The foods that please me the most are the objectively ugly ones: the stews, gravies, gumbos, and goulashes that are cooked long and low until they slump and thicken. It takes time and effort to transubstantiate flour and fat into cocoa-dark roux, a rough hunk of muscle into sumptuous brisket, and raw, tough leaves and tops into sweet, savory greens. In short, time can make some foods taste like heaven, and look like hell.

The key to eating great beans: Soak them whenever you think of it, and let each pot be the source of several different meals.

The best thing I have ever eaten—a Serbian dish called palachinke—was made by my grandmother. A palachinka is pure simplicity: flour, sugar, salt, eggs, milk. It has the sweetness of a pancake but behaves more like a crepe. And I can now picture my grandmother making them, though she never once made them for me.