Hello there, and welcome to Bartender of Food!
I created this space because I have eating habits unlike those of most other people. I cook nearly every meal I eat, sometimes from scratch, but I have next to zero cooking knowledge.
The meals I make are usually delicious, always on the healthier side, incredibly easy to prepare, flexible and adaptable, and the ingredients are most often cheap to acquire. Also, they're all vegetarian, but that's just because I happen to be one. I'm not going to push my beliefs on you; if you want to grill up a steak and toss it on one of my creations, more power to you.
They don't come from cookbooks either; I am not blessed with the necessary attention span to sit down, read a book, make a list, go out and buy ingredients, and then follow step-by-step instructions to assemble a carefully-crafted culinary experience honed through generations of refinement. My meals come from throwing whatever I have on top of whatever else is laying around, and seeing what sticks.
I might not know much about cooking, but I've developed a pretty good instinct for mixing flavors. And I have an exceedingly high tolerance for questionable meals (provided the base ingredients were respectable), so I try things most people wouldn't with little to no fear of failure. At best, I'll have a fantastic dish that expresses my individuality, and at worst it'll still be better than instant ramen.
In the weeks to come, I will document some of my prouder accomplishments, usually as a means to illustrate something I've learned or give focus to an ingredient you should know about. However, my goal is not to get you to cook these exact meals. Rather, I want to train you in my way of thinking, and show you how easy it is to prepare delicious dishes, on a budget, without having any idea what you're doing. If this blog is successful, you too will be tossing miscellaneous bits of produce atop a steaming pile of vague carbohydrates, and sprinkling on a ragtag assortment of spices or maybe cracking open a jar of sauce you found laying around, only to wind up with a meal that will impress your friends.
They'll taste your latest invention and say, albeit with a hint of hyperbole, "Wow, you're quite the chef." And you'll answer with my motto:
I'm not a chef. I'm a bartender of food.
The art of combining flavors to make surprisingly delicious meals without having the slightest idea how to cook
I like it. You should at least document your failures and do a top ten every so often, those will likely be the more entertaining posts.
ReplyDeleteActually... while I wouldn't cook everything I've ever made for a date, I can really only think of three meals I've made that I would call failures. And two of those were still completely edible. I'll certainly talk about those, but I really wasn't kidding when I extolled how easy it is to be a Bartender of Food. You really just have to realize you can do it, and then it all falls into place.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, it's a shame because this blog would certainly be funnier if I screwed up more. But the rarity of critical failures means I to show people who are intimidated by cooking that it's really no big deal (or encourage people who know a few things to take more risks).
I want to show the world (or maybe just the ten people who'll read this) that they can just charge blindly into the kitchen and emerge victorious. Being funny will keep people's attention whenever my information isn't useful to them, but it's not my only goal here.
Nothing, I say, nothing is better than ramen.
ReplyDeleteNice little start with this blog. No fear of bad food. I remember overcoming that fear with the worst culinary experiment I ever commited: Bologne Soup with Ty Ling Chinese Five Spices. Live and learn.