Atomic Nerds

I love food. I love reading about food, researching food, eating out, and searching obsessively for new recipes. What I can’t really do is MAKE food; for a person that owns two shelves of cookbooks (at least that aren’t perpetually floating from my desk to Stingray’s desk to the kitchen counters), I’m actually pretty inept in the kitchen.

Background: By the time I got old enough to where I was learning basic life skills- like how to do laundry without ruining my clothes or destroying the washing machine, how to insert medication into a reluctant animal, how to do basic mending (which never really took, to no fault of my mother), how to keep my computer from turning into a virus spawning device, and so on, neither of my parents was terribly interested in cooking. They both knew HOW to and could do it quite well when called upon to do so, but neither of them actually WANTED to, in that way of nineties adults everywhere at the close of the “only the poor and those wealthy enough to have nothing better to do with their time cook” era. I left home with some extremely basic cooking skills, mostly relating to the microwave and how to prepare a sort of all-purpose Student Chow involving scrambled eggs, rice, and bits of leftover meat and vegetables. I could feed myself, after a fashion.

Then I moved to New Orleans to go to college. I still wasn’t cooking, partly because I lacked basic skills and partly because the dorm kitchens were semi-perpetually closed as various of our co-residents set it repeatedly on fire as they wandered off to have urgent conversations while things were left on the stove. But at the same time, I was learning to eat- it’s actually quite difficult to get a bad meal in New Orleans without going to a mall food court or a university cafeteria, and I was intrigued to discover that there were such things as meals eaten solely for pleasure, not even of the guilty sort. Oh, I had a basic handle on this idea before- I certainly had my preferences among various options to fill the hole, with things that were starchy, salty, and fatty heading the list- but I didn’t have a palate. Over time in New Orleans, I began to develop one, up to the point that by my junior year, I was saving most of my spare money for once or twice a year trips to Commander’s Palace or Galatoires instead of things like new clothes.

Eventually, I moved out to New Mexico to join my long-term long-distance boyfriend Stingray. We determined that neither one of us really knew how to cook, but that one of us should- by a process neither of us remembers, Stingray got volunteered to become the one with the actual kitchen skills. He applied himself with the no-half-measures approach he usually employs, and after a fair amount of fumbling around (yes, there IS such a thing as way too many seasonings, no matter how good they individually are), he turned out to have some hidden talent in the field and became a more-than-competent home cook. I became the “research and development” end of things- or at least that’s how I put it. This approach had its drawbacks; aside from the obvious one of all the work being on him rather than shared between us, I had no real sense, when reading a recipe, for how long it would take to prepare or just what the pain in the ass quotient on it would be. I also tended to flag way more recipes for his attention than he actually wanted to fool with.

So, this summer I resolved to make it my new project: bringing my actual kitchen abilities in line with my overall food obsession. Stingray heartily approved, as it would both reduce his workload and give me a dose of reality when it came to storing and preparing food, plus give him a source of entertainment for the forseeable future.

So, with introductions and explanations aside, this is at least theoretically the beginning of a new easy postfodder source series: recipes and instructions from the point of view of someone who has a lot of theoretical knowledge but almost no kitchen skills- in short, very nearly the opposite of what people who write down recipes have in mind as their target audience. I know what a maillard reaction is on the molecular level, but I stare in paralyzed horror at instructions like “cook until done”. With that in mind, tonight’s installment is originally from Kalyn’s Kitchen, and I hope like hell Kalyn has a sense of humor about what I’m about to do to her recipe. It’s all out of love! Format to follow will be bits of the recipe-as-printed, followed by a mix of step-by-step instructions I worked out based on the actual process.

Recipe:
Twice-Baked Cauliflower

1 large head cauliflower
4 oz. low fat cream cheese (do not use fat free)
1 T butter (optional, original recipe called for 2 T and next time I would leave out the butter)
1/2 cup low fat sour cream (do not use fat free)
1/4 cup minced green onions
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
6 slices bacon, cooked very crisp and crumbled
1 cup reduced fat sharp cheddar cheese
(I used Kraft 2% milk sharp cheddar)

BUTTAH MAKES IT BETTAH*. I used the butter, though just one tablespoon as I was also using full-fat everything else. At least I think I was- I checked off the essential presence of some sort of sour cream, some sort of cream cheese (which would not be fat free for the same reason there’s no flying pigs in the freezer), and sharp cheddar cheese of some degree of fattedness. I’m not *fundamentally* opposed to reduced-fat dairy, but I think Stingray would burst into flames of sheer rage if, say, skim milk touched his lips.

