Skip to main content

Sous Chef 3

As I've mentioned several times before on this blog, I have an interesting relationship with cooking. I enjoy doing it, but, frankly, the Mild Wife is better at it. There's no shame in that, that's just how it is. It's also something that's evolving, because there are certain dishes/items that I'm getting halfway decent at (see: the infamous cheesecake). Still, in terms of general skill level, I'd trust the Mild Wife to put out a delicious meal before I'd trust myself.

Now, that doesn't mean that I am completely useless in the kitchen. Generally, I  try to contribute to the process in different ways. It's not uncommon for me to do a lot of the chopping and prep work, so that I still help with the preparation process. And, as that previous blog post pointed out, that particular work is often considered the hard part. So, I don't feel like I'm slacking in my contributions.

Still, I feel like there is a sense that comes with having done it several times. I remember watching the "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" documentary, and there was a segment where one of the apprentice chefs said he spent years working on cooking the rice just right. Sure, it's a shop that prides itself on supreme quality, but he was cooking rice, for crying out loud. He had to work on his craft, to make sure he knew the intricacies of how to cook the item just right. It's an extreme example, but it's what comes to mind when I think of honing your cooking sense. There is a certain innate knack for adding just the right spice, adding just the right amount, or knowing when to move something around in a pan and when to leave it alone. You grind and you grind until you sort of naturally know the right thing to do to a particular dish.

Like I said earlier, my cooking sense is not as developed as the Mild Wife's. Better yet, I once described this notion, out loud, to the Mild Wife. That immediately resulted in two hilarious things. One, she said that I should get more reps in the kitchen in order to develop that sense. I feel like that's a fairly common-sense reply; I don't have the experience, so I should get more in order to be more useful in the kitchen. The second thing, however, was what really made laugh out loud. My observation posited a progression from onion chopper to pan stirrer, so we then came up with the tag line, "I started at the bottom, now I'm at the stove." It's a nod to a certain song's lyrics, but it cracked both of us up. It took a while before either of got any cooking done in the aftermath.

Just so you know, though, that is now my official motto in the kitchen. I'm starting at the bottom, but I'm gunning for that stove, y'all.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New York City Trip (Day 3)

By the third day of the trip, I was tired enough from the previous day's adventures/subway rides that I felt like sleeping in. And sleep in I did. I think I woke up at something like 11:30 or noon. Of course, that meant that a later start to the day, which started the vicious cycle all over again. By the time we rolled into Manhattan, it was about two in the afternoon. I had tentatively set aside Sunday to see something on Broadway, so we headed over to the tkts booth for discount tickets. There were actually various 3PM options, and after mulling our options, we figured it'd be a good idea to catch one of those. We settled on The Toxic Avenger , which was actually an off-Broadway option. However, we hadn't eaten yet, and the show started about 15 minutes after we got our tickets. Enter the food carts. There happened to be one right outside the theater, and the guy charged a little bit of a premium for the convenience. Still, I was hungry, and I had yet to try...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...

Where Do I Go?

As the days of COVID-19 are dragging on, we are having to make more adjustments to our usual routines. Some of these changes are so mundane that I haven't mentioned them at all in this blog, while others have lead to some pretty funny anecdotes . That's probably par for the course, since you wouldn't expect a global pandemic to be all giggles. As it turns out, however, not all of the anecdotes happen to us directly. Having to socially distance and remotely do things has actually led to at least one goofy episode that we found out from afar. You see, it was our niece's birthday recently, but we couldn't visit her because of the aforementioned social distancing. So, we figured we'd ship her a present and call her on her birthday. We couldn't be there in person, but we could still wish her well and try to make her feel special on her birthday. Given that shipping times have been erratic the last few months, we ordered the present with plenty of time, and it arr...