(no subject)
So, when I was growing up, my mom (or other female family member) was always calling me "Put X in the oven at 350 for me, right now. I'll be home in Y time." I cooked a lot for my brother and sister, growing up, but mostly that was follow-the-package stuff. (Or my famous microwaved butter-and-nothing tortillas were popular, microwaved bologna, over-baked apple quarters with cinnamon, the cupboards were sorta bare sometimes...) Anyway, as a result I didn't really learn how to cook until I got all moved out and suddenly, had to cook for myself. It wasn't until I was 23 or older that I really felt comfortable letting other people eat something I cooked.
What I used to do is bring stuff home and put it on a cookie sheet in the oven, at 350. This pretty much works for everything. Some of it will taste like crap, or take forever to cook, but it never fails. I used to make one chicken wing my sacrifice one, or if I were cooking steak I'd make a butcher's corner, to cut open later and make sure it was done all the way through before I ate it.
Pretty soon, you start learning higher heat, means faster time, crispier, etc and you start knowing how something cooks in a certain oven. And...that's a huge amount of a cook's skill, but not one ever really mentioned. Then I started playing with spices. I had this paper-wrapped chicken at the Dragon Palace in Everett that I pursued for about 7 years. I never did find the spice (ginger*) I couldn't match the flavor of. But during my pursuit of that, I discovered dough-wrapped foods, dim sum, greek spankopitas, egg rolls, lumpia, I had goat wrapped in a nan-like doughy crust once at an Ethiopian place that was amazing. And I started baking, doing my own doughs, first just flour and water, and then using baking soda and baking powder and wheat/white flour and eventually yeast and full on bread, but also cakes and from-scratch brownies and cookies.
For years I only ate meat and starch, bread, potatoes, corn, whatever. Green things were anathema, I'd have had no idea how to cook them. Lately, in the last 4-5 (as I get older 'lately' gets longer) I have started to discover that I actually like the taste of a lot of greens. Carrots too. Even cauliflower isn't completely awful, sometimes. Still not into the whole beets and squash thing...or too many beans, either. But I have sorta started exploring pasta too, lately. Just eating for right now, but I keep thinking that a wrap of raw noodle dough, but softer, almost like a giant raviolli/dim sum, with pork rib meat that's been seared first and then olive oil and a faint hint of soy and something to give it some character, like tamarind or ginger or barbeque/mesquite...
Or a ravioli/pie crust dough, filled with whip cream and custard, with a chocolate kiss in the middle, and then dumped into the oven on like...450 for about 6-8 minutes, so the cream braizes and hardens and the kiss melts...with of course cinnamon and maybe some nutmeg on the outside. And powdered sugar. I am not exactly sure what the purpose of this post was. Just, I've talked to so many guys who are afraid of cooking or even just, so many people who have these rigid ideas of what food is, or should be. I hate the whole 'Fusion' food movement, I don't want an asian-themed burrrito. That is gross. But, taking the largest available pool of ingredients, and then...painting a taste experience...that really appeals to me. I like to eat straight from a pan, or even the oven sometimes, because so often what I cook is only....exactly what I'm going for when it is still popping with grease or still molten inside or just not going to taste the same ever again after it cools off.
It just always seemed weird to me that people grew up hating liver and onions or meatloaf or whatever, then moved into their own house and started creating the same rituals and fallacies, with their own family. Or even just their life as a single. The grocery store is HUGE and there's nobody telling you what you can and can't do with things. Mix them together. Walk through the grocery store blindfolded and pick 5 things and go home and make dinner with them. Once the novelty of that wears off...then...eating becomes for pleasure. I don't eat things I don't like. Ever. I can't think of something I've eaten in...10 years that I haven't wanted to put in my mouth. Other than the occasional bad service at a restaurant, maybe. That was not the case when I was younger. It took me a lot of years to figure out that I'm not really a picky eater, I just don't like things that suck.
I so rarely have time to do it anymore, but...crafting a taste experience, like a mural of flavor, that all makes a theme or a picture is how every meal should be. And....it's so much fun, when I have the time, to play like that. Plus, that's basically how I learned to cook, all by myself. Mostly. Sorta.
* I had a girlfriend at one point whose mother HATED me. HAted, hated, hated me. She cooked everything with ginger. Spagetti. Chocolate chip cookies. Everything had ginger in it. I kid you not. She always made me taste anything she was cooking when I was there. I always figured it was intentional. But how could she know I hated ginger (well on my PB&J anyway)?
K.