The First Lesson

I had one of those days last week when life knocks you flat on your face without recourse. Work was exceptionally stressful, and by the time I got my home, my belly ached so much that I was afraid to stomach anything at all.

These are not the sort of days where you want to come home and cook. So we couldn’t have picked a better day for Andy’s first cooking lesson.

Honestly, I’d completely forgotten my plan to have Andy prepare dinner for me with only three “life lines” for help, but on the commute home he was eager to find out what recipe I’d selected for him to try.

Fun as it may seem to hand him a recipe for lobster-stuffed beef tenderloin with béarnaise sauce, torture was not my goal.

Rather, I wanted to give Andy a recipe with a manageable set of familiar ingredients – including herbs and spices – that involved a few different cooking stages and a variety of techniques. The idea was to see how he approached a recipe and what basics he was lacking.

We settled on a simple recipe from the latest Fine Cooking Annual for Mexican Tomato Rice and Beans. Andy is the farthest person from BEAN FAN that I can imagine, so I don’t know how he agreed to it. He must have been to terrified of his cooking lesson to remember he hates beans.

That’s where my work ended. I told Andy he had to make the grocery list and shop for the ingredients. He balked at first (“You want me to do that too?!”), but then carefully read through the recipe and made his list – checked it twice – and he was off.

What luxury! My roommate gone for the summer, my boyfriend off shopping for dinner, my apartment empty save for my new kitten, Ginger. All I had to do was relax and unwind from the day with my cat in my lap. Maybe I’ll never cook again!, I thought.

But Andy was back from the store, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t help but peek over his shoulder while he got started. I quickly disregarded the “life line” rule – I figured I had a vested interest in making sure my meal was edible, so I may as well be available to offer unending advice.

The first step was to cook the rice. Andy’s an old pro at cooking rice, so this task was a freebie. As I watched him reach for the dry measuring cups to portion out the water, I quickly intervened with the Pyrex to give him a dry/wet measuring lesson.

He then had quite a bit of work while the rice cooked: chopping garlic and jalapeños, draining the tomatoes (remembering to save the juices for later), fetching fresh oregano from the garden, and tracking down the cumin and chili powder.

When Andy was ready to sauté, he was impatient to get the veggies into the pan. It’s important to get your pan hot before you add your oil. Otherwise, you’re oil will get too hot and break down by the time you’re ready to cook, and you’ll end up with burnt food (in my experience). I also feel that the food absorbs too much of the oil if you don’t add it when the pan is good and sizzling.

Andy gave me a skeptic look, as if I was somehow making this up to prolong his uncomfortable cooking experience, and added the veggies to the pan too early. But its not such a great sin. He was pretty flawless through the remainder of the food prep, even with me breathing down his neck!

In went the beans and the seasonings with the aromatics, then the liquid from the tomatoes, which simmered until fully absorbed by the beans. The last step was to toss in the tomatoes, fresh herbs, and rice – and he was done!

We ate the rice mixture folded into flour tortillas, with cheese, salsa, and sour cream on the side. Andy refrained from the cilantro (one day I will convince him that it’s not the vile herb he thinks it is). Fancied up or on its own, the rice was delicious!

The only thing that tripped Andy up was reading the recipe. Some of the preparation notes were in the ingredients list themselves (“One 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed”) which threw him for a loop.

Clearly, if this was the only snag, I need to pick a harder recipe next time! Try this one for yourself when you need a light summer meal.

Mexican Tomato Rice & Beans (courtesy Fine Cooking Annual)

Yields 6 cups; serves 6-8

1 c. medium-grain white rice
2 c. cold water
One 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes (petite-cut if available)
2 Tbs. olive oil
6 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 medium jalapeño, seeded and finely chopped
One 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed
2 tsp. kosher salt
2 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. chili powder
¼ c. finely chopped fresh oregano
¼ c. finely chopped fresh cilantro

Serve with tortillas, shredded cheese, sour cream and salsa.

In a 1-quart saucepan, combine the rice and water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, cover, reduce the heat to low, and cook for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand, covered, for another 5 minutes.

