Cooking

Somewhere, I am sure, there is a simple secret to good cooking. I would like someone to find it for me and explain it to me in the simplest terms available to mankind. And please do not start with, “Just follow the instructions.”

I have always followed the instructions. I really have. When my mother told me to “drizzle cold water slowly” into the pie crust dough I did exactly that. I drizzled cold water slowly into the silver mixing bowl until the mound of flour and salt became first a small treeless island in a lagoon of cold clear water, then the highest portion of a white turtle’s back as it submerged itself in the sea of cold cloudy water, and finally disappeared altogether as I drizzled water to the very brim of the two-gallon silver mixing bowl. I stopped then because I suddenly wondered how I was supposed to mix the flour with the water. I thought, “Shoot! I did this wrong. I was supposed to use a bigger bowl.”

A decade later I was sent to Hawaii to help my aunt and grandfather for the summer while my uncle served a tour in Iraq. My duties, I was told, were to drive my grandfather anywhere he needed to go, keep his house clean, and fix his meals. A reasonable enough request for any nineteen-year-old granddaughter, and for a time it seemed I would actually be able to dispatch said duties without incident. I sliced my grandfather’s papaya every morning and fixed his cup of instant coffee. For lunches I proudly assembled his turkey and cheese sandwiches and mixed a pitcher of juice. In the evening Auntie came and fixed dinner and chatted the whole time about different ways I could improve every meal. I always listened as I cut the lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers for the salad and imagined actually preparing these simple meals myself.

One weekend Auntie needed to leave town for a conference. She knew I had run in with some glitches in my cooking history and promised to write out the most basic instructions for three dinners while she was away. The first evening I set about fixing dinner an extra half hour early to ensure that everything would be set and ready to go at six when my grandfather was accustomed to eating. True to her word Auntie had indeed prepared three double-sided full-length pages of easy-to-follow instructions. Dinner 1 in short told me to take the pre-made lau-laus from the fridge, steam them for five minutes in the microwave, and serve them with salad.

Lau-laus are a Hawaiian dish consisting of chunks of pork wrapped in some kind of leaf and steamed so that the leaf keeps the pork moist and tender and the entire thing is savory and delicious. I quickly made the salad and juice and even found the microwave steam kit that Auntie instructed was on the second shelf next to the lettuce spinner. All I needed to do was put the lau-laus in one at a time for five minutes each. Or, as the case came to be, all I needed to do was find the lau-laus and microwave them for five minutes each. I searched. I removed each item from the fridge and set it in order on the table until the fridge was empty. Then I returned each item to its proper place in the fridge. No lau-laus, pre-made or otherwise, were anywhere to be seen. Beginning to panic, I opened the freezer and voila! There on the top in plain sight were the much sought lau-laus. Granted, there was only one and there were supposed to be two, but by now I figured I could just eat leftovers.

I followed Auntie’s instructions to the letter.
1. Unwrap plastic around lau-lau. Done.
2. Place lau-lau in microwave steamer. Done.
3. Fill microwave steamer with water. Cover with lid. Done and done.
4. Microwave on high for five minutes.
5. Check center of pork with chopstick to make sure is hot enough.
6. Serve. And make sure Grandpa eats his salad.

Having successfully reached step four I figured I was more than halfway to fixing a good meal. I put the steamer with the lau-laus in the microwave and set it heating for five minutes. After five minutes I moved on to step five and tried poking the center of the pork with a chopstick. It didn’t. That is to say, the chopstick did not enter the lau-lau. Fair enough. Five more minutes it is! My logic was irrefutable. If the lau-laus were not done in five minutes and they were supposed to be, clearly the problem is that five minutes is not enough.

Five minutes was indeed not enough. Nor was ten. Or fifteen. Or even twenty. In fact, if you ever need to know, it takes between twenty-five and thirty minutes to fully thaw and completely destroy frozen lau-laus. The inedible mass I finally placed before my grandfather consisted of three chunks of rock hard pork which could not be penetrated with either teeth or knife and a few strands of shriveled, blackened leafs. He ate his salad. 

And for the next two nights Grandpa and I ate out.

