Small Town Hermit

You know what I love about cooking? I love that after a day when nothing is certain — and when I say nothing, I mean nothing — I can com home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. — Julie Powell in Julie & Julia

I grew up watching The French Chef on television. I hear Julia’s voice telling me that whenever I flip something, I need to have the courage of my convictions. (I rarely do.) While I adore Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I actually get more use out of Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom.

A couple of years ago I wanted to make a nice, simple potato leek soup. I pulled out a giant Gourmet cookbook promising to have every recipe I might want to cook … except potato leek soup. In Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom, it is one of the very first “master” recipes. It was perfect, and I use it often.

The simple recipes, made with quality ingredients, are often the best. They really taste like their ingredients, and yet the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Tonight’s meal wasn’t quite so simple — mushroom and cheese omelette, mashed potatoes, and steamed zucchini — but it reminded me how satisfying and pleasurable a thoughtfully cooked meal is and how much happier I am when I eat real food I have prepared myself from ingredients (i.e. not a frozen pizza). With that in mind, I am forming if not a plan then an intention to do more cooking from the shelves of cookbooks in my house, test out the Joule I received as a gift, and maybe finally get through some of my Rouxbe cooking classes.

I will keep you posted on how it goes.