Wednesday, April 16, 2008

I Told Them I Couldn't Cook!

As most of you know, I do not cook. Over the almost 17 years of our marriage, Jim has done the majority of the cooking. Why? He likes to cook, he's good at it and it relaxes him.

From time to time, Jim tries to teach me to cook. His lessons consist of him telling me to do something and then criticizing my "technique." For example, he especially dislikes the way I use a whisk. I don't have the appropriate wrist action. He inevitably ends up taking everything away from me and doing it himself "the right way." Needless to say, after about 10 of these lessons, I learned to say "no, thanks!" when he offers to teach me to cook.

I like baking. Baking relaxes me. I like the way you combine a bunch of ingredients into one bowl, mix them together, put them in some type of baking implement and throw them into the oven. No fuss, no muss. The oven does all of the hard work -- I'm only responsible for getting the ingredients mixed and into the oven. I don't even have to pay attention to the oven because it has a timer that automatically lets me know when the baking is done! Cooking, on the other hand, requires one to do a lot of preparation, often in several different bowls and containers, and then hover over everything while you cook it on the stove. There may be continual stirring, or the adding of various ingredients at certain times, and the changing of heat levels. In cooking, the cook controls everything and must attend.

This rather lengthy treatise on cooking/baking is just a lead in to What Happened to Me Yesterday.

You see, we had about a pound of fish left over from my last trip to the fish market. Jim froze it and we agreed that it would be used to make a fish chowder. I adore fish chowder, especially my mom's version.

When my mom was in town a couple of weeks ago, I asked her to help me make chowder. I bought the ingredients, but somehow we never got around to making the chowder. So, on Monday I suggested that this would be a good week to make the chowder and Jim agreed.

On Tuesday morning, I called my mom and added all of the ingredients I needed for the chowder to my weekly grocery list. Then Jim said that I should start the chowder before he got home. He said he thought that would be easiest. I told him that I didn't think I would be able to make an edible chowder. Seriously, I knew there was the delicate cooking of a milk product involved, and that's just a recipe for disaster with me. Jim insisted that chowder was simple and I would be able to do it. "Just call your mom and ask her how she makes it!"

After the shopping was done, I called my mom. This is the recipe she gave me, based on the notes I took during our conversation:

Mom's Fish Chowder

Dice some potatoes and cook them separately. Cut up 1/2 of an onion and saute it in olive oil with 4-5 pieces of bacon cut up into small pieces. When you are done sauteing, make a roux (I have no idea how to spell that) with 2 tablespoons of flour and a cup of cold water. Add that into the bacon and onions and stir. Use low heat. When it thickens, add the potatoes, the fish and slowly add the milk and heavy cream so they don't curdle. Voila! Fish chowder! Easy peasy.

Right away, I had some questions.

Me: Do I saute in the frying pan?

Mom: No, I do mine in my Dutch oven.

Me: Do we have a Dutch oven?

Mom: Yes, the one I gave you.

Me: What does it look like?

Mom: The big metal pot with two handles.

This initial exchange should have warned my mother that I was already swimming beyond my depth with this recipe. Did she try and stop me? No.

I started the chowder at 4:45, figuring I would have plenty of time to get the ingredients together by 5:45, which is when I usually go to pick up the kids from school. I called my mom again:

Me: How big do you cut up the potatoes?

Mom: I dice mine.

Me: Like into little cubes?

Mom: Yes.

Me: Do I boil them in water or saute them?

Mom: Boil them, of course! (talking like I'm stupid, which I am about cooking).

Me: Okay. How long?

Mom: Geez, Wendy! You know how long! Boil them until they are soft.

Me: Okay.

I hung up and called Jim.

Me: Jim, how long do I boil potatoes?

Jim: How big are the pieces?

Me: I'm cubing them into little cubes.

Jim: I figure about 15 minutes. Test them to see if they are soft enough.

Me: Okay!

I hung up and began peeling the potatoes. Once they were peeled, I started to dice them. The first potato I cut flew off the counter and onto the floor. The second piece I cut did the same thing. I tried three different knives before I found one that seemed sharp enough to work. I put the potatoes in our big saucepan and started them to boil. So far, so good.

The next step was the onions and bacon. I decided to put in a whole oinion, because when I cut up half an onion it looked too small. While cutting the onion, my eyes started to sting. I reached up to wipe my eye with the back of the hand holding the knife and flung half an onion and a few small pieces stuck to the knife onto the floor.

My next step was to put the onions into the Dutch Oven (or the "big pot" as it is known to me) to saute them. I sprinkled in a bit of olive oil and turned the burner on medium. The oil started to smoke and sizzle almost immediately, so I threw in the onions and turned the heat down a bit. I let the onions saute while I went to cut up the bacon.

Now, please understand that I picked out some thinly cut, inexpensive bacon to use in this recipe. I grabbed what I thought was the package of bacon out of the fridge and pulled out a big, thick slab of bacon. It did not look like what I purchased, but I thought maybe I picked up the wrong thing. Again, I had to try out a couple of different knives to find one sharp enough to cut the bacon. Note to Jim: We need to sharpen all of our knives. It was slippery and difficult to cut, so my "small" pieces were kind of largish and thick. (I later realized that I was using the extra thick hickory bacon Jim bought, and not the run-of-the-mill cheap bacon I bought).

I checked on the onions. Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, I remembered that onions would look clear when they were done. I saw that the onions had been sauteing for 15 minutes with no apparent change, so I thought I should add more olive oil. I poured a generous helping in and then put in the bacon.

At first it smelled really good and I was excited. By this time, the potatoes were done and they looked fine. I had the frozen fish thawing in the microwave, and about 30 minutes left before I had to leave for the kids. Oddly, however, the bacon was not really getting crispy like it should, and was instead a series of pasty white blobs that looked disconcertingly like larvae. Also, the onions still weren't clear. I decided to put in another call to my mom.

Me: The onions and bacon aren't cooking. The bacon is just in big, floppy blobs!

Mom: How long have they been in the pan?

Me: About 30 minutes. Do you think I might have too much olive oil?

Mom: How much did you put in?

Me: About 1/2 cup.

Mom: That's way too much! You only need enough to coat the bottom of the pan until the bacon starts to melt. Take a few tablespoons out. (I followed her advice and took out about 5 tablespoons).

Me: Uh-oh, a black residue is forming on the bottom of the pan!

Mom: How high is the heat?

Me: It's on medium!

Mom: I don't know, that should be fine.

Me: It's getting worse -- it's a big burned mess.

Mom: Well, throw it out and try it again.

Me: (thinking to myself, not bloody likely!)

I got off the phone with my mom, shed a few tears and called Jim.

Me: (crying) I think my chowder is inedible. The onions and bacon are a black, smelly mess. Why did you think I could do something this complicated???

This is what my end result looked like:



When Jim got home, he assured me that the onions were just carmelized and that they smelled good. It was a sweet gesture, but I know he was lying. He admitted to me today that he and my mom had discussed the incident and agreed that a recipe involving a bunch of different techniques, like sauteing and a roux, was probably beyond my limited cooking capabilities.

The fish went back into the freezer and we mashed up the potatoes, which were perfectly boiled, by the way.

The 2 olives are STILL in the refrigerator, for those of you who might be wondering. I'm going to see how long they stay in there until Jim either (a) makes them into a sandwich (right) or (b) throws them away.

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