Finding Focus at the Start of the Year

Cooking, uncertainty, and choosing one thing to hold onto

I love this time of year. Even though the new year is nothing but a marker of the earth’s completion of its circuit around the sun, we ascribe a sense of renewed enthusiasm to bettering ourselves and our experience of life. There is a push of momentum, helping us break the entropy that we fell into as the demands of work and everyday life consume our schedules and energy.

Work is weird these days. I can’t go into details, but suffice it to say that my trajectory is unknown. I love technology. Beside cooking, it’s the one obsession I’ve held firm to over the last 25+ years. The industry is changing, and while exciting, it’s also scary. Businesses are reducing costs and operating leaner than ever. In times of uncertainty, we often strive for something we can hold firm to, taking the opportunity to really lean into the things we can control—things like this blog and my dedication to making myself the best home cook that I can possibly be. While I am admittedly ADHD as heck when it comes to activities and hobbies, if I had to say there was my ONE THING, it would be the culinary world.

My plan for this year is to be more systematic about my approach. Last year, I really burned out on cooking from around the world. While I enjoy all foods, I found the exercise was taking me away from cooking the foods I really love to eat: Chinese, Thai, Japanese, and Vietnamese primarily, though I also like the occasional run of Korean. I also LOVE cookbooks. I have over a hundred print books, and I have no idea how many digital copies. Cookbooks give me the opportunity to read about and explore other cultures through their food, even when I can’t physically be there.

My focus for the first part of this year is going to be wok technique. I recognize I can’t get the true wok experience in my home kitchen, but neither can most people—at least in the West. The question is: how good can I get, even with the limitations? My plan is to use J. Kenji López-Alt’s book, The Wok: Recipes and Techniques, and try to work through every recipe. I’ll be tracking my completion status, but I won’t necessarily capture or report on some of the side recipes for making things that are used in other recipes, such as the pickled chiles. What is especially good about this book is the focus on technique for the home cook and exploring the use of the wok throughout the different cultures that have it as a central cooking vessel. It plays right into the foods I like to eat and the way I like to cook.

I tend to overload myself with projects and disparate interests, so rather than declare a secondary focus, I think I’m best off playing the “other” by ear. Currently, I am thinking of working on both dim sum and sushi. I love the idea of sushi and definitely want to get to the point where I feel comfortable putting together a decent dinner, but it is expensive to make and something I burn out on pretty quickly. It’s also a lot of rice. Rice is my favorite food, but my wife is quite a bit more carb-sensitive than I am, so it’s not something I am going to be able to serve all the time. Dim sum is just, well, wonderful. Freshly made dumplings swimming in chile oil have got to be one of the best things you can put in your mouth.

Lastly, I want to find a way to get involved with the broader culinary community. Certainly, part of that will need to be online, but I would love to find a local group that I can meet up with and share this wonderful obsession.

Of course, I’ll write about all of it here. Let’s kick things off by leaving you with a couple of pictures of what I made for a quiet New Year’s dinner at home. Being from the South, I had to bring in the classics of greens, peas, and cornbread.

We added some chicken for protein. I spatchcocked it and rubbed herb butter between the skin and the meat, then roasted it. Unfortunately, I tore the meat a little pulling it off the pan with metal tongs. I don’t know how I timed it so well, but the meat was extraordinarily tender. Frankly, this is one meal that really doesn’t need the addition of a protein, but the herb butter gave it a holiday feel that fit nicely with the rest of the meal.