The Inconvenienced Chef

There is an invisible line of competency when it comes to cooking.  Once you can saute onions, boil pasta, make a decent grilled cheese, brown taco meat, bake a Betty Crocker cake, scramble eggs, etc., you are pretty much across the line.  Then you move on to a few more complicated techniques and fancy ingredients, and BAM! you're a cook.  I've been a cook for a while.  I'm pretty competent.  I can't make all of my mom's ethnic dishes, largely because like GirlWednesday's experience, it's all "a little of this, a little of that", and impossible to pin down. But I can follow a well-written recipe like nobody's business, and I have experience with most usual dishes.

With this ability, it can be fun and indeed healthful to look up new recipes online, pour through cookbooks, and garner tips from friends to fix your very own breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. And yet, I hardly ever do.  And it's not just because I hate doing dishes.  It's a lot of work in general.  It doesn't always go as planned.  I hate hate hate the feeling of working hard on a meal and then not getting an exuberant reaction from my husband.  Often, the leftovers sit in the fridge while we elect to eat some form of prepared food or go out to eat.

Or, the food that I have in the fridge with which to cook has gone bad (or at the least, looks questionable).  And if I can muster the energy to cook, the added stress of going to the grocery store puts me over.  I guess the reality is I'm a bad planner when it comes to providing my family with meals.  It doesn't help that my family consists of two finicky adults.

It would probably help if I thought of cooking as more of a chore that needs to get done regardless of outside moods and activities.  Because if you wait until you are hungry to think about what you are going to eat, you are screwed- take it from me.  The irony is, I was much more eager to get into the kitchen when I had no clue what I was doing.  It seems like now that I am able to cook, I can't be bothered.  I keep thinking a nicer kitchen with cooler gadgets will get me there, or a child I'm more motivated to provide healthy nourishment for.  I don't know what it will be.  But as always, I am going to keep trying.  I don't think my quest to become a better housewife will ever end.  At least not until the divorce.  :-)

Grandma's Recipes

Cooking…something I love to do but I am not very good at! When I got married, my family knew this was a big concern of mine. I think a few months ago I had mentioned my grandma’s caramel recipe. Well, at my bridal shower she gifted me with a wonderful scrapbook of all her best tried-and-true recipes. I have gotten her permission to share a few of these with the loyal fans of our blog! Of course, my favorites tend to be the sweets!! Here you go:

Caramel Corn (not that hard but oh-so-good)
2 c. brown sugar
¼ c. light Karo Syrup
¼ c. water
1 stick butter
1 t. baking soda

In a deep pan, boil all ingredients to a soft ball. Add margarine. Add soda and stir with a wooden spoon. This will become very frothy. Pour immediately over popcorn. Covers 3-4 poppers full.

Clam Chowder
2 or 3 6 ½ oz. cans canned clams
1 c. finely chopped onion (1 small)
1 c. finely chopped celery (2-3) stalks
2 c. finely cubed potatoes (2-3 medium)

Drain juice from clams and pour with vegetables in sauce pan. Add enough water to barely cover. Salt and pepper. Simmer 15 minutes. Drain and then add clams.

Make a white sauce of:
¾ c. butter
¾ c. flour
1 ½ t. salt
1 qt. half & half

Melt butter. On very low heat add flour, salt and cream. Stir constantly until well mixed continually scraping bottom of pan so it doesn’t stick.
Drain vegetables and reserve juice to add if mixture is too thick for personal taste. Add vegetables to white sauce and a couple of bay leaves. Keep warm until ready to serve stirring occasionally.

Jan Hagels
(my favorite recipe!! Pronounced “Yawn Haw-gulls”. These are a GREAT treat to take to a party!)

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, separated (save the whites, throw two of the yolks away)
1 t. almond extract
2 cups flour
1 cup sliced almonds
2 T. sugar and ½ t. cinnamon combined

Beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add one of the egg yolks and extract. Stir in flour. Turn onto ungreased jelly roll pan 15x10x1. Beat egg white until foamy white (I find I need 3 egg whites). This works better if you use a bowl and mixers that have been chilled in the freezer. Spread over dough. Add almonds and sugar and cinnamon mixture on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes (depending on your oven). Cool for 10 minutes and cut 8 lengthwise strips and then 12 diagonally. Cool a little longer in the pan before removing. Makes 6 dozen.

I hope you get a chance to try these recipes. I LOVE sharing recipes!

Two Teaspoons of Turtles

My father cooks.  (He is a cook).  He can also build things.  Like our house, and elaborate science projects and dollhouses and collapsible walls that turn his daughter's expensive 1-bedroom Manhattan apartment into an affordable 2-bedroom share.  He also is really great with fabric.  He can tell when a shirt has a hint of acrylic or polyester in it- just by putting his fingers near it.  And more useful- he can sew, do any alteration.  He made my mom's wedding dress.  Bought the silk and sowed it himself.

