November 8th is “Cook Something Bold Day”! Rather than presenting a list of recipes that are within my family’s personal definition of “bold”, I would like to provide you with some ideas for finding inspiration to figure out your own bold food adventure. Whether you are tired of the same old meals each week, wanting your kids to explore new flavors, or wanting to learn a new method for using a favorite ingredient, here are three ways my family has found inspiration.
1. Head to the bookshelves.
Anyone who knows our family knows we have a big problem with books. Whether it is the “fill a bag” sale at The Rosewater, finding antique goodies at a peddler’s mall, or attempting to carry out more than our arms can hold at the library, we want ALL the books. Admittedly, we have not read every word of every book we have at home or have checked out from the library, but each one is a treasure. Books about food are one of my top library searches right now, and I like visiting different branches to see what unusual finds each has in circulation.
There are multiple types of “food books” that you may want to look for. The first is obviously a cookbook. Cooking “bold” may mean trying a cookbook by an author from a country whose flavors you have not tried. It may mean getting recipes specifically to learn how to better use a cooking tool or appliance you have. (I still haven’t learned how to do much in my Instapot other than cook perfect boiled eggs and fast cook things I used to do in the Crock Pot. I should probably get one for this!)
The second type of food book I enjoy is a narrative about cooking. I’ve read several books about or by Julia Child, and as someone who finds cooking well pretty overwhelming, her transformation from having no skills as a newlywed woman into becoming a woman many people think of immediately when it comes to good food was inspiring. I loved hearing descriptions of delicious French recipes and finding how easy some of them were to make in my own kitchen. That was pretty much her goal with “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and reading about her love affair with French cuisine helped me be “bold enough” to try new things. In her book “Julie and Julia”, author Julie Powell calls her year going through Child’s cookbook “living dangerously”. Definitely bold!
One I have been reading lately is “The Kitchen Counter Cooking School”. Kathleen Finn writes about gathering several unskilled and unconfident women, teaching them basic kitchen skills and recipes, and how that transformed how they and their families ate permanently. Something as simple as holding a knife properly might make trying a new vegetable recipe more accessible. Maybe your version of “bold” is learning how to use a knife without being terrified of cutting off your fingers (like me!).
2. Turn on a screen
Perhaps using a written recipe is still a little too bold for you to jump in unafraid. Maybe you need someone doing it with you, someone you can watch actually showing you what it means when oil is “shimmering” or how exactly to spatchcock your chicken. Cooking television is not a new invention, but YouTube is particularly useful because it has given a platform for bold cooks to present niche ideas to people without the constraints of needing to be watchable for the masses. There are foodies with just about every niche interest you can imagine.
Want your kids to be bold enough to try a new veggie that you are afraid they won’t touch? Head to “Binging With Babish” and learn how to make Kronk’s spinach puffs before watching “Emperor’s New Groove” or try out Remi’s leek and potato soup from Ratatouille. Few things look tastier than cartoon food, so having it right there might encourage bold tasting they might not otherwise do! Leeks are a favorite ingredient at our house, now. I probably would never have tried them without that soup looking so delicious!
One of my daughter’s favorite YouTube channels belongs to a woman she affectionately calls “The tomato grandma”. Buon-A-Pettiti invites you into the kitchen to learn how to make authentic Italian food. Whether you want to learn the secret to an amazing lasagna or try something bolder like pasta from scratch, Nona Gina’s motherly guidance will calm you enough to try it. She’s not a professional with special equipment, just a mom and grandmother with lots of years of practice in her own home.
Perhaps during soup season, you have found your go-to chicken noodle a little dull. Why don’t you hop in your Delorian, Tardis, or time machine of choice and learn how to make nyumen from Edo period Japan from the oldest surviving Japanese cookbooks! If you are without a time machine (like I am), try Tasting History. Max will show you step-by-step how to create the recipe while learning more about the history around the use of noodles in Japan. He also provides plenty of links to ingredients that you might need to special order. (Maybe you’re bold enough to make garum from scratch to really make authentic Parthian chicken from ancient Rome, but I’d rather buy my fermented fish sauce pre-made when that’s an option.)
Whenever my kids show me something crazy they see on a “food hack” video, I often make them check to see if Anne Reardon has tried it on “How to Cook That”. I’m not bold enough to try something that could end up burning down our house instead of making it a little quicker to make a quesadilla. She talks about the chemistry that causes reactions during cooking, why a recipe is too dangerous to try, or why certain ingredients that sound like a bad combination actually make sense together. It’s a great channel to see if all the TikTok recipes you’ve saved are worth your time and energy.
3. Have a party
A really fun way to get bolder in the kitchen is to get together with friends. I will never forget the time a friend invited our family over for dinner on Lunar New Year and taught us to make authentic Chinese dumplings and a few other dishes. I had never even heard of sesame oil before that evening, and now I use it all the time. I am much bolder when I try Asian recipes because of what I learned from my friend.
Host a dinner party where everyone makes their signature dish. Take turns with a friend learning how to cook a special family recipe or important cultural dish. Invite friends to purchase one ingredient for a complicated dish that you all work on learning together. There are so many ways to let friendship help you “cook something bold”.
Whatever you decide, I hope you mark this date on your calendar with excitement. Cooking may require some guidelines, but there are no set rules. Even if your “bold” experiment goes awry, you’ve learned something. Maybe you really can’t handle ghost peppers, but now you know for sure! Maybe you cooked the bread too long, and it burned. Now you know how to adjust the recipe for your own oven. These experiences are successful. Being bold is never something you will regret!
