Dear reader,
I’ve been thinking about this for a few days, and I think we all need to be honest about why a 20-minute recipe like Andrea Boueiz's freekeh chicken salad ends up taking us two hours. Cooking isn’t the problem here; our real issue is that we cannot function in the kitchen without forcing ourselves to multitask with something completely unrelated.
We all do it in different ways. My mom will put on a Syrian series on Shahid and get completely locked into the same repetitive plot. I usually throw on a YouTube video and lie to myself that it’s just “background entertainment,” right before I completely stop prepping because I got distracted by a funny babies compilation. If you try to listen to a podcast, you end up constantly missing things, rewinding, and burning whatever’s on the stove. If you put on a TV show instead, you end up chopping the same cucumber for 20 minutes as you look up every two seconds to see who betrayed whose mother.
This is exactly why our grandmothers are so much better at this than us. They cook in absolute silence with no TV, no podcasts, and no phone leaning against a jar of orange blossom jam. We, on the other hand, need to be fully entertained just to peel an onion.
That is why I'm making a case for music being the only entertainment that actually works when you’re trying to get things done in the kitchen. Music doesn't demand your visual attention. You can miss the lyrics, sing badly, enjoy your time, chop faster, dance around, and keep your momentum going.
Since we’ve let go of kitchen radios, I created a “What’s cooking?” playlist for us, which includes a mix of different genres. I also turned on the collaborator option so you can add the songs that keep you moving while you cook.
To give you a proper test run for it, we have some incredible new recipes for you this week. You can try your hand at rolling Stuffed Cabbage Leaves (Mehshe Malfouf), or whip up Andrea Boueiz's Zucchini and Tahini Dip. Just throw the playlist on shuffle, put your phone down, and see how much faster you get through preparing dinner.
(P.S. I’ll keep on updating this playlist)
Melissa Manouchakian
Distribution editor
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