Last night I asked my potatoes how they wanted to be prepared, and believe it or not they told me they preferred to be roasted. This wasn't the plan I had for them, but as it turned out they were right! I roasted them with some ghee (aka clarified butter), chopped garlic, salt, pepper, and dried dill, and they came out perfectly. When I was planning the dinner in my mind I thought I would probably just boil the potatoes, then add some fresh herbs and olive oil. That wasn't a bad plan, but through the process of washing, scrubbing, and drying the potatoes I was able to intuit their desired destiny. And that destiny was roasting.

I know that communing with your potatoes sounds a bit crazy, but I can't take the credit for this wackiness. I learned it from Alice Waters, queen chef of the Slow Food movement, founder of Chez Panisse Restaurant, author of numerous cookbooks (including one of my personal home cooking bibles - The Art of Simple Food), and now host of a cooking class on Masterclass.com, which I very happily watched this summer.

Alice Waters' cooking philosophy depends on the simple preparation of the highest quality ingredients you can find, ideally locally sourced. When your starting point is ingredients like this you don't need to do much to prepare a delicious meal. Through watching her class I was fascinated by how much her cooking method revolves around engaging her senses with food - touching, smelling, tasting, growing - all of the choices she makes with food are done with full engagement of her senses (and with a masterful but gentle touch). 

In the kitchen of Alice Waters all food has desires of its own, and those desires usually have something to do with that food becoming the most tasty version of itself that it can possibly be. The salad greens "want" to be tossed gently with two spoons. The garlic "wants" to be warmed up very gradually in the olive oil so as not to burn. The cheese "wants" to be grated, not flaked, so that it is adequately distributed among the mushrooms. The peach "wants" to be eaten at the peak of its ripeness.

Understanding what your food wants means using your most valuable kitchen tools - your senses.  
 

When it comes to making delicious food, using your senses of taste, touch, hearing, and a fair amount of accumulated wisdom over time will get you pretty far. Dare I say much farther than the latest new cooking gadget. That's not to say that things like pots, pans, cutting boards, and good knives aren't important, but they're secondary in the process of preparing the food that you truly want to eat.

I would even postulate that engaging your senses with your food's desires inevitably leads towards engaging with your own inner desires, and that's a pretty powerful thing.  Being able to hear my potatoes talk meant being present in the moment of interaction with them, and that also meant being present with myself and my body. So was it truly that my potatoes spoke to me? Or was it that getting present in the moment allowed me to hear my own inner desire for roasted potatoes? It's hard to say, but one way or another the experience led to a very satisfying meal.

Engaging your senses when preparing food means paying attention throughout the cooking process - tossing the potatoes with the butter, salt, and herbs with your hands to feel that they've been well coated, listening to the subtle sizzle coming from the oven, and smelling that lovely scent of browned potatoes as you open the oven to check on them. When the world and internet is filling to the brim with recipe after recipe, special meal plans, and food delivery services, it seems like it's all too easy to become disconnected from our food's desires and consequently from own inner wisdom. That's not to say that these conveniences don't have an important place in our lives. They certainly do! But I find it equally important to slow down with the food, to go into the kitchen with nothing but some good ingredients, my fully engaged senses, and my past experience to refer to. Only then can I really hear what my food is asking of me, and if I listen closely I might hear something from myself too.