Guerilla Cooking

When people find out I cook, they frequently ask, "What's your specialty? What do you like to cook at home?"

Generally, I respond to this question with a deer-in-the-headlights look on my face because I somehow know they want me to give them a very lofty/highbrow answer...
-"Well, you know that truffle mustard trend you keep hearing about? I started that."
-or: "Once a week, I import skate wing from the North Sea and prepare it in a light beurre noisette with rare root vegetables from East Africa"
-or: "Really, I'm a master sommelier and I simply create something that will enhance my vin du jour."

All of that sounds great, but it just ain't true for me.

I feel funny telling them that what I really like to do is to take the cheapest piece meat at the grocery store and try to make something fantastic out of it. And I just know they'll turn up their nose if I tell them that I've found that the mushrooms that are half-price now, because they look like they'll be rancid tomorrow, have the richest flavor when they are cooked. They'll probably just feel sorry for me if I tell them the only reason I'm any good at terrines is because I'm too frugal to throw those scary bits away. They'll laugh at my concept of "turbo ramen", or cheap noodles jazzed up with winning vegetable combinations. I learned how to make caramel not because I was inspired by some heady French confection, but because one day I had a killer sweet tooth, and the only thing my pantry held was butter and sugar...so, what the heck can you do with THAT??!! (Answer=caramel!)

So, I guess my specialty is Guerrilla Cooking. That's too rebellious a concept to impress anyone over the age of 22, but it HAS been useful and fulfilling. Some of this stuff is a tough sell. I mean, really... "Let me show you what I can do with a pound of chicken livers and some cheap brandy" has a limited customer base.

But Guerilla Cooking puts me at peace with any vegetable, any cut of meat, any fat, any lack of fat, and on and on and on. I think the best things happen when you are forced to make them happen for yourself with the resources you have at hand, however limited. It forces you to be creative. It forces you to use logic. It forces you to take chances. Guerilla Cooking has been my real-world education, never having had the opportunity to do a formal, long term curriculum at a culinary school. It's not fancy, but Lord! Is it ever fun!

So when people apologize to me for cramping my style with a restrictive diet, I tell them I don't mind. I don't. I enjoy the challenge. And I'm quite certain that the magic of food will continue to let us make something out of virtually nothing if we keep trying.