How to Cook

Fearlessly. Incrementally. Ad lib. That’s how we cook.

My mother used to say “if you can read, you can cook.” Surely that’s true: following a recipe isn’t very hard, and the result is usually better than anything you can buy in a restaurant.

Cooking goes beyond reading, though. Eventually it arrives at creativity: at making it up.

La Maya gave me a couple ears of some corn she bought at a roadside stand whose proprietor said they would be wonderful if you just cooked them long enough. Yesh. This corn is white and hard and, when raw, flavorless: the sort of thing, I’m sure, that led humans to feed corn to their livestock.

Coincidentally, my teeth hurt.  The temporary crown the dentist’s assistant applied to the tooth His Dentisthood ground down to a nubbin hurt, and it was making all the teeth in my upper jaw think they hurt so much I couldn’t chew on a damn thing. Hence: soup.

Soup, soup, wonderful soup!

Picked up a cebolla cafe at the Mexican market this afternoon—if you speak my language, you would call it a yellow onion. Raided the pantry: a tin of cheap Target canned tomatoes; another of canned beans, a canister of bulk rice. Invaded the refrigerator: remains of a head of red cabbage. Back yard: parsley, marjoram, thyme, sage, carrots growing long in the carroty tooth. Explored the freezer: spinach, peas, the dog’s veggie mix of broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots.

What to do with a cebolla? Dice it and sauté it slowly, over low heat, in olive oil, in the bottom of a stock pot. Add some chopped garlic (ajo); continue to cook slowly.

Cut the tough, strange corn off the cob and throw it in with the cebolla and ajo. Let it keep cooking slowly. Mince the garden herbs and throw them in with the cebolla and ajo and maize. Let it continue to cook slowly. This is where we get the “incremental” part.

After a while, when it looks like the cebolla is soft and golden and maybe even beginning to brown a little over that very slow heat, open the can of tomatoes and dump the contents into the pot. Take a wooden spoon or whatever you have to hand and break open the tomatoes. Stir. Cover and continue to cook slowly.

Now add a fair amount of homemade chicken-beef broth, which you cooked up some time ago. Stir. Add a splash of cheap red wine from the bottle standing on the countertop. Put in a half-cup or more of rice. Stir. Continue to cook slowly, covered.

Slice the cabbage into strips.

Go into the garden and pull up a bunch of carrots. Wash these well; cut them into bite-sized pieces. Place the tops and trimmings into the compost. Let the cut-up carrots sit on the cutting board with the sliced cabbage until the rice appears to be about cooked.

When you think the rice is coming onto cooked, add the cabbage and carrots. Continue to cook slowly, covered.

About the time the rice is looking almost soft enough to eat, add the cabbage and carrots. Let these cook slowly another short while, until the cabbage brightens up in the way that some veggies do when added to hot liquids.

Open the can of beans. Dump them into a strainer or colander and rinse off the liquid from the can. When it appears that the rice and the fresh veggies are just about cooked, add the beans.

While they are heating through, feed the dog.

Then feed yourself with the elixir that is in your stock pot. Add whatever seasonings and condiments please you: yogurt, sour cream, croutons, herbs, wine, whatEVER.

That is how we cook.

😉