Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies

by Dane, Michael

  Also thankfully, I waited until after making several meals in it before I read the following at an online message board for cooking questions:

  “A word of caution: Don’t buy pre-seasoned cast-iron. The “pre-seasoning” is actually paint, and it can and will come off if you, you know, actually use the damn thing.”

  Well, I appreciate the comment, cookingguy1974. Funny. You would think the manufacturer of the ‘pre-seasoned’ pan would give you a heads-up about that. Oh well, everything tasted good, and that’s what matters. Paint chips be damned.

  When I was looking for things to cook with Iron Mike (yeah, I named my skillet), I turned to the web. I had some chicken defrosted, so I searched for “cast-iron skillet” and “breasts.”

  Oddly enough, most of the search results pointed me to Amish porn sites (“Watch as Sister Margaret strips down to her last three layers of clothes—while she churns butter!”).

  I eventually found a recipe that looked promising and I tweaked it a bit. Then I browned the chicken in my own damned unwieldy cast-iron skillet, and I ‘finished’ the meat in the oven in the same skillet (for the novice cook, ‘finished’ is cooking lingo—it means ‘finished’).

  My take on going the cast-iron route? A real old-fashioned skillet allowed me to feel connected to generations of pioneers who cooked their vittles over a crackling wood fire.

  On the other hand (literally), real old-fashioned skillets can give you some wicked blisters. But there’s usually a price to pay for authenticity.

  Kitchen Mistakes

  Since I do all the cooking for myself and The Girlfriend, she only sees the finished product, not the often clumsy steps I had to take to get there. Sometimes, however, something goes wrong in the kitchen that you don’t realize until you’re already eating the mistake.

  I must say, up until now, most of my cooking screwups have been, for the most part, original and creative. I’ve advanced beyond the typical mistakes, like overcooking or undercooking.

  I do things like buying an oven thermometer and forgetting to put it in the oven. Turns out it’s not as useful in determining the oven temperature if it’s sitting on the kitchen counter.

  The most unusual mistake I’ve made involved my soon-to-be-renowned Rustic Maple Turkey Meatballs. Things seemed to be going fine, as I became one with my mixing bowl, using my hands to knead the egg into the ground turkey.

  Then I blend in the garlic, onion and celery, then some hand-crushed crackers, cracked black pepper, Himalayan salt, and of course, the maple syrup. You heard me, maple freakin’ syrup!

  I was feeling good about our overall meatball prospects, because I recently had figured out that with meatballs, it’s all about the density.

  Not dense enough and they just fall apart. Too dense, and they can develop their own gravitational field, and suddenly you have bits of your side dish orbiting each meatball.

  I finish communing with the pre-ball goop (I believe that’s from the French term, ‘goopée’), put it in the oven and an hour later we’re enjoying some Rustic Maple Turkey Meatballs©™.

  To be entirely honest, we only enjoyed nine of the ten meatballs. As I cut into my last one with my fork, I unexpectedly met resistance.

  I continued, actually sawing with the fork by this point, baffled by what could possibly have gone wrong with this one meatball.

  Determined to solve the mystery, I picked up the meatball with my hand, and inside I saw what looked like a note.

  I began imagining elaborate worst-case scenarios. Maybe someone working at the butcher shop is being held captive and slipped a plea for help into the ground turkey. Or maybe The Girlfriend, in a romantic mood, wrote me a poem and hid it in a pound of raw meat.

  The answer was, unfortunately, much more prosaic. In my zeal to mix everything thoroughly, I apparently neglected to take all of the butcher paper off the meat. I missed a piece about two inches square.

  And that’s when Inspiration slapped me in the face (because my muse is a dominatrix). I may have accidentally created America’s next great snack sensation—Fortune Meatballs!

  Think about it—why are marginally clever, mass-produced epigrams only available inside cookies? What if you’re craving a more . . . savory glimpse into your future? How about Fortune Meatballs! Once again, I’m a visionary!

