A Start

Over the last 10 years I have held two year long subscriptions to Cook’s Illustrated magazine and between subscriptions purchased several copies at the newsstand. I flipped through the pages, admiring the artwork and fantasizing about what I was going to make. I love the meticulous comparison process and the details provided regarding “failed” versions of the recipes. I love that there are no ads. I love the systematic review of various cooking tools and utensils. It is how I imagine I would do things if I were a real cook. It is my imagined cooking style. I’ve watched a few TV cooking shows and none of them appeal to my sensibilities quite like America’s Test Kitchen. It is where art meets science. The combination of intellectual understanding of cooking, of what works, what doesn’t and why, with the sensory and creative aspect satisfies my desires both to be creative, and my almost pathological desire to optimize.

That being said, it largely remains a fantasy to me. In all the issues I have purchased I have only made one recipe. It was for tuna salad and it was, I have to admit, terrible! Yet, like any good projection I was able to rationalize this failure and continue with the fantasy as I continued to enjoy the magazine without stepping foot in the kitchen. Actually making a recipe only ran the risk of bursting my bubble.

Last year when I found out my nephew was going to culinary school I got him a subscription to the magazine and added a subscription for myself, vowing to try at least one recipe per month. Now 12 months and 6 issues of the magazines have come and gone and guess how many recipes I have made? Yep, zero! I can’t help but feel like a little bit of a failure, and cringe when I see the unused issues sandwiched between the World Atlas and the Baby Book on my bookshelf.

I hereby resolved to prepare every recipe published in Cook’s Illustrated magazine in 2010.

Since there are only about 10-12 recipes per bi-monthly issue, this means about one recipe per week. It is not quite as crazy as Julie Powell’s endeavor where she prepared all of Julia Child’s recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year, and will be thus less likely to have the same negative impact on my relationships and job.

Also, I am worse than not a writer… I am an academic writer. Every ounce of creative writing I had in me (which was not much to start with) has been squelched out of me through several years of graduate school training and on the job report writing. This project is also an attempt to do something completely different.

Yes, the movie “Julie and Julia” did inspire me, and no doubt many other copycats. My lack of originality in pursuing this project doesn’t concern me one bit. My experience is not about being unique or creative, or about impressing anyone. It’s about me, attempting to a small degree, to live a fantasy.

I will document my experience here. There is no better place to start than the beginning… so the first recipe will be the first from the Jan/Feb issue – Minestrone soup. I love the acknowledgement that working with supermarket vegetables will be a challenge, and that homemade chicken stock is too much of a hassle. I plan to forage what I can at the Union Square Greenmarket tomorrow morning after my run (I am also training for the Big Sur Marathon on April 25^th… wish me luck!) then pick up what I can’t find there at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods.

Happy New Year!