A few weeks ago Mark Bittman wrote an article about how celebrity chefs can actually deter people from entering the kitchen. If you think about it, almost nothing you see on TV happens in a real kitchen. Due to the short time frame of a thirty minute show, some things are obviously prepped ahead, and to an extent, that’s fine. What is intimidating is that these chefs, unlike the average person, never flinch or fail.
I’ve followed a celebrity chef’s instructions to a T before and ended up with egg yolk all over my counter and flour in my hair. They ended up with a beautiful pie. One experience like that can be enough to make you not want to try it again.
Here at The Food Spot, we realize that people make mistakes. We do to—I admitted to leaving a key ingredient out of my meatloaf (it was still delicious). Cooking can be intimidating, but we try to emphasize the ease of many dishes and explain what really happens in the kitchen. We’ve mentioned how to repair dishes on the fly before, and we’ll be sure to include more tips and suggestions like that.
We’ll even get better about giving you options to do things without relying on specialized equipment. Obviously not everyone can have a smoker, but you can still make very tasty pulled pork without one.
That’s why you’ll see a new series, WE COOK TO EAT, where we’ll follow a couple of relative culinary novices as they try to make meals with basic ingredients in your average kitchen. No stand mixers or other fancy equipment will be used by these aspiring chefs. You’ll see a few mistakes, a few tries to salvage dishes, and even a few great successes.
Hopefully this will inspire you to turn on the stove and overcome the fear of possibly making a few mistakes–after all, if it really is that bad you can still order a pizza. (But really, it’s not hard to make your own.)
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