[ScottON]

Hi folks,

Well I'm new here, it looks like there's a lot of information to digest - I swear no pun intended.

Anyway my experience is very little(i'm a 1st year student living at home) - I make a lot of scrambled eggs with various fillings, have made chilli by following a recipe to the dime but thats about it.

I want to learn to cook a variety of dishes as I'm planning on moving out with my girlfriend next year.

Anyway as I know very little where would you advise I start. I was hoping for a online lesson plan I could follow or a list of basics I should learn first.

My summer holidays start in a few days so i'll have time to experiment.

Many Thanks

[Suzanne]

The only online cooking lessons that I know and trust is the eGullet Culinary Institute. But it's been a long time since I looked much at what they have there.

They have a very broad range of skills and tend towards special topics. Some might be too advanced for someone starting out, but there are several "101" courses as well.

If you want a couple of book suggestions, have a look at The New Cook by Mary Berry and Marlena Spieler (Note: I'm guessing you're in the UK?). It's just great for learning what things should look like and how you do things. Another good one is No More Takeout by Stephen Hartigan (who is Irish) and Jerry Boak (an American). That one is an American book, but I think you would understand what they're about.

Welcome to cooking!!

[amazingrace]

If your girlfriend is also interested in cooking this might be something you could explore together. Even something as simple as watching some food network shows can expand your knowledge. My recommendation for a cookbook would be the "Better Homes & Garden Cookbook". It has your basic no-frills instructions, and photo tutorials.

[phatch]

Following recipes is the basic starting point. Learn some food safety and taste as you go (when safe) so you learn how food tastes at different points in cooking and with different levels of seasoning.

This teaches you how different seasonings work over time in the dish and how they taste when cooked just a little or cooked a lot. And how they work in combination.

This also applies to the main ingredients, not just seasonings. You'll learn which are complementary, which offer desirable contrasts and so on.

With that knowledge, you can start to improvise and change things on the fly to suit your tastes or just what you happen to have on hand.

[ChrisLehrer]

I know this will annoy some readers, but I'd advise you to go to a video library and watch some Jacques Pepin videos. It's not that what he does is so unusual -- far from it, in terms of what he cooks -- but he is an extraordinarily good teacher. What's more, he will get you focused very early on technique. This is important. Once you start thinking in techniques rather than recipes, suddenly it becomes obvious how to cook a vast range of your favorite things. You do it once or twice from a recipe, and you think, "hey, I get it, I just do this and this and this," and you're in business to do it without assistance.

Once you've got the hang of that, which won't take all that long if you don't get crazy about it, set aside one day a week for "fridge cleanout." The rule is, dinner is made from what you've already got. No cheating unless you actually have nothing, like literally nothing. If you can consistently make dinner from random odds and ends, every recipe, however intricate, is within your grasp. Besides, you'll save lots of money and get a warm "I'm so clever" feeling each time you do it.

I agree with the notion that you should explore cooking with your girlfriend. BUT you should both pay close attention to what's going on. For example, my wife likes to bake and she likes to make desserts. I don't mind baking so long as it's bread, and I've never really learned to make desserts. Our unstated rule is that I don't go there: I'm much more serious about cooking than she is, and so I leave a space where she can rule when she feels like it and I'm stuck plodding along with recipes when I have to do it at all. Pepin remarks on this in his memoir, how he and his wife found ways so that she could enjoy being in the kitchen and cooking, which she liked, when her husband was after all a top-notch French apprentice-trained chef. You don't want this to be competition. You want it to be fun together or something you trade off (I cook monday, wednesday, friday, you cook tuesday and thursday, weekends we find other avenues). Both can be great, but it depends on your personal dynamics, and those should have absolute priority. A word to the wise.

[Koukouvagia]

Originally Posted by ChrisLehrer

I know this will annoy some readers, but ...

Why would this annoy readers? This guy could do a lot worse than watch the incredible Jacques Pepin in action.

[chalkdust]

Great! Cooking is awesome!


Look up the cookbook "joy of cooking"

also "mastering the art of french cooking volume one and two"


u might like learning about french style omelets by the way.

i would try and cook with someone else who is good at it.

the way to learn is by doing it, and asking questions, and reading about it.


my other favorite cookbooks are "the real taste of jamaica" (i think its one of the best jamican cookbooks...)

"classics of indian cooking" (sanhi)

the ethnic vegetarian

the frugal gourmet: china greece and rome

sweet hands (Trinidad and tobago)

next on my cookbook wishlist is a good haitian, and colombian one.


and thai!


there are many blogs and recipe indexes online...



Guyana Outpost: Wayne's Guyana Page

Simply Trini Cooking

Jamaica Travel and Culture .com

www.trinigourmet.com

El Boricua, Recipes, Carmen Santos Curran, The Rican Chef


Welcome to The Congo Cookbook - The Congo Cookbook (African recipes) www.congocookbook.com -

complete chinese cookbook

complete middle eastern cookbook

complete caribbean cookbook

(i think these three are from the same publishing company, nice, big hardcover with pictures)

silver palate cookbook (this one is awesome)

and this website is the best i have found for super knowledgeable advice and quick good help.

[Ishbel]

You could do worse than look at Delia Smith's books... Simply written, well-flavoured dishes with the method written simply and concisely. It's the set of books I sent my kids off to Uni with so they would at least sometimes cook a 'real' meal, rather than potnoodles!

