During my recent trip to Turkey, I spent a day at the Istanbul Culinary Institute. At the outset, my intention was to share some stories and photographs with you, and encourage you to check it out the next time you're in Istanbul. Then yesterday, when I was thinking about why I started this website, something more meaningful came to my mind, and as I sorted through the photographs and the ideas I'd jotted down in my notebook that day, it became clear.
The most spirited images I had were the ones that showed how joyful this process is of learning to cook. The class was intimate, barely ten students, all women. There was laughter and focus. I even saw one little tear fall.
The setting was familiar — I too went to culinary school — but as I looked deeper, I saw that the setting was one we have all experienced; it is the kitchen. The warm, fragrant place where we make the food that feeds us, and if we're lucky, someone occasionally shows us the best way to peel an apple or dredge a piece of meat.
What this place really evoked in me is not an urge to encourage you to sign up for a class there (though if you are in Istanbul you must at least have a meal in their restaurant), but rather, a desire to talk about how we learn to cook.
I bristle when I hear the term "self-taught cook" because while I know not everyone has attended culinary school, and that this may in fact be an advantage, no one learns to cook in isolation. It's impossible. Even if you cook for yourself only, you interact with your community; your grocer, farmer, the neighbor who smells it happening, the co-worker who watches you eat the leftovers.
When I think of all the places we learn to cook, the common denominator is community. Often it starts in our childhood kitchens. Grandparents are sometimes there, too. Then we make our way into adulthood figuring out how to fill our growing bellies. Then maybe we wise-up and start looking at the quality and quantity of our food. Maybe we take a class or two, start reading more cookbooks in bed, browsing online resources and subscribing to magazines.
The heart of the action happens when we cook with others, and that's the spirit I felt during my day at this school. It wasn't the terminology or the chef's coats that made it a learning experience. It was the way the women shared it together.
For those of you learning to cook at home, know that when you have someone to dinner, and you talk about the food, the learning grows exponentially. That's what happens when we gather together to eat.
I should note that I was especially excited to visit the Istanbul Culinary Institute because the intro came through one of our writers, Leela Cyd Ross (who wrote about her time at the Institute in the post she wrote as a try-out for the job) and because it promised to be a very local, tourist-free experience. And it was. So if you do find yourself in Istanbul, I encourage you to take one of their one-day classes, or at least have a meal in their restaurant.
(Images: Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan)
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love this! thanks for sharing your experience and reminding me of how much i love istanbul. i also took a cooking class there once, but now i can't wait to go back to visit the ICI for more!
Beautiful pictures, too. Another destination added to the list. We seem to have forgotten in our fast-food age, but food has always been about community.
You're completely right about the term self-taught cook. It's making me rethink calling myself that. It's like with everything in life, we don't learn or make it to where we are in a vacuum. What's a better term to call ourselves if we have never attended culinary school?
I love this post. No man (or woman) is an island.
I felt a similar sense of community at a pasta making class that I recently took in NYC. Cooking with others is the best...
I also have always called myself "self-taught" because my mother was a very plain cook and, with 8 kids under her feet, she never really had the time to teach me (being the only girl!). I started learning once I moved out of my parents' house. Now I consider myself a good cook and my husband does also!
I generally start with a cookbook and make changes to make the recipe "mine".
I loved your comment about "the co-worker who watches you eat the leftovers", that happens to me everyday at work! One woman always walks by and asks "and what do you have today?".
I look forward to your posts showing up in my inbox at work, I read them while eating my leftovers! Keep them coming.
I learned the basics of cooking from my mom who was a pretty good cook and from Home Economics class when I was in high school a zillion or so years ago. But that was basics, and the good cook that I've become is a result of the many opportunities I've had to learn over the many years since. While there was certainly initiative and opportunity, it was from the influence of others that I learned. I could never say that I am self-taught. I also love your blog --keeps me inspired to try new things.
looks like such a fun class.
Stacey ann Dolenti
This post first made me smile because of the fact that the pictures from my own city. The second emotion was warmth that filled my heart, the familiar feeling of the excite behind each and every try, each and every taste. Then I felt glad and proud because this site is one of my secret joys that I occasionally share with my friends. I'm still learning to cook and I believe that one day I will be as good as my mother while she is an amazing cook. I was lucky for having such an amazing mother and an equally amazing father who also loves cooking. We all have different ways of thinking and different ideas about food so our table is mostly a mixture of these. A kitchen where you can share the ideas and food :)
I was in Instanbul last month and walked right past the Culinary Institute. I really wish I'd gone in!!
You're so right no one learns to cook in isolation. I tell people I'm a self taught cook but I'm going to stop saying that because it's not true. I learned from others around me for sure.
My mother used to say,"If you can read, you can cook. Most people can't read." Mind you she also said that about sewing as well! A couple of years ago my daughters and I took a cooking class in Ubud, Bali. It was a great way to make friends and get the lowdown on the great places to eat in Ubud.
Then how would you have those of us who learned to cook on our own, without input from a family member or friend, refer to ourselves? My mother is a spectacularly bad cook who never allowed anyone to work in her kitchen or cared that her food was awful, and neither of my grandmothers could cook or were involved enough in my life to teach me anything (they both lived in other states). What I've learned is through a combination of reading, television, and pure trial and error.
I tell people I'm an enthusiastic home cook. Sometimes I say passionate, depends on my mood. My mother hated cooking so I say I learned to cook out of self defense. ;-)
Bertholle, Beck & Child and my own senses of taste, smell & sight taught me how to cook - they and numerous other recipe-writers, published & unpublished, famous & obscure, who continue to teach me still.
When I wrote my 1st cookbook, Stir, Laugh, Repeat it was due to my daughter asking for my Banana Puddin' recipe before I died but as I went along adding other recipes I remembered stories, which I added, about the mistakes I made while learning to cook. Then it hit me! I'm a baby boomer and worked when my kids were growing up. I didn't teach them to cook! They now have families of their own and with them too working plus after school activities, they have even less time to teach. To me, teaching a young person, child and even adults to cook is so important and I'm thrilled to see others doing this.
Martha
I heard about your visit to Turkey too late to invite you to see what real Turkish cooking spirit and lifestyle is. Culinary institutes are good for learning how to cook but I wish you could have also visited homes where the real culture of cooking lies. It is a tradition handed down from generations. My grandmother taught my mom and even though I grew up in the US my mom taught me and now I am sharing it with whoever I can. This, you can't see or experiencel in a school.
great post! ...and I have to say I love those striped aprons!
I certainly learned to cook in my childhood home. Both my parents cooked well, and we sat down as a family nightly (this was the 1950s - '70s). Salads and scrambled eggs were my first talents. It's interesting now to see how my cooking varies from what I learned at home. I certainly use more fresh fruits and vegetables and less canned and frozen. And as a child I was never served fresh artichokes or broccoli! And I have never made a Jello mold. Bread, cookies and desserts came from the store, but I bake weekly. My father's cooking was original and inventive -- and quite good. My mother, however, didn't particularly like cooking but did it excellently. Out of respect for that, once he retired, my father took over the dinner cooking and clean up for a number of years.
Now I have married children and I have had the pleasure of my daughters-in-law thanking me that their husbands cook.