I'm blushing, and I'm considering making "like reading an episode of Emeril hosted by Conan" the new description of this site on Substack. One of the finest compliments I've ever received!
you are a wordsmith, and I agree with a lot of what you're saying here. I will probably spend most of my retirement delving into the ACBN archives and realizing I should have tried these before arthritis set in.
My intro into cooking feels similar to yours. I think the main difference is that I’m from a slightly younger generation, so Youtube channels like Binging with Babish are what sparked my interest instead of shows on the Food Network.
I can remember my first major cooking for others. Decided to make a pot of chicken soup, and missed the whole "debone the chicken" step, and had to warn everyone of the tiny choking hazards I was serving them. Good cooks only make that mistake once!
There are days I wonder if ACBN is the new Alexa and is constantly spying on me. My wife and I were having a conversation about my ever growing collection of cookbooks and whether I would want to donate any, which I actually did have a couple (bargain bin ones from long ago). Then the conversation went to my collection of kitchen items, which may have started to collect dust including many KitchenAid attachments, those were saved. Having a little one makes multistep prep difficult.
All of this lead the conversation into when did I start cooking which took me down memory lane and helping my grandma make meatloaf and pouring cans of beans into chili while on a kitchen chair. Then helping my mom as she would make large batch crockpot meals to go into the freezer. Time spent in high school running a kitchen (rural child labor laws do not exist) to standing in front of a broiler at a steak house in grad school. And now cooking with my daughter in her kitchen tower stealing vegetables from my mise en plas (one of the greatest things learned while binging early 2000 Food Network shows instead of studying). And it really made me realize that the kitchen out of any part of the house is my happy place.
Now how do I turn off the eavesdropping setting to ACBN?
My squelched argument with wifey is whether we even need the cooksbook on the shelves, as we have a small notebook filled with family recipes and when we don't use that, we're turning to the Internet for our ideas.
I think the gate-crashing by Rachel Ray and others, and nowadays with YouTube, has been a marvelous revelation. I never understood the consternation over more people getting into cooking. I appreciate restaurant meals so much more knowing the efforts they're taking.
My culinary origin story is a lasagna. I should note that I've always "helped" in the kitchen, especially when my mom or her dad were cooking. But this was my first attempt at cooking a "big" meal for the family all on my own.
Mom had left the to-do list, and for some reason, she'd picked lasagna as the meal of choice. She'll insist that I chose this meal, but she'd left the ingredients out, a recipe card (very detailed!), and a note that said "Dinner at 6". I'm not sure how else I'm supposed to interpret this selection of ingredients other than "make this". Please note, it was my day to "cook" according to the chore sheet.
Anyways, I followed the recipe card and prepared all the fillings and the noodles, assembled the lasagna, and put it in the oven to bake.
Did you know noodles and egg and cheese expand when they bake?
Reader, I did not. I'd never seen a lasagna rise from the pan like a zombie from a grave but here we are.
Nowadays, I only have one well-used cookbook (Better Homes) and then I use the internet for anything else. I love being inspired by a recipe, and that's why I enjoy this newsletter.
My challenge in cooking is usually finding a replacement for pork proteins. (Allergy.)
Ground turkey with anise seed, cumin, chili powder, sage, and some basil has been a pretty decent replacement for ground pork sausage when I make biscuits and gravy.
I can't remember where I saw it now, but awhile ago I read a great piece on the devaluation of crafts and home cooking vs. the elevation of arts and restaurant chefs, and how women are primarily associated with the former and men the latter. It will shock no one that society considers home cooking and crafting "silly women's things" that have no intrinsic value. Heh.
I didn't really enjoy Rachael Ray's personality - I still cringe when she says EVOO and the word delish just raises my hackles - but I absolutely get down with her message and approach. It's practical, approachable, and eminently doable. And yes, I cook with a garbage bowl. Home cooking is a wonderful thing that, while it can vault you into sophisticated approaches, is also just fine if all it does is feed you and make you happy.
That era of Food Network is what hooked me on cooking. Between watching Rachael Ray and Good Eats with my mom, and watching a TON, and I mean LOTS of the original Iron Chef tv show firmly set the hook.
God, I loved the original Iron Chef. I could never accept the American version as real. The only true Iron Chefs were Masuhara Morimoto, Chen Kenichi, Hiroyuki Sakai and Rokusaboru Michiba. "Iron Chef Bobby Flay?" GTFO.