Preheat oven to 350 F.

1. Step one: look at this instruction, realize the prep work will probably take your incompetent self far longer than preheating the oven will take, and skip ahead.

Cut out stem and core from cauliflower, and cut into small pieces. Cook in large pot of boiling water until cauliflower is tender, but not overly soft. Drain well and mash with potato masher, leaving some chunks. Mix in cream cheese, butter (if using), sour cream, green onion, Parmesan, and 3/4 of the bacon.

2. Note presence of a step involving heating water almost immediately after a long chopping-and-manipulating step, and then immediately after mixing a bunch of things. Carefully measure out every mixy thing except the bacon, which has yet to be cooked, and the green onions, which require an additional preparation step. Ransack the kitchen cupboards to find everything its own individual measurement device if you have to. Eyeballing measurements is for competent people. Set up a cutting board in the middle of your work space for the next series of steps.

Optional step: tread on the cat’s tail as soon as you’re done. He won’t be hard to find; he’s been right behind your heels ever since the cream cheese came out of the fridge. The entire household will be diverted by your mingled shrieks of agony and surprise.

3. Address the green onions. Examine the large block of knives for every conceivable kitchen purpose, and cautiously select the one without any serrations or mysterious indentations that’s a bit smaller than the huge chef’s knife your spouse the cook paid some dizzying sum for. Just like the Good Eater counsels, use the folded knuckles of your nondominant hand as a guide for your knife as you cautiously chop, using a rocking motion from the belly of the blade forward. Realize the chef’s knife actually WOULD have been a better choice after all. Realize the recipe actually calls for “minced” green onion after you achieve a pleasing pile of little green circles. Spend the next ten minutes awkwardly sawing at the pile, periodically pausing to resort them into a pile for better sawing, before eventually coming up with enough mangled greenery to fill the little 1/4 cup measure you dug up.

4. Confront the cauliflower. The first thing to do, after studying it from several angles, is to peel off all the leaves attached to the stem and surrounding the head. Then you can chop off the stem, using that big chef’s knife that you spurned before. Wash the cauliflower now that the dirt-catching leaves are out of the way, and convince yourself that’s why it wasn’t until now that it occurred to you to wash it. Stare dumbly from chef’s knife to core of cauliflower for awhile. Follow your spouse’s suggestion to use a paring knife to cut it out of the rest of the cauliflower. Marvel as it falls, more or less, into discrete conglomerations of florets.

5. This would be a good point to start the water boiling. This is a high altitude, it’ll take awhile- probably as long as it takes you to finish prepping the caulifower. Bring a vessel smaller than a stock pot and larger than a saucepan to your spouse for approval as a “large pot”. Insert water, turn burner between “high” and “medium high”.

6. After taking up your chef’s knife again, agonize over just what in hell the recipe means by “small pieces”. Vaguely resent the writers of recipes for not abiding by the same style, format, and above all detail required of college-level chemistry lab notes. Start out by attempting to chop the entire head of cauliflower at once, then realize the problem would be much better addressed macrofloret by macrofloret. Disassemble each one into a hasty translation of “small pieces”.

7. The water has come to a merry boil at some point while you were finishing step six. Very carefully use the back of your chef’s knife to scrape the entire variably sized mix of cauliflower pieces and particles from the cutting board into the boiling water. Wish you had cut your “small pieces” larger. Now determine the source of that alarming burning smell is a few stray vegetable bits that bounced haphazardly into the gas flame during the scraping process. Eventually, that smell will turn into a less worrying “cooking cauliflower” smell.

8. Stare into the bubbling pot wondering what a ballpark cooking time for “until tender, but not overly soft” is. Discover a strainer with a handle in one of the pots of stove-oriented kitchen utensils on the counter. Use it to periodically extract the larger of the small pieces and poke them with a fork. Eventually they will strike you as acceptably tender. Remove pot from flame. Re-attempt with hot pads this time; those handles aren’t as insulated as they look.

