Renaissance Molly

I've always enjoyed cooking and in my home, I rather took for granted that people knew how to cook: mom was a good cook, dad was basically a gourmet chief on the weekends, and I learned from them both.

But when I went to college and got a kitchen of my own (and had friends who had kitchens of their own) I realized that cooking was not as inate a talent as I had always assumed it to be.

Erupting from the bubble that was my parents' home, I started hearing horror stories of fried rice made goopy, spaghetti burned to bottoms of pots, potatoes boiled to oblivion, cream of wheat which clumped itself into gross dumplings, chickens as dry as the Sahara, Steaks burnt to a crisp, and vegetables cooked to the point of unintentional soup.

The one thing I noticed was the main reason for these mistakes was simple: attention.

So many friends will start something to eat and then walk away from it. Soon a simple dish like pasta turns into a burned, starchy mess at the bottom of your pot: all the water boils away and the pasta begins to clump and stick. Soon the cook remembers their initial endevour right as the fire alarm goes off. So why is this? Every person, perhaps, is different but the solution is the same: Pay attention.

"But Molly!! I've got other stuff to do, I've got homework to do, I've got laundry to do, I'm tired after work and don't want to be standing in the kitchen for an hour!!"

So eat a salad. You want risotto? You'll have to stand there. A perfectly cooked steak? You'll have to stand there.

But it's not all bad. I am a grand advocate for multitasking: I knit while I watch movies, I'll listen to an episode of Star Trek while I'm working on something in photoshop. Ultimately I feel most successful if I'm accomplishing two things at the price of one! The key to multitasking is being able to devote the appropriate amount of attention to each task. For instance, when writing an essay, you can listen to music, but only 10% of your attention should be on the music, maybe less; the rest of your attention should be on your primary task: your essay. Cooking is not a background task: it should be the primary task. That all to be said, here are some quick tips to keep you concentrating in the kitchen.

Start small and simple.

Don't go starting your culinary success with Beef Wellington, here. It'd be like asking a new piano player to start with Chopin. Nope, let's start with whatever the "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" version of your cooking repertoire is for you. I think the first thing I learned to cook was Pasta.

Gather your primary ingredients and your secondary ingredients.

The former should be obvious: do you have water? A pot? Pasta? Whatever sauce or spice you like? Good. Take them all out or lay your eyes on them. The worst thing is to get half way through cooking something only to find out that you don't have a key ingredient. Then you're discouraged and have to improvise and let's just not deal with that. The secondary ingredient is what I'm calling that factor which is distracting you outside the kitchen, which is disabling you from noticing when all the water has boiled away. If you know your mind will wander as the pot boils, have something to do, something minor, something you can take your attention away from easily. Have a book, some music, play guitar, you can even watch show if you know you won't get super enthralled in it. But the moment you cease noticing the cooking, you know that secondary activity is dominating your attention too much.

Don't leave the kitchen.

Really, stay there. The only exception is if you have to go to the bathroom, in which case, you may go, but come right back. Don't go wandering around the house doing 100 things. You may think, while you're watching your water boil, that there is probably 1000 things you can do in that time, but really, for most pots of water, depending upon your stove and water quantity (and even altitude above sea level) a pot of water can take 5 - 20 mins to boil. That sounds like a lot of time, but the moment you start concentrating on something else, the time will escape you and all of a sudden you're distracted. Focus! Don't leave the kitchen, bring a stool in there if you have to, play with the cat or something. Just stay put.

Use clean up to keep you engaged in the cooking.

Ok so you filled your pot with water and turned on the stove. While you were waiting for it to boil you read a chapter of a book, looking up every so often to see if it's boil (perhaps as you're turning a page) and now that it's boiled you've added your pasta and a touch of olive oil and salt. Now you have a few minutes to kill, not long, and you should probably stir it every so often also to prevent clumpage. So reading is really not an option at times like these. If you only have one or two minutes to kill, do other things centered around the meal in the kitchen. Chop veggies or prep other ingrediants for the meal, throw away any trash which has accumulated on the counter from your endevours, wipe up any messes, put some dishes in the dish washer if you want. The more you do now, the less you'll have to do after dinner when you're actually sitting with a project or relaxing in front of the tv. This will keep you in the kitchen and engaged with your meal - you'll be concentating on it the whole time and so you won't forget to stir your pasta.

These may seem like basic tips, and as such should be easy to impliment, but ultimately rest assured that cooking is not necessarily easy for everyone. Even basic things can go terribly terribly wrong at times. But I've found that one of the best ingredients to ad to any dish is focus.