There's also an Iron Chef channel on Pluto TV, which I discovered at the dentist's office the other morning when the receptionist had it on in the waiting area. That was an unexpectedly fun wait for dental work.
OG Iron Chef was the best. Every challenger was the master of some random ingredient. The dubbing (Go ahead, big guy!). The one judge who seemed to like only truffles and sauces. The other judge that was always some form of actress or pop star that seemed genuinely surprised that food was served. The long ingredient intros that were excessively dramatic (and informative, I now know with sashimi to look for the rainbow).
US Iron Chef just never understood why the other was successful…and having Flay make the same three sauces every time didn’t help.
People get me cookbooks every year and I rarely use them. I'm spoiled by YouTube. Between chef John, Babish, and the bon appetit diaspora, it's so much easier to watch someone.
been a big fan of the Molly Baz "Cook This Book" in my house recently and it's my first real foray into cookbooks. I worry that it is a slippery slope, but good thing I like sledding.
There's definitely a place for the literary-style cookbooks of the modern era, but if you're new to cooking or lazy or whatever and just want to make something basic for dinner, there's no better book than the 1980 version of the Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook.
If you trade out Rachel Ray for Binging with Babish we've basically had the same journey. Seeing some of the stuff you've made has helped me step up my food game immensely. I've already gotten some cooking gadgets for gifts lately (I only wish I had an ice cream maker earlier) and can't wait to tackle some new recipes. My only question is if there's an air fryer variant of the Kentuckiana Hot Loin?
I might agree that I've transitioned into casual foodiedom. As I've gotten older, and had kids, a lot of the old pastimes have gone away. The desire to try rock climbing gradually changes into the desire to try a Vietnamese noodle bar. Free time shifts from finishing your favorite video game to finding a store in town that carries quality ingredients to make your own vindaloo.
Like you, one of my inspirations was mom and grandma, two Italians who loved to cook, but loved to serve their cookery even more. I also transitioned from dishwasher to short order cook at a local restaurant during my high school years, and only left after disagreeing with the owner on portion sizes (see above, Italian heritage and all).
I think my biggest hangup is that my kids are not nearly as adventurous as the parents are when it comes to food, and I lack the ambition to do elaborate preparations. Maybe I should seek out this Rachael Ray person's recipes.
I also learned to cook from those early 2000's Food Network shows, but because I was a high schooler back then, I didn't care about 30 minute meals, I wanted to do science experiments in the kitchen, so Good Eats was my preferred show. I did a lot of those experiments, some of them were terrible. I wonder now that we have streaming, and people can watch what they want to watch and not just "what's on" how that changes our food exposure.
I wanted a good steak dinner at age 23 and I no longer worked in a restaurant, giving me access to discounted food. So I figured out how to do it.
A couple of years later I moved in with a college buddy who was an obsessive cook and took a lot of notes and stole a lot of recipes.
As a parent now, I definitely appreciate the Rachel Ray’s of the world: you need some 30 minute meals in your arsenal or a good crock pot meal to keep the fridge stocked.
In my experience, it seems that the home cook is too caught up in following the rules to a t. They lack the experience, and so lean on the text. Once the experience comes, you realize that recipes are just suggestions. Guidelines. Wing it. Slap some stuff together and season it well and it'll taste good. That then opens things up and makes cooking less of a task and more fun!
My mom is a great cook but is very much a "let me cook and stay out of my way person", so it's kind of a minor miracle that both my sister and I are now also what I would consider pretty good cooks. My journey started with the chili recipe in my copy of the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook - gifted to me by my mom. (I think I ate it for a week straight... I was broke broke)
I think you sort of exemplify what I'll call "cooking for the masses as art."
I have not made anything you have shared here in the years which you have shared them.
This is not because what you make doesn't look delicious. It does.
This is not because I cannot make it. I cooked professionally for 15+ years.
It's more that I get joy from watching you make it. It's like reading an episode of Emeril hosted by Conan.
I love it very much. Thank you for all your hard work Scott.
I'm blushing, and I'm considering making "like reading an episode of Emeril hosted by Conan" the new description of this site on Substack. One of the finest compliments I've ever received!
Update: he did it!
