I’ve been posting weekly about pleasure for 10 months now, and I still haven’t written about the most consistent pleasure in most people’s lives, one we enjoy three times a day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner—how they punctuate the day with pleasure, how we look forward to each meal! But I have tasked myself to be at least somewhat original in each post, and perhaps there is little new to say about eating.
Let me just mention that hedonic adaptation applies to food as well as to everything else. When my mother and I were in the Virgin Islands at the late, lamented Caneel Bay resort, they had a magnificent breakfast buffet: fruits, breads, pastries, yogurts, eggs, cheeses and so on—and also one hot new thing each day. By the third day, this lavish spread had become routine, and we were eager to know the identity of today’s hot new thing.
If variety boosts our interest in food, etc., why then during the week do most of us (“studies have shown”!) eat the same thing or two for breakfast and the same thing or two for lunch? I suppose when it’s ease versus pleasure, ease usually wins. If you find something healthy you love, you’ll probably buy a lot of it and have it every day.
Also, when you make breakfast, say, on a Tuesday, you don’t want to face a lot of decisions. It’s just simpler and more convenient to eat something you reliably enjoy every morning—for me, it’s berries—even if eating it every morning means you’ll end up loving it less. Rarely do I have the initiative to break the happy monotony and break open a melon.
There is one food-related pleasure I enjoy that I haven’t read about, though: the pleasure in following a recipe. I get such satisfaction from the process that for several years now, I’ve been trying a couple of new recipes a week.
When I was much younger, routinely cooking dinner for our family of five, I never thought to make anything new, and the kids never clamored for novelty. We’d all tuck in with gusto to the same dozen or so dinners, day in, day out. Restaurants, which we went to rarely, were for trying new things; home was for spaghetti and meat sauce.
Years passed, and I cook for only two people now. We occasionally order in, and we sometimes eat out. The fact that I don’t have to prepare a meal means I’ve come to love cooking. And a few years ago, I began receiving a cooking column in my inbox which presented me with just a few recipes at a time.
For decades, cookbooks have intimidated me, because how could I ever choose which of hundreds of recipes to try? So I recently threw out a shelfful of these books.
Today, I usually find a recipe in that cooking column that tempts me, and I set out to create it. Cooking new things stirs my spirit. You might say it’s a kitchen adventure.
Often, I need to go shopping, especially if the ingredients are exotic. So it’s fun to track down a new fruit, a new sauce, or to buy something similar as a substitute. Cooking starts at the market, or the supermarket, as the case may be.
I pay no heed to the optimistic preparation times on the recipe, such as 30 minutes. That presupposes the presence of a sous-chef to mince all the onions or peel all the potatoes. Nor do I presume that because there are only 5 steps to the finished product, this is an easy recipe. Each “step” contains several sub-steps. I may want to try Beef Chow Fun this week, but just take a look at Step 5.
Step 5
Add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil and onion and stir-fry until the onion is crisp-tender and charred in spots, 1 minute. Add the noodles, toss to combine and spread into an even layer. Cook, undisturbed, until the noodles are crusty and slightly charred underneath, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the bean sprouts, scallions and garlic. Return the beef and any of its juices to the wok. Pour the sauce around the perimeter of the noodles. Stir-fry until the beef is cooked, the sauce is dry and the noodles are starting to sizzle, 30 seconds to 1 minute. Season to taste with salt and white pepper.
Step 5 has 8 steps!
When I follow recipes (although not at other times) I lay out all my ingredients on the counter. Sometimes this pre-step alone takes several minutes, especially if I have to find little-used spices. But there is some satisfaction in lining up all my ducks, or my duck sauce and condiments, in a row. Maybe I should always do it.
My most frequent mistake to just skim over the ingredients and instructions before starting out, thereby missing something vital. So if the recipe calls for 3 Tb olive oil and says as part of Step 2, “add 2 Tb olive oil,” I just toss it all in and have none for later. Or my hopeful early sweep of the recipe has led me to ignore a discouraging detail until I’m at Step 4: “Add 1 tsp lemon zest.”
Do you know how long it takes to grate 1 tsp lemon zest? And now I’m supposed to be stirring the pot!
All along, of course, I’ve been using my hands, washing, measuring, chopping. I am immersed in the physical world. This aspect of cooking is especially gratifying to one who is often engaged in abstraction. I take special joy in the feel and heft of my lethal-looking Chinese cleaver.
When I try a recipe for the first time, I try to make it exactly as written, because I have learned (duh!) that if I modify everything to my taste (adding lemon, anchovies, garlic) it all tastes the same. I do it their way first, unless it makes no sense. Many recipes for chicken, for instance, instruct you to brown pieces of chicken, skin on, in oil—then pour off the excess oil. But the skin on the chicken provides plenty of oil: eliminate the oil, eliminate the step!
Unlike many pleasant pursuits, such as kayaking or reading, cooking to a recipe always yields a tangible and useful result—though not always a wonderful one. Following a recipe leads to enjoyment or . . . disappointment. I won’t repeat half of the recipes I try, but I do keep trying more of them!
And to an iconoclast, occasionally following instructions to the letter is curiously satisfying.
BONUS CONTENT: “LITTLE ZUCCHINI”
This is among the world’s simplest recipes, and I think I invented it. No need to even write it down. I told it to a friend who made it, said it was sensational, and made it again the next day. You know a recipe’s good when you have to cook it again right away!
Ingredients: one firm, fresh zucchini per person, one peeled clove of garlic per zucchini, one Tb oil per zucchini, salt, cayenne pepper.
Step 1. Slice the zucchini into tiny pieces by making 4 longitudinal cuts (so the top looks like a tic-tac-toe board) and then cutting crosswise at 3/8 inch intervals. This is the most important step: you need tiny pieces so each gets coated with oil.
Step 2. Heat the oil and when it sizzles to a drop of water, add the zucchini (no more than two zucchini in each batch). Stir on high heat.
Step 3. Put the garlic in a press and squeeze it over the zucchini. Stir.
Step 4. Add salt and cayenne pepper and stir occasionally, still on high heat, until parts of some of the zucchini turn brown.
Done! (Note how simple my steps are!)
Makes an excellent side dish, or serve over pasta (with or without sauce or cheese) for a meal.
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Was it good?
As someone who has enjoyed the benefits of your labor, I’m happy that your efforts give you pleasure.