I recently leveled up from my small but fantastic little cafe to a beautiful restaurant serving Italian food in Hawaii. Things could be worse. I joined a team that has been coming together for the last two years in a space that has been dear to my heart for more than a decade.
I didn’t mean to become a chef, but here I am. What I did purposely do many years ago however, is to start cooking like I CARE. Lately as people ask me about my new gig, I have found myself telling them, “Everyone in the kitchen and in the front of the house CARES”. One of those recent conversations was with a sommelier and a liquor rep at a dinner party. We talked about Temple Grandin’s theory about being able to pass down a cow’s stress at the slaughterhouse into the food and we drew the similarity to when you can taste the frustration and stress of a restaurant kitchen in the dish that is delivered to your table. When talking about the kitchen I work in now, it is the opposite of that. You can see and taste in the food that there is joy behind that plate. We want you to taste and see that we give a f*@k.
When my children were young and I was working from home, I began to practice the slowness and attention to the small details that can turn the simplest of things into something a little more special. Things as simple as garnishing the finished dish, even if you are the only one at the table.
Now that I am cooking professionally, this is what I bring to every dish I send through the pass-through. I have had several conversations recently about the differences and similarities of cooking at home versus cooking for a living. My discovery? We all just want to eat food that was simply made by someone who cares.
Here are ten simple things you can do in your own kitchen to cook like you give a f*@k and show the people you are feeding that you care:
Finger Root has a subtle citrus, floral flavor
Buy Sexy Ingredients
I guess this means that you first have to shop like you give a f*@k. And no excuses that you don’t have a big shopping budget, sexy doesn’t = expensive. It can be one ingredient in your recipe that you choose to highlight or elevate.
Cooking a simple pasta? Go with a shape that you don’t normally use like campanelle, radiatori, or orzo. Look for seasonal produce. One rainbow carrot or a bundle of some mystery fern from the Chinatown markets will make your dish look, well, prettier. Because don’t forget, before anyone tastes your food, they will eat with their eyes first.
Keep some sexy things in the door of your fridge and in your pantry. The next time you are in Ross or TJ Max or wherever else, check out that specialty foods isle. For a few dollars, you never know when you might score a jar of spicy mustard, or a bag of lavender, or a bottle of hazelnut oil.
2. Get In The Mood
Your kitchen is your stage when you’re cooking. Turn off the fluorescents and turn on some soft light. Pour yourself your favorite beverage. Play some music. Open the window. Take a deep breath. Smile. Dance. Definitely dance.
There are certainly those times where all you want is food in your face. Immediately. You think you don’t have time before you rush out the door in the morning to make yourself or your people something sexy, but you do. Play your morning jams, open that fridge and do something as simple as drizzle some of that honey you scored in the specialty isle over a sliced apple. Done. Too tired when you get home from work to even think about cooking? Pour yourself that drink, slice some onion and sauté it over gentle heat with a hunk of butter while you peruse your mystery ingredients. The smell will guide you toward creating something as simple and satisfying as a caramelized onion grilled cheese and some spicy greens (because you always keep some in your fridge) drizzled with that lovely oil.
Did I mention the dancing? Sway your hips while you stir that sauce, sing the lyrics into the spoon or have a full on dance party. We need as many of these moments in our day anyway, it really does wonders.
Heads of garlic dressed in olive oil, fresh time, salt and pepper ready for the oven
3. Make Your Own
There are some things to have on hand that will not only make your life easier, but now that you’ve learned to set the mood and you’re dancing around your kitchen with that drink in your hand, you can actually enjoy the smell of a chicken stock or a red wine tomato sauce simmering away on the back burner on a day or an evening when you are puttering around your house or multi tasking anyway.
You can buy a six pound can of tomato sauce for about $3 along with a rotisserie chicken for $5, make your favorite sauce or stock recipe, cool and then freeze in smaller portions to have on hand when you need them, and trust me, you can taste the love in a homemade pot of anything that has been cooking slowly and tended by a happy cook, dancing around, drink in hand.
4. Get Your Mise en Place, Yo!
Mise en place (French pronunciation: [mi zɑ̃ ˈplas]) is a French culinary phrase which means "putting in place" or "everything in its place". It refers to the set up required before cooking, and is often used in professional kitchens to refer to organizing and arranging the ingredients. That’s what Wikipedia says anyway.
In professional kitchens, this is the beginning of any dish. Whether you are making that simple grilled cheese, or cooking dinner for 20 of your closest friends, this will make the execution of YOUR dishes so much easier and less stressful for you.
It doesn’t have to be like the cooking shows with one tablespoon of each ingredient laid out in endless bowls, but can be as simple as lining up your sliced vegetables on your cutting board, having your herbs chopped and your cheese grated.
Taking these few minutes before you hit the stove, to prep and organize your ingredients, will do wonders in helping you to enjoy creating something sexy and nourishing.
