1. Home food – learn at least three of your mother’s (or father’s) traditional food recipes, because you’ll come to miss it when it’s no longer around all the time; it will give you a warm fuzzy feeling when you make it and it tastes good.
2. New food – Learn another 3 from parents of friends or significant other. Not only will you score browny points with them but your SO will also appreciate the effort. If that happens to be Canadian or American food then great, learn how they make a specific dish, which may be better than how you make it. It might be worse too, in which case this will reaffirm that you know everything. My in laws are Armenian but with heavy Persian influence, so I learned to make Kofta.
3. “Ethnic” food – don’t be afraid to experiment with food. Learn 3 items from other cultures which you enjoy and you may be surprised at how well you do. This will build confidence and allow you to expand your base of expertise. I myself make a mean pad Thai, homemade polish pierogis, and Vietnamese spring rolls. This also doesn’t have to be done at home, many marketplaces and grocery stores offer cooking classes every few weeks, or why not have a girls night in making a friend’s special dish. If none of your friends cook that’s ok too, you can take a sushi making class with a few girlfriends and make a night of it, or hook up with a hottie who cooks and you can whip up some magic together. If this endeavor fails then drink some vino and laugh about it. See my post on why cooking is an individual activity here. And here is some Armenian Dolma:
4. Favourite food – if you’re a pasta lover like me, experiment with a couple of different pasta recipes. I like to switch it up so I don’t get bored, for example sometimes my lasagna will include meat, other times may be vegetarian. One day it may be fettuccini Alfredo, the next pesto and vegetable, to balance it out. I also love cauliflower so you better believe I have 3-4 recipes dealing with such. I also love salads so i’m constantly finding new recipes online, to prevent getting bored. There is only one salad I could always eat and it is the most basic. Its a standard Romanian salad my mom always made. Boston Head lettuce, garlic, cucumber, tomato, oil, regular white vinegar, salt and feta.
5. Elaborate or pretty food – try your hand at making something difficult or “high end”. Up the presentation and you may feel like a Michelin star chef. Roam free with the creativity and if it fails miserably… too bad, get over it and try again later. You can also add a million filters on it if you take a picture, just like how some people do for online dating to completely change everything about how they look in order to properly deceive their target audience. Putting lipstick on a pig as they say. It will make you feel better. Nobody has to know.