Learn to Cook Like a Pro at Home With The Living Well

I’m going to let y’all in on a little secret: I’ve started to embrace one aspect of AI. Not for writing. That wouldn’t help much, since the robot intelligence has trained on a million words I’ve already written about Nashville food, so anytime I’ve ever played with it, it just spits out something slightly worse than what I would have written (or already did write).

Instead I’ve been working with an AI agent to meal-plan for our household. I let it interview me on household likes (Mediterranean cooking) and dislikes (my partner cannot abide beets, wasabi and cilantro), and then ask it to suggest menus for the next week. The AI knows when I’m in town or when I’ll be coming back from a trip and need a quicker meal. It even knows to perhaps suggest something a little heavier after an afternoon drowning my sorrows in draft beer at a Titans game. After I approve a menu, it spits out suggested wine pairings (after checking local availability at two or three of my favorite shops), pantry items to check for before offering a shopping list, a prep list looking ahead a day or two and combining like tasks and then the recipes. I can also specify that I’d like a few suggestions for lunches to make with leftovers, and Gemini will take those into account as well.

My favorite part has been the recipes, because they’re not too specific. I’ve been cooking a lot of New York Times recipes for the past few years, and I like them because they’re so specific and technical, it’s like doing a lab during high school science class. (I was really good at those. There was usually a battle to be my lab partner.) The problem is that some of the NYT recipes are so involved that the techniques aren’t very applicable to many other meals. AI recipes are more free-form and allow for improvisation or making it easy to substitute a different ingredient if there’s a leftover I want to use. So sorry, NYT, I’m not making a separate trip to search for pomegranate molasses or kumquat-dragon fruit marmalade glaze.

This is all to say that I’m excited to see that one of my favorite local independent restaurants, Miel, is offering a series they’re calling The Living Well. They say, “It isn’t a class. It’s a practice.” They want to concentrate on understanding the process and practice of cooking instead of obsessing over recipes. That’s where my head is, too.

On Wednesday, Nov. 11, from 6 until 8:30 p.m., Miel chef Jason LaIacona will share his two decades of kitchen experience, demonstrating essential skills and time-saving shortcuts, and sharing the secrets and tools that professional chefs use to make cooking look easy.

Here’s what they promise you’ll learn by the end of the evening:

“You will have the knowledge to:

• Apply simple, fundamental cooking techniques to set you up for great meals.

• Troubleshoot complicated or time-intensive recipes on your own. No more Googling!

• Overcome common mistakes that hold cooks back from advancing their skills.

• Learn tips from the pros to elevate flavor, presentation, and efficiency in the kitchen.

• Cook with the most accessible and affordable tools appropriate for all skill levels.

• Build the confidence to use recipe steps as inspiration, not rules.”

Students will also get to eat their classwork, with multiple courses made using fresh and seasonal ingredients, plus your choice of wine, beer or an elevated nonalcoholic cocktail.

Chef Jason wants this class to be interactive, so bring all your questions, even if you think they are crazy. The whole evening is designed to be non-serious and serious fun! Tickets are available at Miel’s Tock site.

Miel Restaurant & Bar is located at 343 53rd Ave. N.