The Amateur Gourmet: On Learning the Basics

If you are famil­iar with Adam Roberts’ web­site, then you know what to expect from his book of the same name, The Ama­teur Gourmet. It is a frothy con­coc­tion of food tips, mishaps, and recipes, mixed together with nerdy good humour. In the book, he fol­lows the every day culi­nary pur­suits of his food-challenged friends who, poten­tial gourmets all, require inspi­ra­tion, cajol­ing and out­right manip­u­la­tion to expand their food horizons.

Oddly enough, he doesn’t herd them all into a mono­chro­matic train­ing room, seat them in front of a slide show out­lin­ing the 5-step recipe (sorry) for the acquir­ing culi­nary exper­tise, or urge them to par­tic­i­pate in a learn­ing activ­ity involv­ing a (sim­u­lated) five-course meal. On the con­trary, he relies on real-life chal­lenges posed by an encoun­ters with plates of mar­i­nated olives, or a bushel of apri­cots at a farm­ers’ mar­ket, or a set of dull knives, or a com­mit­ment to host a spe­cial din­ner party to offer oppor­tu­ni­ties that cul­ti­vate habits of fear­less inquiry, of capa­cious mind and spirit. So, what you might not expect from his book are insights into alter­na­tive approaches to teach­ing and learn­ing. (Food, I’m dis­cov­er­ing, is a use­ful metaphor for learn­ing).

The infi­nite vari­a­tions on the theme of tomato sauce. There’s learn­ing bub­bling up to the sur­face. Photo by Pete Car­pen­ter. Sauce by ???

Con­sider the prepa­ra­tion of tomato sauce. Here is how I make it: Every six months or so I clear every­one out of the kitchen and start dic­ing: red onion, green pep­pers, cel­ery, car­rots, mush­rooms. It is quite a pro­duc­tion. Every­thing is added to a large dutch oven, along with a few cans of plum toma­toes, broth, tomato paste, and equal parts of dried thyme, dried oregano and dried pars­ley. I cook it on high, add a lit­tle wine, bring the con­coc­tion to a boil, and then reduce the heat to sim­mer and cook, par­tially cov­ered and stir­ring occa­sion­ally for 3 to 4 hours until the sauce is thick and robust. Sound deli­cious? It is. I’ve pre­pared tomato sauce this way for years for appre­cia­tive appetites. I can do it mind­lessly. I start with the same ingre­di­ents every time, irre­spec­tive of sea­sonal toma­toes or fresh herbs, with­out spe­cial regard to the pref­er­ences, age or minor health prob­lems of those who may con­sume it (just eat around the green pep­pers), or how many there may be for din­ner (in fact, my goal is vol­ume), and clearly unin­flu­enced by the fact that I spent months trav­el­ing through Italy sam­pling the world’s finest sauces. Con­text does not mat­ter; this is, after all, how I’ve made tomato sauce for years.

Here is how Adam Roberts makes tomato sauce:

Tomato sauce rep­re­sents every­thing I like about cook­ing .… I like the infi­nite vari­a­tion on a theme — if you sim­mer toma­toes in a pot for thirty min­utes you’ll have a sauce. You can make that sauce with but­ter or olive oil or pork fat; you can make it with onions or gar­lic or shal­lots; you can make it with fresh toma­toes or canned toma­toes; you can use fresh basil and thyme or dried basil and thyme or any com­bi­na­tion thereof. In my cook­book col­lec­tion alone there are at least thirty recipes for tomato sauce.