  What if, at that corporate meeting, instead of the usual cold cuts and pretzels, you could have hearty meatballs with motivational slogans tucked inside? They’re Fortune Meatballs!

  Granted, there are some technical issues involving how best to get the fortune out of a cooked meatball, and I should probably have a lawyer look into the risk of litigation in case someone swallows their fortune (“Warning: May contain scraps of paper. Do not swallow paper.”)

  Maybe I could use rice paper—can you write on rice paper? I don’t know. I’m more of an idea man.

  Can you guess which meatball contains a special surprise?

  If you said second row, third from the left, you're right! Congratulations!

  I Dropped the Meatloaf

  I’ve mentioned meatloaf before (and of course meatballs, which, let’s be honest, are just little balls of meatloaf). At this rate, maybe for my next book, I should write EXCLUSIVELY about meatloaf.

  I’ll become a . . . meatloaf pundit (two words which, incidentally, have never been used in the same sentence before). I could appear on television any time there was breaking meatloaf news (“We’re joined live by CNN’s Meatloaf Correspondent”).

  Maybe it’s the concept that intrigues me. Let’s take some ground meat, but before we cook it, we’ll throw in some bread crumbs and…get this–we’ll shape it like a loaf of bread! It’s…ironic food! My point is, I have another meatloaf story.

  I was making a lamb meatloaf, and when it was nearly done, I wanted to see how it looked, and I gotta be honest. It looked like a picture from the cover of Bon Freakin’ Appetit. Or at the very least, Meatloaf Monthly.

  It was by far the meatiest, loafiest-looking meatloaf I had ever made, all different shades of textured brown with a honey-chile glaze in a pristine white Corningware dish. Then, I dropped it.

  Our language doesn’t really have an adequate curse word to express what I felt as it slipped out of my hands and shattered.

  I think I yelled some sort of bizarre compound word like “shitdamnfuckhell,” and for a minute or two I think time stopped, as I just stood there surrounded by shards of honey-chili glazed pyroceramic glass.

  One of the shards cut a gash in my foot, making me the only person in the history of cooking to injure his foot while cooking.

  note: I DIDN’T HAVE THE FORESIGHT TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THE MEATLOAF BEFORE ITS DEMISE.

  YOU'VE SEEN MEATLOAF BEFORE.

  USE YOUR IMAGINATION.

  But frankly, every injury I’ve ever had has been stupid. And although I’d like to blame the various neuro-muscular issues I’m currently dealing with, truth is, I’ve just always been a klutz.

  I have taken some specTACular falls. I’m talkin’ YouTube-worthy, email-the-video-to-your-coworkers ridiculous. And if I somehow manage to walk from one place to another without tripping, I’ll usually drop or spill whatever I was carrying at least once.

  JOBS AT WHICH I WOULD SUCK

  waiter

  surgeon

  juggler

  bomb disposal guy

  I just wish at least one of my scars had come from something I could brag about.I would love to regale friends with stories of the knee I blew out playing in the state championship, or the bum hip I got serving in combat.

  I’d even settle for a good bar fight story to explain some of my scars. But no.The following would be some highlights from my cavalcade of clumsy:

  Apparently (I was three at the time) I thought I could do a magic trick, so I pulled the tablecloth out from under a freshly brewed pot of coffee.

  A couple years later, a cousin thought it would be fun to swing me around by my arm, which promptly came out of its s
ocket.

  When I was seven, I was crawling from one box to another and dislocated my shoulder.

  At eight, I tested my pocketknife to see if it was sharp, so I tested it on . . . my thumb. Our bathroom looked like a scene from C.S.I.

  At ten years old, I jumped my bike over a hill the other kids were using in the neighborhood. Seems the other kids, though, held on to their handlebars, instead of having their bikes fly out in front of them.

  In college, I was so excited that finals were over, I ran out of a building on campus, and forgot how stairs work. Broken foot, crutches.

  I’ve broken a toe—the SAME toe—three times. What nimble-footed activity was I engaged in? Some sort of ‘Riverdance’ jig? Nope. Walking through a doorway.

