Cooking

I do not love to cook. It is one of the stereotypical "wifey" tasks I do not want to embrace, but I'd be cooking anyway if I were still single. So instead of hating the stereotype, I try and find things I enjoy about it, like the sense of satisfaction that comes when I have mastered a new recipe or just plain eating something good. Cooking does take up quite a lot of time, but it helps if the recipe yields many servings; then I can portion up the leftovers and not have to cook again for a day or two. 

Some cooks insist on using whatever is in their pantry, even if the substitution is nothing like the original required ingredient. I will make an extra trip to the store to ensure I have exactly the right ingredients, until I know the recipe well and understand how each element affects the overall flavor of the dish. My uncle says it means I cook with passion, since I insist on doing everything the right way.

With cooking it's the prep and cleanup I dislike the most; oddly enough, I took a job that was all about the preparation and cleanup parts of cooking, as a "prep cook." I arrived early in the morning, hours before the restaurant opened, and then spent the next three hours chopping, slicing, mixing, stirring and washing. So I never even got to see the end result of my efforts. It was a very unsatisfying job, but I think it gave me a little more patience with cooking.

I have never had a formal cooking class, only a few lessons about the basics from my parents. It's interesting to think about how much I have learned, just from the tidbits other cooks mention in passing. Besides browning ground beef, I have learned that milk will scald, or burn, if not constantly stirred, and if a recipe requires milk it should usually be added last, also to avoid scalding. Adding a little olive oil to boiling water can help reduce the stickiness in pasta; water comes to a boil faster with a sprinkle of salt (just be sure to account for that salt if the water is for a soup or sauce); cooked pasta, if left to cool too long on the counter, can clump together, but running it under hot tap water loosens it again. Metal gets the smell of onion or garlic off your hands; if the dough tastes bad, so will the cookie; and chopped carrots are nearly invisible in spaghetti sauce.

In the Disney Pixar movie "Ratatouille," there is a food critic character who is ultra-skinny. I've always thought skinny chefs were suspect, or at least odd, but in the movie the critic defends his lack of girth, saying he doesn't just like food, he loves it, and therefore only swallows the truly best food. It actually made sense. I will still trust a chubby cook over a thin cook, though. 

Whenever I visit someone's home and they provide a meal, I confide that they happened to cook my favorite meal: one I didn't have to make! While I enjoy my own dishes, it's fun to try new foods or variations on the classics. I think that's one reason we as a nation eat out so often: we get bored and like to try new things. (Well, that and laziness to a certain degree...) 

Plus there are some foods that I simply cannot replicate at home. I refuse to deep fry anything, for example. (I'm afraid of hot oil--I'll even make my husband cook bacon if a recipe calls for it.) I also don't know how to make tabouli, chow mein, or sushi rolls. And I definitely do NOT like homemade pizza. So there are my excuses to eat out :)