What does it take to cook well.
One doesn't need a lot of utensils, but it's good to have the right ones. Knives, cutting boards, equipment for deboning meat and fish, a good processor, a well laid out counter and sink. If it's easy and comfortable to make food, with the right tools, you'll make more food.
And then the basic skills. Heat management's been mentioned. Crucial. How do different foods respond to heat, and heat sequences - and why do men always use too much heat? Probably impatience. To make good food, one has to be patient. My mother spends three days on her gnocci sauce. A good friend spends from Monday-Friday on a meal he'll serve for us, when he invites us over twice a year for a gathering. Those are extremes for home cooking, but a lot of these processes can take place while you're doing other things.
Start with the basics. Explore the kinds of omelette it's possible to make, and what kind of heat you should use, how to add the ingredients - until you end up with the perfect omelette, every time.
Do the same with something as prosaic as pancake batter, studying how the flour absorbs moisture, and what that does to the texture and taste of the pancake. How many eggs? What heat to use? How thin/thick should the pancake be? What makes the pancake dry in your mouth, what makes it feel and taste succulent, in spite of its basic ingredients?
And do the same with pizza dough - with or without yeast? Tipo 00 flour mixed with durum, what proportions? Thick or thin crust - how to get the crust perfect in a normal oven, do I use a pizza stone, or are there other tricks? What about yeast - what temperatures are best to get a good rise, if that's what you want? How to work the dough?
Move on to baking bread - which corns to use, sour dough or flour and yeast? Join a bread baking class at a good private bakery. Bake bread for your own family, and arrive at the family's preferred recipe. That gives one a wonderful sense of accomplishment.
Investigate how produce, vegetables and fruit respond to heat - and make certain you get the rice perfect.
Advance to creating sauces, reducing them, thickening them.
Fish. Types of; ways to prepare.
Meat. Types of; ways to prepare.
Overall goal with both - preserve taste, flavor, succulence - enhance texture, make it savory, avoid blandness. How to promote the raw material into something that works well complemented by other ingredients, sauces. How to make tough meat tender, how to ensure that tender meat remains so after cooking/grilling/etc.
Start with salmon loins and cuts, and explore what can be done with these with a skillet and a little butter. Study the structure of the side of whole salmon as you separate different cuts from it.
End up with telling your butcher how to cut hanger steak from the plate of cattle, and serve it to astonished friends.
, LOL. I have a funny feeling, that like I said before, you are going to be one hungry Norwegian....
