I used to think that I was pretty good with food. At least I was during the first year of college, when I’d invite people over and make them a three course meal. It was always stressful and never came naturally, but I put in the effort of hour-long preparations (we call those ‘MEP’s now; Mise En Place) and well-read recipes. No longer. I have had to face the fact that I can’t really cook; I have no instincts of measurement, always forget the key ingredients, can’t slice a vegetable without the realistic result of chopping my nails off, and I lack the capability to taste whether something needs salt or pepper, which is why I regularly don’t favour food at all.
A few weeks ago, I made a sauerkraut soup by boiling 200 grams of sauerkraut in half a liter of milk and then pouring it in two bowls.
Just saying.
Most of the time, I can laugh about these things, but in effect, when I try to make dinner for my boyfriend, I become paralyzed with stage fright. I quite simply feel that I will never live up to the expectations, everything will go wrong, I can’t do it anyway, look at me, I can’t even read the recipe properly, why is everything so hard?
Annie knows what it's like
Not anymore. Yesterday evening, I spent 1,5 pleasurable hour concocting a swede-parsnip-mushroom pie with handmade dough from scratch. And it turned out.. edible! How did I get from A to B in such a short timespan? Easy; Hannah Hart.
Interviewer: Hannah, now you’re that a world famous chef I should ask the question on everyone’s minds: what’s your favourite food?
Hannah Hart: I’d have to say it’s food that’s in my mouth. But I also really appreciate food that’s on its way to my mouth.
Hannah Hart is the host of My Drunk Kitchen, a youtube show where Hannah cooks… drunk. I watched all of the videos yesterday afternoon. At first, I just thought she was hilarious, and could see right into my soul. I’ll always have a special relationship with the first video I saw: meat pie.
“Sometimes people say you should read the whole recipe before you start to cook. I say don’t ever do that because then you will immediately not want to cook.” There is so much truth to this quote, I don’t even know where to begin. Recipes are great, I look at the pictures, I think: yeah, I’d like some of that. But then, simply to start looking at the ingredients list.. It’s always so long and half of it looks like something I probably don’t even need (‘cumin seed? white flour? yeast? double cream? I’ve got cinnamon, self-raising dark flour – which means you don’t need yeast, right? – and yoghurt. That will do.’) and so it always goes two ways: I decide not to make anything at all, or I decide to give it a shot with my improperly stacked supply of ingredients and make something disgusting (again: sauerkraut soup).
I am a chaotic and ill-educated cook – this is true, but it wouldn’t be all that bad if only I could accept it. The fact of the matter is, I have this image of myself as a ‘kitchen princess’ (as we like to say in Dutch), and I want to live up to it. The lazy branch of perfectionism which reads: if you can’t do it superbly on the first try without any previous experience, better not bother at all! Trial and error is for lesser people. Of course, the foundation of this perfectionism is not so much arrogance or ambition, but pure insecurity with a dash of anxiety. I won’t do something I haven’t done before, because I don’t know how, and if it goes wrong, the world may just end. What I need is a bit of Dutch courage (also known as the ‘fuck you attitude’:
“So… Steep the vanilla be- yeah, that’s what I’m gonna do right now. I’m gonna steep a vanilla bean. Rough. You ever notice how people who make things from scratch, that suddenly means they’re better than you? Just because you made it from scratch, doesn’t mean I couldn’t. I just didn’t. ‘Cause I was doing other things.”
There is nothing wrong with trying to do something and failing – moreover, if you’ll have a glass of wine with it, you’ll probably enjoy it tremendously – and there’s nothing wrong with not trying because you have other things to do. No shame. Never be ashamed of the person you are. Even if that person holds within herself the paradox of being extremely critical of food that’s offered to her, and extremely unconcerned with being able to prepare a tasteful (there’s a difference between tasty and tasteful – the first is easy: grilled cheese and chocolate. The second encompasses cooking alarms, tools, know-how and an organic farmer’s market) meal.
If you want food, make an omelette! If your omelette falls to pieces, call it a scrambled egg! Do not be ashamed, and do not care. These are all lessons I learned from Hannah. Crying with laughter behind my computer, I looked up at her and thought ‘if she can make a meat pie drunk, surely I can do it sober.‘
My recipe: vegetable pie
Ingredients: flour, butter, water, filling (any kind of vegetable). Interchangable flavour makers: raisins, cinnamon, salt, cumin, pepper, ginger, garlic, onion, stock, oil.
1. Put the flour (don’t care what sort, flour is flour), butter, and water in a bowl. Mix, knead, push or pull these together until it looks like dough.
2. Put all the ingredients in a pan and add whatever seems needed to make it edible.
3. Put the dough in a pie dish and pour the fillings on top. If you have some dough left, lay it on top. If not, who cares. Put it in the oven for like half an hour.
Wow!
I can’t tell you how much this means to me. My Drunk Kitchen has been more than entertainment; it has been an inspiration to let go of internalized restaurant standards, to make do with what I have, to trust that I will find a way to make it work, and if not, to rest assured that the corner shop is open until midnight. Thank you, MDK, for allowing me to follow my harto.