  I have never been hospitalized as a result of my klutziness, and amazingly, I’ve never fallen down in the kitchen. Although from a safety perspective, I probably shouldn’t even be in the kitchen, since cooking typically involves using fire, handling knives, and…carrying things.

  But this story is about meatloaf, which, by the way, tasted fine. The presentation wasn’t what I wanted, and we had to eat it very carefully, but it was good meatloaf.

  Sometimes I Cheat

  The more I cook, the more I’m willing to try something new. I’m not exactly making oxtail soup, but if dinner at home used to be Denny’s, now it’s a little more Applebee’s. Minus the mozzarella sticks and annoyingly friendly servers.

  Some people enjoy eating foods they’ve never tried. I’ve never been particularly daring. I liked escargot (drenched in butter, but maybe I just like butter), but didn’t enjoy beef tongue (not so much the texture, more the concept, which seemed like sharing an inter-species French kiss).

  I found both buffalo and ostrich to be disappointing. I get that they’re lean, but I think meat needs a little fat for . . . what’s the technical culinary term? Oh yeah, flavor.

  Since The Girlfriend isn’t very adventurous when it comes to food, my mealtime ideas sometimes require a little convincing. And sometimes I find a great idea for dinner but don’t execute it very well.

  I found a recipe for meatloaf (of course) that used raisins, and I hyped it pretty hard to The Girlfriend. Talked about it all afternoon. Then I forgot to put the raisins in, and ended up serving meatloaf with a side of raisins, while muttering that I intentionally deconstructed the dish.

  Still, she knows that the best way for me to learn is to take risks, and most of the time the end results have been downright edible.

  Sure, once in a while I’ll decide to glaze a chicken breast with, say, almond butter, only to realize you can’t easily spread almond butter on a raw chicken breast, instead creating more of a…glob than a glaze.

  But I think of what I do as a kind of kitchen improv (“I need a suggestion for a vegetable you’d find in our crisper, and a type of pasta.”). And like with most improv, sometimes it clicks, and sometimes you wish you hadn’t sat in the front row for it.

  Last time we were at the market, we bought something neither of us had ever tried, but had seen on the teevee. Polenta. It’s a fun word to say. Has those warm ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ sounds—it’s a hearty-sounding word.

  Turns out it’s cornmeal mush, which sounded fine to me, but The Girlfriend seemed skeptical.

  Now, don’t misunderstand here—it’s not like I got ambitious and decided to buy some cornmeal and . . . mush it. No, we bought polenta because IT CAME IN A FREAKIN’ TUBE! ALREADY COOKED AND MUSHED!

  We just figured, if all we have to do is heat it in a pan, at least we’d know our first polenta would taste like polenta should taste. However that is.

  At this point, any foodie worth his or her fleur de sel is muttering “You should make your own polenta from scratch.” Yes, homemade polenta is simple to make, and I’m sure it tastes marginally better, but YOU CAN BUY IT IN TUBES—ALREADY MADE!

  The only way the whole polenta process could be any simpler is if a guy from San Gennaro came to our place and squeezed the tube into our mouths.

  To be fair, let’s look at both methods. I could . . .

  “Set the water on the fire in a wide bottomed pot and add the salt.

  When it comes to a boil, add the corn meal in a very slow stream, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to keep lumps from forming…

  Continue stirring, in the same direction, as the mush thickens, for about a half-hour (the longer you stir the better the polenta will be; the finished polenta should have the consistency of firm mashed potatoes), adding boiling water as necessary.

  The polenta is done when it peels easily off the sides of the pot.”

  Or, I could

  Open the tube. Heat what’s inside the tube. The polenta is done when it’s hot enough.

  In general, I would agree that making things from scratch is better. You’re more connected to what you’re eating, and it’s more satisfying to taste something you worked on for hours.

