Today, on the French Chef!

This year my wife and I flew to Germany for twelve days, followed by another three days in Paris.  For the flight over, we picked up two books: Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdaine and My Life in France by Julia Child.  Because my wife has just started culinary school (which causes me jealousy to no end), we've really ramped up our unabashed "foodie" status.  Hey, at least one of us will be a professional, and I suppose that makes me half a professional in the same way I'm jokingly half Australian now.

I never really knew much about Julia Child other than some vague memories of her speaking (I thought she was British...) and being an old-school culinary TV personality.  I never attributed much worth to her show or cooking, for whatever reason.  Perhaps because so many TV personalities these days, like Rachel Ray, don't really inspire awe or even interest.

The book was a little slow to begin, and often read like I was reading a paper for school-work, but I slowly began to get a glimpse at a woman who was really quite remarkable.  She hadn't begun cooking until her mid to late thirties.  She was obsessed with food and was, in all adoration, a complete geek when it came to cooking.  She thrust herself into a major culinary academy and pushed herself to become a legitimate and accomplished home cook.  And she happened to write an absolute tome of French Cooking.

Here was someone who found her passion later in life than most people think they could.  Not only that, but she turned her passion into something that had a profound impact on the world around her, mostly through hard work and determination.  

I always enjoyed watching "Good Eats" with Alton Brown due to his scientific take on cooking.  By learning the science behind what you were doing, you quickly learned the "hows" and "whys" of what you were cooking, and that sort of knowledge readily applied itself to other meals and methods you might be using later on.  In the same way, I always enjoyed watching or reading America's Test Kitchen for their scientific experiments on which tomato paste was the best, or how to make the best roast.  They didn't do it by hearsay, they simply tried the recipe quite a few different ways and determined what they liked the most.  In the same way, Julia Child took a scientific approach to her cooking.  She always wanted to know why something failed to turn out correctly, or if old methods based on seeming superstition actually carried any weight.  The sheer amount of time and effort she put into her recipes made her confident that they not only worked, but worked well.

If you haven't seen Julia, you should definitely take a look.  And pick up "Mastering the Art of French Cooking"; it's sure to be at your local library no matter where you are.

Numbers and Organization

Growing up, cooking was always something I hated.  My understanding of cooking was fairly simple: you always needed recipes to do anything, and all cooking was a matter of putting exactly the right amount of food into exactly the right amount of heat, for exactly the right amount of time.  My brief attempts were always disappointing in result and nerve-wracking in execution.  After awhile, I just didn't bother.

Then I happened to catch a show called "Iron Chef", which you've probably heard about.  Besides being fascinating in its own right, I was really amazed with how the chefs could take any random ingredient and prepare it without a recipe.  I was also fascinated with the techniques, tools and knowledge they possessed.  As I watched more of the show, I became more interested in cooking, but assumed that you'd have to have a lot of training and field practice to pull off those sorts of moves.

On the same channel I started to watch one of Jaime Oliver's shows.  He presented food that wasn't carefully measured or accurately timed.  He talked about tasting the food, about watching for this sign or that to know when it was ready.  Although it should have always been obvious, I had never really devoted much thought to cooking, feeling that it was just someone else's domain and not mine.  But here were practical, useful tips to cook things that looked far better than what I'd been eating or ever attempting to make.

Add now to this Alton Brown's "Good Eats", which dove into the science of cooking.  He didn't just explain recipes, he explained techniques and the reasoning behind things.

All of this finally got me to cook.  I've always been a technique freak, so learning to use a knife properly was fun.  Tearing through Sur La Table to stock my meager kitchen with new pots and pans and gadgets was also no great battle.  I couldn't cook very well (and still don't) but suddenly it was something attainable and interesting.

Although I love to cook, I wasn't particularly fond of shopping for ingredients, writing lists, or cleaning up.  Luckily for me, my wife had great knowledge of how to pick the best ingredients and she slowly taught me what a good orange looks and feels like, or when a tomato is actually ripe.  Over time, she infected me with the same picky eye when strolling the aisles.

There's so much to learn, but what other hobby can you not only sustain yourself with, but in good fashion as well?