My wife, May, bless her heart, thinks I’m the bee’s knees when it comes to cooking. I will say without any false modesty that I am pretty good at cooking, but so are many others in our circle. The thing is though, whenever we visit with family or friends May volunteers me to take over in the kitchen. Nobody seems to mind much; happy enough to be relieved of the chore I expect. I don’t mind either except that I invariably end up working with dull knives which drives me nuts.
The thing about me and the way I cook is that I tend to be something of a control freak in the kitchen. I have an image in my head of what I want the meal to be and I am disappointed if it turns out other than my ideal. I have single handedly hosted the family Thanksgiving dinner for the past 35+ years, rejecting all offers of help because nobody else would do it the way I envision. In fairness I should say that in recent years my daughter has assisted to take some of the pressure off – thanks sweetheart.
With my well known love for cooking and a reputation boosted by May’s promotion of my talents, people tend to step aside when I walk in the kitchen. Often people who cook for us will apologize saying, “It won’t be as good as yours”. “It’s not a competition”, I tell them. I am truly grateful when somebody takes the time and effort to cook for us and I savor the food all the more because of it.
We were in Italy about a month ago for our niece’s wedding. It was at a villa just outside of Passignano, a village on the eastern shore of lake Trasimeno in Umbria. Italy in July was screaming hot and of course, as is the case in most of Europe, few places have air conditioning. But It’s Umbria with its delightful hill towns and gorgeous landscapes so how bad can it be? We had a terrific time in spite of the unrelenting heat.
The happy couple had rented this villa and invited their close friends to stay there too. We were staying at an AirB&B nearby. We stopped in late one afternoon, post wedding, and the kitchen was a hive of activity with preparations for a communal dinner. Someone was grating a mountain of parmesan cheese while someone else was chopping garlic. Another friend was slicing zucchinis to roast in the oven. Yet others were preparing a salad and spreading bread with garlic butter for garlic bread. At the stove someone was boiling pasta and making tomato sauce. All of these operations were going on independent of each other and in my slightly OCD mind it was a recipe for disaster. I was horrified to see a sheet pan of zucchinis going in the same oven as a tray of garlic bread. The zuccs are never going to roast perched above the garlic bread and the bread will never crisp up because of the steam from the zuccs. May nudged me to volunteer to assist but other than our niece nobody knew who I was or of my reputation so I was politely told, “No, thank you”. At that moment I was grateful for my anonymity.
We dined al fresco, it being a balmy evening, and the dinner was absolutely perfect. The pasta, rich with the flavor of fresh tomatoes was delicious. The not quite roasted zucchinis blended in perfectly with the pasta. The garlic bread was just crunchy enough with a perfect balance of garlic and butter and the salad (even with its bottled dressing) was light and refreshing. Add a glass or two of good Chianti to round out a most satisfying meal.
I guess on some intellectual level I know that I don’t need to seek perfection but in the moment, on a more emotional level that has always proved difficult to hold on to. Watching a group of people prepare dinner and making some fundamental errors in the process was almost painful for me. And yet, the dinner was a complete success. I can’t help but think, had I been allowed to poke my nose in I would have overthought the whole thing and it would have turned into the disaster I imagined it was going to be.
As long as I am cooking for 2-4 people at home I will probably retain control in my kitchen because that is very manageable. Come Thanksgiving this year though, I am resolved to make a real effort to let others help out. Let’s see if I can live up to that!
Another thing I have come to realize is that not everybody wants to learn new and possibly better ways to cook. I must confess that is an alien concept for me. Why would you not want to improve your cooking skills? I was home in Scotland last year and my grandson was going to make pesto. He had a recipe open on his phone as he went around the grocery store collecting the ingredients. He needed X number of grams of this, that and the other. I tried telling him you don’t need a recipe and I would show him how to do it. At home I offered to show him how to make pesto without a recipe and he told me if I wanted to make it he was quite happy to leave me to it. “But then, next time you will do it your way anyway, right?” “Yes”, he said. So I let him get on with it. The point wasn’t for me to make the pesto, it was to show him how. But he was content to do it his way and who am I to say there is anything wrong with that?
My approach to cooking is not the same as many home cooks, I suspect. For me cooking is not a chore but a joy. After one Thanksgiving many years ago, as guests were leaving I started preparing for a lasagna I was going to make the next day. My sister-in-law asked me do I not get tired of cooking? I told her I get tired cooking but never tired of cooking.
I like to think my ego is not so inflated that I think I’m the only one who knows how to cook. However, I seem to have found myself in a position where others defer to me which is too bad. I would much prefer that others, if they think I am that good, would look over my shoulder and ask how I do what I do so they can improve their skills. But I guess it goes back to the joy versus chore approach to cooking.