The Joys of Cooking

On shared meals, following recipes, and going home.

For me, “home cooking” means that I am at home, and I am cooking.

It is both a spoken and unspoken expectation that I will bring my current recipe developing projects back to my parents’ kitchen in Winchester, Massachusetts, testing my recent experiments on my most encouraging and honest subjects. My mom and I will drive to the nearby farm-stand and seafood market to pick up whatever looks the freshest, around which I will plan the menu. My dad and I will bake—probably banana bread—and disagree playfully about the little things.

“Honey?” he asks, eyebrows raised. “On pizza?”

We spend an afternoon making banana cream pie from the Petee’s Pie cookbook, a consolation for my failure to bring anything back from the shop that employs me back in New York City. He is skeptical that local butter and eggs will change the quality of a banana cream pie, and even more skeptical that it is worth all the effort (“Pillsbury is looking pretty good right about now,” he says, as I break up the butter with my fingertips).

I haven’t followed a recipe in what feels like a lifetime, and so I forget to read ahead and execute the steps in order. I am used to winging it, a tendency that I recognize more clearly when my mom asks what is in the pot that’s gradually becoming shrimp scampi and I respond by saying “uhh… I think garlic and oil, maybe butter?” When we make bread together, I read out the measurements from memory, estimating quantities and adjusting the rising times and methods as we go. It tastes delicious.

As you read this, I am still walking around my childhood home in my adult pajamas (more specifically, in an oversized sweatshirt from Wildair that I refuse to take off, ever). I am drinking tea and eating sour cream coffee cake that my dad baked in preparation for my arrival. I am thinking about what to pair with the tin of mussels escabeche from my old job that still sit in the pantry here, reminiscent of past lives.

Making the decision to come home has not always been easy, since home is a small New England town that I once contorted myself into, attempting and succeeding to fit a round peg into a very square hole. It is a reminder of a past life that I am not always so keen to look back at. This is not uncommon for those of us who grew up in places with people that all look and act and think the same, and it is not always an easy re-entrance to make. But home is also where my parents are, and where my dog is, and where my old but sturdy Kitchen Aid stand-mixer is. Home is where I learned to follow a recipe, and where I learned to wing it.

In a time where shared meals are a rarity, there is something very special about cooking for other people. There is something even more special about cooking for people who love you and your food more than anyone ever could.

To me, the joy of cooking is infinite. It takes the form of a dinner party, or a potluck with friends. It manifests in the grateful satisfaction of someone else cleaning up my messy dishes, and the parmesan that I sprinkled throughout the kitchen. I feel it in every new creation, every successful (and even failed) experiment. The many joys of cooking are in making something that I am proud of, and sharing it with people I care about.

And sometimes, it is as simple as a bowl of fish chowder eaten in my pajamas.

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In other news: I’m hosting a cooking class!

If you liked today’s essay, join me on February 16th for an interactive workshop on improvising in the kitchen. We’ll be making pasta with whatever you have on hand, and discussing tips and tricks for thinking, cooking, and grocery shopping without a recipe.

Find more information and register here: