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There are tons of things that are easy to do well enough from a practical standpoint but can be made as elaborate as you want to for showmanship purposes. Cook

There are tons of things that are easy to do well enough from a practical standpoint but can be made as elaborate as you want to for showmanship purposes. Cooking is one of those things. Look at the "rules" that people who live in 500k houses and drive 50k cars have for using and maintaining cast iron. Some 1930s housewife who was all out of fucks to give most certainly did not go through all those motions when she used an identical pan and it worked out just fine. When GP says "good soup" he/she means soup you can show off (or bring the leftovers in to work as your lunch to show off there) as a status symbol. It may also be good in the practical sense (good tasting, filling, healthy, etc.) but that's secondary to the showmanship aspect of making it.

kls 7y ago
For me it is not about the showmanship, I am not the type to even take a picture of my food. What I did do though was grow up in a family of good southern cooks on both sides of the family, so I had a foundation in cooking from a young age and developed a taste for quality. I can tell how something is made by tasting it, flavor is all I really care about in food, as such I became interested in developing flavor from a young age. I attended culinary school because of that and though I wanted to be a chef until I got a real job in a commercial kitchen and quickly revised my dreams away from the culinary arts all together. About the only thing I engage in showmanship on when it comes to cooking is BBQ Brisket, I am pretty damn proud of mine as it is a hard art to master.