in the kitchen

Despite living on my own for most of the last decade and a half, interrupted only by a few shared years in Utah, I haven't exactly developed a sense of domesticity. I don't do DIY, I don't do electricity and I certainly don't plumb. What I sometimes do is cook.

My cooking has two dominant reasons. First, I like to eat good. Second, I don't like to spend money unnecessarily. For these two benchmarks to meet, I have to cook my own food. (Note that for this logic to work, desires and essentials have to be disentangled, potentially causing the disruption of our economic system: Eating good cannot be considered a necessity. Note also that eating good might just work grammatically, if I understood Johnson's arguments over at the Economist correctly.)

My skills in the kitchen are limited and are reflected in my repertoire. I do mostly single skillets full of stuff, some carbs, some veggies, some sauce. I rarely cook meat, not because I'm a vegetarian but because I can't be bothered. I almost never bake, but tonight I went back to a baking incident of many years ago and made plans for more.

When I lived in France I bought a little bakebook called Petits Gâteaux, not even three dozen recipes with pictures taking more space than the instructions, rather encouraging for a neophyte like myself. The recipes had lovely names like Demi-lunes au citron and Palets aux pignons and added a few words to my vocabulary. Baking paper is called papier sulfurisé, for example, not very appetizing but apparently true to the original process of making it.

I think it was in my first year in Grenoble that I toiled in the kitchen an entire Advent Saturday to bake petits gâteaux or biscuits or cookies or Plätzchen or whatever you want to call them, and surprised myself with the result. They came out really well. I took some to the lab, eat the best part over tea and took what was left back to Germany when I went home for Christmas.

This year, I'm not going home for Christmas, or rather, and this corresponds much better to how I feel about it, my definition of home has changed. I'm gonna be home for Christmas, but it will be with Flucha in my flat. Home in that case is not a physical space. I will be leaving London soon and wouldn't call my flat my home. Instead, home is togetherness and traditions.

One of the traditions that I will contribute to the incipient home is Christmas Plätzchen, and so next weekend I will once again get sweaty in the kitchen and bake. I'm slightly doubtful about the success. Technically, it's about even. My oven is a bit sketchy but an accurate balance and a hand mixer should just about counterbalance that. But in terms of following the recipe, I'm seriously handicapped.

This is not because I forgot to read French. As I said, there aren't that many words in the book in the first place. The problem is that I'm trying to follow in England recipes that were written for the French market. The available ingredients aren't the same. It starts with something as simple as flour. If it doesn't have the same texture or strength, just using the right amount won't do. Baking power is another issue. Last time I checked, a sachet was not an internationally recognized unit.

At least the recipes are forgiving in terms of time management. Many call for the dough to be stored in the fridge for at least an hour, precluding the dramatic situation when everything culminates at once and alarms go off and there's no more space in the oven and definitely not on the counter tops and what happened to that medium size bowl?

If everything fails – and I have no reason to assume that it will be that bad – there's still time to go to the Lidl. Normally I don't go out of my way to shop there, but the chain's origin is very visible in the offered products. Lots of German things. Lots of baked goods for Christmas. Just the thing I'm trying to do myself.