Cook Something Bold

November 8th is Cook Something Bold Day a holiday made up created by the folks over at wellcat.com. This is a direct quote from their site: According to it’s creator, Wellcat.com, Cook Something Bold Day is designed to encourage us to cook something bold and daring, that will fill up the house with warm, “homey” odors. It is celebrated in the month of November, as houses are closed up for the winter, and capture the cooking smells.  I’m sorry, but I couldn’t resist commemorating such a significant day, and taking a stroll down memory lane to review some of the boldest and nuttiest culinary moments of my life.

When we were kids (I’m guessing I was around twelve) my mom decided to cook tripe for dinner. I have no recollection of why, or what made her think this was a good idea, but it wasn’t. I’ve had tripe cooked properly (in culinary school) and it was still awful, but my mom’s was worse. Though I can’t recall how she prepared it, the memory of the smell and the texture are enough to haunt me. A definitely bold, but questionable choice.

There were the Chinese sausages we bought on one of my birthday trips to Chinatown. We stood on Canal St. all of us dressed in our good clothes (because in the early 1970s you got dressed up for a trip to New York City) eating bites of sausage we’d bought at a little store. It tasted sweet and earthy, I think there may have been some liver in it. Suddenly an old Chinese man ran up to us yelling something I didn’t understand, but my parents did, “Raw pork! Raw pork!” he was shouting, so all six of us stood over the curb spitting out the sausage. My older sister waited for weeks for our symptoms of trichinosis to appear. I was never convinced that the pork really was raw, but we all survived, unscathed.

Planning a chicken dinner for my college roommates I went to the market and found a hen, which was much less expensive than the regular chickens, so I bought it feeling quite smug. What I didn’t realize is that a hen is much older than the chickens I was used to, and is generally stewed for a long time to break down the stringy, tough meat. I think we actually threw it out, it was like chicken flavored gum.

As I matured as a cook, and an individual these efforts at cooking something bold improved. I learned more about ingredients, and how they’d work, or not work together. I began to understand the chemistry of cooking, and the role specific ingredients play in a dish. Culinary school helped with introducing me to a broader world of foods and flavors, but the internet has given all of us new tools to push forward with mysterious items. If I come across something that looks interesting and I am ready to experiment I have access to tons of information, photos and recipes.

Most of us tend to stick with the flavors we know. We make the dishes we can throw together without a cookbook, and that we know our families will enjoy, Hardly anyone wants to be bold and experimental on a Wednesday night after school/sports/work and before homework. That sort of thing is reserved for weekends or the odd weekday off. Maybe this weekend in honor of Cook Something Bold Day, you’ll try one of these vegetables like salsify or long beans. Some of the things on this list may be hard to find, but most grocery store will have sunchokes or celeriac (both great in soups or added to mashed potatoes).

What is bold to you may be an everyday food for me, and vice versa. It might be fun to plan a cook something bold potluck, and see what your friends think is bold cooking. What is the boldest thing you’ve cooked?