A Thesis on Food Preparation

Some people (professionals, I like to think, as well as those with strict organizational tendencies) naturally cook from their heads. They measure ingredients meticulously, calculate boiling temperatures and calorie counts, and endorse the practicality of slicing vegetables julienne. These are the dieters, the culinary artisans who substitute applesauce for oil when they bake, and push Splenda into realms of use it was never intended to enter.

Others approach the art of cooking from their (metaphorical, certainly not physical) hearts. From grandmothers to five year olds to bachelors with a flair for improvisation, taste and satisfaction are the goal- adding the complications of substitutes and artificial cheese is simply avoiding the point. Butter is a staple, and measuring instruments? Ha! Feeble crutches for the faint of heart. Recipes are to be memorized, buried and altered at instinct, and an excess of any kind is not an error but an opportunity for seconds.

As for myself, I fall somewhere in the middle. I am a thoroughly cautious cook by nature, though I endeavor to embody the latter set. My most successful concoctions arise from impulse, because for some inexplicable reason it is nearly impossible for me to alter written recipes and as exactly as I obey them, the results never emerge as satisfactory as the author promises. It has taken quite a long time, but I have at last begun to tire of the irritating smugness that seems to uniformly plague the authors of these misbegotten tomes, and rely more often on my own intuition (though this course of action is far from foolproof- ask my smoke detectors.)

My mother is a category in her own right- she cooks from her hands. She rarely bothers with recipes, as she has invented most of her dishes and simply alters their ingredients to allocate whatever mixes, sauces or spices currently reside in our pantry. My mother can pour almost anything on chicken (from orange juice to diet coke), and it will taste delicious. No one believes her when she confides that her ratatouille recipe consists solely of chopped up vegetables and maranara sauce. My mother does not use a vegetable peeler- she simply slices off the peel in great squarish chunks, a practice she could perform perfectly with her eyes closed that I have never been able to remotely imitate. Her piece de resistance is her Shabbos soup, a solid, chunky concoction built of potatoes, onions, soup mix and other canned vegetables that (without offense to the clear chicken broth of tradition) merges to form unquestionably the most intoxicatingly delicious concoction that has ever been seen or tasted on the face of the earth. My sister and I can make the same soup exactly, and as tasty as it often is, it is never remotely as sumptuous as my mother's.

Others may scoff at her seemingly casual approach I am sure, but without question I know that there is no other chef, cook, baker, method or cookbook I would rather imitate than my mother. The soup alone is worth any amount of derision.