While the rice steams, set a fine sieve in a bowl and drain the can of tomatoes. Pour the tomato juices into a 1-cup liquid measure. Add enough water to equal 1 cup.

Heat a 10- to 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Pour in the oil and stir-fry the garlic and jalapeño until the garlic browns and the jalapeño smells pungent, about 1 minute.

Add the black beans, salt, cumin, and chili powder; stir two to three times to blend and cook the spices, about 30 seconds.

Stir in the tomato juice and water mixture and bring to a boil. Adjust the heat to maintain a gentle boil and cook, stirring occasionally, until the beans absorb much of the liquid, 5 to 7 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, oregano, cilantro, and cooked rice, and cook, stirring occassionaly, until the rice is warm, 1 to 2 minutes.

Serve immediately.

"If you can read, you can cook."

My mother once bestowed this little gem of wisdom on me in her trademark, no-nonsense tone that lets you know she doesn’t accept any excuses for kitchen inadequacies.

She herself is a fabulous cook, having grown up on a cattle ranch where it was her task to prepare lunch for a slew of hungry ranch-hands everyday. When she was 14, her picture appeared on the cover of Sunset magazine, riding in a horse train through the Cascade Mountains of Washington state to cook meals for city-dwellers on summer vacation.

My mom gives the most gorgeous wedding cakes you’ve ever tasted as gifts, throws gourmet dinner parties for 16 without breaking a sweat, and packs a turkey fryer and key lime pie on camping trips. She is the cook I admire most in the world.

Mom isn’t the only one in our family to make your taste buds dance. My grandmother is famous for rummaging through a fridge I would deem totally void of any dinner options and wowing us with the meals we didn’t see. My dad’s buttermilk biscuits are to die for. My brother’s pie crust prowess is renowned.

I know not everyone is as lucky to grow up with the promise of perpetual good meals. At times I’ve wished that my family wasn’t so food-centric, and that everything on the table wasn’t so tasty, and belly-busting and worthy of just…one…more…bite! It would certainly have been easier to lose my baby fat.

But food will always be how our family communes, so fighting the sticks of butter in the mashed potatoes and the five dessert choices per holiday is really no use.

Now I cook at home most nights to save money, be healthy, and take my stress out on chopping vegetables. But really, I just can’t bear to watch my boyfriend Andy eat pasta with cold sauce and Kraft parmesan night after night, which is the only meal he prepares in my absence. How he survived before we met is still a mystery to me.

Which leads me to the inspiration for this food blog: I am going to teach my boyfriend how to cook. And lucky him – I’m going to publish his trials, tribulations, and triumphs.

He can read – so he can cook!

I know there are other guys out there – smart, capable guys like my boyfriend who are deathly afraid of cooking. And let’s not discriminate; there are lots of girls out there who know their way around a drawer full of take-out menus better than a cookbook.

It’s not just the pure cooking technique that Andy needs help with – he’s lacking the basics. How do you read a recipe? Where do you find ingredients in the grocery store aisles? What does it actually mean to mince garlic, parboil green beans, or lace up a chicken? We food-literate folks take it for granted that recipes are written by other foodies that speak our language. He just needs a translator.

In my research to see if other food bloggers are writing about the same thing, I came across this Letter From an Unwilling Cook on Heidi Swanson’s 101 Cookbooks blog. The writer had recently been romantically disenfranchised from his partner and chief meal provider, and is now left at age 60 trying to find his way around the kitchen. He’s not happy to do it, but he knows he must for self preservation.

Reading it made me realize that Andy must feel a lot of the same bewilderment when faced with cooking from an actual recipe as this man in the letter. I also realized I’d been too hard on him when I shoved a recipe at him in the past, with no instruction, asking him to pitch in on dinner. He didn’t read it through, and slightly ruined the dish. I was frustrated with him at the time, but now I see that he didn’t know any better.

More than anything, I want Andy to share my love of cooking. I want him to understand my joy in crafting a super tasty meal for our closest friends – nourishing and bringing pleasure. But I won’t let him forget that I still want him to do the dishes!