One of my favorite hobbies has always been cooking. As a small, nerdy child, I loved watching the cooking shows on the Discovery Channel (because the Food Network had not yet been born and not yet been killed by “personality” chefs, but that’s another topic). My favorite to watch was Graham Kerr on Discovery. My local public television channel had a cooking show from Louisiana, starring Justin Wilson. As a human who has never mastered sleeping, I would wake up at 6 a.m. on the weekends and watch Mr. Wizard and my cooking shows. Which, now that I think about it, are pretty much the same thing. Science and cooking. I have never not been all about that.
Making things from scratch
Homemade tamales 
How the sausage is made 
Tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches
One of the strangest parts of my passion for cooking is my desire to prepare foods from scratch. Sometimes to a completely unreasonable level. I want to learn the origins of things that really shouldn’t be made at home. Some things work out well. I grow tomatoes and make homemade pasta sauces. Beer is fun to make and delicious in the end. Bread is also pretty predictably delicious. Hand-grinding the spent grains from the beer and then making bread from the dried/hand-ground grain is … another level of trying too hard. My favorite experiment in making things from scratch was making a some homemade ciabatta bread and making my own mozzarella cheese, then making homemade garlic-mozzarella grilled cheese sandwiches, and of course serving that with some homemade, home grown tomato soup. Weeks, months, of preparation for a meal. This is unreasonable, but probably better than wasting my time doing something like… playing video games or whatever.
Cultured butter 
Converting cultured cream to cultured butter 
Cultured cream
Other experiments were… not so successful. I’ve made homemade bratwurst a few times, but it takes just 10 forevers and makes a mess of everything in the kitchen and isn’t quite as good as the fancy German butcher in Mountain View. My most infamous failure was the cheese. Fresh cheeses are fantastic. Mozzarella and ricotta are a breeze. Brie, however is another level of complicated, but I was able to have a passable version of brie. Sadly, my attempt at making a bleu cheese was disastrous. I don’t know what went wrong. But it went so terribly wrong that I have never made cheese again and I completely got rid of my cheesemaking equipment and use my old cheese-cave as a wine fridge. Or I did until it died, forever smelling of this horrific experiment.
A loaf of dark bread made from spent beer grain 
Biscuits made from spent beer grains
This does extend to from-the source food experiments. Given the chance, I will visit a farm. I will milk a goat. I would milk a cow, given the chance. I would love to learn to fully slaughter/butcher … anything, really. I love visiting farms and getting the freshest eggs and honey and meats and veggies.
Trying new techniques
I am a sucker for new techniques and new gadgets. Fondue pot, sous vide, timbale set, pasta press, you name it, I have maybe 2 of them. If there’s a dish that requires any weird, preferably hand-cranked or operated by some amount of manual force. I don’t go for the little “cherry-pitter” and “avocado-slicer” type nonsense. But a potato ricer? Sign me up. Spaetzle/Nokedli-maker? I have one of those.
Making something exotic
Breading the chicken 
Ready for baking 
Flaming hot cheetos fried chicken is definitely exotic
If something sounds strange or unnecessarily complicated, I will try to make it. Even things I don’t normally eat. I’ve prepared so many delicious (so I’m told) seafood dishes over the years. Because I don’t enjoy eating fish, all seafood dishes seem exotic to me. I also love making foreign foods. If I can’t pronounce it, I will definitely want to cook it and eat it. (Yes, this is directed at all of you science-haters who think you’re not eating “”””chemicals””””).
Ramos gin fizz: Shake for 12 minutes. The shaker gets cold! 
A completed Ramos gin fizz 
Our first beer: a bourbon barrel porter. You can see the chunks of charred oak floating in the brown beer. 
Bottled and ready for consumption!
I also love learning and I love taking cooking classes. Every time I travel to a new place, I try to find a cooking class. I’ve never had a bad experience with this and would recommend it to anyone who travels. Cooking with other people is a very intimate experience. They are sharing their culture with you through their food. Even if I don’t take a class, I will try to taste everything I can when I travel. I want to at least have a good handle on what things taste like in their authentic environment before I come home and google a recipe and completely butcher it.
One Comment
clare
Tina,
I continue to be amazed, enthralled, and inspired by you. 🙂 I love your writing, your travel, your adventurous-ness, your resilience, and happiness. Truly, I love reading your blogs, posts, and pictures. Thank you so much.
xo
Clare