The Joy of Cooking and the Art of Trying

In November, I tried a new recipe. It was Julia Child’s Chocolate Mousse. My son had requested it for his 12th birthday.

We could have purchased some, but I always prefer homemade. I like to make new things, and because my son’s birthday was on a Saturday when there was no farmer’s market, I had the time to try.

My son had actually just requested “chocolate mousse,” but I went to Julia Child’s recipe first. I had purchased Mastering the Art of French Cooking for $2 at the High Point library book sale a couple of years ago, but had never made any of the recipes. The title is intimidating on its own: mastering, meaning to become proficient in an ongoing process, meaning it’s not the “quick, easy, 3-ingredient chocolate mousse” that I found online. French cooking, meaning something foreign, meaning something we’re not used to.

Growing up, our family cookbook was the Joy of Cooking. Throughout my childhood, I found this increasingly ironic, since my mother hates to cook and did everything in her power to make the simplest foods. We ate a lot of spaghetti, always with store-bought sauce. We also ate a lot of Taco Bell.

When I got married, my mom made sure that I had Joy of Cooking in my kitchen. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t have any of the beautiful color photographs found in many of today’s cookbooks. But I have found that I love it for its very basic instructions of almost every food I could want. It is, in my opinion, a great reference for the beginner.

This cookbook is also a reminder of joy.

The joy of cooking is to try new things and eat meals with those we love. It’s to watch as ingredients meld into new creations. There is joy in the kitchen, as there is joy everywhere else, if we look for it.

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure,” says Julia Child. “In cooking, you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

But herein is the key: We must try, and not rush ourselves in the trying. Mastering often requires a messy beginning. The joy of cooking is always there for us to uncover, but in the rush of completing tasks it can be mistaken for strife. Slowing down, paying attention, letting the job take as long as it takes: this is where we find the joy waiting for us.

When my son requested chocolate mousse for his birthday, I got excited. I love chocolate mousse, but I hadn’t made it since I was in high school French class. Then, we called it mousse au chocolat, and it was more likely chocolate pudding that I renamed for a grade.

After reading the recipe, and re-reading it, and reading a blog about someone else who made it, I gathered the ingredients and got to work.

I heated water. I separated four eggs and whisked them with granulated sugar. They mixed well, but then the mixture got grainy. I think my sugar may not have been fine enough. The recipe said the concoction should have looked like mayonnaise. I added a tablespoon of hot water and the mixture came together. I don’t know if that was the right thing to do, but usually when something is dry, water will help it. I left out the orange liqueur. I added a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Eventually, the mixture became smooth and I folded in stiff egg whites.

I finished the recipe and poured it into a dish. Then I had to wait four hours before knowing if my toil had worked any magic.

I knew that if it didn’t, we could come up with something else. The celebration would not disappear. I could try the mousse again some other time. I was a beginner, after all, and trying again would be one more step toward mastery.

In the end, the mousse was decadent, smooth, rich and chocolaty. The candles stood tall as we sang to our new 12-year-old. We smiled. We laughed. We ate. We were blessed.

Photo by Lauren Kan on Unsplash

As we enter the holiday season, we will all make more things. And we’ll order more things. Whatever you choose: homemade or store-bought, or drive-through, I hope that you see your table is blessed. And if you have the time, I hope you will disregard the possibility of failure and mix up some things in your own kitchen. Above all, I hope you will sit down with people you love, letting the joy of life take shape around you.

feature image photo by American Heritage Chocolate on Unsplash