![]() ![]() Unfortunately, the produce clerk was equally clueless. I finally had to break a cardinal guy rule (‘Never ask for directions’) and request help. The store had onions labeled green, white, brown, red and several other shades (periwinkle, mauve and plaid), but no yellow. However, when I got to Ralphs, no yellow onions were to be found. And shopping was a nightmare, the first clue that these “foolproof” cookbooks had serious flaws.įor example, the ginger chicken recipe from “Learning to Cook With Marion Cunningham” (Knopf, 1999) called for four medium-size yellow onions. To ease the workload my first time out, I decided that the salad could be one of those pre-washed, prepackaged jobs, although I made the dressing from scratch.īut the other dishes weren’t so simple. And the second meal would have to be harder than the first. Each dinner had to include an appetizer, salad, entree and dessert. Before planning the menus, I set some ground rules: No pasta dishes and no breakfasts (I’m actually decent at both). 1 were two friends who took out a large life insurance policy before arriving and left their daughter at home with a revised last will and testament.īut I’m getting ahead of myself. ![]() ![]() After flipping through them, I chose a few recipes, made a shopping list and headed for something called a “supermarket,” which I had previously thought was a place to find beer and use the ATM. That narrowed the field to four bonehead cookbooks. I threw that one on the reject pile, along with “How to Cook Without a Book,” a title that seemed too oxymoronic to be useful. The editors of the Food section were so impressed that they gave me a book titled “How to Eat,” presumably with chapters on “Chewing,” 'Swallowing” and “How Not to Stab Yourself With a Fork.” Today, my cooking skills remain the stuff of legend. My sister immediately denounced the award as a sham, even though I had learned to prepare such French delicacies as roti avec confiture (toast with jam). In ninth grade, my culinary talent earned the prestigious Boys’ Chef Medallion from my junior high school. In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I’m not a complete novice. The goal was to see which books offered the best instruction for beginning cooks. And it’s probably why the editors of the Food section drafted me for a story in which an inexperienced chef tries to master the kitchen by studying “Cooking for Dummies” and other idiot-proof manuals. That’s the level of confidence my cooking usually inspires. For the fact that strawberry ice cream was the only thing we had in the fridge at the time? That’s more like it.Some people predicted that this story would be written from prison, where I would be doing time for involuntary manslaughter in the accidental poisoning of one or more dinner guests. And it may sound strange, but with this apple-pear crisp, I actually scooped some strawberry ice cream into it. Don’t forget the ice cream!Ĭrisp really isn’t the same without ice cream. You’re really going to use it all the time, trust me. This one is similar to the one we used growing up.Īnd of course, get yourself a cast-iron skillet. If you don’t have a Kitchen Aid, you can actually buy an apple peeler and slicer where you can crank it by hand. I know it’s not one of the basic kitchen supplies I recommend, but if you’re starting to cook more and find yourself investing in a Kitchen Aid, get the attachment. You then chop up the spiralized apples into quarters, and look at that, you have easy small chopped chunks for your apple-pear crisp. When you buy the spiralizer attachment for the Kitchen Aid, you can actually peel apples using it, and slice them up into smaller thin circles. But I like to use my Kitchen Aid attachment for this.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |