I cook almost every meal that my wife and I eat in our tiny studio apartment in Manhattan with its tiny, but very adequate, kitchen. I’ve loved to cook since I was a kid but I have no formal culinary training. I’m not a vegetarian but I cook more plants than meat. I’m of mainly Scotch-Irish and English descent and grew up in the Midwest so I can’t claim that I’m a cook with any “authentic” credibility in any ethnic cuisine other than American, whatever that means and maybe English (yikes). I do, however, love to experiment and explore dishes from all over. I occasionally cook something that requires special ingredients that I have to trek all over New York to find, but the vast majority of what I prepare is readily available in an average grocery or farmer’s market. I’m not radical about it (yet) but I’ve read Michael Polan so I get what I can that is locally produced, organic and humane and then fill in the blanks with groceries from a regular old grocery.
What you make on any given Tuesday says more about what kind of cook you are than what you serve at a holiday dinner. There are what I like to call “glory meals” and then there is regular cooking. Glory meals are served at Christmas, Rosh Hashanah and at dinner parties. Everybody has a relative that cooks a special dish or meal that everyone requests and looks forward to eating. Maybe it’s you. This is great and should be celebrated but you can’t serve these meals every night. These meals are usually very rich, often expensive and demand preparation time that you don’t have most of the year. Imagining, preparing and serving great food in the middle of the week is the mark of a “real” home cook. My goal is to make meals that might qualify as a glory meal but without quite so much effort or cash.
The site is called Apartment Cooking because, as I said, I cook in a very small New York kitchen. It’s 5 ft. x 13 ft. for a grand total of 65 sq. ft.. This turns out not to be that small by New York standards. Most of the food writers and testers in New York are in a kitchen not unlike mine. I’ve lived and cooked elsewhere, namely Nashville, where my wife Terri and I spent our first several years together. We remodeled an old house in East Nashville and since we both like to cook, we built a magnificent kitchen that was literally the same square footage as our entire current apartment. It allowed us to amass an insane collection of gadgets, pans, utensils and dishes made for very specific dishes, 90% of which we shed when we moved to New York. I’m not complaining though. I’m actually very proud of my kitchen and what I’m able to cook in it. By necessity it is very efficient. If I can finish a dish in the same pan I started it in, it’s a good thing. If a utensil or pan is not used often, it’s gone. If it can be used for multiple tasks for which it was not intended, it’s a keeper.
All that to say, if I can cook what I cook in my kitchen, you probably can too. If you live in New York or another overpriced-rent city and have a similar kitchen situation, I hope I can inspire you to cook at home anyway. If you have a giant kitchen with granite counter tops and an island, I hope you take advantage of it.
Personal
I’m an artist/designer and worked as a creative director in the music magazine industry for years. I’m now freelancing. I’m a completely obsessed music fan and I listen to NPR and music constantly while I work and cook so I might mention something great that I hear every once in a while. I’ve been married to Terri for almost 10 years. Best thing that ever happened to me. She manages a dog-walking and boarding business so I am assisted by canines on a regular basis. They function as motivation to never drop any food while I’m cooking. I’ll try to post an occasional photo of the assistant chefs.