I’m very much a baker rather than a cook. Maybe that’s my general love of carbs that led me down such a path, but it’s also the fact that cooking just doesn’t match the way my brain works.
If baking is like chemistry, I’ve got that covered. I can hot swap ingredients on the fly because I understand the principles of why each thing is needed and how to compensate with a substitution.
But cooking is more like alchemy, the quasi-magical practice of throwing things together and suddenly there’s a tasty meal at the end.

Yes, there is a lot of science involved in cooking too, and I’ve leveled up my skills in that area enough to be proficient, but it’s the art that eludes me.
I can get that soufflé to rise perfectly and never sink, but not setting off the smoke alarm every time I try to heat some oil is apparently beyond me.

Which is a bit of a problem when one’s dog is afraid of the smoke alarm.
And yet, occasionally, I manage to improv a recipe to perfection and feel like a kitchen god.
That’s usually when I get cocky and think I’ve finally figured this cooking alchemy out.

Which promptly leads to being too cavalier with the recipes, burned meals, scared dogs, and a whole lot of takeout.
So yeah… my cooking skill is a bit of a work in progress.
Last Updated on October 11, 2020 by Amy Pilkington