But most often my dad cooks.  He's been cooking his whole life, my whole life.  I remember bratty kids coming over for dinner when I was in elementary school.  I just wanted the kids to like me and I knew my father was going to make a big production- lots of pots and pans, his chicken-and-chorizo pie with my name spelled out on top in dough calligraphy... And then the whole family would sit down together for the big presentation.  

I suspected, though I never knew from first hand experience, that the cool kids didn't eat with their parents, that they probably ate pizza bagels (we never had those growing up) while sitting on the couch watching 90210 (a show I was never allowed to watch) and talking on the phone (no phone calls for me during the school week).  

And as I assumed, after hours-- of sauteing garlic, onions, chopped peppers, tasting, adding spices, tasting, and stirring a bubbling concoction-- a chunk of Asiago cheese was in the silver grater, a million pots and pans were in the sink, and my dad's brilliant homemade sauce was steaming in a glass bowl in the middle of the table, spaghetti in the other, garlic bread in the basket.  Oh it was all on display that night.  We sat down at the counter and the two kids who were visiting asked for ketchup to put on their pasta.  They "never ate red sauce."  My dad almost choked on his semolina angel hairs.

Another time we had to bring snacks to school- the last day of technology class (8th grade) and I asked my dad to make the popcorn he always made me (secret ingredient: sugar).  According to my dad, that's the way they made popcorn in Argentina.  Sweet.  I proudly brought in the popcorn in a giant Ziploc bag.  I thought for sure it would change the lives of every kid in that classroom.  Well nope, it didn't.  No one even ate it.  (Except me).  And my teacher held it up to some students during the "party," when he thought I wasn't looking: "What did she put in the popcorn? Is that sugar? Gross."   

When I was in junior high my mother told me that I'd better ask my father to teach me how to cook.  "He's not going to be around forever," she told me, "and his cooking secrets will die with him."  Well after I had a good long cry over my father's quickly impending death, I went to him with a notepad and pen and asked him to teach me how to make his family-famous dessert:  crepe suzette with dulce de lece.

When I got ready to write it all down- for posterity- I watched my father silently dump an indiscernible amount of flour into the mixing bowl. I said, "Dad what are you putting in? I have to write this down."  After a pause, he answered, "Two... teaspoons... of turtles." 

At first I thought this was hilarious, and so he kept it up. But then I looked down at my notebook and the page was full of "turtles" and "giraffes" and other nonsensical descriptions for food. So I begged him to be serious. But he just shrugged and said he didn't know how much of anything he put into his crepes.

My father may be many great things, but a great communicator is not one of them.  At the time, I thought he thwarted my efforts to learn his recipes because he didn't want someone else to become a better cook and take his place-- I mean, as far as we knew, we needed him in order to eat.  But that's a silly over-simplification from a young mind.  The truth is, I think, that my father has no recipes.  To this day he doesn't measure.  He doesn't read instructions from a book or a note card.  He feels his way through it.  He experiments.  When he finds something that tastes good, he remembers it.  It's rote.  After years and years of practice, and formal culinary training, he's just really good at eyeballing it.  

Growing up, I never thought it was out of the ordinary-- a little girl going into school telling the other kids that she had London Broil with chimichurri marinade with roasted potatoes and sauteed mushrooms for dinner the night before.    And I think that's pretty darn cool.  

I'll tell you one other thing- that nay saying technology teacher eats at least once a week at my dad's restaurant.  Gross.

  

Sunday Dinner

I hate Sundays. I hate the way that the work week tends to loom over the day, as if to say that even if it’s 70 degrees and sunny, it feels somewhat breezier and cool because I have to be back in the office first thing in the morning. I know it is a bit crazy; and I know I need to grow up and get over it, but for some reason, Sundays just depress me. It’s due in part to the fact that I usually put off a significant portion of my “to-do” list until Sunday evening, at which point all I want to do is watch bad television. Instead, I find myself bitterly washing dishes, folding laundry, paying bills, or filing my tax returns far too late into the evening hours.

There is one saving grace of Sunday evenings, however. There is one thing that helps me relax and enjoy those waning hours before bed time, and that is cooking Sunday dinner.

It’s a habit I developed in my first year of graduate school. At that point, I would cook a large meal on Sunday so that I could eat leftovers all week long. Spaghetti, Linguine and clam sauce, chicken casserole, tuna-noodle casserole, tacos. The recipes were pretty basic at that point, but the concept remained the same—spend an hour in the kitchen on Sunday and avoid cooking the rest of the week. Perfect.

My efforts became far more sophisticated when HusbandTuesday (HT) and I first moved in together. In part because I was trying to show him that I really was wife material, and in part because I was excited to no longer have to do mental math in downsizing recipes. Cooking for two is just so much more rewarding. My efforts also began in large part in an effort to absolve myself of the guilt I feel for feeding us frozen pasta, frozen stir-fry, frozen pizza, refrigerated pasta, or take-out throughout the week. Sunday is the one day of the week in which I can actually take more than 15-20 minutes to prepare a meal. It’s the one day in which I can wake up, decide—hey, I want to make chicken chili—and have the time to find the recipe, go buy ingredients, and still have plenty of time to relax before dinner time.