[LuvPie]

Originally Posted by ScottON

Hi folks,

Well I'm new here, it looks like there's a lot of information to digest - I swear no pun intended. Anyway my experience is very little(i'm a 1st year student living at home) - I make a lot of scrambled eggs with various fillings, have made chilli by following a recipe to the dime but thats about it.I want to learn to cook a variety of dishes as I'm planning on moving out with my girlfriend next year.Anyway as I know very little where would you advise I start. I was hoping for a online lesson plan I could follow or a list of basics I should learn first.
My summer holidays start in a few days so i'll have time to experiment.Many Thanks

Here's my best suggestion for you at this young and tender time in your life. Tell us what your favorite flavors are. Are you a meat eater, love vegetables, like sweet sour hot salty, hate certain things? What will you have in your kitchen to cook with? Pots and pans, crock pot, stove oven microwave?
I know I will be more than willing to send you a few recipes that are easy, delicious and attemptable, if that's a word. I'll read what you write and go from there. Hope that helps.
Oh and cooking is either a passion or can become one the more you get into it, it really is very theraputic..........

[LuvPie]

Originally Posted by chalkdust

the frugal gourmet

I'm curious if you're speaking of Jeff Smith the Frugal Gourmet cookbook writer or if you speaking of something else.
I have cleared my house of all and anything Jeff Smith/The Frugal Gourmet. I used to be an avid viewer of his TV shows, not anymore, sure most know of his story.........

[chalkdust]

Originally Posted by Lover of pies

I'm curious if you're speaking of Jeff Smith the Frugal Gourmet cookbook writer or if you speaking of something else.
I have cleared my house of all and anything Jeff Smith/The Frugal Gourmet. I used to be an avid viewer of his TV shows, not anymore, sure most know of his story.........

gee wiz what is his story??????

yes that is what im talking about!!!

[phatch]

Originally Posted by Lover of pies

I'm curious if you're speaking of Jeff Smith the Frugal Gourmet cookbook writer or if you speaking of something else.
I have cleared my house of all and anything Jeff Smith/The Frugal Gourmet. I used to be an avid viewer of his TV shows, not anymore, sure most know of his story.........

Too bad, lots of good content regardless.

Nothing proved only alleged. No criminal charges, it was a civil action only. The settlment was tiny, reported at 2.1 million divided among 7 people. 300,000 per BEFORE attorney's fees. They probably got less than 150,000. That's not much to settle for on claims of rape and molestation.

To me that looks like a shake down, and probably less than he'd have paid in costs to defend himself.

[chalkdust]

ah well

the bible clearly states man is fallen and in need of salvation. thats the whole philosophical point of christianity and islam. humans are evil.

so is he worse than me? i dont know.

he could cook though

[ChrisLehrer]

Originally Posted by Koukouvagia

Why would this annoy readers? This guy could do a lot worse than watch the incredible Jacques Pepin in action.

You're not one of the readers in question.

[ChrisLehrer]

As to Jeff Smith, I have never much liked his stuff, but I also don't really see what his alleged morals have to do with it. A friend of mine used to work for Daniel Boulud, says he's the most impressive raving s**t she's ever encountered, but nevertheless he's a pretty darn good chef. I know a brilliant kaiseki chef in Kyoto whose behavior toward his cooks makes Gordon Ramsay -- the way he's portrayed on TV, I mean, the exaggerated Gordon -- this guy makes Ramsay look like a pussycat. I don't approve of his behavior, but that doesn't make his cooking lesser.

Anyway, this has drifted off-topic. Back to the topic...

I think that at your stage in cooking, it's essential not to get caught in what I think of as the "recipe trap." The extreme here would be America's Test Kitchen and their works. The idea is that if you have a perfect, super-tested recipe, you get perfect results every time. Translation: a recipe does the work, not you, so you don't need to know anything. This is an exceptionally bad way to learn how to cook, though you might get some decent recipes out of it.

If you want to learn to cook, you have to work with books and shows and whatnot that focus on what happens between the action plan (recipe) and eating the food. Pepin is the greatest of these visually and in person; he is less good on paper. Julia Child was the best on paper, if (like me) you're the sort of person who likes to read a lot of text and think about it. (I think her failing, if she had one, was that she wrote cookbooks like Mastering the Art that could be used to learn how to cook -- you read all the text, learn it, then execute the dish using the writeup as a sort of shorthand -- but that could also simply provide rather verbose recipes. My mother, for example, has used that cookbook probably more than any other in her life, and she likes to cook, but she frankly doesn't know what she's doing or why, because she insists on following the recipes.) In his very early shows, Emeril was quite good, but soon he became just an entertainer with food. Alfred Portale is fabulous on paper, but he's aiming at people who already know their way around pretty well. Joy of Cooking and the like should be treated primarily as reference works: if you basically know what you're doing but aren't sure about a particular recipe or ingredient, you look it up.

Some people these days, including many of my students, think of themselves as "goal-oriented." They like to have a concrete goal to strive toward. If you're like this, go get Le Repertoire de la Cuisine, by Louis Saulnier; there's a translation available, and it's inexpensive. Skim the book a little. See how all you've got is shorthand descriptions, no actual explanations of almost anything? Okay, your goal is to be able to look at these little bits and say, "I see, so that means I have to do X, Y, and Z, and I should time it more or less like A, B, C, and probably it's going to look like G, H, I and should be plated accordingly." That's a LONG way off -- that's a seasoned cook with a good memory and a powerful technical range -- but that's a great way to set yourself a goal.