A comedy of errors, except without the comedy.

[weaselmom]

Cooking continues apace here at the Weaselden. Monday night I made Chicken With Fresh Tomato Sauce, which was optimistically described as a "simple, yet delicious dish." This simple dish took me TWO FREAKING HOURS to get on the table. Why? Because I still have no earthly idea what I'm doing, and I can't remember the recipe or the ingredients or the steps and have to keep going "what? what?" and looking at it every 10 seconds. Chicken breasts, fresh rosemary, a shallot, garlic, plum tomatoes, fresh basil (which smells like armpits!), chicken broth, and balsamic vinegar (which smells like one of the Circles of Hell when cooking). One specific thing that took so long for this particular dish is that I had to prep *everything* in advance. This meant measuring the broth and the vinegar into little paper cups so they'd be ready to add at the right second, chopping the herbs and veggies and having them ready to go, etc. It's different for you guys - if you have a couple spare minutes while something is simmering, you can use that time to prep something else. I, on the other hand, spend those two minutes dithering and wringing my hands and stirring like a mad thing. I still vastly prefer recipes that involve roasting or baking over those that involve sauteing. It didn't come out too badly, except the tomato sauce got overcooked because the damn steamed asparagus got done at the wrong time, and I was dealing with it instead of watching my sauce. This continues to be a problem for me - my reach exceeds my grasp.

You would think I learned my lesson on Monday, but on Tuesday I tackled Rosemary-Garlic Baked Chicken. More fresh rosemary, garlic, red wine vinegar (less vile than balsamic), an onion* (I used a sweet one), some Dijon mustard. Oh yeah, and chicken. You make a sauce with everything and pour it over your pan of chicken. Except the recipe made enough sauce for an entire 3.5 lb. chicken and we had only two breasts, so the chicken was buried in oniony rubble like some kind of weird, pungent Pompeii. Once again, I tried to be extremely organized and plan ahead so everything worked out, but it just...doesn't. I know exactly how long I want to steam the broccoli for, but I am unsure how long it will take to get the saucepan of water to the correct temperature. I knew it didn't take long to make Goth Spinach, but again how long exactly, and how long to get the pan to the correct temperature? I got flustered because everything happened at once, and despite having a large-ish kitchen I still never have any room to work, and I set down a dinner plate (with dinner on it) on a burner that I didn't realize was still on. Do you know what happens to stoneware when it sits on medium-high heat? It shatters like a clay pigeon. Well, it was an ugly plate anyway. Plus, PLUS, I sliced off a little part of my thumb and thumbnail with the ultra-sharp microplane grater when grating parmesan. Well, it will grow back, and a little extra protein never killed anybody.

Tonight I microwaved.

*Note to woadwarrior: You would have been so proud. I diced the bejeezus out of that onion. I was an onion-dicing machine, I tell you.

Comments

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

Just as a data point, I'm like that with cookbooks. I cannot remember instructions I read SIXTY SECONDS before. This is part of why I just fake it most of the time.

Poor WM! Hope your finger is healing nicely.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

I grated my thumb at the exact spot I use to bang the spacebar with. You can imagine my delight every time I type. ReallyIshouldjusttypelikethis.

I have magnets to stick the recipe cards to my stove hood so I can see them, but this recipe was in the book, which is not so good with the magnets. For a while there I was making recipes off my BlackBerry and had to hit the backlight button every 15 seconds. I ask you.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

You make cooking sound like an adventure suited to men in chainmail bearing swords... of dicing.

Plus, I love the image of "chicken... buried in oniony rubble like some kind of weird, pungent Pompeii."

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

In our house, we need welder's masks and steel gauntlets and asbestos suits. And a team of medics standing by.

You know, I hate onions, but the sweet varieties are pretty tasty! Your Maui onions, your Vidalias...this was a Henderson or something.

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

Go to a kitchen store and get something called a blitzhacker or a chopper. Slice onion, put under hacker cup, pop down on the handle half a dozen times, and that onion is in bits.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

WOW. You had me at "blitzhacker." I have to have something with such a cool name!

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

I may have acquired my most recent one at WalMart, of all things. The original one was a German import, of course, and larger than the one I have now. They make onions a really easy thing.

[bebemochi.livejournal.com]

Life is too short for this crap. Take up crockpotting.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

We do indeed have a crockpot (which I assume is the same as a slow-cooker, but a pressure cooker is something different, right?). I need to find the right time to explore it, because you know the whole 8-hour thing? I never have 8 hours in a row to do anything.

