secrets of a rotten cook
/I have a reputation for being a rotten cook. I know most people wouldn’t brag, but I think it’s a blessing. First, I can throw down a bag of iceberg and a boiled rutabaga and call it dinner, and second, I receive constant compliments from people who want to prove I’m wrong. “This instant oatmeal is just superb!” is the kind of praise I get all the time without hardly trying.
One of the reasons I like being a rotten cook is that it reminds me of my mother. After spending the whole day scrubbing, ironing, mopping, and sewing, she wanted to do something we’d actually appreciate. She let stews simmer until all the love she could pack in was fully absorbed, meaning everything was burnt to a crisp. I picked up lots of traits from her, but I can proudly say I got this one right. I can char a lentil loaf better than a five-alarm fire.
I also like being a rotten cook because it saves time. Great cooks are always dishing about their dishes and following cooking shows and collecting cookbooks and sharing recipes and tasting and adjusting and swooning. I’m amazed at the amount of grating, dicing, and blanching that goes into the daily three squares.
In my own kitchen, I break out the machete. Vegetables get chopped like fireplace wood, thrown in a steamer, dumped in a bowl, and suffocated in soy sauce Monday to Friday, twice on Saturday, never on Sunday. On that day of recuperation, I’d rather take the soy sauce intravenously.
The only time the menu becomes a problem is when I have a dinner party. A bad cook and a dinner party go together like beurre blanc and salsa. But then I had a dream. A gourmet chef sat down next to me, pointed her finger, and gave me this big challenge: “Boost your ego, change your self-perception, and become more popular. Learn how to cook ten meals you can serve to a crowd.”
Challenge accepted!
I started with my only success of the past, Moosewood Cookbook’s to-die-for mushroom barley soup. I used to make it for birthdays, anniversaries, special holidays. Then everyone wanted the recipe for the one thing I could cook without a mass exodus.
But I needed to start with a bang. Moosewood holds up.
Happy and positive, I got to work on my second dish: Donna’s savory eggplant and polenta party casserole, because I’ve learned it’s pretty hard to screw up anything topped with tomato sauce. I ran to three stores before I found polenta and then chose an eggplant that appeared all shiny and plump. When I got home, I realized the polenta was the mashed kind, not the log, and the eggplant was rotten inside.
Did you notice in the old movie Julie & Julia, about Julia Childs and a food blogger named Julie, that Julie carts around one tiny bag of groceries for the whole dish she’s about to make? And she never runs out for something she forgot. I need a caravan, a police escort, and a witch to get my ingredients home. Who has “eye of newt” just lying around?
Finally, I cut the new eggplant the wrong way and had to squish the slices together. The polenta broiled up to rawhide dog chewies. Is that the way it’s supposed to look? Then I sautéed the mushrooms, boy, do they ever shrink. Okay, I’ll add more. Then I shredded, shredded, shredded the mozzarella. And on top of everything I poured my one sure thing, tomato sauce. And voila! Red soup surrounding yellow hockey pucks laced with brown fungus and gooey yellow tentacles. Is the eggplant supposed to look like pieces of hanging flesh?
How hard is cooking? A male acquaintance asked me this, not realizing I was working on building my confidence and becoming more popular. His wife had burned their Sunday night chicken, and he trashed it. Literally.
I’m not sure what my dream chef would say about that overcooked chicken, but I know what my mother would say. His wife was probably making sure all the love she added, for him and him alone, was totally, utterly, achingly absorbed. Right down to every itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy burned little bit.