I like cooking the same way I like dancing: by myself. Whether I’m in a relationship, living together, or not, it’s always been my choice, my natural state of being. Part of that is real estate: With few exceptions, the kitchens in the 13 apartments I’ve lived in throughout my adult life have been dollhouse-sized—too small to accommodate more than one person without the threat of fratricidal war. And part of that is because I’m an introvert and moderately selfish: Almost nothing brings me more joy than turning on a podcast and unplugging at a cutting board for an hour or two.
The idea of cooking for couples has never really appealed to me: like couples massages or couples manicures, it’s an activity that doesn’t inherently involve the person you’re sleeping with. In my house, my fiancé, David, and I have a church-state arrangement that plays to our strengths: I cook, he cleans. On the rare occasions we cook together, it usually ends in a competition over who gets to use the better cutting board or who has the greatest right to eight square inches of uninterrupted counter space next to the fridge.
Still, even I can appreciate the theoretical benefit of a second pair of (competent) hands in the kitchen, especially on weekdays. So when I received the gallery for Sonja and Alex Overhiser, Couple Cooks: 100 Recipes to Cook Together (coming out Oct. 15 in the Chronicle), I was both skeptical and curious. There are a lot of so-called “couples’ cookbooks,” and many of them seem to be aimed at date nights or newlyweds. Nurture your relationship!they cry. Cooking is an act of love! Rekindle your romance with this paella recipe! Interestingly, most of these books don’t seem to be intended for more than one cook: their instructions are written as if one person would do all the work, while the other would be somewhere else, presumably waiting for that act of love.
A couple is cooking takes a different approach. Each step in the recipe is labeled Cook 1 or Cook 2, theoretically making it easier for two people to be in the same kitchen working toward a common goal. This is the second cookbook from Overhisers, whose popular website A Couple Cooks has successfully cashed in on the idea that two people in the kitchen are better than one. “Cooking shouldn’t just be about putting food on the table,” they write in the introduction. “It’s about bonding over bubbling pots, chatting over veggies, and making memories that last long after the cooking is over.”
It’s a cool idea, as much as the equally indifferent concept that food brings people together, and I needed some inspiration for a weeknight, so I figured, why not? When I told David we’d be cooking together, he took the news with some caution. But we entered the kitchen, accompanied by the Overhisers’ recipe for shrimp with avocado and lime sauce.
The division of labor in the recipe seemed a bit asymmetrical: one cook makes the sauce and shrimp, while the other combines the slaw ingredients and heats the tortillas. But given that one cook (ahem) prepped the slaw ingredients, the other had more time to wash dishes, so it was all right. Overall, the recipe went smoothly, as long as two people could easily follow it, and the shrimp seasoning and avocado sauce were very good. That said, the ⅛ teaspoon measure of garlic in the sauce was mysterious—you might as well wave a clove at the sauce—and the shrimp weren’t actually browned but sautéed. Still, it created the bonding experience that Overhisers promised, because we were complaining about the same thing ourselves, and if that’s not the point of sharing your life with another person, I don’t know what is.
Since I was determined to prolong this experiment until I found something sensible to take away from it, we returned to the kitchen the next evening to prepare the recipe from the book for sticky orange tofu and broccoli. This recipe worked really well, as did the division of labor, which seemed to be evenly distributed. When we started preparing the recipe, we argued with each other about something unimportant, but when we finished, we got along great. The end product was delicious, which also helped. We ate it while watching What we do in secretone of the few TV shows we agree on.
There is a chapter in A couple is cooking called Just For Two, which functions as the de facto Date Night chapter that couples-oriented cookbooks are contractually obligated to make available. Its recipes, according to Overhisers, are “imaginative enough to impress, but practical” — think Date Night pizza, truffle pasta, shrimp and scallops, and other animal proteins that are pricey enough that you don’t want to lavish them on your kids or guests. I chose Sweet Heat Salmon, a recipe described as “great for spicing up a date night.” It had only six ingredients, and most of them were staples, which I appreciated (many of Overhisers’ recipes are based on staples and are fairly scarce, making it a solid book for weeknight dinners, whether you’re in a relationship or not).
Unfortunately, for all its ease, the dish — through no fault of its own — didn’t end up spicing up date night. That’s because it wasn’t date night; instead, it was just a weeknight, hectic and bad, with good but unrealized intentions. I made a sauce (butter, hot sauce, sriracha, honey, and tamari), I poured it over the fish, we ate it, it was delicious, and that was that. But maybe that’s its own form of romance, a meal that meets your expectations without making you feel bad for not exceeding them.
All of this made me realize that cooking together is a bit like starting a daily exercise routine: it requires determination and conscious decision-making and developing new muscles, especially those related to accommodation. Could David and I cook together every day? Probably not, at least not in this kitchen. And I don’t think either of us would; again, we know each other’s strengths and are good at using them. But while I can’t say the experience led to memorable deep conversations or extraordinary bonding, it was, in its own way, rewarding, especially because cooking together made the cleanup a lot easier, which ensured that no one got stuck scrubbing dishes later.
Does cooking together create memories? Well, yes—most conscious experiences do. If anything, it has created a new awareness of my own muscle memory: so much of what I do in the kitchen is the result of doing things a certain way until I stop to think about them. Cooking together is, in some ways, like riding a tandem bike: you have to be aware of how the other person is moving and how much energy they are using, and adjust accordingly. Eventually, you can reach the top of the hill, sweaty and maybe a little tired, but still able to appreciate the view.
#Cooking #means #complaining