In high school, I found out that PBS aired cooking shows on Saturdays. I began to watch America's Test Kitchen, Lidia's Italy, and Simply Ming every week, since we didn't have cable TV, and those were the days before everything was available online. I remember watching Ming Tsai and his dad make homemade tofu before ever even tasting it. America's Test Kitchen taught me that recipes are not set in stone and can always be tested, changed, and improved.
I held on to all of those lessons ever since. What makes cooking so great is that a failed attempt can get better the second time around. Failures remind us not to make those same mistakes again. I'll always remember the time all the chocolate chip cookies melted together in the cookie sheet and became one big puddle of a mess. Or the time I made mousse and realized after I let it rest in the fridge that I forgot to fold in the whipped cream.
In the kitchen, no one is perfect. This brings me to Chef Gusteau's catchphrase in Ratatouille - "Anyone can cook." It doesn't matter if you were surrounded by passionate foodies as a child, or at what age you started to cook. Anyone can do it. Anyone can cook.
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