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As has already come up at least once on this supposedly arts and culture blog, I really like cooking.

Over a year ago, I kept getting asked the same question by various friends of mine from different social circles. They all wanted to know if I was watching the Bon Appetit YouTube channel. I hadn’t been, and this response caused all my friends to reply that I had to watch them because I was so much like this specific chef named Claire Saffitz.

At the time, I was still a Perpetually Busy Person, and these videos were not a priority. Then March happened, the pandemic hit, I was home 24/7, you know how it went, you were all there. So, in search of new content to inject into my eyeballs, I finally caved and decided to see what these comparisons to Claire were all about. I was immediately hooked.

Disclaimer: I’m not going to take the time to explain the appeal of the BA Test Kitchen YouTube shenanigans because it’s over. A few months after my obsession took hold, allegations of racial discrimination in terms of hiring and pay came to light, and the BA YouTube channel was swiftly #cancelled. If you want more details on the scandal, feel free to google it, I’m sure there are more than enough deep dives and analyses for your purposes. I no longer watch the Bon Appetit channel, but Claire has her own independent pursuits and I continue to support her work, as well as the work of other test kitchen staff members who have branched out independently. Now back to my obsession with Claire.

I have a lot of surface level similarities with Claire. We look similar and have a similar sense of style, I’ve even noticed that we own some of the same clothing. Basically she’s a short Jewish woman with traditionally Ashkenazi features, and so am I.

But the similarities are deeper than that. One of Claire’s defining qualities is that she’s a bit of a perfectionist and tends to bite off more than she can chew with her ambitious cooking projects. One glance into any pages of my planners (yes, I’m a pen and paper person) from the years 2019 and earlier would show you that I am a chronic over-committer. I like to do things well and I like to do things right… and I like to do a lot of things. Although I can’t speak to Claire in her personal life, in the kitchen she is like that too. She tries really hard. She stresses herself out. She is her own worst enemy and harshest critic. She also loves bagels and babies. I felt very seen when I watched her videos and understood why my friends insisted I was like her.

Watching Claire navigate the test kitchen and, later, her home kitchen, served as a salve to the soul during a difficult time. More so than being Type A and slightly neurotic, Claire is also a highly competent person. She is a trained pastry chef and has a master’s degree in French culinary history. She can teach you how to make a tarte tatin or sourdough bread or carrot cake with ease and poise and somehow a complete lack of pretentiousness or artifice. It’s the anti-Food Network. (Except Ina Garten, who is somehow both anti-Food Network and on the Foot Network. She can stay).

Channeling Claire has gotten me through a year of cooking almost exclusively for myself. In April, less than three weeks after the world shut down/I began to feel somehow spiritually connected to a woman on the internet I’ve never met, I literally dressed up as her (patented grey streak included) and cooked a Passover seder for myself and my two roommates at the time. I went all out and broadcasted it all on my Instagram story. It was the most fun I had that month, if not the entire spring.

I continue to heed her wisdom daily. One of my 2021 goals has been to re-fall in love with cooking, after becoming very exhausted by it last year, and one of the things that’s been helping a lot has been finally listening to Claire’s advice to invest time and energy into my mise en place, which basically means actually reading the recipe all the way through and getting out all my ingredients and tools before I start cooking. This makes the process more meditative and less harried, and brings some peace into a chaotic world.

I keep thinking about a quote from Nora Ephron’s 2009 film Julie & Julia, where Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, a blogger who spends a year going through every single recipe in Julia Child’s, (played expertly by Meryl Streep) Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Towards the beginning of the film, after a horrible day as a bureaucratic pencil pusher in freshly post 9/11 New York, Julie says:

“You know what I love about cooking? […] I love that on a day when nothing is sure, and I mean nothing, you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. It’s such a comfort.”

It’s no coincidence that today, in a time when saying nothing is sure feels like an understatement, cooking and baking have been a solace for so many. Although I have no plans or intentions to cook my way through Claire’s cookbook (Dessert Person, available where all good books are sold), I understand what Julie meant, and I want to take it a step further. Following a recipe is more than just a comfort, it’s a connection. To the person who wrote the recipe, to the people who grew the food, to the person who checked you out at the grocery store, to every single person that got you to the place you are today where you can chop onions and mince garlic with ease. I don’t see many people at the moment, and I cook for only myself, but when I take time out of my day to prepare a meal, I am more part of the interconnectedness of our world than at any other moment. It’s just so beautiful.