Cooking By Instinct

Forget new pots and pans-here's how to use your senses and heart to become a better cook

- Tamar Adler

IF WE WERE taught to cook as we are taught to walk, encouraged first to feel for pebbles with our toes, then to wobble forward and fall, then had our hands firmly tugged on so we would try again, we would learn that being good at it relies on something deeply rooted, akin to walking, to get good at which we need only guidance, senses and a little faith.

We aren't often taught to cook like that, so when we watch people cook naturally, in what looks like an agreement between cook and cooked, we think that they were born with an ability to simply know that an egg is done, that the fish needs flipping and that the soup needs salt.

Instinct, whether on the ground or in the kitchen, is not a destination but a path. The word instinct comes from a combination of in meaning "toward," and stinguere meaning "to prick." It doesn't mean knowing, but pricking your way toward the answer.

If you are to start down this path, you must feel charged with using your senses, imagining them as hands that nudge you forward and hold you up when you get unsteady, and even when you fall.

You must taste and taste. Taste everything, and often. Taste even if you're scared. Only by tasting can you learn to connect the decisions you make with their outcomes.