COOKING WITH RUFUS

Installment # 1

LET’S GET STARTED

By Rufus v. Rhoades

            The other day I was thinking about the countless number of wives who have said of their husbands, on the subject of cooking, “I’m not sure he even knows how to boil water.”  The husbands who fall into that category  (I suppose women might, too, but far less frequently) are depriving themselves  of a great way to spend their leisure time, as well as some pretty good food.

            So, let me talk to those of you who only go to the kitchen to get a glass of water, but would like to do something a little more active around the kitchen.  You probably respond to your wife’s comment that you don’t do any cooking because you don’t know how.  The odd thing is that you don’t need to know how.  Cooking is pretty intuitive.  I tell you that because not all parts of what we call “cooking” involve the stove.  One part of cooking is simply combining things to make an edible dish.

            For example, suppose your wife says, “will you make a salad for dinner, dear?”  Rather than replying “I don’t cook”, say “sure”.  Having told her you would do that, now what?  Take a moment to stop and think.  What is a salad?  It’s lettuce, primarily—plain, old, simple lettuce.  You know where that is, so grab it, tear (don’t cut) it into pieces, throw it into a bowl, add some dressing that’s there in the frig and voila! You’ve made the salad.  Plop the bowl on the table and say, rather smugly, “Anything else, hon?”  (You might have the smelling salts nearby in case she faints).

            Pretty simple, huh?  My point is that cooking is not some secret magic act that your wife does each night. It’s really pretty simple stuff. So, back to the salad.  After she recovers, your wife thanks you for what you did but comments that the salad is pretty boring.  Well, she’ right; plain lettuce is pretty boring.  Let’s kick it up a bit.  To do that, you use that part of what we lawyers have in abundance, your imagination.  What goes in a salad?  You’ve had a thousand salads, so you know.  There, on the counter, is an avocado.  Great, let’s add some avocado to the lettuce.  To do that, cut it in half and separate the two halves, setting the side that still has the seed back on the counter, (half an avocado is usually plenty for two people).  We’ll get back to that counter half in a minute.

            Look at the half without the seed.  It should be a lovely green; not dark.  If it has dark spots, cut them out and discard.  Skin that half.  Take a sharp paring knife, slice through the skin three or four times (down or across; doesn’t matter) and slowly pull each section of skin away from the flesh.  Slice the avocado one direction and then cut across it in another direction to get cubes of avocado.   Throw the cubes into the bowl with the lettuce.  How about some spices?  They will work, but let’s wait until we learn a bit more about spices to add them to the salad.

            Further search of the kitchen should reveal a tomato.  Is it ripe?  No one likes a crunchy tomato, so make sure the tomato is soft and gives a little when you lightly squeeze it.  Slice it (now that you are the salad maker, invest $10 or so in a tomato knife; much easier to use on a tomato, especially a really ripe one, than a normal non-serrated paring knife) and toss it into the bowl with the lettuce.  Add a few grinds of black pepper and you no longer have a boring salad.

            That isn’t the end of what you can do with a salad; the number of potential additions are pretty large.  You could add cucumber, scallions (green onions), hard boiled egg, roasted beets, and a host of other ingredients. You might even add croutons, which you can either make yourself (well, maybe later, on that) or purchase at the grocers. All that limits you and your salad is what you have available.

            So, now you have cooked.  Not too hard, right?  The drawback to what you did is that you are now the official salad maker for the home.  That’s really not such a bad fate and, actually, a harbinger of things that we will do together.  Did you have a feeling of satisfaction to be able to put an edible and good dish on the table?  I hope so, because you will find, if you stay with me, that cooking and producing a good meal is a very satisfying and rewarding way to spend your time.

            Let’s return to that half of the avocado that is on the counter with the seed still in it.  The flesh of avocado starts to turn brown when exposed to air after a few hours.  It won’t turn brown in the salad bowl, assuming that you have dinner within 30 minutes or so of making the salad, because it won’t be exposed to the air that long.  But, overnight, it will.  One way to retard that conversion is to cover the flesh in a light film of lemon juice.  That light film won’t protect the avocado for long, but it will retard the deterioration long enough to use the avocado again, the next day.

            What about that pesky seed?  How do we get rid of it? Actually, we don’t have to, if you would just as soon cut around it. Let’s assume, however, that you do want it gone. The simplest way to remove the seed  is to take a large carving knife, hold the avocado half with large kitchen tweezers (DO NOT hold it in your hand; hospitals have records—lots of records—of folks who severed a finger or at the least cut it deeply when the strike at the seed went painfully wrong) and give the seed a solid whack with the sharp side of the knife.  That should embed the knife deeply enough so you can twist the seed out of its flesh.

            So, whether or not you intended to be, you are now a cook and you became one without ever touching the stove or looking at a recipe.  Nevertheless, what you did is clearly classified as “cooking”.  Your wife will never again say, “I don’t think he even knows how to boil water.”

            This is the first in a series.  I hoped you enjoyed it and will look forward to the next one in our series.

Want to talk?  Try me at rockeyrodgers@gmail.com