Cooking well is a lot like falling in love. You fall in love with food. You notice and pay attention to every distinct characteristic exhibited by food, no matter how slightly nuanced it is – the sweet and delicate flavor, the subtle aroma, the rich and vibrant hues, and the wide-ranging feel and textures.  You are aware of everything that gives flavor to that which you love…food. Your senses are engaged.

Nothing prepares you for the siren call of the cooking muse, that indefinable and inexorable pull towards the kitchen. You can’t explain it, but you know that you have to do it. Otherwise, you never know what you’ll miss. You don’t need a reason. You don’t need an excuse. Cooking time is no longer a chore. It becomes an experience. You savor. You bite, nibble, sample, test and try.

Cooking well does not necessarily mean plating and presenting food elaborately, nor does it mean strictly following someone’s recipe to a T. It does not even mean using hard-to-find and expensive ingredients.

Sometimes, to cook well, you have to make mistakes to learn how to get it right. Just like falling in love. You have to get down and dirty, oil splatters and first-degree burns be damned.

You cook like you mean it. You pour your heart out into what you are cooking. You give it what you’ve got. Don’t cook because you have to; cook because you want to. When you cook because cooking makes you happy, you make it your own.

Ultimately, cooking is something you do on your own for yourself. Some people cook when they want to find something, to find what they’re looking for, and even to find themselves – the good, the bad and the ugly. Of course, how your food will be judged relies on the communal experience once other people taste it.

People might fall completely head over heels in love with what you cooked. Then again, some people might not like it. Heck, others might even hate and loathe what you’ve done. Just like being in love, this will break your heart. But you pick yourself up and continue on. You might even ask yourself, “How much effort am I willing to put into this?”

As the saying goes, “do what you love and love what you do”. If you love cooking, then you’ll do everything in your power to do the best you can, damn what other people say. By all means, cook what you love and love what you cook.

A well-made meal, just like true love, is created.

That’s how you know that you have cooked well.