With the motivation mentioned in my previous post, I embarked on my culinary endeavour. The first thing I wanted to do better was, of course, pasta, since it was the ground-zero dish that ignited the whole thing. And, what better to begin with than something I already had some rudimentary skills in!
I already knew to cook pasta to al dente. Taste, not just for pasta but everything, naturally was the target. All the salt and pepper and olive oil didn't make tasty pasta, just a salty bland pasta. My poor hubby tolerated it for so long.
Fortunately, my younger sister gave me a big stack of cookbooks amongst her wedding gifts to me. Now I was finally using them. My first attempts were simply following the one-pot recipes. It was easy to do and great to eat. Cook the pasta, drain, stir in cheese and chopped meat, plus microwaved frozen vegetables, and may be chopped nuts, adjust seasoning and serve. Viola! For cheese, I used not just cheddar but sometimes feta, camembert or even creamy blue. Meat was mostly ham or other cold cuts and sometimes cut up sausages that was baked in the oven, or shredded meat of a ready-to-serve roast chicken from the supermarket. Convenient, though not really elegant.
So, it was a nice, easy success. No pasta sauce to make (or ruin). Adding double cream was the saucey (and saucy!) shortcut. But, it soon became boring.
Making pasta sauce from scratch is not a difficult thing, if you already know how to do it right. It actually is a vast subject, as you may already know. A rich tomatoey meat sauce is but one out of hundreds of sauces. There are books written entirely on sauces alone by culinary greats (and not exactly greats, but definitely many). So, what should I take as my next challenge? Hmm....
Of course, macaroni cheese! A pasta al forno, just to make it sound all fancy. Then, I discovered how opposite to simple it was. There a quite a few things to trip you up, starting with the béchamel sauce, or basic white sauce, to getting the dish to a golden brown without turning the cheese into curds inside. It was an obstacle course. But more about this battle and triumph next time.
August 28, 2016
August 12, 2016
The Spark
Most passionate cooks and chefs found their passion from the beginning. I really enjoy cooking and baking now, but my kitchen life began rather differently from everyone else – I hated cooking. I have always loved food, but it didn't entice me to cook. Cooking seemed like a tedious chore.
In my college days, flatting with my younger sister the awesome cook, she used to laugh at me when I helped out with chopping vegetables. I did the task so gingerly that she thought I looked like I was laboring on my arts class homework with engineering precisions. I didn't like art classes, either. She and our mother were talented, fantastic cooks. I used to say that I would rather wash dishes than to cook. However, I loved chemistry lab classes in high school. Not chemistry theories, for all the memmorization I had to do, but the experiments were fun. Little did I know, that would be a seed to my cooking life.
My husband didn't mind that I did not know how to cook when we first got married. It doesn't mean that I did not have to cook from day 1 – he was raised the old-fashioned way. Well, I guess I slipped into the role naturally too, because although my parents did not teach me to conduct myself as an old-fashioned housewife, my parents' old-fashioned relationship was a model for mine in my subconscious. My hubby has always been very kind about my cooking, except this one time... He was not well, and I made him pasta with ham and peas. My culinary repertoire then was rather restricted. I asked him if the dish was OK. The illness-induced irritability took over my sweet husband and snapped, "Yeah, if you add salt to it!" Ouch! That was the motivation I needed. I decided to learn to cook properly.
My family was oceans away by the time I wanted to learn to cook. So, I followed recipe books, but frankly, most of them don't teach basic skills very well, if at all. Incredibly, some recipes still in circulation have been passed down through generations and may be century(s) old. These old recipes contain instructions written in archaic vernaculars and out-dated context that don't apply well in modern day situations. For example, "beat eggs until light" and "dissolve in cold milk". Two common, simple steps that silently test your knowledge of history in cookery, imparting no wisdom on "beating" in the old days being with a wooden spoon, not an eggbeater, electric mixer or whisk, thus "light" refers to color, not texture, and "cold milk" being non-hot milk, not refrigerated milk. And to complicate things, not every 'cryptic' recipe is an ancient recipe. It can be quite frustrating for beginners. Thank goodness, my love in chemistry experiments helped. In a way, the experimentation had me hooked.
One tip I can offer with no reservation is that straight from the refrigerator is a lousy temperature for dissolving flour in milk. Temperature in the range between room temperature and lukewarm are good, with tepid being the best. Sieved flour would help if cold milk is required. Did you know you can make a white sauce without oil or butter this way – without making a roux first? Beware that as it cools, it exhibits a slightly non-Newtonian consistency, similar to cornstarch-thickened sauces.
With the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web, you can now look up how to do virtually anything - pun not intended ;) There are hundreds and thousands or more recipes you can cross-reference, or pick and choose from. The only problem is having to try out a recipe in order to find out if it delivers a result that meets your expectation of the dish or baked goods.
In my college days, flatting with my younger sister the awesome cook, she used to laugh at me when I helped out with chopping vegetables. I did the task so gingerly that she thought I looked like I was laboring on my arts class homework with engineering precisions. I didn't like art classes, either. She and our mother were talented, fantastic cooks. I used to say that I would rather wash dishes than to cook. However, I loved chemistry lab classes in high school. Not chemistry theories, for all the memmorization I had to do, but the experiments were fun. Little did I know, that would be a seed to my cooking life.
My husband didn't mind that I did not know how to cook when we first got married. It doesn't mean that I did not have to cook from day 1 – he was raised the old-fashioned way. Well, I guess I slipped into the role naturally too, because although my parents did not teach me to conduct myself as an old-fashioned housewife, my parents' old-fashioned relationship was a model for mine in my subconscious. My hubby has always been very kind about my cooking, except this one time... He was not well, and I made him pasta with ham and peas. My culinary repertoire then was rather restricted. I asked him if the dish was OK. The illness-induced irritability took over my sweet husband and snapped, "Yeah, if you add salt to it!" Ouch! That was the motivation I needed. I decided to learn to cook properly.
My family was oceans away by the time I wanted to learn to cook. So, I followed recipe books, but frankly, most of them don't teach basic skills very well, if at all. Incredibly, some recipes still in circulation have been passed down through generations and may be century(s) old. These old recipes contain instructions written in archaic vernaculars and out-dated context that don't apply well in modern day situations. For example, "beat eggs until light" and "dissolve in cold milk". Two common, simple steps that silently test your knowledge of history in cookery, imparting no wisdom on "beating" in the old days being with a wooden spoon, not an eggbeater, electric mixer or whisk, thus "light" refers to color, not texture, and "cold milk" being non-hot milk, not refrigerated milk. And to complicate things, not every 'cryptic' recipe is an ancient recipe. It can be quite frustrating for beginners. Thank goodness, my love in chemistry experiments helped. In a way, the experimentation had me hooked.
One tip I can offer with no reservation is that straight from the refrigerator is a lousy temperature for dissolving flour in milk. Temperature in the range between room temperature and lukewarm are good, with tepid being the best. Sieved flour would help if cold milk is required. Did you know you can make a white sauce without oil or butter this way – without making a roux first? Beware that as it cools, it exhibits a slightly non-Newtonian consistency, similar to cornstarch-thickened sauces.
With the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web, you can now look up how to do virtually anything - pun not intended ;) There are hundreds and thousands or more recipes you can cross-reference, or pick and choose from. The only problem is having to try out a recipe in order to find out if it delivers a result that meets your expectation of the dish or baked goods.
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