My Philosophy About Food & Cooking

I’m into good food. Food that tastes good and haunts my dreams.

Mostly I stick to minimally processed stuff, but only most of the time. There's enough shame in the world. I don't need to apply it to food.

I also think we should be able to afford the food we eat. I don’t like snobbery of any kind and food snobbery just irritates me.

Food shouldn’t take forever to make – I’ll leave that kind of recipe to the professionals.

Rarely do I cook a recipe the way I find it.

I tend to be a fairly intuitive cook. Cooking for me is creative, joyful, playful, and kind of chaotic. (I come by this naturally – my father was famous for leaving splatters of spaghetti sauce on the walls and ceilings of friends’ homes where he had cooked.) Only when I’m baking do I really carefully measure. Otherwise, I eyeball it.

My parents were huge influences on my cooking. For my dad, cooking was about relaxation and hospitality. He cooked almost every weekend, and we almost always had guests. Food was a way of expressing love, open-heartedness, and generosity. I share that sensibility. Dad was a very spontaneous cook. He might look at a few cookbooks, but they were nowhere in sight when he got to the business of cooking. He would riff and jam and imagine. His upbringing in Fresno, the child of Italian immigrants who struggled during the Depression, infused his dishes. Sharing food was almost a spiritual thing to him. His recipes were from the heart and he made similar things over and over, but not always exactly the same.

Charlotte & Lee Telesco sometime in the 1960s.

My mother, on the other hand, really enjoyed finding new and different recipes and trying them out. She approached cooking with disciplined, but open-minded inquiry, like the scientist she was at heart. When she cooked, we had a simple, but effective, rating system we used with new recipes. Every person at the table got a vote: was the recipe repeatable, repeatable often, or not repeatable. Not infrequently, it got more complicated because someone would say “not repeatable as is, but if we made this tweak…” Liking or not liking a recipe was never seen as a personal affront to her. New recipes were a springboard for conversation and discussion. I love that. I live that.

Some examples of my approach:

• I don’t feel the need to routinely make my own broths – honestly, it’s a pain and time-consuming and expensive and I don’t particularly like the result. I use broth cubes or powdered broth or water.

• I’m not going to tell you to only buy authentic Parmesan Reggiano or prosciutto from Italy. Only rarely have I found that it makes that much of a difference. If you’re into it and can afford it, go ahead. Otherwise, just use the stuff you find in the refrigerator section of your supermarket.

• I don’t get fussy about appearance – my taste buds and stomach don’t care if it’s perfectly plated.

• I don’t think extra-virgin olive oil is a necessity in all recipes – canola or some other neutral oil works really well for me for most stuff (and, by the way, I have a real problem with supposedly Asian recipes calling for olive oil – just saying).

• More and more, I find myself tending toward simplicity - just a few flavors shining.

• The same for meal planning - one dish as the focus, then simple sides if needed. Steaming vegetables simply works for me. I like plain rice, roasted potatoes, orzo tossed with some butter and parmesan. But better yet is when I can combine things together.

• It's never about perfection - it's about the pleasure of taste, the pleasure of sharing, the pleasure of connection.