Elitism is cooking is why I rarely engage with people about it. I violate a lot of culinary "rules" because I just don't like it that way. It is kind of deflating to be publicly ridiculed as being ignorant or naive because you use iodize salt, you boil rice like people make spaghetti, you think cast iron sucks, you like drip brew coffee best, or you use flour slurries to thicken soups (I guess some people assume this only works with corn starch). Fuck'm

I use the garlic paste that I find in the Indian sections of the grocery. It's not the best for dishes with raw garlic, like aioli because it's too spicy, but in cooked dishes, it tastes like garlic.