P.S. - I guess I would consider Spilly something like an episode of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives hosted by Gallagher.
you are a wordsmith, and I agree with a lot of what you're saying here. I will probably spend most of my retirement delving into the ACBN archives and realizing I should have tried these before arthritis set in.
My intro into cooking feels similar to yours. I think the main difference is that I’m from a slightly younger generation, so Youtube channels like Binging with Babish are what sparked my interest instead of shows on the Food Network.
I can remember my first major cooking for others. Decided to make a pot of chicken soup, and missed the whole "debone the chicken" step, and had to warn everyone of the tiny choking hazards I was serving them. Good cooks only make that mistake once!
There are days I wonder if ACBN is the new Alexa and is constantly spying on me. My wife and I were having a conversation about my ever growing collection of cookbooks and whether I would want to donate any, which I actually did have a couple (bargain bin ones from long ago). Then the conversation went to my collection of kitchen items, which may have started to collect dust including many KitchenAid attachments, those were saved. Having a little one makes multistep prep difficult.
All of this lead the conversation into when did I start cooking which took me down memory lane and helping my grandma make meatloaf and pouring cans of beans into chili while on a kitchen chair. Then helping my mom as she would make large batch crockpot meals to go into the freezer. Time spent in high school running a kitchen (rural child labor laws do not exist) to standing in front of a broiler at a steak house in grad school. And now cooking with my daughter in her kitchen tower stealing vegetables from my mise en plas (one of the greatest things learned while binging early 2000 Food Network shows instead of studying). And it really made me realize that the kitchen out of any part of the house is my happy place.
Now how do I turn off the eavesdropping setting to ACBN?
I'm sorry, but the surveillance network is essential to smooth operations of the ACBN.
I'm now picturing Olaf as part of spy vs spy.
My squelched argument with wifey is whether we even need the cooksbook on the shelves, as we have a small notebook filled with family recipes and when we don't use that, we're turning to the Internet for our ideas.
I think the gate-crashing by Rachel Ray and others, and nowadays with YouTube, has been a marvelous revelation. I never understood the consternation over more people getting into cooking. I appreciate restaurant meals so much more knowing the efforts they're taking.
My culinary origin story is a lasagna. I should note that I've always "helped" in the kitchen, especially when my mom or her dad were cooking. But this was my first attempt at cooking a "big" meal for the family all on my own.
Mom had left the to-do list, and for some reason, she'd picked lasagna as the meal of choice. She'll insist that I chose this meal, but she'd left the ingredients out, a recipe card (very detailed!), and a note that said "Dinner at 6". I'm not sure how else I'm supposed to interpret this selection of ingredients other than "make this". Please note, it was my day to "cook" according to the chore sheet.
Anyways, I followed the recipe card and prepared all the fillings and the noodles, assembled the lasagna, and put it in the oven to bake.
Did you know noodles and egg and cheese expand when they bake?
Reader, I did not. I'd never seen a lasagna rise from the pan like a zombie from a grave but here we are.
Nowadays, I only have one well-used cookbook (Better Homes) and then I use the internet for anything else. I love being inspired by a recipe, and that's why I enjoy this newsletter.
My challenge in cooking is usually finding a replacement for pork proteins. (Allergy.)
Ground turkey with anise seed, cumin, chili powder, sage, and some basil has been a pretty decent replacement for ground pork sausage when I make biscuits and gravy.
I can't remember where I saw it now, but awhile ago I read a great piece on the devaluation of crafts and home cooking vs. the elevation of arts and restaurant chefs, and how women are primarily associated with the former and men the latter. It will shock no one that society considers home cooking and crafting "silly women's things" that have no intrinsic value. Heh.
I didn't really enjoy Rachael Ray's personality - I still cringe when she says EVOO and the word delish just raises my hackles - but I absolutely get down with her message and approach. It's practical, approachable, and eminently doable. And yes, I cook with a garbage bowl. Home cooking is a wonderful thing that, while it can vault you into sophisticated approaches, is also just fine if all it does is feed you and make you happy.
That era of Food Network is what hooked me on cooking. Between watching Rachael Ray and Good Eats with my mom, and watching a TON, and I mean LOTS of the original Iron Chef tv show firmly set the hook.
