What’s in your repertoire?
A collection of go-to recipes can brighten cooking gloom.
Fast-forward three decades, and those brownies have multiplied: This week, I published my first solo cookbook, “Repertoire: All the Recipes You Need” (Little, Brown and Co.; 235 pages, $32). These are my 75 best recipes, the ones I’ll eat forever without tiring of them, the favorite dishes that form the backbone of my cooking life. It’s my repertoire writ large, the tasty result of honing foolproof recipes for decades, until I can cook them by heart.
Like a magpie collecting shiny bits, I added to my repertoire slowly, making sure each recipe was truly worth it.
And when the pressures of motherhood and professional life made creative cooking impossible, I leaned into that repertoire, rediscovering recipes that were durable, delicious and time-tested. The book was born out of that process of rediscovery; if I, a career food writer who has coauthored five chef cookbooks, was still struggling to get dinner on the table, I suspected I wasn’t alone.
The concept of a repertoire is familiar to anyone who’s taken music lessons or learned a new language. To perform reliably under pressure — say, in a concert hall or in conversation with a native speaker — you’ve got to identify the pieces and phrases that work, and drill them until they’re second nature.
Repetition is the most effective way to improve, whether you’re a cook, a musician, a doctor or a kid studying math. Yet we rarely bring the concept of practice to bear in daily life. Working from a repertoire makes repetition, rather than experimentation, the defining way you spend time in the kitchen. The result is not only meals that make you happy and save time: You’ll become more skillful, efficient and confident.
In his book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,” psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues that people are happiest at work when they reach a state of “flow,” or concentration and complete absorption in the task at hand. That’s the kind of mental peace and focus that only repetition can give.
With a repertoire I more often feel flow in the kitchen — which is both the center of my home and my place of work. Do something frequently and with focus and it becomes natural, effortless. Repeat a recipe until you can cook it from heart and you'll be rewarded with a delicious meal, again and again.
Jessica Battilana is a San Francisco freelance writer. Her new cookbook, “Repertoire: All the Recipes You Need,” is now on sale. Instagram: @jbattilana Email: food@sfchronicle.com