I am bad at preparing food
My roommate knows how to cook. We have a vast array of spices (assembled by her and her previous roommate) and when she cooks, I watch as she looks through them, considers, and makes her selection. She also knows how long to sautee vegetables for and what flavors work best together. She loves reading through, making, and adapting recipes, but she also knows how to cook by intuition.
I cannot do any of these things. There are a few dishes that I can make, and I know how to read, so if I were to try a new recipe I would probably not fail at it. Probably.
Last night I failed. Ali and I were discussing the different ways to cook the copious eggplant that our CSA has been sending lately, and she seemed surprised that I planned on steaming it above the quinoa I was cooking. My attempts to sautee it had failed in the past, so she suggested I salt the eggplant first, let it sit for five minutes, then brush off the excess salt and sautee away. I decided to scrap the steaming and try this salt-then-sautee tactic.
It was difficult to eat, even with extra quinoa. I used too much salt. Much too much salt. I guess in addition to learning the basics of cooking, I need to learn how to fix utterly botched attempts at cooking.
On numerous occasions, my boyfriend has watched me zealously dress a salad or sautee vegetables with vinegar and make the food barely edible. He is confused as to how I can make the same mistake so many times, and I am too. Maybe it's my love of vinegar being expressed far too aggressively. Maybe it's my lack of care/effort/skill. Maybe I should just eat in restaurants forever.
But we have this CSA every other week, and tonight I will again pick up a box full of vegetables, some familiar and some confusing. Hopefully with a little more reading and a little more thinking, I'll become at least functional in the kitchen, if not brilliant.
I cannot do any of these things. There are a few dishes that I can make, and I know how to read, so if I were to try a new recipe I would probably not fail at it. Probably.
Last night I failed. Ali and I were discussing the different ways to cook the copious eggplant that our CSA has been sending lately, and she seemed surprised that I planned on steaming it above the quinoa I was cooking. My attempts to sautee it had failed in the past, so she suggested I salt the eggplant first, let it sit for five minutes, then brush off the excess salt and sautee away. I decided to scrap the steaming and try this salt-then-sautee tactic.
It was difficult to eat, even with extra quinoa. I used too much salt. Much too much salt. I guess in addition to learning the basics of cooking, I need to learn how to fix utterly botched attempts at cooking.
On numerous occasions, my boyfriend has watched me zealously dress a salad or sautee vegetables with vinegar and make the food barely edible. He is confused as to how I can make the same mistake so many times, and I am too. Maybe it's my love of vinegar being expressed far too aggressively. Maybe it's my lack of care/effort/skill. Maybe I should just eat in restaurants forever.
But we have this CSA every other week, and tonight I will again pick up a box full of vegetables, some familiar and some confusing. Hopefully with a little more reading and a little more thinking, I'll become at least functional in the kitchen, if not brilliant.
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