Don't get me wrong I don't mind Twitty being interested in his heritage, especially in terms he can best understand. But cooking is a skill that you are either carefully taught or you learn by trial an error. There ain't no short cut through genetics or anything else.
When you were little did you ever have a friend brag about their mom's cooking? Then eat at their house and discover it was actually a little disgusting? People's tastes develop individually. There is a good reason for the old saying about too many cooks spoiling the broth. It's rare that every kid in the same house let alone an extended family likes and dislikes the same things. So cooking in a household is usually a compromise between what the cook is willing to make and what the members of the household are willing to eat. I suspect that what cooking schools are good at is teaching aspiring chefs how to prepare food for a broader selection of tastes.
How my father's mother usually cooked would have eventually made me ill, if I had to keep eating it day after day: Lots of grease, lots of gravy, eggs everyday, mollasses for sweetener. My mother's father's cooking was boring: beef, beef, beef. My mother studied nutrition in college, so she gave us a variety of foods. She grew up in a different era of food safety so she cooked the hell out of everything. She was not attentive at the stove and once in a while burned things to ash.
Unlike the rest of my family I hate green bell peppers in any form. I like ripe ones. I don't hate black pepper, but almost never use it, because for me I don't feel like it adds anything to a dish. It baffles me why on cooking shows some chefs automatically reach for the black pepper. Unlike some of my cousins I like tomatoes. I wouldn't claim to be a good cook, but I don't think I'm a bad one. I've accidentally overcooked things, but I've never burnt anything!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2019-08-15 02:18 pm (UTC)Don't get me wrong I don't mind Twitty being interested in his heritage, especially in terms he can best understand. But cooking is a skill that you are either carefully taught or you learn by trial an error. There ain't no short cut through genetics or anything else.
When you were little did you ever have a friend brag about their mom's cooking? Then eat at their house and discover it was actually a little disgusting? People's tastes develop individually. There is a good reason for the old saying about too many cooks spoiling the broth. It's rare that every kid in the same house let alone an extended family likes and dislikes the same things. So cooking in a household is usually a compromise between what the cook is willing to make and what the members of the household are willing to eat. I suspect that what cooking schools are good at is teaching aspiring chefs how to prepare food for a broader selection of tastes.
How my father's mother usually cooked would have eventually made me ill, if I had to keep eating it day after day: Lots of grease, lots of gravy, eggs everyday, mollasses for sweetener. My mother's father's cooking was boring: beef, beef, beef. My mother studied nutrition in college, so she gave us a variety of foods. She grew up in a different era of food safety so she cooked the hell out of everything. She was not attentive at the stove and once in a while burned things to ash.
Unlike the rest of my family I hate green bell peppers in any form. I like ripe ones. I don't hate black pepper, but almost never use it, because for me I don't feel like it adds anything to a dish. It baffles me why on cooking shows some chefs automatically reach for the black pepper. Unlike some of my cousins I like tomatoes. I wouldn't claim to be a good cook, but I don't think I'm a bad one. I've accidentally overcooked things, but I've never burnt anything!