  There is one food item that is so ridiculously labor-intensive, I almost always choose the store-bought, pre-made version. I suppose I could

  thoroughly scrub and wash some potatoes

  spend what seems like most of the evening peeling the potatoes

  finely mince several cloves of garlic

  boil some water

  add the potatoes

  wait till the potatoes are mashable

  drain the potatoes

  add some milk

  add some butter

  add the garlic

  mash the potatoes

  Or, I could just buy some garlic mashed potatoes. Yes, it might be considered cheating. I know I’m violating a sacred trust here, but at the end of the day this should be a private matter between me and my potatoes.

  Footnote: In simple terms, I realized that polenta is basically Italian grits, and while I don’t normally enjoy ‘gritty’ food (“Mmm, that’s nice and gritty”), I enjoyed it. The Girlfriend . . . well, she gave me most of hers, but I’m sure that’s because she loves me.

  That’s Not Really Cooking

  When it comes to my culinary exploits, The Girlfriend, to her credit, has been willing to try every crazy idea I’ve suggested, even the ones that came with disclaimers:

  “I think this should taste OK . . . if not I can add some parsley or something.”

  “The recipe calls for three eggs and we only had one, so I tried to adjust the amount of everything else.”

  “I know the crust came out more spongy than flaky, but hey, the filling has chocolate in it!”

  She has also indulged me by being putting up with a lot more of the Food Network than anyone should have to endure. “They’re doing another season of ‘Food Truck Wars, honey!”

  It would be different if I were using what I learn on these shows in making dinner for us, but I can’t remember the last time I had to chiffonade some kale.

  I really should stop watching cooking shows on television altogether. First of all, if she knows I’m watching them, they set up unrealistic expectations on the home front.

  Also, it’s frustrating for me, because I’ll get inspired by something I see, and then I look in our pantry and fridge and realize I don’t have all of the ingredients the chefs use on cooking shows.

  But since The Girlfriend knows what I’ve been watching, we’ll have conversations like,

  “What did you learn to cook today?”

  “Oh, they made a lobster bisque with black truffle shavings. But . . . we’re having elbow macaroni with ground beef. Enjoy!”

  It must make you a little crazy to host a cooking show, because there isn’t usually an audience, and without one, you’re pretty much talking to yourself for half an hour. That’s what I would be doing anyway, so I guess I’m a natural!

  I thought I’d stumbled on a whole new genre of cooking show when I was in the other room and overheard the host say, “Let’s take a look at my breasts, now.”

  Unfortunately she was checking on some chicken, not cooking topless, but tha
t would be a great show. I can imagine the warning: “Mature audiences. Adult content. Mild splattering.”

  I also did a double take when I heard “It’s time for each chef to grab his wahoo,” but apparently that’s a type of fish.

  Cooking shows never seem realistic to me, because nothing ever goes wrong. Horribly wrong, like when I’m trying to make a beautiful casserole in carefully constructed layers and then decide “Screw it, I’ll just mix it all up and bake the hell out of it for an hour.”

  Sometimes when I’m putting a dish together, I’ll just grab a couple of random spices I haven’t tried and throw ‘em in, which I suppose could be risky . . .

  What if oregano and say, turmeric, when combined over heat, actually cause some sort of explosive reaction that takes out the whole kitchen? I just don’t know.

  Cooking for two has been an adjustment, because now my ‘experiments’ are her dinner-after-a-long-work-day. Cooking for someone else has also helped me understand why moms for centuries have yelled, “Get out of my kitchen while I’m cooking.”

  It isn’t that I don’t enjoy some company while I’m working. But for one thing, my kitchen is never as organized as the ones on TV.

  On top of that, I’m not organized, so sometimes I end up running around like a lunatic, frantically flinging things I’ve forgotten into pots and pans until our kitchen looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.

  And sometimes I might accidentally drop something on the floor that needs to go in the dish, and I might pick it up and put it back in the skillet. The heat will kill any germs, right? Nobody needs to know that happened.

  The Food Network hosts also never swear, which really makes me question their credibility. Showtime should launch a cooking show in which the chefs are allowed to say the things real cooks say at home.

  “Where the **** is my rolling pin?” “What the ****? This is moldy already?” “****, that’s way too much ************* rosemary!”