Daily Dose of English 199
Culinary Arts
Daily Dose of English 199
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about culinary arts. Culinary arts is basically a fancy way of saying cooking. However, it does have a different sort of connotation, right? Because we all need to eat. And so in some way, we all cook or directly work with somebody or like pay somebody usually who cooks for us. And this is typically more simple cooking, right? The goal is just to have food to eat, that's it. you're not necessarily worried about it being fancy or unique or special or pretty, those kind of aspects are reserved for culinary arts. Because as people, we both need to eat, but also we can enjoy the food that we eat. And there's a whole extra layer of depth to sort of the art of cooking, as it might be. And so culinary arts is usually what is when you're talking about the more artistic side or fancy food or nice restaurants, that sort of thing. And although, however, if you see it, like, for example, in a school, a class is typically called culinary arts, even if you are just learning how to cook. And I put this topic on the episode actually because I was thinking about learning to cook specifically as somebody who doesn't know, because I've learned sort of through my entire life cooking with my parents, but then I also did take a culinary arts class in high school. And I was just reflecting on it a little bit and how I learned the skills that I have and how I see cooking in a couple of different ways. I've talked about it before, but I like to cook as a hobby, but then I also like to just like make easy and quick food that is nourishing and good for me and simple, right? I do combine the two a little bit. I definitely use techniques that I've learned through cooking more culinary art stuff in my day-to-day cooking to make it more pleasurable for a very small upfront cost. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm being fancy with every single one of my meals. Right, like for example, one thing that I've been doing a lot more recently is homemaking a couple of simple materials, ingredients, like pickles and sauerkraut are the two things that I've been using. To make pickles, all you need is some red wine, not red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, or even just regular vinegar, but apple cider vinegar has a bit more flavor, honey, water, and a cucumber or two. chop up the cucumber, whatever shapes you want, and then do one part honey, one part water. So I do about 80 grams of each, 80 grams of honey, 80 grams of water, and then two parts apple cider vinegar, which is about 160 grams. Heat that all up, put that over the cucumber, and then you put it in the, and it's done. You're good, that's it. That's the entire recipe. It's very, very easy to do and they taste really, really great and they add so much additional flavor to all my cooking in barely any time at all. I made those pickles this last weekend, for example, and I think it took me five five minutes maybe of time like it's just so fast and then I have a ton of pickles for weeks that I put on salads I put them in like if I'm making some sort of sauce on burgers on sandwiches they're just so good and so easy and quick um And buying them at the store, which I actually can't buy them at the store, but if I was to buy them at the store, they would probably be like $6 for the amount of pickles that I can make for a quarter of the price. A cucumber is what? $1.50 or something? Not even. I don't know. I actually don't know how much a single cucumber costs, but it's just so much cheaper that way. The other thing is sauerkraut, which is actually just cabbage and salt. Um, you do a little process of like massaging it and cutting it up and stuff, but the actual time it takes is so little. And then you just like let it sit on the, on the counter, check on it every, every day or so, make sure it's not growing any, any, uh, gross mold. Um, and then you put it in the fridge and you're done. That's also very easy. Again, I can't buy sauerkraut here, and if I could, it would probably be like $10 a jar, and I can make it for, again, like $1.50. And it adds a ton of flavor in the morning to eggs, or I put it with, you can put it with basically anything. Again, on your salad, in a sauce that you're making. And so these are sorts of skills that you might learn when you're learning about culinary arts, right? How to be fancier, how to be fresher, how to be more flavorful. However, I think that there is a lot of stuff that should be taken from culinary arts and brought into the everyday home kitchen because it's very, very valuable. There's a ton of little tips and tricks. One is that if you use anything that you're making with chocolate in it, you can use some espresso powder, so like instant espresso, to really brighten up the chocolate flavors, and it doesn't taste like coffee at all. Oops, sorry, I just punched my microphone. It doesn't taste like coffee at all, and it just makes the chocolate stuff better. All right, those sorts