FamiLee Life

Alpha Cooking :: Guilty as Charged

HW told me about this NYTimes article on alpha and beta cooks in relationships. Ironically, we were talking about this article last night as we (really, she) made a tasty Thai chicken and bok choy potato dumpling soup. I got home late and dinner preparations were already underway. Tired from a long day, I simply let her do most of the cooking - very atypical of me. On occasion, I intervened, sauteeing the chicken and working on the stew while she made the dumplings (a much harder task). It's all worth noting because, truth be told, I am an alpha cook. But I was not always one.

Growing up, I was spoiled like any immigrant kid would be who had a working mother who owned a restaurant and later taught cooking and a grandmother who spoke no English, never left the house, and was responsible for cooking and cleaning for three unruly grandsons. I ate wonderful food all the time. Then, later as I got older and poorer (thanks to graduate school), I slowly began to learn to cook. I watched my mother and grandmother cook whenever I went home for the holiday, picking up little lessons on how to season, cut, etc. Soon, these silent observations turned into phone calls to my mother asking her to help with a recipe or to salvage a cooking disaster. By the time I had finished graduate school and accepted an academic position, I was more confident in the kitchen.

Sometimes social comparisons can help a person to achieve greatness and other times it can disable you. When I moved to Austin, TX to begin my academic career, I discovered a great group of friends in which most of the men were amazing cooks (chefs, to be honest). Their partners, well, as Borat says, "not so much." These men made stews from scratch, experimented with recipes for weeks before ever serving it to friends, and knew the strange science behind cooking. I was envious and terribly intimidated. In this context, I was the beta cook and never dared show my novice cooking skills. Instead, I just enjoyed eating their gorgeous food.

In 2000, I moved up Northland and found mysef alone again in the kitchen. I started to call my mother from time to time for cooking advice and gradually started to cook for students and friends. Relationships would spring up then and again and I found myself taking the lead in the kitchen. As I found myself more economically settled, I began to enjoy shopping for kitchenware (fancy pots and pans, utensils, random spices), buying cook books, and subscribing to cooking magazies (right now, it's Food and Wine). Cooking was relaxing and enjoyable. At some point, I became an alpha cook.

Nowadays, I run the kitchen. I am not a great cook by any stretch but I really enjoy cooking (and experimenting to improve upon recipes, such as my bulgogi v.3 recipe). I also get impatient when I see something going wrong and find myself sometimes biting my tongue when cooking with a partner. Other times, I offer unsolicited advice. In the end, it's about accepting roles, adjusting expectations, and always ending up with a good meal.