One of the most cher­ished myths in edu­ca­tion is that in order to learn a skill, we must prac­tice it to the point of doing it with­out think­ing. We call this learn­ing the basics, and it involves rep­e­ti­tion until that skill becomes sec­ond nature. Con­text does not mat­ter. Psy­chol­o­gist Ellen Langer in her work on mind­ful learn­ing points out that a con­se­quence is that true learn­ing stops. We become so con­di­tioned to see­ing things a cer­tain way, the right way, that we no longer chal­lenge or ques­tion the process. Adam Roberts’ approach is based on the view that experts at any­thing become expert in part by vary­ing those same basics. In his kitchen there is no end-point at which you’ve mas­tered the basics, there is only per­pet­ual vari­a­tion through mind­ful attention:

.… mak­ing tomato sauce rewards atten­tion to detail. The more you make it, the bet­ter you’ll get. The first time you might, say, add the gar­lic too soon and it may turn too brown; next time you’ll know to add it a lit­tle while after the onion. You’ll dis­cover that squeez­ing the toma­toes sub­merged in their own liq­uid will pre­vent you from squirt­ing your­self in the eye. You’ll know pre­cisely when the sauce is done and how much salt to add.

If we learn the basics, but do not over learn them, Adam implies, we can vary them as we change or the sit­u­a­tion changes. Yet, most of what we learn in school, at home, at work, and from books and other media, is given to us in an uncon­di­tional form. Teach­ing one set of basics for every­one seems to be the eas­ier route, but the result is a lit­tle more dis­con­cert­ing than mediocre tomato sauce. Much of what we know about the world, about other peo­ple, and about our­selves is usu­ally processed in the same way. If this seems too dire, then let’s return to the Ama­teur Gourmet and a more palat­able scale. How would you buy an apri­cot? Wait. Would you even buy an apri­cot with­out a recipe?

Part of what makes an accom­plished cook more likely to choose the best apri­cots is that an accom­plished cook doesn’t go with a pre­con­ceived idea of buy­ing apri­cots. The accom­plished cook goes to see what looks good and builds from there. If the apri­cots look good, then apri­cot tart or apri­cot should be on the menu .…When I go food shop­ping, I know what I need before I go, and I arrive at the store with a list that tells me what I need. I pro­ceed to track it down and I usu­ally do so in a hurry. This makes me a hunter. Great chefs, on the other hand, are most often gath­er­ers. They don’t home in on a tar­get — they let the tar­get home in on them.

I have to apol­o­gize for giv­ing the impres­sion that the Ama­teur Gourmet is a book about teach­ing and learn­ing. It isn’t. It is a fun book writ­ten by an author who is both ama­teur gourmet and ama­teur teacher. Here is Adam’s take on the value of reflec­tion and syn­the­sis as an essen­tial part of the learn­ing cycle. No, wait, it is really about doing the dishes:

Clean/Dirty. Photo by Mandy Thorn­ton.

.… cook­ing makes them dirty, clean­ing restores them .… The sooner you embrace the clean­ing up, the more likely you are to make more messes .… the moment you find doing dishes reward­ing is the moment you become a cook for life.

So here’s my advice. When you’re done with … din­ner .… send every­one home with a pat on the back and an assur­ance that, “No, I can do the dishes, it’ll be fine.”

Once the door closes, stand in the kitchen and sur­vey the scene. It’ll scare you.

And, when you press on, through the fear:

.… a clean kitchen is just beg­ging to be dirt­ied again. May your kitchen, then, always be some­where between clean and dirty  —  in tran­sit between the two, always in motion, never still. I wish you ovens full of siz­zling suc­cu­lence and sink­fuls of soak­ing saucers. I hope your fridge is burst­ing with but­ter, your cab­i­nets are spilling with flour and sur­gar, and that your trash­bags are ripe from yesterday’s fist. Mostly, though, I pray that your kitchen becomes a lively place. May you never sac­ri­fice live­li­ness for fear of doing dishes.

No more will doing the dishes fill me with dread, I think. Approach­ing a new skill is by def­i­n­i­tion a time when we know the least about it. It does not make sense to pet­rify our under­stand­ing before we test it in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions, based on our own strengths and expe­ri­ences. I have a can of anchovies in the pantry from a long for­got­ten recipe; do you think I should add it to my next tomato sauce?