About

Welcome to This Is Cookable!

We're living in a strange time for cooking. On the one hand, many of us were never taught to cook: schools don't teach it, maybe our parents never knew how or didn't have the time, and let's face it, most of us aren't going to culinary academies. On the other hand, it seems like everyone out there is crazy for cooking. There has never been a better time in world history to find a recipe, and most people have access to kitchen technology which would make our ancestors weep.

Maybe you've tried cooking. Maybe you've even succeeded. You know a few recipes, you feel reasonably confident boiling water, and you're wondering, "How can I go from here to being able to put food on the table every day?" No one is teaching you the cheats. Everyone is expecting you to present dinner-party worthy (or, let's face it, Instagram-worthy) plating to your refined guests, when in fact you've got a family or friends (or, no shame, just you) who care less about camera-ready and more about it being done before bed time.

And we've all got more on our plates than cooking. Sure, it would be great if you could just sit back, spend several hours preparing a meal, and then bask in praise, but you've got a job. So you order out a lot. And you wish maybe you could cut back on that expense a little, but even if you know how to cook some things, it's just so much effort and so little reward.

Let's not forget those overpriced meal-in-a-box subscription services which promise that you'll be cooking in no time. What they don't tell you is that the minute you stop paying what amounts to restaurant prices for your meals (and then cooking them yourself; jeez, why not just order out?) you're left with just more recipes.

There are a lot of recipe blogs out there. This Is Cookable isn't like that. I'm going to give you recipes, sure, but with an eye toward making them your own. There will be times when I say, "Use whatever you'd like" or, "Whatever you've got on hand is fine." And that might be a little scary. I'm not giving you exact instructions? What is this?

What is this?

This Is Cookable is a site where I'm going to teach you all the strange tips, tricks, cheats, and hacks I can think of (and some I'll probably come up with) so you can get a meal on the table in time to eat it. I'm going to help you save money at the grocery store, although I'll also tell you what you can do to gussy things up a bit if you got a bonus this month and want to celebrate.

This Is Cookable is about flavors, primarily. I want to teach you how to turn cheap, filling ingredients into meals which don't all taste the same. And the way to do that is to learn combinations of flavor, the herbs and spices that so many people pass over in favor of premixed blends. Don't get me wrong: there's no shame in premixed blends either. In fact, I'd say that's one of This Is Cookable's mantras: "There's no shame in doing what you're able to do."

So there will be recipes, but maybe not like you're used to seeing. I'm not going to tell you a long story about how this pot of chicken stew reminds me of the Pyrenees and Raul, the gardener and disgraced Third Viscount d'Estange, with whom I shared a torrid week in June of 2003. In fairness to those stories, recipes can't be copyrighted, so cooks write those stories in order to make a living. There's no shame in that, right?

But the recipes here will sometimes be kind of vague. Because I'm not here to tell you what to do, I'm here to show you different ways you can do it. Learning to cook from recipes is difficult, so I'm trying a slightly different approach. There will be times when things need to be fairly exact, and I'll tell you when that's the case, but there will be times when I'll say, "Here are some spices you could try," with corresponding ideas for how that will make the final dish taste. And sometimes I might be even more vague than that. You've got this.

I'm also likely to give instructions in a more roundabout way than you may be used to. You know your kitchen best. I have cooked in plenty of different kitchens, and there are always quirks, so I'm not going to assume you have a particular tool unless it's absolutely necessary (and even then I might give you alternatives which aren't as good but will do in a pinch).

Lastly, in keeping with our "No shame" idea, you're going to mess this up. Let's just get that out of the way. Too many cooks present their recipes with the idea that you'll make them exactly the same way and they'll turn out perfectly. Nope. They won't. You're going to screw something up. And that's okay. If the technique or recipe is particularly prone to problems, I'll try to bring up where you're going to fail, not because it's hard, but because it's still cookable even if you drop the ball. Sometimes you can't do anything about it, but sometimes you can save it. Maybe it won't look as nice, or maybe it won't taste quite as good, but the only way to learn is to make mistakes. No shame.

Why is this?

I think I've made my feelings pretty clear about cooking, but in case I haven't, cooking isn't a luxury thing we do because we're bourgeois wine-sippers who gave the staff the night off and thought it might be fun to leaf through Martha Stewart Living. Although if you are, welcome to you too. I promise, I'll keep my class struggle to a minimum.

 

Cooking is something everyone used to have to be able to do. It was a matter of survival. We do have the luxury of that no longer being true, but cooking for yourself is still a much more affordable way to live, and it's healthier too. That's pretty much all I'll say on the subject of health though; no shame here (though I may occasionally offer alternatives for people who need to avoid various ingredients).

 

Beyond that, cooking is an expression of joy. We eat our food but too often we don't enjoy it. Or we cook it but it's a massive chore. Or we're terrified of it. This Is Cookable aims to give you back some of that joy, and maybe give you some joy you weren't expecting.

 

But that's the fru-fru. What it boils down to is that everyone can cook (I promise, this is not an intelligent rat writing this) and it's really not as complicated as you think, but it's also not necessary to simplify it down to the point where you feel like a small child whose hand is being held. You, the wonderful, imperfect human that you are, can cook. And you can cook some surprising things.

Who is this?

I started this blog-sorta-kinda-thing to teach you to cook, hopefully with some humor and some gentle nudges. I guess I just got tired of recipe blogs and the fact that no one seems to know how to use herbs and spices. I'm poor, so I'm not assuming you're rich, but I'm lucky enough to have a pretty decent set of kitchen supplies, so I'm not going to make you nothing but mac and cheese (no shame if that's where you are; I'll try to provide as many low-cost alternatives as I can). I've cooked for larger and smaller groups of people with more or less prep, but I'm not a professional chef. I'm just a jumped-up home cook who cooks mostly for himself (yes, my pronouns are he/him) and his wife (sorry, I'm taken) and tries to keep his cats from eating his food while he cooks it.

That's it (finally).

In closing, welcome to This Is Cookable. You can do this! I believe in you! Eye of the Tiger! Punch that pasta! Smash that sauce! Et cetera!