[bebemochi.livejournal.com]

You got it, slow-cooker=crockpot. It's the easiest way to cook, and I've only managed to screw it up occasionally.

Here's how you do it:
If you have more time in the morning, like I usually do, you get up, do your morning shtick, throw some junk in the crockpot, turn it on low, and go to work.
If you come home for lunch, throw some junk in the crockpot then, put it on high, and go back to work.
If you have more time at night, throw some junk in the crockpot, put the liner in the fridge (or throw all that stuff in a gallon zip-lock, or whatever, if you don't have a removable liner to your crockpot), take it out the next morning, follow morning instructions. :)

This is prettymuch the only way I know how to cook, aside from dumping stuff in a pan and stir-frying it.
It's all pretty embarassing, because my mom can, like, make souffles and other gourmet shit.

[bebemochi.livejournal.com]

btw, ways to screw it up:

never put milk-based anything in there until the last thirty minutes of cook time.
never put citrus fruit in there until the last thirty minutes of cook time.
non-root veggies often don't do well for long periods of time; it's better to add them later, too.

[woadwarrior.livejournal.com]

The Weaselmatic (tm)! It slices! It dices! It juliennes!

Timing various dishes to be done at the right time is hard. That's why ovens have warming settings. (175 to 200 degrees and set those overachieving dishes in there for a little time out and let them just think about what they have done)

S

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

Yes! Let those early-finishers reflect upon their sins.

I'm surprised there haven't been more mishaps so far. The new knives are really really sharp, and I have an alarming tendency to reach for pans just out of the oven with no protection. I use the potholders to get them *out* of the oven but then just forget that they're hot.

[cupcake-goth.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, when I am making something from an actual RECIPE, I can't remember any of the instructions for longer than 10 seconds. I am constantly running back and re-reading the page, usually while muttering in a panicked fashion.

I hope your thumb heals quickly! And yikes on the exploding plate! I've told you the story of the exploding Pyrex baking dish, right?

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

Aiyee! Exploding Pyrex? That's never supposed to happen, is it?

You can't magnet your recipe to your stove hood because of your gas range. But maybe you could clip your recipe to a chain and let it dangle upside down where you could gaze down and read it as you work?

Goth Spinach was a big hit - I made a bed of it for each piece of Pompeii Chicken. Man, it reduces down significantly, doesn't it? And quickly! Question - is there any way to cut the bitterness of spinach? Even baby spinach has something in it that registers as quite bitter to me. Still, it's an excellent way to trick spinach into somebody's tummy.

You'll be amused to hear that my Pandora is playing HIM ("Poison Girl") while I'm typing this to you. Have yet to have any MCR pop up...

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

Oh, Pyrex is only good for ovens and for pouring hot stuff into. Put on a burner and ka-bam! Some Corningware will survive on a stove that has a Corning top, but otherwise, nothing made of silica or clay should ever be exposed directly to burner coils or flame.

Spinach ... well, a package of spinach cooked with chopped sweet onion and then drowned in cream cheese isn't bitter that I recall, but maybe the cream cheese makes it slither past the bitter receptors?

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

Hint: if you are going to turn your back on something that needs attention, turn the heat down to the lowest setting, or even turn it off. Burnt sauce is ...not good. If you do this with gravy you may have to whisk very hard or use a blender to get the lumps out unless you move the pan completely off the burner.

Heating water to steam? Just turn the thing on early, and let it boil. Boiling water is pretty harmless as long as there is enough of it.

Make sure there is lots of food between you and a microplane. :)

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent suggestion, turning down the dang heat. The sauce didn't burn, thankfully, but the tomatoes got a lot browner than they should have. (Although I blame the balsamic vinegar too, because it's so easy to blame.) These things don't occur to me yet, because I still don't have a clear idea of what the heat is doing to or for the food, despite Alton Brown's best efforts. I do worry about running out of hot water in the saucepan for my broccoli, because there's only 1/2" in there to begin with on account of my stubby little steamer legs. If you had seen how small the parmesan block was, you'd have slapped the grater out of my hand and told me to get a bigger piece.

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

:) Likely about the parmesan. I am a real freak about staying away from things that can scrape off my skin. Like I would probably use tongs to hold the cheese -- or get a bigger piece -- or use a conventional grater.