9. Pour vegetables and cooking liquid into a colander you have secured in the sink. Discover that this step actually requires much more finesse than it appears from the outside, and that Cooking Mama was right to apply all that emotional abuse making you practice it. Sadly, the Nintendo DS stylus motions do not translate into real-life motor skills, so be careful.

10. After you have assured yourself the cauliflower has achieved “well-drained”, transfer it to the most medium-sized of your selection of mixing bowls. Apply a potato masher. Apply a potato masher with significantly more vigor. Apply the potato masher with just as much vigor but a much shorter stroke after cauliflower bits rain down around you. Wish that you had cut your small pieces smaller. Eventually, it will strike you as appropriate for the description “mashed but still with some chunks”. Note for the future: there is no such thing as cauliflower that is no longer technically chunky unless you apply a blender, the puree setting, and some cream.

11. Reason that mixing will be easier if you add each ingredient in order of ease of mixing, stirring until well blended in between each ingredient. This goes: sour cream, minced green onion, grated parmesan (which you cheated by buying pregrated but still more or less fresh), butter, cream cheese. What’s missing? Oh yes- crumbled crisp-cooked bacon. Better get on that.

12. Realize you have absolutely no idea of the specifics involved with bacon. Consult spouse. After consultation, select a large and well-seasoned cast-iron pan and turn the burner between medium-high and high. Note that six strips would be over-crowding the pan and put down three. Stare at them for awhile. Poke at them with a fork to make sure they’re not sticking. Stare awhile longer. After further consultation, flip the pieces with your fork after the edges have begun to ripple, and transfer to a plate with a paper towel on it to drain and crisp. Aren’t you glad you thought to put a paper towel on a plate even though that part’s not in the recipe? Give yourself a pat on the back for that.

13. Apply the next three strips to the pan. Gosh, that grease sure is vigorous. Guess this is why your spouse almost always bakes it nowadays. Marvel as this set goes roughly five times faster than the previous three. Flip, wait slightly less than a minute, transfer. Now would be a good time to begin preheating the oven to 350 degrees as the original recipe instructed you to do first, with its carefree assumption that you could prep things with greater than glacial speed.

14. Beginning from the first piece of bacon you set down to drain, crumble the bacon into your mixing bowl of Stuff by hand. As you’re supposed to use three quarters of six strips of bacon, solve your fraction problem by breaking the fourth strip of bacon in two and using one half of that plus the other remaining two strips.

Optional: Man, those dogs have been patient even though your spouse would probably have shared a little of the cream cheese and sour cream with them way back in step 2. They’ve been much better behaved than the damned cat, who’s been yelling your ear off the entire time. Stayed out of your way and didn’t whine. Give those good dogs some bacon- you don’t really need ALL of it, do you?

Spread evenly in an 8 X 8 inch glass casserole dish. Sprinkle with cheddar cheese and reserved bacon. Bake 30-35 minutes, or until hot and bubbly.

15. Mix the crumbled bacon thoroughly into the rest of your bowl of Stuff. Pour and spread it evenly into the glass casserole dish you dug up, even though it is 9×9 and not 8×8. Crumble the rest of the bacon on top of your nice evenly spread surface of Stuff. Shake a full cup of shredded sharp cheddar over it, doing your best at the even part.

Optional: Give them a little cheese, too. Why not. They’re thinner than you are, and they’re still being good.

16. Observe that the oven is still some twenty degrees short of 350. Decide to live dangerously and pop the thing in there anyway, setting your kitchen timer for the upper range of expected time for “hot and bubbly”. Remove casserole dish when all parameters have been achieved.

17. Consume. Man, that’s good, and you made it yourself! It only took two hours, too. Aren’t you looking forward to next time? Maybe we’ll try stir-fry.

*Footnote as of having actually put the final product in our mouths: Wow, this came out rich. Leaving out the butter entirely actually WOULDN’T hurt anything from a sheer flavor perspective, effects on the waistline aside.

Posted Cooking Noob, Food |