The Magic of Cooking

 

    At the start of the academic year, I moved into my first apartment. Something I promised myself I would do was learn to cook. I don't mean putting mac and cheese in the microwave or putting a frozen pizza in the oven. I mean actually buying ingredients and following recipes to prepare a main course and maybe a few sides from time to time. I would say that about 10 months later, I have been somewhat successful, but not really where I want to be.

    I learned that cooking is hard for a variety of reasons. It takes time to plan out a meal, purchase ingredients, cook the courses, and serve them. It is a lot of work for about 15-20 minutes of eating, and when you work nights, it seems like a better option just to hit a drive thru on the way home. Something else I learned is that cooking is like magic. I remember taking a class a few years ago in the history department here called "History of Food in America" with Dr. Rebecca Sharpless (the sweetest woman on the planet). In that class, we talked about the process of grinding corn into tortillas known as nixtamalization. Before modern technology, it involved soaking the corn in an alkaline solution, typically water mixed with lime and ashes, and then grinding the composition against a grindstone. I remember thinking, "How the hell did anyone figure that out?!" 

    The truth is, cooking is a form of alchemy, similar to the creation of potions. Over hundreds and thousands of years, humans have learned what different ingredients do when mixed together. But cooking goes beyond that. The mixture of different ingredients combined with cooking food with different techniques and at different temperatures, have resulted in the limitless possibilities of meal preparation. I feel that we often take this process for granted. It took the efforts of many generations before us to figure out what was safe to eat, what wasn't, and how to make the things we eat taste delicious. It is even more fascinating to consider that if someone wanted to experiment with using new ingredients or cooking techniques, that they could have been accused of practicing witchcraft! I'm still not sure how people figured out how to cook. It is alchemy, it is science, and it is truly magical. And in my case, it is too hard. I'll let the witches continue to make my food.