Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Adventures in Grown-up Land

Sometimes I have to be a grown-up and it is difficult.

For example, I have begun cooking for myself for the first time. This in of itself is difficult- sometimes I don't eat until 10 pm because I am cooking for hours! Anyway, I have found that there are some things about food that I was not blessed with an innate knowledge of. Earlier in the year I tried freezing my produce to ensure its long life- instead I killed it in one night. Last week a recipe I was making called for the use of a bay leaf. I thought it was odd that it just said "add one Bay Leaf" and not "crumple up the bay leaf"....so that is what I did. I took out a bay leaf and crumpled it into little pieces and put it in my pasta- I assumed it would get soft with the sauce. Fast forward 3 steps and the recipe says "remove bay leaf and serve"..."Shit!" I can't remove the Bay Leaf, it is in tiny little pieces.

So here I am, three days later, eating my pasta for lunch and chewing every bit thoroughly so I can find those nasty bay leaf bits and spit them out before they scratch my throat!

4 comments:

D.B. Echo said...

You know, I've been doing that with Bay leaves for years, and I consider myself an experienced cook. Never occurred to me that I'd get the same flavor by leaving it whole. Next time I'll try that!

If you kill produce by freezing it, you can always puree it later, to make cream-of-whatever!

Kid Krusader said...

Thanks, that makes me feel better. I assumed it was something that everyone knew :)

Anonymous said...

A eso se le llamaria tener un ANTIdon para la cocina...cuando preparan pasta y le ponen laurel a la salsa, a mi me gusta chupar la hoja (entera) y depsues sapararla.

Uno de mis compañeros de piso, cuando prepara pasta hace la siguiente salsa: pone en la sarten abundante salsa de tomate frito y para darle mas consistencia, añade quesitos para untar o fundir, muchos, entonces la salsa se le hace espesa y despues trocea salchichas y las añade....Yo, la verdad, es q no suelo cocinar pasta, aunq me encanta. Prepare hace poco y para acompañar puse: gambas peladas, con nata espesa, limon y caviar. Pris preparo una salsa con bechamel y salmon..mmmMMMmmmMMmmm.

Y una ultima sugerencia rapidisima con arroz: preparas el arroz y despues simplemente le añades ricotta y atun, esta rico.

Espero q te sirva de algo, yo a veces tb juego a ser adulta, pero siempre JUGANDO.

Kid Krusader said...

Mmmmm... thanks for the recipies carolina. Maybe I will experiment with sucking on the bay leaf and breaking it up. I sent your response to my mom to make sure I understood what you said and that part confused her a lot....hah