Occasionally I get asked my culinary philosophy and my response is resoundingly, "You can cook if you try." All that television food porn has made cooking food seem a lofty artistic goal that requires stainless steel full tang knives hand forged by blind monks and recycled bottle bowls endorsed by bleach teethed celebrities. Well shit why try right? "I always screw it up." "I can't follow a recipe." And "ugh cooking is too hard." are all bullshit excuses for not turning on your stove. I think I've followed about 8 recipes in my life. What's my method then? I read multiple recipes for each dish I want to try. I treat a new dish like its a vocabulary word. Learning to cook isn't instantaneous, it takes making mistakes to get a handle on it. I learned by tackling one dish at a time and as I went along I started to understand that certain things just click, like basil and tomato.
As for fixing things- a dish usually has a blend of basic flavors. Like chords in a song. Say I'm cooking in the key of Thai, I'm going to be spicy, sour, sweet, a little salty and a tiny bit bitter. If I make a dish and it tastes blah I add lime, Thai food's sour flavor. If its still not there I add the heat, red chili paste, or salt, fish sauce or soy. If my dish is too hot- add sweet, agave or honey. To salty? Sour or sweet. See where I'm going with this? It's a balance of flavors and when it swings too far you just need to correct by adding the other flavors. But a warning: sometimes too much is just too much. I've had the lid to a salt fall off into a dish. FAIL.
But don't get down! Burn chicken? Oh well suck it up and set a timer next time. Start small and work your way up to the dishes with 25 steps.
Happy burning!
