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We watch a lot of the Food Network in my house. We have several shelves in the dining room crammed with cookbooks, folders overflowing with Food and Wine magazine clippings, and the better part of a full screen on the iPhone dense with recipe and grocery shopping apps. My wife and I, we cook.
But my wife does more than just cook. She is a Cook. Her palette is far more refined; she has a deeper inventory of experiences, techniques and knowledge to draw on. Her human pantry is fuller than mine. This allows her to be more creative. I sauté onions; she sweats them. I grill; she sears. I steam broccoli; she blanches and shocks bok choy. I throw in the towel; she cleans her knife on it and keeps going.
We were working up a sauce recently. She lifted a spoonful to her mouth, sipped it, and then chewed the liquid thoughtfully, almost as if she were tasting a complex wine. "What does this need?" she asked as she offered me a spoonful. I tasted and found the sauce vaguely lacking. But absent her pantry, I could only offer feebly, "Um, it needs to be... better. (Pause.) Salt?"
But I know more about open rates than she does...