of tips usually come from fancy test kitchens, culinary kitchens, nice restaurants, and that sort of thing. But you can bring them into your home in a more practical way. Um, if you're curious on learning more about that, actually, I think I've mentioned it before, but Kenji Lopez Alt, uh, makes fantastic cooking videos. And he has a, an entire life. He's been in the kitchen so many hours and he has worked in big restaurants of all kinds. And, but he made his videos are all about home cooking, cooking for his family himself. And so he has a great mix of the practical tips that you can actually use in the kitchen. For example, several things that I use from him are like how to make eggs perfect every time, how to cut an onion, for example, right? Because these are things that are very helpful to know even if you're not trying to be perfect with your cooking, right? I cut an onion really quickly compared to a lot of people and all the pieces are about the same size so they cook at the same time. Um, it's not, it's yes, I've had practice, but also because if you're told it's pretty simple, right? You, you cut off the end, you cut it in half or other way around, uh, cut it in half, cut off the end. Oh, no, I cut it. I could do cut off the end first. That doesn't matter, whatever. Uh, and then you do, then you cut sort of down towards the center a little bit, but not exactly to the center, like a little bit below the table. Again, I'm not, it's easier to see this. You, you make a bunch of cuts and you turn the onion, you just cut along it. That's it. You're done. So skills like that are very, very helpful. Some that aren't as helpful are being able to like do perfect little squares like Julianne, a carrot or make perfect little, I forget what the actual cubes are called. Lots of things are more for fancy food, which I don't think are useful, but they are also interesting, right? So I think that there's a lot of beauty in food and creating something that's more artistic and also delicious. Um, I've actually never been to a five star restaurant before, like one of those like fancy fine dining ones where they bring you a bunch of small meals that are like just really interesting and have a lot of different flavors. I'd, I'd really love to go. They seem like a really interesting experience. I probably should just go. There's actually some really good ones here in Mexico City. The whole idea behind this fancy dining is that you're getting more than just food. There's a story to it. There is art to it. There's craft. And they're very expensive because they use weird ingredients. They have a ton of people working on staff. Right. Some of the really fancy ones might have one cook for every single person eating, essentially. It's a one-to-one ratio. Whereas if you go to a diner or something, it's like there's two cooks for 20, 30 customers. A much different ratio of cooks to customers. And so, yeah, they are expensive, but I think they They can be interesting experiences. It's like going to see a play or a ballet or something like that, or a musical, where like, yeah, it's kind of an expensive experience because there's so much human time, energy, and thought put behind this one thing that creates like a work of art almost. And yeah, so I was mentioning how would I teach culinary arts because I think there's a lot of stuff that is not taught or skipped over or not thought of as important about cooking. And I am sort of relearning a lot of these things. A lot of them, thankfully, I already learned. I'm very lucky that I already learned a lot of these basic cooking lessons about doing things that are easy but also delicious and nutritious and how to buy things and that sort of thing. Um, but I think that there are some really foundational skills that, um, are missing, especially in schools, right? Most people don't take culinary arts when they grow up and then they become an adult and it's like, okay, you got to eat every day, several times a day, uh, do that. And they go, uh, how, how do I eat? three times a day without just always buying food and running out of money? How do I not just eat simple instant noodles every day because I wanna be a little bit healthier? But there's all these questions out there that thankfully things like YouTube have started to answer and there's tons of cooking books out there. But cooking is also a very touchy experience. You need to do it and feel it and smell it and taste it in order to figure out what is good for you and how things work. So, um, yeah, maybe at some point in, when I'm like 50, I'll become a cooking teacher at a school or something. I don't know. Sounds interesting, but also like, it sounds like it'd be hard. So, um, yeah. Anyways, uh, that's it for me today. I hope that you enjoyed this episode and maybe learned a little something. If you are a fan of the culinary arts, let me know down in the comments below, but that is it. And I'll see you again tomorrow in another episode. Have a good one. Bye.
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