[WILF] Cooking Without a Recipe & Writing Without Rules
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Samin Nosrat’s cooking mantra works for writers too: Salt, fat, acid, heat. The elements of fearless creation. Welcome to What I Learned From… “Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.” ― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly What I Learned From …The first time you open Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, you’d think you accidentally picked up a textbook…if textbooks made you ravenously hungry. There are diagrams. Charts. Entire chapters without a single recipe. But instead of flipping to the back for a roast chicken formula, it’s best to keep reading. Because what Samin Nosrat offers isn’t just a cookbook—it’s a framework. “Salt, Fat, Acid, and Heat were the four elements that guided basic decision making in every single dish. The rest was just a combination of cultural, seasonal, or technical details.” Learn those four elements and you can cook anything. With or without a recipe. It sounds simple. But as anyone who’s tried to cook (or write!) without any instruction knows, simple is often code for “this is going to challenge everything you think you know.” Nosrat starts with salt. It’s not just a flavor, it’s a multiplier. She calls it the single most important ingredient because of how it enhances and balances everything else on the plate. Used correctly, it can even dull bitterness more effectively than sugar. A sip of grapefruit juice changes dramatically with a pinch of salt, turning sharpness into something smoother. Most home cooks under-salt their food. Perhaps it is out of habit, or fear, or years of being told to avoid it. That’s why Nosrat urges you to break the rules you think you know: “Experience the illicit thrill of using so much of something we’ve all been taught to fear.” Cue the moral panic over your aggressively salted tomatoes. Salt teaches you to trust your own taste. Then comes fat, the shape-shifter. The part that gives everything its feel. It carries flavor, creates texture, and makes dishes feel complete. Sometimes it’s the base of a dish, like olive oil for pasta sauce. Other times it’s the finish, like a pat of butter on steamed greens. At times it’s invisible, just doing its job in the background. Keeping garlic from burning and binding vinaigrette. You don’t always notice fat when it’s there. But you definitely notice when it’s not. There’s a lack of depth. It’s what makes you say, “This soup is fine, but something’s missing.” Acid wakes everything up. It’s the bite in a pickle, the tang of vinegar, the brightness that makes you wonder what secret ingredient just hit your tongue. Without it, rich foods turn heavy. A dash of lemon cuts through roasted meat or creamy sauce, pulling the whole thing into balance. It’s also something a lot of people forget they can add as a finish. Nosrat reminds us that a quick splash of vinegar or squeeze of citrus at the very end can bring a dish to life. Add acid too early and it disappears. Wait too long and it loses its edge. And then there’s heat. The one element you can’t taste directly, but you feel it in the results. It’s what makes a stew fall apart just right and what gives a crust its golden edge. Nosrat insists on trusting yourself over the oven dial. “Paying attention to the sensory cues that indicate how food is cooking is far more valuable than minding an arbitrary number.” Learning to cook with heat is learning to stay present. Once you understand how these four elements work, and how they work together, you don’t need to cling to the recipes as much. Writing isn’t so different. Both are forms of alchemy, grand transformations hidden behind simplicity.
Once you’ve internalized what each element brings and how they work together, you can start freestyling. You build by instinct, you revise with taste. Because, as Nosrat reminds us, anyone can “cook” anything and make it delicious. Whether you're holding a pen or a whisk is just a matter of taste. Previously in This Writing Life …All the good stuff you were meant to see but probably didn’t.
Worth Reading …The pieces that made me pause last week.
Notes from the Masters …Craft advice that holds up, straight from the ones who lived it. “When aspiring chefs ask me for career advice, I offer a few tips: Cook every single day. Taste everything thoughtfully. Go to the farmers’ market and familiarize yourself with each season’s produce. Read everything Paula Wolfert, James Beard, Marcella Hazan, and Jane Grigson have written about food. Write a letter to your favorite restaurant professing your love and beg for an apprenticeship. Skip culinary school; spend a fraction of the cost of tuition traveling the world instead.” ― Samin Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking Prompted: Your Move …A spark from this week’s essay. Use it to write your own. Think of a piece you ‘overcooked’ (too much heat), ‘underseasoned’ (not enough salt), or ‘flattened’ (missing acid’s brightness). What would you change now that you know the elements? Glossary of The Forgotten …Because life’s too chaotic for bland words. Gustation [guh-STAY-shun] (n.) — From Latin gustatio (“a tasting”), rooted in gustare (“to taste”). The word first surfaced in 17th-century English to describe the act of tasting food, but it has always carried a bit of flair…like something done with silver spoons and deliberation. It was about savoring, discerning, choosing what lingers on the tongue. The gustatory sense was often linked with refinement and, unfortunately, morality. After all, what you crave says a lot about who you are. But we don't gustation-shame around here. Sorta synonyms: palate, taste, penchant Use it for: The way you need to sample 38 different cakes before choosing one. Editing a paragraph by feel. Trusting that some ideas need salt and others need tossing. Try This Thing …No promises. Just a potentially brilliant shortcut or two. Free Courses at Harvard and Yale: Yes, that Harvard and that Yale. Take a deep dive into ancient philosophy, political theory, the American novel, or the science of cooking (of course). You don’t have to finish or even pass. You just have to be curious. The Final Chuckle …Serious writing deserves unserious endings. I need my nighttime protection! ‘Til next time ~ Elisa P.S. If this issue made you think (or made you hungry), please forward it to someone who’d savor it. One more week of quiet sharing before we get loud about what’s cooking in July. |