What does it mean to cook well? People may think of elaborate kitchens with ten burner stoves and confection ovens, expensive ingredients from the farthest regions of the world, and years of culinary education and cooking experience. Although it can mean those things, it means something much simpler. To cook well means to bring love, passion and respect to the food being prepared and for those who will enjoy it. It is a basic human need to eat and nourish our bodies. If we don't eat, we die. It is as clean cut as that. To cook well, turns the simplest ingredients into ecstasy for the soul, social celebration and future memories. It is completely different than need.

Cooking well could be the love a street cart vendor has for his tamale recipe brought from his native country. The love someone has for their family and friends to make the humblest of food into fuel from the heart or an elaborate celebratory feast. The hot, steaming bowl of homemade chicken soup or the elaborate Thanksgiving dinner with more food than anyone should ever consume in a day yet alone one sitting.

The passion that comes from the ability of taking what food you have and turning it into something magnificent is cooking well. It is a calling. A yearning from deep inside you that makes you turn out food that keeps people talking for years. Recipes that get passed down from generation to generation, not because they were served at Michelin starred restaurants, or that they were even particularly good, but because they evoke memories of happy times.

Cooking well is having respect for not only who you are cooking for, but acknowledging where your food comes from - not only the farmer, but animals too. There has to be a love and respect for the ingredients. The warmth of a tomato picked right off the vine and the way the knife feels in your hand when you slice through it. The ability to know when a melon is perfectly ripe. Knowing what type of meat works best in a certain dish. Tasting what you are cooking and having it bring a smile to not only your face, but those who will share it with you.

Of course, cooking well happens in restaurants all over the world on a daily basis. Cooking well also happens in homes of everyone still willing to create a meal for their family, friends or themselves. We cook well because we can. We cook well because feelings of being nourished and satisfied go hand in hand with love, passion, respect and the pure gratification that it brings into our lives. It's a simple as that.