Whenever I’m filled with a violent and deafening rage I tend to pick up a knife and chop things.
I’ve been doing this more and more lately, angry cooking, because it makes me feel better. Revitalised. It doesn’t make me feel less angry, no. That wouldn’t make me feel better. Rather, it makes me feel productive, validated even. I also think it makes for better tasting food.
Right now, I’m sitting down at my kitchen table after a particularly violent session of meatball making. I don’t have a food processor, so I had to squish the ground chicken, ricotta, herbs and breadcrumbs together by hand. I made a simple tomato sauce, one that required canned whole tomatoes, which I also crushed by hand. These were then added to a pot of simmering onion, garlic and chilli flakes, and left to putter and spit until it all calmed to a gentle, glistening simmer.
I don’t always cook with love, because I am not always filled with love. I am often filled with hate, actually. When I’m feeling hateful and angry, I still need to eat. Rebecca Johnson says, in her book Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen, that “The phrase cooking with love is used to avoid thinking about the cook and the specificity of her life.” This makes me think about all the times I thought my mother was cooking a meal out of the goodness of her motherly heart, when she was actually just tired, irritated and wanted me to shut up.
Looking back on my childhood, I’ve realised that my mom was actually very good at communicating, mostly through her choice of dish, when cooking was an act of love and when it was an act of labour. On Sunday nights, when my mom was up to her eyeballs after a full weekend of uninterrupted kids time, she’d lock us out of the kitchen and say she was “making a surprise” for Sunday supper. It was sweet of her to make us think she was cooking up something different, but we always knew dinner was going to be one of three things – cinnamon toast, an omelette or asparagus with mayo. Still, this wouldn’t stop my sisters and I from pawing through the security gate to try get a peep and moan about how long it was taking. She couldn’t escape. That’s probably why my parents put in a full door when they renovated the kitchen a few years later, so she could literally just shut us out and let my dad deal with us for half an hour.
The only time my mother ever really let on that she angry-cooked was when I came home from school, I think I was 8, and complained about the butter on my school sandwich (I had weird food things as a child, and butter on anything gave me the ick). I thought she enjoyed making my school lunch, but she couldn’t tell me quickly enough that she would no longer be making it, and that I should start waking up thirty minutes earlier to make my “special sandwiches”. She stuck to it. She never made me another school lunch again. I got really good at making sandwiches, so jokes on you Mom, but in fairness to her, I was being a brat.
Unlike my own food that benefits from aggression, my mom’s really doesn’t. She did a good job of hiding her anger, but the food always gave her away. She’d get apathetic and start rushing things. To quote RMJ again, “Labours of love that cannot be refused will eventually taste of pain and fury.” Bolognese was her go-to angry cook. A brilliant choice for such an occasion, but I feel it was wasted on her. She never sautéed her mirepoix long enough. She’d always forget the white wine. It would end up grey, with no unctuous tomatoey oil in sight. It was like she was in a rush to finish cooking so that she could go off and be angry in secret. I wish I could go back in time and tell her to slow down and savour her grumpiness. I’d tell her to take advantage of the fact that bolognese calls for diced onion, celery and carrot. The trifecta of satisfying chopping! There is nothing better than the sshha sshha sshha of the knife as it gleams through celery. I really take my time with it, too. I conjure the face of someone who’s wronged me (different every cook) and let it sit, right in the front of my mind to fuel the accuracy of my chop. My knife skills have improved tremendously.
When I’m angry cooking, I’m not thinking of who I’m feeding. Besides, it’s usually just myself and my partner, Rob. Sometimes I’m pissed off with him, sure, but mostly I’m just pissed off. I think there’s a misconception that when people don’t “cook with love” the person eating the food is going to know. They’re going to feel hurt! Unloved! Poisoned, even!
You can’t eat an emotion. The only person who has to worry about what they’re feeling during the cooking process, is the cook herself. It’s nobody else’s business what she’s feeling. It’s my time in my kitchen, let me rage fry a cutlet if I want to. To me, cooking is a deeply selfish activity. I cook because I love to cook and eat, not because I love to feed. I only love to feed when my food tastes good. If it doesn't, I won’t feed you (unless you’re Rob) because it will make me look bad. I’m vain, sue me.
I don’t see any difference between rage cooking and rage exercising, for example. Both of them are stimulating, and leave you hungry after. They both make you work up a sweat. I’m always being encouraged to “blow off some steam” and go for a run, do a HIIT workout or speed walk up a hill. Basically, I’m told to take my anger elsewhere. When I was small, my parents bought me a boxing bag because of “my aggression.” They should’ve bought me a cookbook, and thanked me for all the delicious baked goods that would’ve come from it. But unlike exercising, rage cooking—when practiced by women—is frowned upon, because women aren’t allowed to be angry in public and they’re also not allowed to do anything purely for themselves.
My best work comes from rage. My worst comes from feeling unemotional. The food tastes bland, the textures are off. I get an unsatisfied “eh” from Rob and I nod in agreement. I’ll realise I need a little riling up and scroll through the news a bit to look for something to get angry or sad at. It doesn’t take much these days. I cooked a particularly bland quinoa salad for dinner on Tuesday. I fried up some mushrooms, crumbled in some Danish feta, chopped mint, shaved carrot ribbons and some spring onions and mixed it all together and it was…eh. It really wasn’t great. I made a harissa and garlic yoghurt in a bid to revive it, and mixed up a quick leafy green salad with a vinaigrette, but it still tasted really average. The flavour profiles were Mush and Grain. Not enough anger went into that salad, there was no passion. Even Rob could tell, although he still had three helpings, but honestly that says nothing. When we sit down for dinner, I always eagerly await the “hm!” followed by a more emphatic and slower, “hmmmmmm” which signals to me that he loves it. But he gave me nothing, I think he even avoided eye contact. I may be making this last bit up but it definitely felt like he was trying to avoid telling me he didn’t like my food. Ironically though, his reaction made me angry, which then made me want to remake the salad.
If I’d been angrier at the time of the salad making, I would have made it a hot salad and fried the mushrooms with a little soy sauce. I’d have roasted the kale, ditched the carrot ribbons for roasted zucchini and scrapped the spring onion for a charred leek. Most importantly, I would have set aside about half a cup of quinoa and toasted it in the oven with a sprinkle of smoked paprika, and made a tahini dressing, instead of the harissa yoghurt one.
When I get angry, I think. I think about how to make myself feel good, and nine times out of ten, that would involve me eating delicious food. If I were you, I’d keep one eye out for anything that can set you off. You’ll be a better cook for it.
excellent