Although I do have to be honest—my cooking is still a work in progress. Unlike G’mony, I didn’t really grow up with any cooking aspirations. My attempts are usually pretty successful, but my repertoire remains somewhat narrow. My mom imparted the basics, and, as HT likes to say, all you need to do is be able to read the recipe. Check. But I’m starting out with baby steps, for certain. I’ve got baking and broiling fish down, and I can replicate my mother’s spaghetti sauce with a 10-15 percent margin of error. I make a mean hollandaise sauce for Eggs-Benedict, and I’ve finally stopped overcooking the asparagus. Lucky for me, HT doesn’t laugh when I buy black bean soup instead of black beans, but put it in the chili anyways; he’s willing to eat baked ziti for a week when I overestimate quantities for dinner parties and end up with an entire extra pan; and he’s as equally happy with chicken in white wine sauce as he is with marinated salmon steaks and twice-baked potatoes. No matter what the entrée, he’s always willing to open the wine, turn off the TV, and sit down and chat as long as we’d like. And even more importantly, he’s always willing to do the dishes.

Now if only I could find a recipe for an extra weekend day . . .

Love in the Time of Vegetarianism

I’m in love with a vegetarian, but luckily we don’t live in the same city, so meal planning isn’t an issue. We have three or four stand-by items that I make whenever we’re together, and those, combined with a dinner out (everybody wins!) can usually get us through any long weekend. But we used to live together. So this has been an issue for us before.

As you all must know by now, I’m Southern. With a capital S. I was raised that the way to man’s heart is through his stomach. I have grandmothers who’ve passed down recipes specifically designed to help me snare a man: meatloaf, lasagna, roast, chicken potpie, bbq spare ribs, etc. I know how to cook all of those things like I know the back of my hand, but that skill is not really coming in handy these days. These days I have the problem of not knowing how to cook tempeh. Or even what that even is. I don’t know a damn thing about soy, soy beans, soy milk, soy whatever. And I sure as hell don’t know how to snare a man with tofu. I really want to make meals that we can both enjoy, and that are the same meal. I don’t want to be chowing down on roasted leg of lamb and have only the capacity to make him a grilled cheese (I make lots of grilled cheeses, I’m getting better. Not too buttery and not too burnt). But at the same time, I’m not willing to sacrifice the animals (ha!) completely.

I’m sure this wasn’t the situation that either of my grandmothers ever predicted I’d be in when they were making me stand at the stove and take copious mental notes on how to get the crust just so on a homemade chicken potpie. It probably wasn’t what I was dreaming of either (I think I remembered thinking I’d be rich and have a maid to do all the cooking, so that’s not really helpful either). It doesn’t help that I’m not a huge fan of all things vegetable, although I do appreciate a good refried bean. Sadly. I’ve tried just taking meat out of some of my favorite dishes, but the lasagna and spaghetti aren’t the same, and one cannot even attempt to enjoy a pizza without pepperoni. So if any of you out there have yummy vegetarian recipes, send ‘em my way. I’m willing to try just about anything. I guess it could be worse, he could be vegan.

So in honor of my little vegetarian, I’m including some hand-me-down family recipes that are good for meat-eaters and non-meat-eaters alike. Mainly because they’re desserts!


GrammaMonday’s Chess Pie
(for those of you who have never had the pleasure of enjoying a chess pie, it’s like a lemon bar meets sugar cookie pie). Mmmmm.

Make pastry for 9” crust pie (or just buy one, but don’t tell her….)

4 eggs
1.5 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of butter
2 tbsp cream or milk
2 tbsp corn meal
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt

Heat oven to 325. Combine eggs, sugar and butter. Beat 5 minutes high speed on pink KitchenAid mixer. Blend in remaining ingredients. Pour into pastry-lined pie pan. Bake 1 hour until knife inserted about an inch from edges comes out clean.



Peanut Butter Pound Cake
(this is a great pound cake recipe and the flavor of the peanut butter is not overwhelming at all).

1 cup butter, softened
½ cup creamy peanut butter
2 cups sugar
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
5 large eggs
3 cups all purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Icing
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
¼ cup butter
Dash of salt
¼ cup evaporated milk


Beat 1 cup butter and ½ cup peanut butter at medium speed in aforementioned bright pink KitchenAid for 2 minutes until creamy. Gradually add 2 cups sugar and 1 cup brown sugar beating at medium speed for 5 to 7 minutes. Add eggs one at a time just until (AND THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART – overbeating will make this cake or any pound cake DRY!) the yellow disappears.
Combine flour, baking powder, soda, and ½ tsp salt, stir well. Add flour mixture to butter mixture alternately with 1 cup milk, beginning and ending with flour. Mix at low speed until just blended after each addition. Stir in vanilla. Pour batter into greased and floured tube pan.
Bake at 350 for an hour and 35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 10-15 minutes.
Beat powdered sugar, and next 3 ingredients at a low speed until well bended. Add evaporated milk and beat at a medium speed until smooth. Drizzle over cake.