KEEP CALM & COOK ON
Making space and time for preparing food can offer an escape from life
I have devoted a good deal of my career to teaching others how to become better cooks, and if I had to distil all my lessons down to one, it would be this: Pay close attention.
The more you focus in the kitchen, the better cook you become. The better cook you become, the more you enjoy it and the more likely you are to do it regularly.
As with any practice or craft, in order for cooking to create calm, it requires a certain mindset and discipline. Here are a few tips for getting there.
COOK WHAT YOU KNOW
I’m all for trying new recipes, but if you find cooking stressful and want to make it more relaxing, start by learning to cook a few things by rote.
Choose one or two things that you’re willing to commit to learning how to make. It can be as simple as a sheet-pan supper of chicken and vegetables or a pot of buttered noodles with spinach.
It doesn’t even have to be a proper recipe, but it has to be something you like to eat — because you’re going to make it repeatedly until it becomes second nature.
Ingredients are miraculously varied, and when we can shift our focus off the cookbook page and take the time to really experience the ingredients and our actions, we gather information that helps make better decisions and opens the way to improvisation.
For instance, if I notice especially thick flesh on the bell pepper I’m slicing, I’ll cut it into smaller pieces and cook it a little longer.
Or if the pie dough I’m rolling out starts to stick, I’ll slide it into the refrigerator to firm up before continuing. By staying alert to what’s happening, I gain confidence to ignore the tyranny of recipes and follow my instincts.
MAKE SPACE
In many homes, the kitchen is crowded with dishes, groceries, stacks of junk mail, homework: the general detritus of our daily lives.
Before I cook, I clear a space to work. It doesn’t have to be huge — and if the rest of the kitchen is a mess, it’s best to ignore that for now. (Otherwise, I can fall into the rabbit hole of housecleaning, which can also be a grounding experience, but it’s not the one that’s going to feed me dinner.)
All you need is enough room to lay out your ingredients, a cutting board and space on the stove or in the oven for whatever cooking is required. Do a quick inventory to see that you have what you need.
ZONE IN
I start by taking a deep breath. Then I imagine I am able to turn up the volume on my senses to take in what I hear, feel, smell, see and taste. I listen for the scrape of the peeler along the carrot. I listen to the light tapping of my knife on the board as I chop an onion. I hear the click of the igniter and the whoosh of gas as I switch on the stove, and I observe the way the oil ripples across the skillet and how it becomes more fluid as it heats.
CHOOSE YOUR MOMENT
Depending on the day, finding a moment of calm in the kitchen every day may feel impossible, but it can also be a matter of timing and choice.
On a weekly basis, I’ll look at my schedule and choose the times I know I can find a relatively quiet kitchen and time to focus on what I’m doing.
Sometimes this means preparing something in the morning (or the night before) to have a proper dinner ready at dinnertime. Other times, it means I only cook a couple of nights a week.
Perhaps the best example of how important it is to make time to cook comes at the holidays when family members converge on the kitchen at the same time.
No amount of inner peace that I’ve stored up during my quiet weeknight cooking routines can prepare me for this onslaught. I find it impossible to practice any of my mindful cooking habits amid this chaos.
Instead, I focus my efforts on make-ahead contributions to the meal (like my mashed potato casserole and roasted turkey broth), and I peacefully prepare these well before the holiday hits.
REMEMBER, IT’S ABOUT THE PROCESS
Cooking for ourselves should not be about perfection. It’s about taking time to feed ourselves and those around us. As I was working on this article, I happened to speak to a niece, a 30-something who lives in Baltimore with her husband and three daughters under age 5. She and her husband both work outside the house. Even so, they make time to cook supper most every night.
They often ask me for cooking advice, and I developed two sheetpan recipes for them: one with roasted chicken thighs and the other with roasted salmon.
They swap in various vegetables, chicken parts and fish, but both recipes have become part of their weekly routines.
“Cooking lets me feel somewhat in control,” my niece told me, “and this calms me. Amid all this chaos in our lives, I lay out my ingredients on a clean counter, take a deep breath and literally say to myself, ‘I can do this.’ And I do! Sometimes the cooking is more calming than the eating.”
Recipes adapted from All About Dinner: Simple Meals, Expert Advice by Molly Stevens (W.W. Norton & Company).
Amid all this chaos in our lives, I lay out my ingredients on a clean counter, take a deep breath and literally say to myself, ‘I can do this.’ And I do!