Go for the gold: Cooking as Craft

View in Browser

Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book.

Con Poulos for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Monday, August 3, 2020

Cooking as Craft

Sam Sifton

Good morning. “Manual competence” is the ideal Matthew Crawford speaks up for in his excellent 2010 book, “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Iinto the Value of Work.” Crawford’s a mechanic and a philosopher. He has no truck with craftsmanship or artistry. He speaks instead for the importance of trade work — “work that is meaningful because it is genuinely useful,” he writes. He finds that work engaging intellectually, and he finds in it an argument that celebrates responsibility and personal agency. (He’s a philosopher, remember.)

I think that’s right, and I think it’s right about cooking especially. The work that we do in the kitchen is at its best an exhibition of manual competence — making bread dough or flipping omelets or dicing carrots — and a salute to the responsibility we take on in feeding ourselves and our families. There’s no question it’s good to be able to work with your hands to make something useful like dinner. And it is meaningful, too, both for you and those you serve.

So practice and learn, if you haven’t already. Learn to roast chicken. Learn how to make pancakes and how to make perfect rice. Learn how to grill. Manual competence in the kitchen will pay dividends for the rest of your life.

And if you’re a scratch cook already? Cook something new. I like this ginger-lime chicken number, for instance. And this tomato and peach salad with whipped goat cheese (above) as well. Make pork schnitzel with quick pickles, and you’ll end up schnitzeling everything, pickling everything, too.

I hope you’ll make shakshuka with feta at some point soon, and wild salmon with green sauce as well. Take those zucchinis from the farmers’ market, make them into olive oil zucchini bread. Take the early corn and make shrimp linguine with herbs, corn and arugula.

This is all labor, but still some distance from digging ditches. You can even have a cocktail while you work, as with this recipe for pasta with chickpeas and a Negroni.

Baked spinach-artichoke pasta? Mayo-marinated chicken with chimichurri? There are thousands and thousands of recipes to work on waiting for you on NYT Cooking. It’s true you need a subscription to access them all, and to use the features of our site and apps. Subscriptions support our work. They allow it to continue. If you haven’t already, will you please subscribe today?

And we’ll be standing by in case something goes sideways with your cooking or our code. Just reach out to us at cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you, promise.

Now, it’s nothing to do with preserving peaches or grilling tautog, but Joe Coscarelli’s latest “Diary of a Song,” featuring Phoebe Bridgers and “Kyoto,” is a master class in new-format journalism, and really fascinating to boot. And while you’re at it, here’s “I Know the End,” which features the primal scream Bridgers talks about in Joe’s story.

Also in The Times, Malia Wollan has the inside scoop on how to stop biting your nails.

You bet I’m going to read Natasha Trethewey’s new memoir, “Memorial Drive.”

Finally, to end where we started, of course Matthew Crawford has a TED Talk. It’s about making things and fixing things. You might take that in as well. And I’ll see you on Wednesday.