hope / food

Samin Nosrat’s Netflix docuseries Salt Fat Acid Heat, based on her debut cookbook of the same name, comforts me. Salt, fat, acid, and heat are the four pillars on which all good cooking stand.

Aside from the utter charm of Nosrat, it’s this premise that keeps bringing me back. The idea that, despite the hundreds of thousands of dishes eaten all around the world in hundreds of different countries, the building blocks of a great dish remain the same. And they’re simple! There are only four of them.

This discovery of the universal soothes me. We all look at the same moon at night; we all learn the same math at school. While the flavors might change, the components of good food remain the same. Maybe we’re sharing more meals together than we thought.