As with most things, people that don’t do something can find ‘that something’ very intimidating. Cooking seems to be more intimidating than most. Mostly because your efforts are up for judgement by everyone within your web of relationships – your family, in-laws, friends, maybe even co-workers or acquaintances. That is a lot of peer pressure.
Cooking is about bringing people together. Cooking is an art of the heart as much as it is culinary skill. Food is a daily part of life, a home cooked meal is going to be healthier, more flavourful and saturated with well being. No preservatives, no substance fillers, and its still made to order.
Food preparation is a daunting task that will take you the rest of your life to explore, reflect and perfect. You might as well tighten your Iron Chef Intern apron and take the plunge.
Remy the Rat, from Pixar’s Ratatoiulle, has a great love for food that ends up taking him to Paris as he pursues culinary euphoria. Remy (and through him, Linguini) becomes the very symbol of the driving philosophy of the movie; anyone can cook.
You don’t need a ratlike sixth sense for smell. You need practice. After all, there is a plethora of recipes online and more cookbooks than you can shoot with a nuclear missile. A recipe is designed to guide you on your way to new things. When you feel more comfortable with certain aspects of cooking, you can begin to stray from their path on your way to tweaking, substituting, multi-recipe exchanges and doing your own thing. It doesn’t always work out, but that is part of the process. Learn from your mistakes, it teaches you as much about cooking (if not more) than a successful venture.
Take heart young chef. Every master chef started out as the dish washer =)
Uncooked White Rice 