"I'm Going To Come Back To Training" and other lies

[Gyakuto]

While we can't say for sure there is a causal relationship, I'm not at all surprised to hear about a vegetarian who doesn't like food anymore. There is often a correlation between the two.

I suspected someone would say that, but until the last couple of centuries, all Indian (Hindu) cuisine was vegetarian and there’s plenty of great Indian food (the U.K.’s favourite food type). The Japanese were essentially vegetarian until about 1868 and shojin ryori is incredibly delicious. I’ve always been vegetarian so I don’t know any different.

Mostly kidding, but I have friends who are vegan and when we talk about food, they will often mention how challenging it is to avoid ruts and boredom eating boiled carrots and broccoli, as you say. I like to eat at their house, though, because they eat a lot of curry.

Broccoli pan fried with garlic and porcini mushrooms?!

Being a moral vegetarian/nearly vegan, I’d rather be bored than make my animal friends suffer in the way they do for my culinary delectation. It’s a choice I’ve made. I see no difference between my cat, a dog, horse or a cow, pig or chicken.

That sounds lovely. While I don't have any problems with folks cooking from recipes (and use them often myself), improvising in a kitchen just comes with experience.

I think few really improvise when cooking. They’ve internalised a menu which they can reproduce from memory and at most, add different spices or white wine rather than red. That’s like playing a cover tune on guitar and playing a slightly different fill or changing the solo.

Mmm... cheese on toast. A Christmas classic.

Little baby Jesus’s first meal in the manger apparently (with a myrrh-butter foam).

 

[Steve]

I think few really improvise when cooking. They’ve internalised a menu which they can reproduce from memory and at most, add different spices or white wine rather than red. That’s like playing a cover tune on guitar and playing a slightly different fill or changing the solo.

There's a cooking show in the USA called Chopped, where the contestants are all given a basket of ingredients and have to make a dish in three successive rounds (appetizer, main, and dessert). Each basket usually has four ingredients that all have to be used, but can be supplemented by whatever else they want. When my older kids were still at home, my wife travelled a lot for work. So, we'd watch that show and pause the TV after hearing the ingredients to say what we'd try and make. We even organized a couple of chopped competitions with some friends, for fun and bragging rights.

But the more cooking techniques you have in your arsenal, the more experience you have with a broad array of ingredients, the better you'll do. Anyone can improvise in the kitchen. It's actually quite easy to mash around ingredients. Making something edible, much less tasty, relied on those internalized menus you mention above AND practice applying those techniques under some pressure.

You know, the martial arts analogy is pretty spot on. The people who are good at fighting have solid foundational skills AND have specifically practiced improvising through application. My point is that improvisation is itself a skill that relies on a combination of foundational abilities AND experience. I'd say some broad categories of martial arts are better at teaching the art of improvisation than others.

 

[Oily Dragon]

Lttle baby Jesus’s first meal in the manger apparently (with a myrrh-butter foam).

Hmm.

I've never used that but I think myrrh butter would have a sort of narcotic effect.

 

[Gyakuto]

There's a cooking show in the USA called Chopped, where the contestants are all given a basket of ingredients and have to make a dish in three successive rounds (appetizer, main, and dessert).

We had ‘Ready, Steady, Cook’ which was much the same.

Each basket usually has four ingredients that all have to be used, but can be supplemented by whatever else they want.

Ours had a budget of £5, but all the basic ancillary ingredients such as salt and powered oyster pearls was available. I’d’ve bought a loaf of wholemeal bread and a lump of cheddar to make my signature Christmas dish.

When my older kids were still at home, my wife travelled a lot for work. So, we'd watch that show and pause the TV after hearing the ingredients to say what we'd try and make. We even organized a couple of chopped competitions with some friends, for fun and bragging rights.

My mother watched it avidly. I think she had a thing for the annoying presenter/chef (Ainsley Harriet).

But the more cooking techniques you have in your arsenal, the more experience you have with a broad array of ingredients, the better you'll do. Anyone can improvise in the kitchen.

Even me, but it won’t taste very nice.

>You know, the martial arts analogy is pretty spot on.

I think it’s the only thing preventing the thread from being locked!

>The people who are good at fighting have solid foundational skills AND have specifically practiced improvising through application. My point is that improvisation is itself a skill that relies on a combination of foundational abilities AND experience.

As Voltaire once said, ‘Rote learning is the terrors upon which freethinking grows’