Watching Myself Cook 432 Weeks Ago

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Last weekend I made sardine pasta. It was a quiet Saturday night, and Tamar requested something fast so that we could get to the new Chris Fleming stand-up special. Zero notes; the Jeni’s Ice Creams bit had me hurting.

I checked out the pantry and grabbed a couple tins of French sardines that had been gifted to me a while back. I checked the fridge, and I had a bag of baby broccoli. I checked the ceramic crock where we keep the garlic—where there is never actually garlic—and found a full bulb. Within ten minutes, my pan was slicked with some very good Peruvian olive oil from Primis Imports, and I was cooking, goddamn it—and soon after that, I decided to turn back the clock and post through the cooking on Instagram Stories. Soon my friend Eyal was in the DMs. “My favorite show is back,” he kindly wrote, referring to a before-times me when my Instagram was less filled with restaurant visits and podcast guests and more with the documentation of a very average cook in a very average Carroll Gardens apartment kitchen.

I started posting my cooking on IG sometime in 2017. This was before the explosion of TikTok (2018) and the launch of Instagram Reels (2020), and well before short-form social media cooking videos were strangling the algorithms of you, me, and everybody who has ever liked a back seat Taco Bell menu drop review. (I found myself consumed by that exact category this weekend after my friend Miles debuted his Zab’s hot sauce collaboration with Big Bell, which runs through the end of May.)

Back then, I made these little videos for myself (and apparently, Eyal) and was really having fun with the absurdity of me, a food writer—not a trained cook or even an ambitious Serious Eats recipe–saving weekend enthusiast—showing the internet my moves in the kitchen. Looking back, it was honestly more about sharing my cooking soundtrack than anything else. In 2017, it was a lot of Wavves, Stereolab, A$AP Ferg, Todd Terje, Thundercat, Migos (?), and Mylo. I saved a lot of those highlights without really thinking I’d ever look back.

Well, I just looked back, and it tells me some things. I cooked a lot of tuna steaks, which today are never something I want to think about. I cooked a good amount through a black-and-white advance reader copy of Alison Roman’s debut, Dining In, including a citrusy braised pork shoulder that I made for Tamar on New Year’s Eve in 2017. I still have that ARC, and I still make that pork to this day. My knife skills have drastically improved. I see rough cuts made with dull knives. I see cheap knives bought at Tokyu Hands and not the beautiful Kramer blade my friend Neil bought for me a couple years later. I see the Instant Pot that was rising in popularity at the time, and I see myself cooking through a couple of the books we published that year, reflecting the Instant Pot cookbook boom. I see cauliflower rice all over the place—so much cauliflower rice. This was “riced cauliflower,” as the rice trade groups insisted (sometimes from behind the sharp elbows of a general counsel) it be called. This caul rice cookery likely inspired me to assign a fun essay to Edith Zimmerman for TASTE. I see my cast iron pan putting in heavy work and a heavy hand with springy za’atar. I see a little Korean cooking and even more quick pasta sauces that I was throwing together on the total fly. I see so much broccoli, which makes sense, because there is always so much broccoli in my kitchen.

Looking back at my cooking from almost a decade ago was humbling, a little embarrassing (was I really that into Jay Som?), and totally refreshing. Today’s social media cooking videos are polished but oftentimes lack honesty. They’re entertaining, but the fast cuts cover up flubs and flaws. I like seeing my fuckups. Maybe Eyal (and a few others who might jump in with comments) did too. And more often than not today, there’s a sponsor hanging out in the background (or front and center). This is not an anti-spon-con publication. (Write me if you want to collab, lol). Branded videos are just clogging up the feed and honestly cooling the vibe.

Do I like how I cooked back then? Absolutely not. I burned so many things. I remember my writing partner Daniel Holzman, a chef who has opinions, taking me aside to strongly suggest that I figure out my roasting technique. Did I have a working oven thermometer, he wondered? Whoops.

After I posted the sardine pasta vids on Instagram, I created a new cooking highlight. I’m going to start posting away again. The knives will be sharper, the pans a little cleaner, and the mistakes will be extremely clear to those who do this stuff for a living. But it doesn’t matter. I hope to look back a decade from now and see a totally different home cook. Somebody who is still listening to too much XTC, who has improved his hand skills and perhaps his diet too (will there be real probiotics available?), but who is still as curious as ever in the kitchen.

Michael White is one of my favorite chefs, and we’ve never recorded a podcast episode together until now. His currently NYC restaurant is Santi. It’s great. There were so many things covered.

✔️ Early 2000s NYC, Fiamma’s ⭐️⭐️⭐️, and some bad reviews too

✔️ Working under Paul Bartolotta and catching the regional Italian food bug 🇮🇹

✔️ Restaurant dashboards, 2020 expansion, and Michael White Inc. 📈

✔️ I also have a great talk with Budonoki cofounder Eric Bedroussian. He worked at Houston’s/Hillstone prior, and we go there. Love Budonoki. 🍣

Listen: This Is TASTE 756: Nobody Cooks Italian in New York Like Michael White