These are excerpts from the author’s book “Deep,” which contains eight of his small books published in the form of Wisdom Literature covering different aspects of life: Facing troublemakers, dealing with pain, personal financial issues, gastronomy, reading, criticizing, inspiring, and feeling always good to go.

Week 56: Starting from Scratch

• Cooking is a talent that you can discover at any age. If circumstances did not allow you to cook for any reason in the past, this does not mean that you are a failed chef. Do not give up before you try repeatedly and give yourself enough chances to verify your talent and test your potential.

• No matter how hard you practice or how far you take training courses, nothing matches passion if you aspire to become a great chef.

• While passion is mostly evident from a young age, talent sometimes takes time to discover and needs the effort to cultivate. In any case, the passion itself grows with the acquisition of confidence in cultivating the talent.

• The real start isn’t the first time you’ve prepared a meal for a group of guests or even the first time you’ve cooked lunch for the family. It is the first time you had to go into the kitchen when you were young to prepare a small and extremely simple dish for your own breakfast or dinner.

• It’s okay if you get a little anxious or even fear failure in the very beginning. The problem is when you don’t feel a deep joy transcending all other feelings every time you enter the kitchen.

• Start with the easiest dishes you like, and beware of clinging to your comfort zone.

• Even boiling eggs is an art: you must calculate the amount of water in relation to the number of eggs, temperature, and boiling time, in addition to your special touches, such as sprinkling some salt during the boiling, and the manner in which you serve the dish itself. When you do all this with passion, a connoisseur will be able to tell the difference between your eggs and those of a cook who threw the eggs in boiling water, took them out after a quarter of an hour, and pushed the dish to him or her.

• It is good to offer the results of your first trials to people who are close to you and whose taste you trust. They won’t put you down, so encourage them to openly give you their opinion to improve your next attempts.

• Don’t listen to common sayings. Less salt is not better than extra salt just because you can correct missing salt by adding the necessary amount. Ensure that you work with confidence. Do not leave it to the tasters to decide what is missing or excessive. Adjust the amounts of your ingredients with confidence and care, whether you always rely on a calibration tool or estimate amounts based on abstract senses.
• It is never all or nothing. Cooking anything is better than never cooking. Even if you believe you lack the necessary passion or talent, do not stop learning and improving your skills. Instead prepare simple dishes that you prefer or that everyone around you likes.