When was the last time someone told you something about yourself that you didn’t know?

A while ago I was at lunch with a friend, discussing what we love about cooking (we’re both professional cooks). She enjoys taking care of people, nourishing them. She likes plating family style and making sure the ingredients are visibly recognizable in the final dish. She likes creating community. 

I told her I like challenging myself. That I like making things that are difficult and exacting; making sure everything is just so. I’m not too concerned with other people’s thoughts if I’ve completed the thing to my own satisfaction. 

She said, ‘You like to cook to satisfy your own curiosity’. And I’d never thought of that before but she was right. In my making the question is often one of possibility. What would this taste like, what is this material capable of, what can I do with this tool. What am I capable of? What if? 

 But the more I consider it the more I think the answer is that I just enjoy the process.

Often, I think of my relationship with a made object as a line graph. The x-axis is time: from conception of idea and planning, through to making, using, consumption, its memory. The y-axis is my own pleasure, my own delight. 

I think the immediate assumption would be that the greatest pleasure comes when the item is finished. When the meal is served, the sweater worn, the pot in question used. But I find that often if not usually, the pleasure peaks earlier on. There’s a part in the making process before the final firing where the pot just seems the most itself. The clay is burnished to a shine and all the markings are made. The way brioche feels once all the butter is in. The cross-section of a canele: they haven’t been tasted, or even seen by anyone but me. These are my heights of making.

So why finish? If the glee has peaked, why spend more time on it, more energy? I’d say because that pleasurable moment only really exists in context, in relation to the rest of the object’s life. And also because, although my maker’s pleasure leads me to create the thing, its job is not to simply be enjoyed by me. There’s still that question of what if, there’s still that curiosity to be satisfied. 

This is an outlook I’ve adopted as someone who makes things, a lot of different things, by hand. As a pastry chef, potter, knitter I’ve learned that there are always things outside my control, and that everything has its season. In a professional kitchen you get used to the idea that what you make is inherently ephemeral. It will be eaten or it will be thrown away, regardless of cost or effort. It’s the attitude of someone who uses the things she makes and so regularly reencounters them, re-experiences and considers them. 

When was the last time someone told you something about yourself that you didn’t know?

A while ago I was at lunch with a friend, discussing what we love about cooking (we’re both professional cooks). She enjoys taking care of people, nourishing them. She likes plating family style and making sure the ingredients are visibly recognizable in the final dish. She likes creating community. 

I told her I like challenging myself. That I like making things that are difficult and exacting; making sure everything is just so. I’m not too concerned with other people’s thoughts if I’ve completed the thing to my own satisfaction. 

She said, ‘You like to cook to satisfy your own curiosity’. And I’d never thought of that before but she was right. In my making the question is often one of possibility. What would this taste like, what is this material capable of, what can I do with this tool. What am I capable of? What if? 

 But the more I consider it the more I think the answer is that I just enjoy the process.

Often, I think of my relationship with a made object as a line graph. The x-axis is time: from conception of idea and planning, through to making, using, consumption, its memory. The y-axis is my own pleasure, my own delight. 

I think the immediate assumption would be that the greatest pleasure comes when the item is finished. When the meal is served, the sweater worn, the pot in question used. But I find that often if not usually, the pleasure peaks earlier on. There’s a part in the making process before the final firing where the pot just seems the most itself. The clay is burnished to a shine and all the markings are made. The way brioche feels once all the butter is in. The cross-section of a canele: they haven’t been tasted, or even seen by anyone but me. These are my heights of making.

So why finish? If the glee has peaked, why spend more time on it, more energy? I’d say because that pleasurable moment only really exists in context, in relation to the rest of the object’s life. And also because, although my maker’s pleasure leads me to create the thing, its job is not to simply be enjoyed by me. There’s still that question of what if, there’s still that curiosity to be satisfied. 

This is an outlook I’ve adopted as someone who makes things, a lot of different things, by hand. As a pastry chef, potter, knitter I’ve learned that there are always things outside my control, and that everything has its season. In a professional kitchen you get used to the idea that what you make is inherently ephemeral. It will be eaten or it will be thrown away, regardless of cost or effort. It’s the attitude of someone who uses the things she makes and so regularly reencounters them, re-experiences and considers them.