Notes from A New Cook: Simple is Best

I’m not a foodie. At least I’ve never been one before. I was always a soda-guzzler, a nugget-snarfer, a fan of Lean Cuisine frozen dinners.

But then I started reading about food. Fast Food Nation, Food Politics, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the Ethicurean… What I read frightened me. It scared my pants right off (figuratively, that is. This isn’t that kind of blog).

You probably know all the reasons why it scared me: E. Coli in meat, botulism in cans, carbon monoxide-packaged beef, ecological damage, genetic modification, and an array of health epidemics that are the result of our low nutrition, high fat diet. Our entire food system — Everything I ate! Every single day! — just seemed so…distasteful. I wanted better.

I wanted better for me, of course. But more than that, I wanted better for my kids.

So I started shopping differently. Eating whole foods. And I very quickly learned the bad news: whole foods don’t come with directions.

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Lean Cuisine dinners? They’ve got directions. Kraft mac and cheese? Yep, they’ve got directions, too. Dinty Moore stews? Oh, yes. Even they come with directions.

But vegetables? A slap of fish? An egg? You won’t find any directions printed on them. What does a novice cook do with a bag of green beans? How to take a parsnip — a parsnip, for Pete’s sake! — and turn it into something edible?

There were, inevitably, mistakes. Painful, but true: I ruined perfectly lovely vegetables, I have destroyed hefty chunks of meat. But they’re right about mistakes: you do learn from them.

What I learned turned out to be the best news of all: the tastiest dishes are often the simplest ones. All those exotic ingredients you see at the gourmet store? Forget ‘em. The truth is that anything — anything, save perhaps chocolate — can be made delicious with garlic, lemon, and olive oil. Grill it, roast it, or pan-sautee it. You won’t go wrong with those three simple ingredients. Do all the meals taste the same? No - that’s the beautiful, amazing thing. They mingle differently with different ingredients, bringing out new flavors in a way that is always fresh…and always good.

Beyond that, the tricks are simple: don’t burn the garlic. Keep your vegetables from getting mushy. Use a meat thermometer to determine when your meats are done. And use the freshest, highest-quality foods you can find. The best ingredients? Local, of course.

The results? Much tastier than a frozen dinner. And much, much better for you. Now that’s good news!

(photo credit: Royalty free stock photography)

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