This is my little cookbook: a response to the many people in my life who seem intrigued by the way I feed myself. You might not expect someone with my athletic (or skinny, depending on who you ask) figure to indulge in variety beyond chicken, broccoli, and rice, but in reality I'm typically bringing leftover barbecue, hearty homemade stews, or fragrant curries along with me to have for lunch at work, and the typical comment made as someone walks past my cube is "damn, Jakob, what's cooking?"
Friends and family do seem to really enjoy my cooking, or at least that's what they tell me. I'd attribute the perception of competency to my willingness to do more from scratch than most, at least in the cases where it saves money or noticeably improves the quality of the food. I bake my own bread, make my own stock, render my own animal fats, and grind my own spices. Simple things like a robust homemade stock make a soup much, much more appealing than one made with the sort of thing you get in a carton at the grocery store. The frequent exception I make for using prepared ingredients is when it's crucial for recreating an iconic taste, like using Velveeta for Chile con Queso.
In any case, my approach to cooking is built on a few principles, and the recipes that follow are applications of those principles.
