Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

by Anthony Bourdain

At college, where money is usually tight and good meals are rare, the ability to throw together a decent meal for your friends would probably be much admired. One might even be reasonably expected to have a small but serviceable list of specialties that you could cook for your roommates. Cooking has already become “cool.” So, maybe, it is now time to make the idea of not cooking “un-cool”—and, in the harshest possible ways short of physical brutality, drive that message home. Let us then codify the essentials for this new virtue: What specific tasks should every young man and woman know how to perform in order to feel complete? What simple preparations, done well, should be particularly admired, skills seen as setting one apart as an unusually well-rounded, deceptively deep, and interesting individual? In a shiny, happy, perfect world of the future, what should every man, woman, and teenager know how to do? They should know how to chop an onion. Basic knife skills should be a must. Without that, we are nothing, castaways with a can—but no can-opener. Useless. Everything begins with some baseline ability with a sharp-bladed object, enough familiarity with such a thing to get the job done without injury. So, basic knife handling, sharpening, and maintenance, along with rudimentary but effective dicing, mincing, and slicing. Nothing too serious. Just enough facility with a knife to be on a par with any Sicilian grandmother. Everyone should be able to make an omelet. Egg cooke...