Many of you know I have a passion for cooking. Over the years, several have asked how the cooking journey started. As a young boy I was always fascinated with how my grandmother concocted classic Southern style favorites with an unusual flare for merging oddments at the last minute to get to her flavor objective. This was artful in my young view. Her laser focus always intrigued, and the end results were delicious! The culinary seeds were planted for me during this time.
After graduating high school, I enlisted in the US Navy. While aboard the USS America I met some of the ship’s cooks. I was always interested in how they prepared their food. I remember one telling me he preferred the home style, hands-on-every-ingredient approach to create his dishes. Other times there were the boxes of processed foods that he hated. I had never really heard of the processed food thingy because growing up my family always used fresh ingredients. Once out of the Navy processed foods became sort of a stable in my apartment because I was then a broke college student learning how to prepare for a professional career in music.
Initially, cooking started for me out of necessity. I didn’t have much money, so I had to buy cheaply, but the challenge became how to make something interesting out of the canned potatoes and green beans. It was then I started to realize cooking is an art. A very complex craft. Like painting on canvas or composing music. Utilizing layers to create interesting flavor profiles like meshing sophisticated harmonic structures to enhance melodic themes. The creative avenues are endless. You just need the imagination, intuition and understanding of several things. I remember inviting friends over to taste the new and improved canned potatoes with my inexpensive napery. Ha! It was art for me albeit low grade at that point.
While I couldn’t afford top quality food items at that time, I was always cognizant of the ingredients in processed food packaging. Sodium levels, fat and sugar content, preservatives, and such. Then I had an epiphany. I was always athletic, and I knew having a healthy diet was of paramount importance in fueling my body with beneficial nutrients. Being a drummer is very physical, and endurance, dexterity and mobility are stifled by poor dietary choices. These poor choices create fatigue, high blood pressure, cholesterol issues and much worse so cooking evolved into a healthy lifestyle choice. I wanted to control more of what I consumed so to understand more, I immersed myself into deep culinary study. It takes extraordinary discipline for most folks to consume smartly. Moderation is important and some level of USDA milligram intake guidelines are necessary for smart consumption.
Like my music, my cooking evolution has taken years to get to a place that reflects my artistic choices and concepts. I understand spice combinations to a point of tasting them in my head if that makes sense. That takes years. I can create complex dishes with sophisticated and unique flavor profiles paralleling the simple classics. I so appreciate the art of cooking. The alliaceous aromas of the sofrito or mirepoix permeating my kitchen brings me much joy and a sense of creative and artistic fulfillment. Today, I have my own cooking business venture called The Cosmopolitan Palate which is fine dining in home chef model. It’s the culmination of years of preparation and visionary ideas. I’ve always been one with goals and objectives.
Eat healthy friends and remember there’s much truth in that you are what you eat!
Jae Sinnett hosts Sinnett in Session, The R&B Chronicles, and Students in Session on WHRV FM. He also shares his love of the culinary arts on Cooking with Jae on Facebook every Sunday at 6 p.m. Plus, catch up with past episodes.
