My Culinary Education
I love to cook. I really love it. Its something that has always interested me, fascinated me. Not the science behind it, I’m just now beginning to have an appreciation for that, but the construction of food. Not just that, but the…fixin of food, as we in Tennessee say. It was magical to me as I grew up, though I never rolled up my sleeves to give it a try. At least, not much.
I remember learning how to fry an egg for the first time. I did it myself, as I have every step of my education thus far. I don’t know how old I was but it was fairly young. 12 maybe. The egg was horrible I’m sure, and burnt. I didn’t know about olive oils relatively low smoke point, or that high heat isn’t necessary for eggs. At the time I thought I hated butter. Imagine that, hating butter. It’s a sin, right? Nonetheless, I dove in. And I was proud. So I started frying bacon, sausage, eggs every chance I got. This wasn’t often because my parents, wisely, didn’t want a 12 year old playing with fire and oil.
I eventually moved on to pancakes. From a box. I essentially fried them, using so much oil and getting it so hot as to make them crispy and sweet. And more often than not, burnt. Once I had mastered these foods, or at least THOUGHT I had mastered them, I was confident that I was a breakfast machine. I had never heard of hollandaise sauce, and I thought scrambling eggs was sort of culinary heresy, so baking, boiling, poaching, etc… never even occurred to me. Though, being young, I think I can be forgiven that.
For a long time this was enough for me. It was a source of pride that I could make a fairly well rounded breakfast. Then, one day in my middle teen years, my mom had to take a trip. I realized that I was hungry and didn’t want breakfast, as it was dinner time. Being very confident, because again ,I was a breakfast machine, I dug through my mothers freezer. I found some country style pork ribs. So I cranked up my moms best non-stick skillet, threw in some olive oil, extra virgin of course, and put the heat on high. Then I threw the individual ribs in, still frozen solid, and moved them around for the better part of half an hour with a metal spatula, utterly destroying this skillet. As I recall, the ribs were tough, flavorless, and the best thing I had ever made. I was so happy! I had made dinner, all by myself.
After this I didn’t do much in the way of improving. For a long time I continued to make breakfast, burnt and overly fried, happy with the knowledge that I could COOK, and that was a rare thing. Of course, I didn’t realize that only at the very basest of levels was I actually cooking. I didn’t season, had no idea of proper heat control, everything I made was already done for me, straight out of a box. Just add milk! Or water, if your out of milk. Not exactly Iron Chef material. But it was a foundation, and one I’m glad I have. Not in actual cooking, not really, but in the desire to cook. My next step was in college, when I lived with a friend and we bought a grill.
