Musings on cooking

It’s been more than a week since I started cooking everyday. Having always had ways to avoid cooking for all my life (eg. having someone cooking for me, food at work) and being a self-proclaimed foodie finding joy in dining out to find good restaurants, I never really had to cook or enjoyed cooking. I wouldn’t have started this whole cooking journey unless I’m forced to, which is exactly how it happened.

My personal trainer Michael has been trying to get me to eat healthy since as they say in bodybuilding, it all starts from the kitchen and eating clean is more than half the battle. After his repeated suggestion/nudge/coercion (just kidding, he was nice all along), I finally caved in and started working with the nutritionist Michael introduced me to.

One week later, wow… no significant muscle gains or reduced fat (ba-dum-tss). It’s not because the meal plan wasn’t good or anyting, it’s just because for many days I went rogue and ate out (team dinner, social dinners, a date) and drank a lot.

The subject of this post isn’t actually about how a good meal plan can help anyone bulk up or my testimonial. It’s actually about the cooking that I had to do many times a day and what I learned from cooking the meals over the past two weeks.

• Cooking as a rendering/compiling process: When the process starts, the ingredients are all separate elements. Once the heat is up and the chemistry kicks in, the magic happens. Some of the ingredients (garlic especially) sets the foundational tone of the dish, similar to how drum and bass guitar lays out the foundation for songs. As I lay all the ingredients inside the Air Fryer (the best thing ever since the sliced bread, for real!), they still exist as separate layers, similar to the layers in Photoshop, After Effect or music software like Logic. Then there was the epiphany. Is the rendering in graphic or music software and the compiling in coding (altho I don’t know about coding that much, yet) basically cooking for the bits (vs. atoms in real food)? Are software engineers and graphic/product/ux designers and sound engineers all cooks? Is that the reason why some of the famous software engineering guidebooks are called cookbooks? The questions go on and on.

• Cooking as an act of shipping: The sense of accomplishment that cooking gave me was very much fulfilling. There’s a list of requirements (recipe), I prepare for the ingredients and arrange them for the best outcome and set the time and temperature (design & code), and the almighty Air Fryer does all the rest (rendering/compiling). When the cooked food is finally plated and served on the table, it felt like I just shipped a product with a clear end outcome and user benefit. If cooking becomes my habit, I can see myself becoming more of a maker in addition to being a thinker and talker that I always have been.

I’m glad I got to relish my rendered/compiled dishes every day. They also didn’t taste too bad and turned out quite good except for the omelette if that can be called one — I didn’t have a pan since I threw out the only one I had, so used a saucepan and tried making an omelette with it… no one should ever try this!

I’m also thankful I finally get to pick up cooking as my newest habit/hobby. I hope to keep learning new recipes (Hello NYT Cooking!) and improve my skills so I can nourish the body and soul of people who I love and care as well as myself.