You may have noticed that my blogs are seldom overtly personal. This is mainly because I’ve always felt that food writing should, by its very definition, be about the food, not the ego of the writer. This is not an exercise in bragging about how clever or ingenious I am as a cook, but in celebration of good food, good cooking, and good eating.

This week, however, you will also notice that the first paragraph of this piece has an “I” in it—in fact, more than one. What’s more, I’ve allowed that lean, self-centered pronoun to worm its way past the first paragraph into this one. It is probably going to rear its ugly head again, because what follows is actually about myself—well, sort of.

In the last three weeks, my life has been turned into an emotional roller coaster, and in many ways, it feels as if that roller coaster got stuck on the underside of the big loop, leaving me hanging upside down. Since I make my living writing and teaching about cooking, what that emotional upending has forced me to notice is that, whenever our lives get turned literally upside down, so does our relationship to food.

When confronted with extreme emotional distress, our path to the dinner table is never down a sensible center, but is likewise extreme: we either plunge into a self-comforting binge of eating anything and everything we can lay our hands on, or our appetites get washed away by the overwhelming tide of grief.

I am one of the latter. When my first long term relationship unraveled and landed in pieces all around me, I came away from it looking like a concentration camp victim. A cookbook that had to be tested and written pulled me back, and my normal weight gradually returned. But while having that book to write kept me from compromising my health, in the long run it was not helpful, because it kept me from examining what had happened to my relationship to cooking because of a relationship with another person, and what happened to it when that personal relationship died.

This time, fortunately, there is no book to write. As my appetite vanished with this present upheaval and my belt had to be tightened a couple of notches, I made myself sit back and think about how my relationships and emotional balance have affected what I do (and don’t do) in the kitchen—how even good relationships can make us neglect our own soul’s needs.

In my case, I had forgotten a fundamental belief that I teach in all my classes: the first and most important reason for anyone to cook is to satisfy and please his own soul. What had happened with me was, I was no longer cooking for my own pleasure but for the pleasure of pleasing someone else.

Now, that’s not a bad thing to want to do, but it isn’t healthy when it takes over completely, and makes us neglect what our own souls need. You see we don’t cook just to provide our physical body with needed fuel. If that was all that drove us, we wouldn’t even have a kitchen; we’d just be like any other foraging animal.

When our creative mind is brought to preparing that fuel for pleasure, however, it is no longer providing mere calories; it is feeding our souls—or, if that word puts you off, then our imaginations, or whatever you want to call the vital part of our being that connects our mind and body into something whole.

What I’ve had to do is let go of that drive to please someone else with my cooking, and dig down to rediscover what fuels my imagination and pleases me. Irma Rombauer got it absolutely right when she named her timeless cookbook The Joy of Cooking. It is and ought to be a joy, but one that comes from within. That joy can be reflected in the pleasure that it brings to another person, but it should never be defined by it.

Braised Artichokes alla Genovese

Artichokes are one of my favorite spring vegetables, and this is a favorite way of cooking them, but because I was the only person in my house that would eat them, I had not made it in years. Respecting the tastes of that other person was one thing; neglecting my own was another.

Serves 4 to 6

12 small white boiling onions

4 medium artichokes

1 lemon, halved

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, preferably Ligurian

2 large or 3 medium cloves garlic

3 tablespoons capers, well drained

Salt and whole black pepper in a mill

½ cup dry white wine

2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cut a deep “x” into the root end of the onions and drop them into the boiling water. Cook 1 minute, drain, and slip off the peelings. Prepare a bowl of cold water, squeeze half the lemon into it, and drop in the spent rind.

2. To prepare the artichokes, trim and peel the stem, rubbing as you go with the other lemon half. Pull off the tough outer leaves by bending them back until they snap that the tender part until the inner cone of leaves is pale yellow-green 2/3 of the way up, again rubbing it well with the lemon. Cut off the top 1/3 of the artichoke, rub the cut with lemon, and then peel away any remaining tough, fibrous bits from the base. A bird’s beak peeling knife is perfect for this job. Quarter the artichokes, rubbing the cuts with lemon, and cut out the choke. Cut each quarter in half and drop it into the bowl of lemon water.

3. When all the artichokes are trimmed, warm 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large, lidded sauté or braising pan over medium heat. Raise the heat to medium high and add the onions. Sauté until they are beginning to color a little, then drain and add the artichokes and continue sautéing, tossing, until they’re bright green.

4. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant, about a minute. Add the capers, season with salt and pepper, and pour in the wine. Bring it to a boil, reduce the heat to a slow simmer, and cover the pan. Braise slowly until the artichokes are fork tender, about 20 to 30 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally to prevent sticking and checking from time to time to make sure the moisture has not dried up too much. If it does, add a little water as needed.

5. When the artichokes are tender, remove the lid and, if there is too much liquid, raise the heat and boil it away. Turn off the heat, sprinkle parsley over all, and stir it in. Drizzle in the remaining oil, taste and adjust the seasonings, and serve warm or at room temperature.