I’m referring to both “lol lmao why am I putting this leaf in” posts and “omg I found a leaf in my chipotle” posts here because both have the same issue of broadcasting their confusion over the internet instead of just looking it up.
You could chalk this up to social media but even before that’s advent you had Jamie Oliver showing you a 30 min dinner that consists of leftover ingredients that are not picked up by his show / cookbook and also assumes you’re cooking on kitchen grade equipment instead of the landlord special like most of his presupposed target audience and feel free to swap him for any number of aspiritional celebrity cooks.
It’s all showstuff. Which can be nice but let’s be honest here, if you’re cooking a lot at home you’ll be eating slop (non derogatory) most of the time because between price and time investment that’s what gets you tasty, manageable, affordable.
But that’s not in the cookbooks, I’m pretty sure I own all of them because if you’re a known home cook they just end up at your house. If you ate nothing but Jamie Olivers Healthy 30 min Dinners (all of them take about an hour or so because they presuppose you start with a 10L boiling pot of water and have the skills necessary to dice a large onion in a minute) you’d end up nutritionally deficient and poor.
But say you were to google lense your bay leaf and find out what it does, where does that leave you? I feel like there isn’t a site in the world that teaches you home economics cooking where you concoct up something healthy, tasty and time saving out of like half a pantry and a capsicum you bought on sale. I speak two languages and I’ve never found one - where the fuck are they?
I was five when I started cooking myself food. we had a space rack, I remember adding random spices to my Ramen all the time. Must’ve been stuff like thyme, cumin, allspice, ginger, black pepper. I’ve had so many experiences where I’ve just thrown stuff together without knowing what I’m doing regarding spices.
Regarding the bay leaf : traditionally I’ve always used it in spaghetti sauce, but I’ve also always added ginger too. It wasn’t until I really started learning different cultural practices of food that I started using Bay leaves more. Latine and Asian foods can use a lot of bay leaf. (from observing people cook on YouTube or TikTok.)
One way that I connect to my Filipino heritage is through cooking, there’s not really any restaurants around here so I have to make it all myself. Which means I need someone to teach me, so videos online are really what I have to go by. And I have learned that a lot of Bay leaf is used in certain dishes, such as adobo.
This has spurred me to learn more about what the bay leaf does exactly, this is something I do with all food now. I like to know exactly what the benefit is of each thing that I cook with. Many spices are actually nutritious, the bay leaf is no exception. it’s natural properties can counter acidic flavors, such as in spaghetti sauce. 🙂