Men are from Mars, etc

When it comes to recipes and how to handle them, those classic gender differences that may have their roots in the Stone Age distinctions between men as hunters and woman as gatherers do seem to play a role. Just as men hate to ask for directions while women demand them, guys who cook seem ready to improvise while our mates hesitate to try anything for which they may not have the exact ingredients.

While I have far more cookbooks than most sane individuals, I admit I look at them for probably all the wrong reasons. I look for clues about a spice I might not have thought about, or a trick in preparation that might not occur to me otherwise. Occasionally I actually do try to follow the steps in a recipe, but usually I attempt to get a feeling for how a certain set of tastes and textures should come together. I'm part of the "dash of this, pinch of that" school. After all, it seems rather arbitrary that we need to measure so exactly with the clear exception of baking, where there are crucial matters of chemistry involved.

I was very much influenced in this when I took some cooking classes in New Orleans. The instructors--male, of course--were not concerned about exact measurements or proportions. What counted was that we understood how to make a roux--flour browned in oil--that would be the base for so many wonderful dishes. That was technique. How much of the holy trinity--the somewhat irreverent Cajun expression for the combination of celery, onion, and green bell peppers--we might toss in once this was done depended more on what would fit in the pot with all the other good stuff, such as chicken and Andouille sausage, than on some exact rule of a cup of this to half a cup of that. I liked those guys, even if they were shills for a store's stock of prepared spices.

There finally can be just one rule: how something tastes. The second great tragedy of processed foods, beginning with what we feed our infants, is that almost all subtlety is obliterated through the sheer quantity of salt or sugars added in (the first, of course, is the effect on health). Good spices ought to enhance the natural flavor of what's being cooked, but if someone is especially aware of a spice--an issue when it comes to come to using a hot sauce--then we are not cooking as we should. Either that, or the items being cooked need to be disguised, and now that good meat and fish and good produce are more readily available to us urban types such gimmicks should not really be necessary.