Cooking

Like a typical male, my cooking for the most part has been limited to the grill.  Steaks, chicken and hot dogs were the extent of my cooking prowess.  Recently though, I have found myself in the kitchen a lot more and I have expanded to the list of items that I can call upon to whip up in a moments notice.  A lot of pastas have made it into the repertoire.  Yes, I know.  How hard can boiling water be?  Well, given that assessment of the situation, I started doing a little more and experimenting with recipes I am now saving as I run across them.  (Based on that last statement, I am pretty sure my man card will not be renewed at the end of the year.)  I have actually learned to enjoy the process of cooking, which typically includes an open bottle of wine and the tunes going.  This is of course just to get the creative juices flowing.


Now for those of you who do not know, I come from a Cuban heritage, which has a unique diet.  It is all fried.  Steaks?  Fry them up!  Pork?  In the pan!  Got some bananas over here.  Hell, fry those as well.  Obviously being on the small island and isolated from the rest of the world due to the Castro regime, they must not be aware of the cholesterol problem that is plaguing the rest of the humans on this planet.  That being said, my grandmother just turned a 103 on said diet, but I digress.  My mom is an incredible cook.  These cuban restaurants that you go to in town have nothing on her and what she can make.  Her breaded steaks are legendary, but then again, there really never is a bad meal in her kitchen.  Also, you will never leave hungry.  If there 6 people for dinner, then she makes enough for 25.  Just in case I guess.

So, given that I am a novice in the kitchen and having someone with such great talent at my disposal, you would think that I could get some help in making some meals that were not as simplistic.  I emailed my mother the other day to get recipes for her black beans and tres leches dessert so I can make it for dinner the other day and I got to tell you it is like prying information out of a CIA agent.  She literally sends me back a list of ingredients.  No measurements.  I got the same kind of instructions as I get from my kids when I play XBox with them.  Most of the information, but something is always held back.

So I call her up to get a little clarity and I get the old "just add a splash" of this and "throw a dash" of that.  Seriously??  What the hell does that mean?  She goes on to explain that she doesn't measure anything and that she just cooks by sight.  Well, unless she is planning on sending me her eyes, I got a whole lot of nothing going on.  Part of the instructions were to beat some egg whites to create the frosting for the dessert.  Well, maybe it was in the spanish to english translation, but I was beating my ass off for 15 minutes (you have dirty minds) until I called her and she asks why I am not using a blender?  HMMM, let's see?  Maybe it is because you didn't tell me to!  Outside of the faulty pressure cooker that resulted in black beans exploding in my kitchen (sorry about your pants Kate), the meal seemed to be a relative success.  My son gave it an 8 out 10.  I asked about the rational for the scoring and he said he had to take a full point off for the exploding beans.  OK, that one is pretty valid.  The other deduction though was more to the stand point that it is just not abuela's (for you gringos out there, abuela is spanish for grandmother).  You know what?  Not only was it hard to argue that point, but I had to agree with him.  There is something about the way your mother does things that becomes the standard for you for the rest of your life.  It's not that the food I grew up with is better because my mother is a better cook than your mother (even though she is), but because it is your mother's cooking.  It can never be duplicated, even if you had a decent freaking recipe to follow.