Just because it tastes good

Lotje Deelman was editor-in-chief of ELLE Eten, has been working for Allerhande for almost 15 years and worked behind the scenes on television programmes such as MasterChef, Worsten van Babel On Tour and De Nieuwe Lekkerbek. She ate pig’s trotters with Anthony Bourdain and flirted with Gordon Ramsay in his Aston Martin. Lotje is the (co-)author of more than ten cookbooks and, in her kitchen in the Drenthe countryside, is never too timid to set something on fire. On FavorFlav, Lotje shares what occupies her mind every week. This time: cooking, simply because it tastes good.

The idea that cooking a means to an end is has of course long since been debunked. If it were merely about putting something on the table to stay alive, we wouldn’t have Michelin stars, MasterChef or Lindenhofs and Duikelmans.

I sometimes select candidates for cooking programmes. During the auditions, people tell the most heartbreaking stories about why they cook. That’s how I first heard that you can genuinely cook your way out of a hole. There are people who cook their way through divorces, incurable illnesses, family disputes, burnouts, dead pets and bankruptcies. And not just a few, but a great many. Stories—sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes toe-curling—that could fill a television programme in themselves. Cooking distracts, cooking brings people together, cooking puts things into perspective, cooking heals. You never have to think very deeply while doing it, but you do have to focus. And then there is always that whisky-sea-salt-caramel-chocolate cake, vegan rijsttafel or epic boeuf bourguignon at the end. I don’t know a more beautiful win-win.

Yet I never hear a cook, a foodie or even a food blogger say that they’re making something because it feels so good. Yes, feels. So not tastes good, but feels good. I do, though.

Self-satisfied

Dough is one example. I don’t necessarily have to knead it by hand. Takes too long. What I like best is the moment you take the dough out of the KitchenAid bowl and hold it in your hands for the first time. As if you’re weighing it. A combination of temperature (a kind of cool body heat) and weight (heavy and light at the same time). Brazenly contradicting you when you press your finger into it. Dough is a first time right thing: you immediately feel whether it’s right. Followed by a brief rush of satisfaction, on the verge of self-satisfaction. That feels good.

Also very satisfying: chopping. With a nice sharp chef’s knife. One with the perfect balance and the right weight. Big enough to make you feel cool, but not so big that it makes you overconfident—or worse, insecure. With a handle that fits exactly and feels very familiar, like your favourite pair of jeans. Once you’re nicely into chopping, you really don’t want to stop.

Autistic

Different, but also satisfying: autistic mise en place at home. Preparing everything in a hysterically neat fashion, setting it out on your worktop in identical containers of the same size and material. As if you’re about to present a cooking programme, or work in the best restaurant in the world, but in fact you’re simply making a little pasta for yourself. Fucking great feeling, right? Is anyone still with me?

In the zone

One more: when, while cooking, you suddenly find yourself completely in the zone. A bit like that Remy in Ratatouille feeling, as if someone else who can cook really, really well is controlling your hands. Everything happens automatically, every action is effortless, and you even have brilliant culinary inspirations while you’re at it. Being completely in the moment while simultaneously not being entirely there.

Man, that feels good too…