Fresh ravioli
5. Cook Like You Like To Eat
What do you order when you go out to eat? What do you crave? What is that “last meal if you were on death row” that you would choose? Learn to make it. Good food that feels like a special occasion doesn’t have to be complicated and unattainable. Is it impossible to resist a house-made ravioli when you see one on a menu? Take some time to learn to make your own. It may take some time to figure it out, you will most likely trash your kitchen and make a few batches of shitty ravioli before you get it right, but you will learn first hand how much love and attention goes into that dish that rocks your world on that menu that you love. Don’t forget, most of us who are cooking your $30 dish in a restaurant learned the exact same way. Cooking a perfect steak or even something as special-occasion-y as lobster is truly a simple process, don’t be afraid, the internet will tell you all of the secrets.
6. More Than Salt & Pepper
Spice doesn’t have to be spicy. It’s that thing in the back of that dish that you love that brings out the flavor of the star ingredient, maybe it’s the thing that doesn’t make any real sense but it’s what keeps you coming back for more.
There are a few different spice and flavor families that you should really consider inviting into your cooking. Think “The 5 S’s”: Salty, Sour, Sweet, Savory, Spicy. You don’t have to have them all in one dish but learning to balance these flavors will make your dishes sing.
Salt is definitely a must in any dish. It’s non-negotiable, unless you are on a low-salt diet, which you then have to compensate for with other flavors. There are lots of creative ways to add saltiness to your cooking that you might be missing out on. Miso provides a fantastic layer of salty umami, as with so many Asian sauces. Garlic salt is one of my favorite staples. And of course there’s just good old’ salt, but you can start collecting some sexy salts too. I brought back a small vile of sea salt with rose petals from Spain and just using a sprinkle of it brings something truly special to the plate. For home I buy Hawaiian sea salt and grind it slightly in a spice grinder to give it a smaller, course texture. There’s Himalayan pink salt, there’s grey sea salt, and the list goes on. If you really want to get crazy, mix up your own blend with your favorite herbs from the garden or farmers market.
Sour comes in the form of acidity in cooking and it can be the one little touch that brightens up the whole dish. Lemon & lime zest are a great addition to pretty much anything and if you grate it over your finished plate it gives an extra visual boost too. A squeeze of lemon onto a roasted chicken or some seafood, served with some pork tacos, or a little zest in your next dessert will make all the difference. And then there’s vinegar. It’s so easy to give something a quick pickling in a little vinegar of your choosing, salt and some sugar as a base, and then you can also add herbs and spices if you so choose. Fresh fruit, red onion, jalapeños, radish, carrots are all great things to have on hand to add to whatever you’re cooking.
Sweet is key in marinades especially. I love brown sugar, honey, and I even reach for a jar of marmalade or jam when throwing together a marinade.
Savory can come in the form of garlic, onions, herbs, and fats such as butter and oils. You better believe I have a mason jar of bacon grease that I keep in the fridge and use it in place of cooking oil ALL the time. Try adding a dollop of butter to your pasta sauce as it’s finishing cooking, or roast a head of garlic and store that to smear onto some French bread or to add to a sauce. Caramelized onions are another favorite to keep on hand.
And of course, everyone needs a little spice in their life. It doesn’t have to blow your face off but a little cayenne, a sliced jalapeño, a dash of hot sauce always gets the party started.
Squash blossoms for the win
7. Don’t Be A Chicken
No offense to chickens, but be brave in the kitchen. In my cooking classes I talk about the value of what I call “improv cooking”. It’s great to have a recipe and follow the steps, but it’s also ok to improvise when you realize you are missing an ingredient or have totally overcooked something. Remember, you can always turn it into soup.
Let them eat soup
8. Clean As You Go
I am not good at this. But I can tell you that when I do this it makes everything flow a little easier. There’s nothing that makes you not want to cook at all like coming back into the kitchen after eating your sexy meal and walking into the aftermath of a cooking tornado. Plus, if you have set the mood (see #2), chances are your people have gravitated into the kitchen to sniff and taste and chat, so you might as well pass them a bowl to put away or hand them the towel to wipe the counter.
9. Eat It With Your Eyes First
Please please please take two seconds to pretend you are in a chef coat in a swanky restaurant. You know what went into making this dish. You cried the tears when slicing the onions, your burnt finger is stinging, you’re quite proud of yourself for adding that dash of white wine which brought the whole thing to another level, and now you’re ready to plate like the badass chef that you are, dammit. You’re not going to scoop little piles of food onto the plate like a cafeteria kitchen, not you. Because you give a f*@k. You’re going to take those two seconds and you are going to artfully arrange your sexy food in a way that says you CREATED this. You are going to garnish that bad boy with some fresh herbs and maybe even give it a fancy drizzle of that balsamic reduction you scored. And then you are going to stand back and congratulate yourself, because that is one beautiful grilled cheese.
10. Share
I love to eat alone with a book or a movie or some great music. But I really love to share a meal with someone I love. I love to watch them eat, to see how food makes them happy, to witness them being nourished, for them to know I care.
And what to do with the leftovers of that huge batch of soup you made? Package it up and give to someone. Your neighbor, coworker or the homeless person you will pass on the street later will love your thoughtfulness. Because remember, we all just want to eat food that was made by someone who cares.
And now, if you’ve made it all the way to the end of this article… Please leave a comment below and let us know what things you already do to take the time to cook like you give a f*@k!
Cheers!