A year later I attempted to entertain a couple of friends with an evening of dinner and cards and asked for a simple dish with simple instructions. I was given one. Stir-fry vegetables. Very easy. I had learned this time to keep my mother handy and not let her go off to take a nap while I followed the instructions I had last been given. With my cell phone braced on my shoulder I described the meal exactly as it was forming. I was doing marvelously well. The hamburger was cooking well. I had not under or overcooked it nor had I under or over seasoned it. My mother assured me that the hardest part was pretty much done. I had already cut up the carrots and green beans, and my mother said simply that all I need do is throw them in with the hamburger and let them steam for a little. I did just that. I tossed the carrots and beans on and smiled as the steam began to rise. Mother had told me to stir everything up so that the food cooked evenly and was proportionately mixed. So I began to stir. Small hitch: I was trying to stir-fry vegetables with a flat plastic spatula in a round-bottomed wok. Well that’s not anything to worry about. Simply find a better stirring utensil. I gave one more try with the spatula, shoving down to the bottom of the pan and trying to lift the meat to the top. It didn’t work. So I left the spatula there in the bottom of the pan and went in search of either a spoon or chopsticks.

But nary a chopstick nor a stirring spoon could be found in the house. I searched every drawer, every cupboard. Nowhere did we have anything that would work. Some five minutes into the search I found a stirring spoon in the dishwasher and spent three or four more minutes cleaning it off. I was determined to make this meal come out , so I had not entirely abandoned the stovetop. I checked over my shoulder every minute and was reassured that the food was not burning. There were no billowing clouds of smoke, no telltale scents of charred hamburger. The food looked quite colorful in a mound in the wok with the spatula sticking jauntily out the side. How happy I was that I had found a replacement cooking utensil in under ten minutes and the food was not burnt! I wondered, though, at a new smell I was beginning to detect. Somewhere in the apartment someone seemed to be burning plastic. I was quite sure of it. And of course I was right. I was indeed burning plastic there on the stovetop at the bottom of my nicely cooked hamburger and vegetables.

The spatula was completely melted. And melted to the spatula were bits of my formerly perfect meal.. I refused to admit defeat and finished cooking the vegetables with the stirring spoon I had wasted so much effort finding. It was no use. Every bit of painstakingly cut carrot, every beautiful diagonally sliced bean, every carefully browned meatball tasted the same: Burnt. Plastic. Spatula.

In the three years that followed I safely avoided any attempt at cooking. I lived alone in an apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo for one year and subsisted on apples, breads, and yoghurts with the occasional dinner at a curry house. The following year I lived at home and fixed cereal and milk when it was either too early or too late for a hot meal from my mother’s kitchen. When I finally moved out, my apartment came equipped with three roommates all of which turned out to be capable and excellent cooks as well as wonderful people. I contributed ingredients and kept a shelf stocked with canned fruits and granola bars. A few months into that arrangement I met the most wonderful man in the world and entered into a most agreeable eternal arrangement in which it was decided that for the first few months at the very least he would cook and I would not.

This was more than satisfactory to both of us. Brian turned out to be quite the natural chef, with the ability to tweak recipes and add ingredients the book did not call for and still come out on top. I bragged to all my friends, coworkers, and fellow academy cadets whenever any of them jibed me about cooking for my husband. After all, how many of the twenty-eight husbands present were capable or willing to fix lemon-herb chicken with homemade mashed potatoes and peas and dessert to follow? That I could not prepare such a meal myself was immaterial.

What became material was that Brian did not know how to fix miso soup and had not yet had the chance to try when he got sick. Miso soup is famous for being delicious, nutritious, and simple as chicken. I was taking no chances this time. I consulted not one but three cookbooks and wrote down instructions from my mother as well as from the backs of both of the two ingredients’ cases. Miso requires only water, miso (a seasoning paste), dashi (a seasoning powder), and tofu if desired. With no fewer than six sets of instructions I confidently tackled the challenge.

In one pot I coked some noodles so that Brian would not have to drink just broth and tofu, towards which he held some doubtful reserve. In the second I added the ingredients exactly as the recipe called for them. I worried, though, that there was not enough and quickly added a few more cups of water to the broth. It looked a little thin but I was sure it would still come out all right. After all, how many times had I seen my own mother adding water and things willy-nilly to recipes? Just to be safe I tried tasting some after it had been simmering for three minutes only to wind up with a burnt tongue and no idea what the broth tasted like.

Certain this time that I had succeeded I called Brian to the table and served him a bowl of what turned out to be tasteless hot water on bland noodles with tofu and a half-hearted piece of seaweed.

I am sure somewhere, some ancient Japanese cook is rolling over in his grave and wondering how? How? How does one possibly mess up dissolving two types of seasoning in one pot of water?

In the meantime, Brian brought home some MREs. Complete with instructions.