightly more sweet and acidic], but there was just one problem - after being scarred by putting TOO much marinade and sauce, this time I didn't put enough. There was barely any sauce, and combine that with cutting the chicken cubes too thick, the flavor didn't penetrate, and therefore the sour taste that comes with cooked chicken penetrated, which I really dislike. Also, I didn't toss high nor frequent enough, so the chicken was slightly overcooked. The peanuts were a bit bitter, since there wasn't enough sauce to compliment it. I used a bit too much oil.
I mean it still tasted good, somewhat, but it could've been better, and knowing the science behind it [baking soda was used to promote the Maillard reaction] and all was really cool.
The Red Shrimp dish was a dish my mom taught me where a sauce is made from reducing wine and adding some other ingredients to it, and then you add shrimps with the shells on [so that the juices don't leak out]. What really annoyed the crap out of me was having the peel the shrimp while I ate, so I devised another solution - sous vide. My mother would never let me use sous vide at home, since she didn't really understand the FREAKING AMAZING EFFECTS THAT IT HAS. So I decided to infuse the oil with aromatics at the start, create the sauce, and THEN add the shrimp last, and stir fry very briefly, just long enough to cause the Maillard reaction to happen.
This worked beautifully. The shrimp was tender, juicy, very [as the Taiwanese say] Q, and it was really good in general. My only problem was - the dish was too simple. I mean it was the way it was taught to me, but it was too plain, too one dimensional. Don't get me wrong, it was amazing - but something was missing. Where was the flare? I'm going to have to experiment with spices and flavorings to get this right.
Okay, I'm not going to cover the other six dishes, but I had a similar reaction to all of them - I could improve! I had a long way to go! And you know what - I wanted to go that long way! I wanted to make food that would make people feel happy. That's what I noticed; when my friends ate that dinner, with the somewhat dim lighting, and the chopsticks and everything, they came up to me and were like "it's as though I was in China tonight." He also had a huge smile on his face.
This is where artsy me kicks in. Music, I'd always imagined it, was a conversation between the performer and the audience, with the performer trying to invoke, through sound, emotions within the audience, whereas in literature, this is done through words. Cooking is an art too - and the medium is food! I can use food to invoke emotions within the people eating - but I'd have to get the basics down before I can do that. And that is my goal - to become such a good cook that I can evoke emotions within the people that eat my food. To use food not as a means of sustenance, but as a form of dialogue between cook and eater, and hopefully let the eater enjoy themselves and have fun, rather than simply slobbering down to stay alive.
So two weeks later, I cook again. This time, French Onion soup, Bloomin' Onion, Steak & Fries, Ice Cream.
I covered this in my other blog here, but I'll go over it more, since it marks another huge step in my culinary adventure.
Though only cook once every few weeks, I spend a lot of time planning, thinking, watching, reading, and evaluating, and I examine every little detail in past dishes to ensure that next time they will be better. Come the summer, I'm going to experiment - like crazy.
Anyway, so after we bought all the stuff, we began. I mixed the sauce, but I noticed it was a bit too salty, so I started playing with the proportions, using my palete as reference. Another huge revelation was made - I learned how to taste food that night, but not how to make it good XD
So first order of business was the French Onion soup, which I would make while the steaks were cooking sous vide. The goal was to time it so that they got about a 5 min break after they finished the French Onion soup, and then the steaks would arrive. I'll go over this in a bit later.
I am a HUGE advocate for sous vide. There's no reason not to, in my opinion, and it's so easy - just get a thermometer and fill your sink with hot water, and whenever the temperature drops, just find some way to heat it up! Though my system is a bit more sophisticated - I rigged a giant slow cooker with a PDI rig, so it essentially sous vide's for me, but is only accurate to degrees Fahrenheit. As I progress, I'll begin using PolyScience water baths, probably. Those are CRAZY STABLE :O
Anyway, so immediately, a bunch of problems were happening in the kitchen, in the sense that I ended up doing anything. I mean some people did help, but for the most part, I was doing all the work, which I didn't really mind. If I were running a restaurant though, that would've been a huge problem XD.
So my multitasking skills that I learned from Starcraft really came into play. I had to stir soup to ensure that it didn't burn while cutting baguettes, vegetables, and I was simmering my fries at the time, so I had to do all this at the same time. Worked beautifully; everything was done right, except the fries were a bit destroyed since the pot was so big we had to use full fire.
I forgot to add flour to the Onion Soup - which was actually a huge blessing! Flour dilutes the flavor like CRAZY, and not adding it [though it was more watery] actually escalated the flavor a lot. In fact, my friend's dad actually said it was "the best French Onion Soup [he'd] ever had." All because I left out the flour. I figured next time I'll use the same proportions and just add a bit of Xanthan gum and we'd be all good. Yeah Modern Thickeners! :D
So the soup was amazing. We broiled the Gruyere over it, and I actually really liked it myself, though I didn't taste it as much as I should have [like evaluate] since I had to do the next dish.
The steaks were almost done being sous vide'd, but the fries were a disaster, since they wouldn't crisp because there was a ton of debris at the bottom of the oil pot, which we didn't realize for an hour. After that, the fries were easy, and turned out exactly the way that I wanted them to. That's all there really is to say about that. I wish I had malt vinegar and an atomizer to complete it, but eh...
The steaks...the steaks were good for what they were, but I didn't flavor them very much. It was just sous vide steak, but the texture, and succulence, the juiciness...it was perfect. Thanks to sous vide :D So I just gotta work on flavoring the steaks, and not letting them thaw as much before I sear them...or maybe sous vide before the sear, but if that is the case, I'd need a blowtorch.
And then ice cream is ice cream.
So I've learned a lot on my culinary journey so far...yet I have so much left to learn. And this weekend, I'm cooking two meals, both equally as epic. Eventually, I'm going to start building my dream kitchen [complete with a centrifuge, Pacojet, etc, etc...] and I'm going to just try everything. Experimenting for the next 20 years of my life, and then...I'll keep experimenting :D
Wish me luck!
EDIT: Aaaaand I forgot to mention I have a ton of books to go through as well :D should be fun