/takes giant bite of yellow pepper
//laughs
God, I loved the original Iron Chef. I could never accept the American version as real. The only true Iron Chefs were Masuhara Morimoto, Chen Kenichi, Hiroyuki Sakai and Rokusaboru Michiba. "Iron Chef Bobby Flay?" GTFO.
"Fukui-San!"
"Go ahead Ohta!"
"It turns out that almost every episode of the original is on YouTube! I guess I know what BeerNye is watching with the kids tonight!"
OH HELL YEAH
There's also an Iron Chef channel on Pluto TV, which I discovered at the dentist's office the other morning when the receptionist had it on in the waiting area. That was an unexpectedly fun wait for dental work.
OG Iron Chef was the best. Every challenger was the master of some random ingredient. The dubbing (Go ahead, big guy!). The one judge who seemed to like only truffles and sauces. The other judge that was always some form of actress or pop star that seemed genuinely surprised that food was served. The long ingredient intros that were excessively dramatic (and informative, I now know with sashimi to look for the rainbow).
US Iron Chef just never understood why the other was successful…and having Flay make the same three sauces every time didn’t help.
People get me cookbooks every year and I rarely use them. I'm spoiled by YouTube. Between chef John, Babish, and the bon appetit diaspora, it's so much easier to watch someone.
been a big fan of the Molly Baz "Cook This Book" in my house recently and it's my first real foray into cookbooks. I worry that it is a slippery slope, but good thing I like sledding.
We've been talking about getting that one. This is the second recommendation in a week, so I might have to pull the trigger
I've had fun with it!
I mean, I chose a career from watching Good Eats in high school, so I can’t begrudge Ray being your culinary origin story.
Turn-of-the-millennium Food Network had an underrated roster.
There's definitely a place for the literary-style cookbooks of the modern era, but if you're new to cooking or lazy or whatever and just want to make something basic for dinner, there's no better book than the 1980 version of the Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook.
Thank goodness you discovered cooking. Or we would be the poorer...
If you trade out Rachel Ray for Binging with Babish we've basically had the same journey. Seeing some of the stuff you've made has helped me step up my food game immensely. I've already gotten some cooking gadgets for gifts lately (I only wish I had an ice cream maker earlier) and can't wait to tackle some new recipes. My only question is if there's an air fryer variant of the Kentuckiana Hot Loin?
I might agree that I've transitioned into casual foodiedom. As I've gotten older, and had kids, a lot of the old pastimes have gone away. The desire to try rock climbing gradually changes into the desire to try a Vietnamese noodle bar. Free time shifts from finishing your favorite video game to finding a store in town that carries quality ingredients to make your own vindaloo.
Like you, one of my inspirations was mom and grandma, two Italians who loved to cook, but loved to serve their cookery even more. I also transitioned from dishwasher to short order cook at a local restaurant during my high school years, and only left after disagreeing with the owner on portion sizes (see above, Italian heritage and all).
I think my biggest hangup is that my kids are not nearly as adventurous as the parents are when it comes to food, and I lack the ambition to do elaborate preparations. Maybe I should seek out this Rachael Ray person's recipes.
I also learned to cook from those early 2000's Food Network shows, but because I was a high schooler back then, I didn't care about 30 minute meals, I wanted to do science experiments in the kitchen, so Good Eats was my preferred show. I did a lot of those experiments, some of them were terrible. I wonder now that we have streaming, and people can watch what they want to watch and not just "what's on" how that changes our food exposure.
I wanted a good steak dinner at age 23 and I no longer worked in a restaurant, giving me access to discounted food. So I figured out how to do it.
A couple of years later I moved in with a college buddy who was an obsessive cook and took a lot of notes and stole a lot of recipes.
As a parent now, I definitely appreciate the Rachel Ray’s of the world: you need some 30 minute meals in your arsenal or a good crock pot meal to keep the fridge stocked.
In my experience, it seems that the home cook is too caught up in following the rules to a t. They lack the experience, and so lean on the text. Once the experience comes, you realize that recipes are just suggestions. Guidelines. Wing it. Slap some stuff together and season it well and it'll taste good. That then opens things up and makes cooking less of a task and more fun!
My mom is a great cook but is very much a "let me cook and stay out of my way person", so it's kind of a minor miracle that both my sister and I are now also what I would consider pretty good cooks. My journey started with the chili recipe in my copy of the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook - gifted to me by my mom. (I think I ate it for a week straight... I was broke broke)