Assuming you want to be a master of the universe in your own kitchen (if not, why are you reading this?), here are a few helpful tips to make sure you haven't got it completely wrong:
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-common-mistakes-while-cooking-2014-1
Walk into any small supermarket nowadays and the emphasis is clearly on ready-made, save-time, on-the-go meals. It’s a reflection of how we all live our lives in modern life, of course, but does it spell the end of real food?
An article by American author Michael Pollan (author of ‘Cooked’ And ‘Food Rules’, for example) in the New York Times Magazine once predicted the end of home cooking, a trend another American author, home cook and entrepreur Michael Ruhlman said could lead to people ‘losing something essential to our humanity’. However, Ruhlman added in a blog that we are not going to wave goodbye to home cooking partly because of the growing emergence of ‘foodies’ who care about food and the way it is created, prepared and served up.
You can read the magazine article (from 2009) at "Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch" and discover Ruhlman’s response at "Julie & Julia, Foodie & Cook". And stay tuned to Professional Secrets, where we foodies lobby for where nature and culture meet on our plates, farms and gardens and in our living environments.
I once asked a very dear friend what made him think of himself as a ‘foodie’. He replied that for him being a foodie was about the ‘overall experience of eating a meal’. He saw my puzzlement and added: ‘It is about revelling in what makes a meal something memorable, from the process of selecting the ingredients and where they were sourced to preparation and the taste, texture and presentation’.
It proved a wake up call. Because while I have always enjoyed and taken a lead role at home in cooking simple meals for the family, I cannot honestly say I had ‘revelled’ in the process even though I did try to buy organic and showed interest in basic cuts of meat and fish, for instance.
Foodies are different: they talk what they eat. Nonstop. A foodie is on a constant journey, discussing, explaining, and passing on knowledge about herbs and vegetables, poultry, pork, cod, flavour… every bite and the why’s, what’s and where’s are an experience.
Beyond love for good food, foodies also are passionate about caring. Not just about what’s in season or where the food is coming from, but also about taking responsibility for the way food is grown, bred and treated.
Welcome to Professional Secrets, by the way. It’s the site for foodies cut from the same cloth - the side towel, of course! And in case you didn’t know, the side towel is the probably the single most important tool in a chef’s arsenal, ask any foodie.
