GETTING A REPUTATION as a good cook is not that difficult. You can take the hard-working, honorable route and actually go to cooking school or work as a chef. Of course, cooking for a living tends to take the edge off chopping garlic on your days off. Spit-roasting an entire suckling pig over an open fire, tending a cassoulet made with home-preserved duck confit, going deep-sea fishing and serving sushi on the deck – anything elaborate, too complicated for ordinary civilians, and slightly dangerous is cool. Boiling pasta, making a salad: just work. Or you can take the obsessive-amateur route, taste-testing olive oils and actually, painstakingly cooking from The French Laundry Cookbook (a beautiful work of art that, in my mind, resembles a cookbook the way Les très riches heures du duc de Berry resembles a Filofax). And then you can take the easy, lazy way and hone your skills on a few signature dishes.

This is the route urged by every earnest how-to book. Cook one recipe – roast chicken, short ribs, mashed potatoes – a dozen times, until you really feel the ingredients and understand the technique. Could any suggestion be more boring? Who buys a cookbook just to make the same thing over and over? I hate this advice, and of course it's exactly what I do. I have a great kitchen-stained book called Polenta, written by Sonoma author Michele Anna Jordan. It's a lovely little book, full of everything you could ever want to know about or cook with polenta. In the seven or eight years I've had it, I've gotten at least a dozen dinners out of it. And they've all been the same dish: a tomato-cheese tart with a polenta crust, served with a basil mayonnaise. Have I learned more about polenta from making that tart a dozen times?

Probably not, but what's more important is knowing how to make it without even needing the recipe anymore. And who doesn't want to be the sort of person who can whip up a swell tomato-basil tart off the top of her head, aided only by a bag of polenta and some grated cheddar cheese?

Having a few dishes down cold can fool anyone into thinking you can, therefore, cook anything. What goes by the name of Thai peanut noodles in my house has convinced several rounds of guests that I can cook Thai food. This is not true. As far as I can tell, there is nothing authentically Thai about this dish. But I love it and am ever grateful for the original formula, found in a quirky, no-detail-too-small book of essays, recipes, and extremely opinionated advice called Cooking as Courtship, by Sharon Weigand. Weigand, who insists that she is no cook, nevertheless presents numerous recipes, all of which are funny and chatty and very observant, because she assumes that you, like her, can't cook. For this dish, you make some noodles (or rice), steam a few vegetables, stir up a sauce (mostly made of pantry staples like soy sauce and peanut butter), and top the whole thing with a crunchy fresh salad of cucumbers, carrots, and cilantro (or a mixture of mint and basil for those who feel cilantro is soap masquerading as parsley). The sauce is on the salty side, so you may want to start with unsalted peanut butter. A natural peanut butter, made with only peanuts (and salt, if desired), will give you a much better flavor. The sugar and hydrogenated oils in commercial brands like Jif and Skippy mute the savory peanut flavor this recipe needs.

Thai peanut noodles

8 cloves garlic, chopped finely

1 Tbs grated or finely chopped fresh ginger

¼ cup soy sauce

2 Tbs rice vinegar

2 Tbs lime juice

1 Tbs honey or sugar

1 Tbs toasted sesame oil or tahini

1/2 tsp hot sauce, such as Sriracha chili sauce

¾ cup natural peanut butter

¼ cup water

1 block firm tofu, cubed

1 bunch broccoli, separated into bite-size florets with stalks peeled and chopped

1 large cucumber, peeled if waxed, halved, seeds scooped out

2 large carrots, peeled

5-6 scallions, roots removed and 1/2 green stem removed

About 1/2 bunch of cilantro, stems removed

5-6 sprigs of mint or basil (optional)

Cooked noodles (or rice)

Mix all sauce ingredients except the peanut butter and water. Add peanut butter a large spoonful at a time, beating well. At first the peanut butter will resist you, but keep stirring. It will relax and form a thick cream all at once. Add water a little at a time, until sauce is thick but pourable. Taste for seasoning. Add honey (or other sweetener), soy sauce, or vinegar to taste. Set aside. Slice cucumber and carrots into thin, matchstick-size strips. Chop scallions, cilantro, and mint or basil leaves. Using a vegetable steamer, steam broccoli and tofu together, until broccoli is bright green and just tender. In a large bowl, top noodles (or rice) with cooked vegetables and tofu. Drizzle on sauce to taste and toss until well mixed. Top with cucumber and carrot strips. Scatter scallions and chopped cilantro (or mint and basil) lavishly over the bowl.