Day #4: Cooking as creativity, and courage

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to cook. I’ve collected cookbooks since my college days, and still have my tattered favorite, a paperback copy of The All New Fanny Farmer Boston Cooking School Cookbook. The spine has split into several sections by now, and some of best-loved recipes, like the one for crepes, are attached to scraps of paper and stuck between pages so as not to get lost.

In my 20s, I explored international recipes, and was drawn especially to Eastern European ones, which reflected our family’s heritage and that of a Polish boyfriend. Being a perfectionist and not wanting to risk making a mistake, I followed those recipes to a T. I even gave them a grade in the margin to help myself remember which ones were worth repeating.

In the summers I cooked alongside my Ukrainian “Baba” and German “Gramma” and wrote down our family favorites, like pirohy and Bavarian apple torte . I heard them describe their measures as “a pinch of this,” “not quite a hand-full of that,” or “just enough until … ,” but I preferred using cups and spoons in my own recipe making, and following the directions.

In 2008, I moved across the state to take a job at a non-profit retreat center. I quickly discovered a passion for hospitality. I loved creating an environment where guests who came to participate in weekend or week-long events felt at home, and that especially included making meals they would enjoy. We had a few cookbooks on hand, and I brought a couple of my own from home.

Somewhere between 2008 and 2012, before we made the difficult decision to close the center due of the economic downturn, I met Emmanuel, who accompanied one of the retreat attendees as his caregiver. Emmanuel changed my attitude toward cooking forever. He encouraged me to ditch the recipes, loosen up, play and have fun with cooking.

I’ll never forget one afternoon, when I was preparing a grocery list for a run to the store. I needed certain items for a meal I had flagged in my cookbook. Emmanuel casually suggested using ingredients that were already on hand in the refrigerator and cupboards, and skipping the store run.

I remember Emmanuel standing in the open fridge door examining the fresh foods, then crossing the kitchen to the pantry to take stock of dry goods and spices. Then he turned to me and said, “What if we make roasted xyz, stuffed with abc, and qrs for dessert?” I don’t remember the exact ingredients, but it was gourmet, that’s for sure. No recipe. Just a confidence I myself had never felt as a cook.

Emmanuel also taught me to set a pot on the stove, filled with whatever fruit and vegetable scraps and skins we had, “everything but banana peels and pits,” he told me, and leave it to simmer all day for homemade stock. As he used a ladle-full or two, he just replaced it with more water. I do that in my own kitchen now, as does my daughter in hers.

The most important lesson Emmanuel taught me that week was to trust myself. “You’ve been cooking long enough, you know what flavors go together,” he said. “Try it. If it doesn’t work, do it differently next time.”

My favorite thing to make these days is soup. Even in the summer I’m forever trying new combinations of beans, lentils and other legumes, vegetables, and always lots of garlic. I almost always make a batch or two on Sunday, which I eat all week. When I have just a little left of each, I combine them to see whether the flavors in the third soup “work.” Mostly they do.

To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I cracked open a cookbook. Except for that treasured crepe recipe, the one my daughter taped to a cat sticky note for safe-keeping.