Cooking Conundrums Challenge

Sometimes! I have body issues that make doing almost anything a pretty terrible experience no matter what it is, when it is, or what sort of mood I’m in. But when those issues aren’t doing anything to me, if I’m not too hungry already, I really enjoy cooking. Although, now that I’m thinking about it, I’m kinda wondering if I like cooking – the active part, over the heat (or whatever), as much as I like peeling, chopping, or otherwise preparing ingredients. But maybe that’s all cooking, for the purposes of this question?

I can remember being explicitly taught how to make rice and beans when I was leaving (or just gone) to graduate school. Apart from that, everything I know about cooking, I think I learned either from reading, guessing, or watching someone who didn’t know they were teaching me. Actually, this is a little bit of an annoying thing (about me). Sometimes you’ll come across someone who says they’re self-taught, but they watched an instructional video or read a manual or something like that. It feels like the term self-taught should be reserved for folks who go through the process of trial and error to learn from first principles. But I’m being pedantic, aren’t I?

I wouldn’t say I follow cooking bloggers, but I do follow cooking vloggers. In no particular order, some of my favorites are Maangchi, Yaxin, Andrew Bernard, The Indigenous Food Lab, and Chinese Cooking Demystified. I don’t follow any bloggers anymore, I should say. My absolute favorite food-related human is Isa Chandra Moskowitz. In fact, while writing this, I got seriously distracted by Isa’s Cheezy Lentil Smashburger post.

My partner and I own a handful of cookbooks. My partner’s influence has led me to refer to The Joy of Cooking much more than I would’ve expected before we met. But when I’m on my own, or when I’m running the show, I probably have referred to Veganomicon more than anything else.

Tricky. I do watch cooking shows, but I don’t know if I like them. At least when we’re talking about US cooking shows, I think the ratio of tolerable to insufferable types is really bad. I’m not a huge fan of arrogance, and it seems like, at least on a show like Top Chef, the contestants are often extremely arrogant. There are other shows that aren’t broadcast in the US which I have seen that I do like a lot – MasterChef Australia is one.

When you’re searching for restaurants on, like, a map or food delivery site, you can sort by cuisine. And the options will be things like, Italian, Indian, Chinese, … all these different ethnicities and regions, but then you’ll also see, for example, Vegan. So, by food-delivery standards, the cuisine I’ve cooked the most often is vegan. If we’re talking culturally or regionally, then it’s probably a toss-up between, broadly speaking, East Asian and Latin American.

I’ve never tried cooking Egyptian food before, but there’s a place not too far from my house that serves Koshary, and it is so dang good. I’d like to try making it. Don’t know why I haven’t yet.

When I’m in the mood for cooking, I don’t mind when it is. I used to cook a lot late at night before going out with friends. These days I’m cooking a lot more in the morning than I am later in the day. Preferences don’t have a whole lot to do with it, though.

Condiment, ketchup. Ingredient, potato.

No. Plans are a recipe (see what I did there?) for disappointment.

I like to have a recipe to make a new thing, but once I’ve made it a couple times, I’ll deviate from it if the mood strikes. I don’t normally just make a thing without a significant point of reference. And that point of reference will have been made first from a recipe.

Again. That was pretty fun!