Cooking

I don’t cook, I consume.  This used to be my mantra.  When forced to cook due to Judy’s absence or illness, I resorted to my go to favorite, Banquet Chicken and deep-fried tater tots. All I had to do was open the box, put it in the oven, and then just before the time on the box was up, I would heat up some cooking oil in a cast iron skillet and toss in the tots. I was really proud of my tater tots.  So was my grand daughter who bragged to my eldest son Wes, who is a world class chef, about them.  Not only can I out fish my son, with tater tots, I can out cook him as well.  At least at one time I could.  Then Banquet Chicken changed something.  Don’t know when or why but they lost something over the decades.  Kind of like what happen to Twinkies, as they no longer taste the same either.  I doubt that my palate has matured as I still like Velveeta.  More likely Banquet and Hostess could make an extra penny per box by substituting some GMO shit for the real ingredients.  It’s called capitalism and even though Republicans will laud its virtues, in the Banquet Chicken and Twinkie examples, it just sucked.

I could say that I miss those frozen, processed chicken days, but I really don’t.  After the kids left the nest and I had a little more discretionary income, I discovered take out.  Now when Judy does not want to cook, I quickly volunteer to go get broasted chicken from our local tavern which comes with the best beer battered fries on the planet, possibly the galaxy. I also BBQ.  Like most men I have no real talent at this. Judy preps the meat, beans, and potato salad.  She then brings the marinated and tenderized steak out to me on the deck where all I have to do is put it on the grille and try not to burn it.  If I succeed in cooking a passible steak, I get credit for the BBQ, even though Judy did all the work. You can debate about white privilege, but BBQ privilege is definitely real.

I have never mastered the “poke your forearm” technique to tell well done from raw even though Wes has tried to teach me this on several occasions.  Others have tried to convince me that a meat thermometer will also work for this important steak doneness measurement, but I manage to fuck this one up as well.  Much to my son’s disapproval, I pull out a knife and slice into the meat to check for the proper degree of redness. 

“Dad, I just showed you again how to do this!  Are you that dense?”

“Wes, I tried, really tried. I think my forearms are not as fat as yours.”

That shuts the bastard up for a while.

For years I was fully content in my role as an open the precooked box, take out and occasional BBQ chef.  Then Judy decided that I was not eating healthy, and I need to go on a Mediterranean diet. You know, zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant, died beans, chicken and sea food, none of which is deep fried.  She even cooks all of this stuff at one time in an Instantpot or worse yet in a tagine, which is a Moroccan cooking pot where the food steams in its own juice.  I am not sure, but the Moroccans may have scaled this down from a device that they used to use to torture infidels.  Is she trying to kill me for the insurance? Okay, I have lost weight so I might live a bit longer, but now I will have to suffer through the drooling years.  Occasionally, so I don’t starve to death, I get her to cook “deep fried goodness’, but that rarely happens.  (I made the mistake of letting Judy read this as I was writing.  I am getting Mediterranean for dinner tonight. Fuck me.  Next time I am writing my blog on the shitter.)  Then I discovered Jet Tila.

Jet Tila is an Asian American who is an expert in Chinese, Korean, and Thai cooking.  It all started when we visited Judy’s bother John in Northern Washington.  You might remember him from a previous blog of mine.  He is the one who hybridizes iris, bakes artisan breads, and lives in turn of the century Victorian house, known locally as the Pink Lady.  Although, in that previous blog I intimated that he might be batting left-handed, but that was in spite for him exposing my not so manly fondness of an iris I inadvertently named “delicate”. Yet again he spent 20+ years in the Navy, so I can not be sure.  

But I digress.  We were sitting around his kitchen island drinking wine, eating gourmet cheese from Slough Foods in Edison, WA.  Judy and John are elbow deep in old cookbooks.  John feeling sorry for me for being left out, handed me a more modern book by Jet Tila, “101 Asian Dishes You Should Cook Before Your Die”.  Was John really feeling sorry for me, or just pointing out how inept I am?  Regardless of his intent, the first recipe I found was for General Taos Chicken.  I love that dish.  We have a Chinese restaurant in Newport, OR which we have frequented for decades.  It is owned by a family where we have watched the kids grow up and become employees.  It is also the place where we fell in love with chow fun noodles.  I wrote a previous blog about our failed hunt in San Francisco’s China Town for chow fun noodles. Jet Tela had a recipe on how to make your own. Fuck me. I was going to be a cook.

Wes was so excited about this he gave me an expensive chef knife, showing me how to safely use it to avoid cutting my fingers off.  First time, yes, the first time I used that fucking thing, right though the thumb nail.  If he knew about this, I would never hear the end of it, but as he only reads cook books and fishing shit I am safe.

Judy and I can now have cooking discussions.  She once told me to use sesame oil to fry up some chicken for the Lo Main.  But Jet says that oil is only used for aroma and does not good for cooking as it has too low of a burn temperature.  Wow am I good at this or what?  Then I watched one of Jet’s u-tube videos.  In it he gave further instructions not in the book.  Sneaky Asian bastards, now I have the watch the fucking cooking channel!

So far, I have make Lo Main, Chow Fun, Orange Chicken, and General Tso, and our favorite Bulgogi, which I consistently and inadvertently mispronounce as bukkake. The latter is a sexual practice in which several men ejaculate on the face of woman.  Well at least I am not a gay cook.