I wasn’t exactly raised by wolves,
but I have no warm memories of cozily working by the side of my mother as she
handed down kitchen secrets. Those years, the adults in the family were occasionally best avoided. About the only thing I can recall is her caution to toss some salt in with boiling eggs. Supposedly, if the shell cracks, the salt will prevent the egg from oozing out and creating egg-drop soup. Oh, and to remove an avocado pit, whap into it with a heavy knife to pull it out of the soft green suction.
There
ya go. That’s it.
As
a new bride of twenty, I figured out by myself how to cut up a whole chicken
and how to cook fresh vegetables. (A clove of garlic, by the way, is not the
whole head, but instead the half-moons that it separates into.) I learned that
it’s not a great idea to clean a bathroom with both ammonia and Comet. And I
also learned not to mix together a meatloaf two days ahead in Georgia
heat even if you are refrigerating it. (At least the first meal I served my new
in-laws was memorable.)
Over
the years I’ve discovered the absolute brilliance of parchment paper on cookie
sheets. I not only have no more burnt cookies, but I also don’t have the
penance of twenty minutes at the sink with an SOS
pad. And now that we’re all roasting our vegetables, ditto with aluminum foil,
which makes me feel downright decadent. For years I treated foil as though I
was cooking with gold leaf, using it sparingly and carefully flattening it out
to use again. Now there’s no end to my extravagance. At the finish of a loaf of
bread, I actually throw away the bread heels and then go out and buy prepared
bread crumbs. And these days my trash can is lined with real trash can liners,
instead of the brown paper bags of past years, although in today’s world those
are as hard to find as a metal hand-operated ice-cube tray.
As
teenagers, my kids were completely uninterested in all the magic happening in
the kitchen as I was kneading bread, rolling pie crust, and cutting up my own
stew meat. Still, as adults, they’re both good cooks and could probably teach
me a thing or two.
And
yet, maybe this Thanksgiving I’ll remind them that rubbing your fingers over a
stainless steel sink will erase the smell of garlic and that it’s just plain
wicked to throw out the turkey carcass instead of making turkey bone soup.
We come from similar backgrounds; my mother was a prolific, but terrible, cook. I mastered the rudiments, then turned cooking over to my teenage daughters. One went on to own a fabulous restaurant. She gifted my sister a little stainless steel doohicky, looks like a bar of motel soap. Turn it over in your hands like a bar of soap and goodbye smelly hands.
ReplyDeleteYou're living my dream - to have a professional chef in the family.
DeleteThere were some painful (and occasionally dangerous) cooking lessons weren't there?
ReplyDeleteTurkey was a christmas dish here - and goodness we were tired of it by the time its bones were bare. Turkey bone soup? Shudder. Anything but turkey.
Which makes me feel guilty for the waste...
I just make the soup and freeze it for the day we can all face turkey again.
DeleteOh, memories! I got the full education on housecleaning but my mom couldn't stand to have anyone else in the kitchen "in her way" which made for some interesting meals when I was a young bride. Fortunately I was roommates with the home ec teacher my first two years of teaching and she saved me from some real disasters. She and I dozens apples pies for all my wedding guests and I still make her fudge recipe! (Thank you again, Jenny.)
ReplyDeleteYes. Most of my best recipes are from a friend or someone I worked with.
DeleteI didn't know that about putting salt in the egg water or the stainless steel sink will take away the garlic smell. I had never cooked anything before I got married, my Mom was a professional cook and the only thing I got to do in the kitchen was was dishes.
ReplyDeleteMy first meatloaves were so bad that we jokingly said that I cooked them for revenge.
Yes, another reason to start cooking immediately after the honeymoon. Your spouse will still be mesmerized by those days of passion and anything you put on the table is magical.
DeleteI don't remember learning much from my mum either, except to clean the kitchen soon after dinner, including wiping down all surfaces and sweeping the floor. I did learn that when roasting vegetables the pumpkin should go in when the potatoes are already half cooked, as pumpkin cooks so much faster. Most other things I've taught myself, especially the trick of keeping an empty ice cream container in the freezer, to take all the potentially smelly things, that would otherwise stink up the rubbish bin. The frozen smelly bits, prawn shells, meat scraps etc, would be put into the bin on the day the garbage was collected.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant, River. I'll now set aside a section of the freezer.
Delete(This post was really a ploy to scoff up housekeeping tricks.)
Line the ice cream container with a suitably sized plastic bag, then on garbage day you just tie it off and toss it.
DeleteLord, I haven't thought of paper grocery bags in forever. We used to use them as trash bags, too.
ReplyDeleteAs for chicken (or turkey) bone soup, we've had mixed results. Sometimes it comes out tasting a bit grainy and, I don't know, bitter or something. Maybe we cook it too long?
Just dump the carcass in a big pot, cover with water. Add celery, onion, and maybe a bay leave.
DeleteSimmer for a couple of hours, strain the broth, pick the meat off the bones (SO much fun), put it back in, add parsley, onions, carrots, celery, anything else you fancy like rice or noodles, season and you're done.