questions and doubts: this is not an exit

I've just passed recipe 100 and here I am having doubts. The fact that Italian chicken--an Escoffier recipe with a few modifications--sucked maybe woke me up. I've had a mixed experience cooking through Larousse Gastronomique. There are dishes I've loved and dishes I've disliked. I've learned something from most of them. I look forward to some dishes. The whole milk lamb? The cassoulet? The stuffed hare cooked in a casserole? They sound exactly like my idea of a good time.

The problem is that Larousse Gastronomique is not the book that's going to teach me to cook. Here are some flaws from my perspective:

1. There are a hell of a lot of recipes for eggs with slightly different garnishes. Now I get why these are distinct recipes. I do. I get that location is everything in French cuisine and that a lot of those recipes are region-specific. I'm just not sure what value, if any, I'm actually going to get from booking two dozen different variations on boiled eggs over the course of three or four years. No one wants to read that, either.
2. Larousse Gastronomique has remain unchanged in the face of modern wisdom in some key areas. The roasting temperatures and times often terrify me. I'm no scientist but I've picked up a bit of knowledge from Blumenthal, McGee and even Fearnley-Whittingstall. I know cooking meats at certain temperatures is a bad idea. If I have to change the recipes to account for knowledge I've picked up from elsewhere am I really cooking through the book faithfully?
3. Larousse Gastronomique is French-centric. I knew this from the beginning and at first I thought that was okay. I mean, even in non-French restaurants, classic French techniques and preparations are clear and present. But they're not everything. This isn't a fault of Larousse Gastronomique. It's a fault on my part. I was a snob, I guess. In wanting to learn to cook I was ignoring the talents of chefs in other cuisines I like--Italian, Spanish, Indian, Chinese (Sichuan especially). I was precluding myself from really explloring something I want to delve into more heavily: using classic techniques from Asia and Europe with Australian ingredients such as emu and kangaroo and wallaby.
4. Larousse Gastronomique still draws heavily on the cuisine of Escoffier. Now again, that's not a fault. The book is what it is. It doesn't claim to be more than it is. This means that there are recipes for all the classic sauces--espagnole and so on--and I want to get around to those, but it also means there's a lot of stuff I'm not particularly excited about. Italian sauce, for example ...

So what do I do? I'm not giving up as I haven't attained my goal: to learn to cook properly. That's what this exercise is about, after all. It's not about poaching a dozen eggs. It's not about roasting four turkeys. Cooking both versions of devilled sauce or cassoulet to see which I like the best. I might find that one recipe is stronger than another but I'm not going to learn a hell of a lot in the process ... although I may develop an encyclopaedic knowledge of Larousse Gastronomique.

Larousse Gastronomique remains an essential reference for me. Let's make that clear. I'll still cook from it but I'm not going to cook all those egg recipes. And I'm going to supplement it. I want to know more about the cuisines of other countries. I want to fuck around with some molecular gastronomy, just for fun. I have more than 50 cookbooks sitting here and I plan to get a few more. I'd like to grab the Quay book and mess around with that. Grab Thomas Keller's range of books, especially the sous vide one and Bouchon, in a couple of months if they're still on special for $30USD a pop. Turn to books already in my collection I know are good. Bourdain's Les Halles. Alinea. The Fat Duck. Dunlop's Land of Plenty. David Thompson's Thai Food. Greg Malouf's Middle Eastern cookbooks. And, on the pastry front, Advanced Bread & Pastry. I mean, I want to be able to make a fuck off awesome cassoulet for friends. But I also love a nice curry. I'd love to be able to make a beautiful Thai curry paste from scratch. I want to cure my own meats. Brew my own beer--moreso than make angelica liqueur, although that would still be a lot of fun. Savoury icecreams and sorbets. An artful cake. Something as well-thought-out as what I've had at restaurants like Embrasse and maze and The Press Club and Vue de Monde or as rustic as the grilled morcilla with boiled vegetables from MoVida or the pulled pork with much chilli salsa from Mamasita. How is all of that stuff not as valid as espagnole sauce? I just happen to like delicious food. Specific dishes and ingredients. Food does not become more or less delicious if it's French. Coq au vin isn't good because it's French. It's based on classic French technique but much of what makes it good are traits common through international cuisines. A few ingredients. Care. Time. A soothing quality.

How much can you learn from cooking through a single book? I now understand one of the major criticisms Julie Powell faced: it's a stunt. It's an educational stunt, yes, but in terms of providing an education about cooking it's providing an education about one style of cooking as seen through the eyes of one author or team or authors. Their preferences and fuck-ups and missteps and prejudices and limitations become your own. Their goals were not the same as yours. Cookbooks typically aren't written to be cooked through. These aren't novels. You're not really meant to progress from page one to page three hundred and fifty two, the end.

This is not an exit. This is not quitting. The blog shall continue. I shall broaden my focus while still following logical progressions: making a nice braise, refining my roasting technique, getting better at baking cakes, blending spices and herbs, discovering molecular gastronomy.

After all, anything in which recipe #3800 is the end point implies something I really never wanted to imply: an end point. A completion of a journey. I'm here to learn to cook. And that's a journey that will outlast all the cookbooks I currently own and will ever buy.

Onward.