I don’t like cooking; I really like to think about cooking.

If I were a different person, say, a person who made coconut layer cakes I might make a coconut layer cake, but I am a defroster. A packet-opener. A dumper into pots of canned things. I warm things up, I mix things, I toss a mean salad. That’s what my husband says.

When I read cookbooks, it’s the same way that I read Architectural Digest; with no intention ever of fluffing throw pillows, or installing art from Oceania, or purchasing a pecan-wood sleigh bed. I read merely to live for a moment in another world. A world where there are heirloom acorn-fed pigs, and alpacas, and roast squab, and beets like jewels, and lardoons, and lardo, and the people who live in this world care about foams, and sous-vide, and the stable oven temperatures, and whatnot, like making a watermelon into a watermelon-flavored dust.

It all sounds so interesting. But would I do it? Hell no. It’s ridiculous the idea of an ice cream machine in my home, and the word “gelato.” This is why we have Italy, people, and professionals. So we can go there. [Read more...]