Cooking, like parenting, is all about trial, error
First, you make a sauce.
Long ago, when I was learning to cook, those five words would have sent me running to the phone to order pizza.
I got married at 21, had never boiled an egg. Cooking was the one chore my mother never let me try. Fine with me. I figured if I could read, I could cook. Isn’t that why God made cookbooks?
So, at 21, I traded a wedding-gift blender for “Joy of Cooking” and a fancy apron, because not only did I want to cook good, I wanted to look good doing it.
Yes, I was young.
Then I pulled back my hair, put on some Stevie Wonder and proceeded to peel, chop, dice, blend, beat, batter, bake, broil, steam, poach, saute, stir-fry, spill, splash, butcher, burn and blaspheme pretty much everything I touched – I was actually cooking !
The apron went in the rag bag. The kitchen floor looked like scorched earth. My fingers were permanently scarred.
But slowly, over time, 20 years or so, I learned to cook. I’m not great, but I do all right. We never go hungry and I seldom feel a need to follow a recipe.
I still love cooking and cookbooks, but only for browsing. Whenever I get an urge to cook, I take one out, turn a few pages, and wait for the urge to pass.
Imagine my delight, while visiting my son and his wife and their 1-year-old, the Firecracker, when my daughter-in-law asked me to teach her how to make white chicken lasagna.
I’d made it for dinner one night and everybody liked it, even the Firecracker, who rarely likes anything edible.
“He ate it!” she said. “You have to show me how to make it!”
Showing is lots more fun than telling. But I had to leave, so I promised to send instructions. Here they are. It’s easy.
First, you make a sauce. Melt a stick of butter in a pan. Chop an onion and a clove of garlic; cook them in the butter until brown. Sprinkle with a half cup of flour, stir until smooth. Add three cups of milk, stirring until it’s thick like, you know, a sauce.
Stop. Go get the Firecracker, who just woke up screaming from a nap. Strap him in his high chair and give him your cellphone to distract him. Be sure to turn it off so he can’t dial 911.
Oil a 9- by 13-inch baking dish. Pour a little sauce in the pan. Lay three uncooked lasagna noodles in the pan; add a little more sauce.
Stop. Take the phone from the Firecracker, tell the dispatcher to disregard the 911 call. Give the Firecracker a sliced banana.
Pull the meat off a dead chicken. (Buy one fully cooked at the deli.) Pile half the meat on the noodles. Add more sauce, the rest of the meat and another layer of raw noodles.
Stop. Put the dogs outside before they throw up the banana the Firecracker fed them. Give the Firecracker the TV remote.
Spread two cups of ricotta on the noodles. Add a few handfuls of raw spinach, more sauce and another layer of noodles.
Stop. Take the remote from the Firecracker and try to cancel his pay-per-view selection of WrestleMania’s “Hell in a Cell.” Give him some Goldfish crackers and a piece of cheese.
Top the lasagna with two cups of shredded mozzarella and any remaining sauce, sprinkle with Parmesan, cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for an hour.
Put the pots, pans and utensils in the sink to soak. Put the Firecracker in the tub to wash the bananas and cheese and Goldfish out of his hair.
When you finish, dinner will be ready. See, wasn’t that easy?
Cooking is a lot like parenting. You can read all the books you want, but the only way to learn is to stay in the kitchen, take the heat, try and fail, lick your wounds, and try, try again.
At least with cooking, if you don’t like the results, you can always order a pizza.
Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394 Henderson NV 89052 or at www.sharonrandall.com.
