I love food, but often prefer eating it to cooking it. Often cooking seems like a chore, an extra labour of living alone. I graze, I snack. I occasionally bake focaccia and eat it all with hummus or pesto in lieu of a cooked meal.
Prior to the pandemic, I started online cooking classes. During the first lockdown, these provided me with time and space to plan and execute food that would be seen by many but only eaten by me. This virtual assemblage quickly formed intimate bonds and alliances, and has resulted in the realisation that some of us were leading different but oddly parallel lives, allowing some shared intimacies I haven't shared with those in the flesh of friends around me.
As life started to open up, the scarcity of Sundays and the need to catch the short winter sun meant that these classes became less of a priority than real-life relationships. Opportunities for deep guttural laughter, and the whiff of BBQ smoke in our hair was more important ‘in the real.’
One day during the isolation of lockdown, I made space on a Monday afternoon to watch and do a catch-up cook of one of the cooking classes I had only watched due to dashing off to meet friends, a straightforward dish of cavatelli (pictured) - simple in its ingredients but rich in its labour and care. I put on podcasts in the background…like old friends chattering, as I kneaded dough, shaped pasta, and made a tomato sauce with white onion and basil. It took hours, it was a joy and a pleasure. The physicality of kneading dough and rolling shapes means not only do I create with my body, I create shapes which are my body. The food becomes me, I consume myself. I plated it up, took a photo and enjoyed it on my own. It was worth all the labour.
Because I have a complex relationship with cooking, it means I am reluctant to do this casually for and with others. Once, I was blindsided by a friend who came over to work on a food project with me, casually turning up with noodles and an assortment of veg, not realising my awkwardness in creating a free-flowing communal lunch. I was awkward as fuck. It was great for me to be challenged in this way.
After the majority of a year of cooking alone, I was happy to let someone take up the task of cooking for me, watching quietly - a glass of wine or beer in hand. Sometimes I would chop vegetables, sometimes I’d just watch. He could cook, but did not work in the same way I did - I cook with my senses, I sniff and I taste. I experiment and trust myself to not fuck it up too much. Once we cooked more communally, I took more of a role, I gave suggestions that he viewed with suspicion - I realised he did not trust me or my senses - my brain and my body - and I let him dominate me in my domain. In doing so, I ignored the initial warning signs that this relationship would not work. I was right though, I could cook it better.
If I care deeply for you, if you have allowed me to trust you, I will cook for you. I will plan, prep and ensure the minimum amount of work once you are in my company. I will boil and sieve sauces, pick the tiniest of herbs, and go to lengths you are unlikely to realise to source the best ingredients I can find. This is rare for me, an act I seldom undertake for platonic friends; those most deserving of my reciprocal care and attention.
This week I sat on the fence. I had the ingredients, a desire to create and I did the prep in the knowledge that it was highly unlikely that I would share this food. I cooked for myself both as an act of love and as an act of hope, finding space within a time which usually does not allow for expansion. (All hail the grimness of Mondays!) There are leftovers to be crammed into tupperware and shared for lunch with those friends/colleagues who hold my heart and act as my cheerleaders.