If anyone asks me when I first fell in love with the culinary world, the answer is when I was five years old. At that time, my white-haired grandmother with her distinctive round glasses was making nastar cookies in her old cinnamon-scented kitchen.
My grandmother's kitchen was no ordinary kitchen. For me as a child, it was more like a secret research laboratory belonging to an eccentric professor. Various glass jars were neatly lined up on old wooden shelves, each containing a mysterious spice whose name I couldn't spell. Some were shaped like dry tree branches (which I later found out were cinnamon), some were like ghost nails (turned out to be cloves), and some were even shaped like small black stones (none other than black pepper).
I still remember clearly how my grandmother always hummed while cooking. Sometimes her old songs sounded out of tune, but she didn't care. "Cooking without music is the same as soup without salt," she said while stirring her steaming broth. Of course, being the good grandson that I am, I pretended not to hear when her tone veered off-key.
It was in that kitchen that I learned that cooking is more than just mixing ingredients. It is an art, a science, and a little magic all rolled into one. My grandmother used to say that every dish has its own soul. "Just look at this egg," she would say as she whipped it up for a cake. "It can be anything we want it to be. Like life, it all depends on how we prepare it."
As the years passed, I began to understand her philosophy on cooking and life. I remember the first time I tried to cook my own at age 12. The result? An omelet that looked more like a map of a desert island, with the edges burnt like it had been hit by a volcano.
But my grandmother never criticized me. She just smiled and said, "At least it looks unique." Then she took a piece of the burnt omelet and ate it with an expression that made me believe she was eating a five-star meal. Even though I knew exactly what it tasted like, it was charcoal wrapped in protein.
Entering adolescence, the kitchen became my escape. When my math grades dropped, I made cookies. When my first heartbreak came, I experimented with various soup recipes. There was something soothing about the ritual of stirring, chopping, and mixing ingredients. Maybe because in the kitchen, we always have full control over what we make.
One day, while in college, I tried to make rendang for the first time. Ambitious indeed, considering that rendang is one of the most fiery dishes in the world. But don't all great achievements start from "slightly" excessive ambition? Unfortunately, ambition is not always in line with reality.
My first rendang ended up with meat that was as tough as the sole of a shoe and spices that looked more like mine mud than rendang spices. My roommates who were the guinea pigs could only smile bitterly while secretly ordering fried chicken delivery.
But that failure made me even more curious. As my grandmother said, "Failure in the kitchen is as valuable as success. At least you know what doesn't work." This philosophy sounds good, although it doesn't help ease my embarrassment to my friends who are still traumatized by the rendang experiment.
Over the years, I developed a love-hate relationship with various recipes. Some were perfect on the first try, others took dozens of tries to finally make them presentable. The most memorable one was when I tried to make croissants from scratch.
Who knew that making a sheet of dough with layers could be so torturous? I spent three days working with flour, butter, and water, trying to create the perfect layers that would make a croissant a croissant. The result? Well, let’s just say it looked more like a depressed bull’s horn.
But it was through those failures that I learned that cooking, like life, is all about the process. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail, but the most important thing is to keep trying. And of course, to have a good sense of humor when the results of our cooking look more like abstract masterpieces than food.
Now, after all these years, the kitchen is still my favorite place. Although I don’t spend as much time there as I used to, every time I cook it always brings back memories of my grandmother and her magical old kitchen.
I remember how my grandmother used to say that everyone has a different "hand" when it comes to cooking. "Two people can use the exact same recipe, but the results will never be identical," she said. I used to think that was just one of her many abstract philosophies, but it turns out she was right.
Even now, I still can't make nastar as delicious as my grandmother's, even though the recipe is exactly the same. There's something magical about the way she processes the dough, something that can't be explained in words or measured with any sophisticated digital scale.
Maybe that's what makes the culinary world so interesting. Unlike exact mathematics, or physics that can be predicted with formulas, cooking always has an element of surprise. Sometimes the surprise is fun, like when a cake rises perfectly. Sometimes... well, like the rendang on the sole of my shoe.
Speaking of surprises, last week I tried making ramen from scratch. Yes, including the noodles which are made manually. After watching dozens of video tutorials and reading various recipes, I felt confident enough. "How hard is it to make noodles?" I thought naively.
Turns out, making noodles is like trying to teach a cat to swim. It might work, but it’s a very, very tedious process and will most likely end in a mess. My noodle dough was too sticky, then too dry, then too stretchy to be used as a slingshot.
But hey, at least the broth was delicious! And isn’t that the most important thing? Okay, maybe not. But as my grandmother used to say, “In cooking, as in life, it’s not just the end result that counts, but the story behind the process.” And well, I have a lot of stories about my ramen-making adventures.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s why cooking is so addictive. Every failure makes us more curious, every success makes us want to try a more challenging recipe. It’s like playing a video game, but with the bonus of being able to eat it (if it works) or use it as fertilizer for plants (if it fails miserably).
And here I am now, spatula in hand and a million recipes to try. My grandmother is long gone, but the scent of cinnamon in her kitchen still lingers in my memory. Sometimes, in the midst of cooking, I can hear her dissonant humming, reminding me that cooking does need music-even if it's out of tune.
So what's the lesson to be learned from all these culinary adventures? Maybe it's that life, like cooking, is about the courage to try, the patience to learn from failure, and the ability to laugh when things don't go as planned. Oh, and of course, always have a food delivery number as a backup plan.
Because at the end of the day, as my grandmother always said, "There are no failures in the kitchen, only imperfect experiments." Even if those "imperfect experiments" sometimes set off fire alarms or cause friends to turn down dinner invitations for months to come.
Posted Using INLEO