Improvisation

I made dinner tonight. Yes, I know this is hardly earth shattering news: "wife cooks dinner". But it isn't the norm at our house. My husband is an excellent cook. He has quite a reputation among our family and friends for his culinary masterpieces. He reads a lot about "cooking science", which makes him very good at cooking without any recipe to guide him, and it almost always turns out fantastic. Lucky me! So I usually let him do the lion's share of meal prep around here. I figure it all works out in the end -- for example, I am the only one who has ever cleaned the cat boxes. PDM is always after me to cook more, but cannot seem to resist what I will call "back seat cooking" when I do. Tonight was no exception. He claims that it is a learning experience and he is just trying to help. I say he sucks the fun out of cooking, except that I don't find cooking all that fun. I guess it comes across as too much criticism and makes me not want to cook because apparently I am not all that great at it.

A funny thing happened with tonight's meal. We had some chicken thighs and the plan was that we'd use those somehow. PDM got home around 7pm and didn't feel like cooking, so I volunteered. I figured we could make "southwestern chicken stew" which is good with thigh meat, except we didn't exactly have all the necessary ingredients. We did a quick inventory. Since PDM is such a good improvisational chef, I decided to run my potential substitutions by him. The big one was fine by him - needed a 28 oz can of whole tomatoes; had a 14 oz can of diced tomatoes and a jar of chipotle salsa. Sure, that'll work. But the recipe also called for some corn, and we didn't have any. PDM throws out a suggestion - "hey, we have lima beans in the freezer". I take this to mean "we should use those lima beans in place of the corn." But what he really meant was the equivalent of "hey, we have some dog turds we could use." PDM does not like lima beans. Not even a tiny little bit. But since I like them and didn't get the joke, into the stew they went. And it all worked out very well. The stew was delicious, and PDM finally found a way he can eat lima beans without gagging. According to him "they really work in this", and it was a sincere statement. At least I think so. He might have just been trying to increase the odds that I will cook more in the future. You never can tell.

'Joe Froggers' and ribs

We tried some new recipes this weekend and had mixed success. The 'chinese sticky ribs' were a huge hit. We braised two racks of baby back ribs for three hours in liquid that included sherry, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, ginger, orange peel, cilantro, scallion, cayenne and garlic. Made a thick glaze by reducing the drippings with some jalapeno jelly. Then we basted the ribs with the glaze in the broiler to get it the rest of the way to delicious. Meat was falling off the bone and chock full of flavor. MMmmmmmmmmmm. And definitely sticky. It was a messy meal, and some of the best ribs I've ever had. I also made stir-fried broccoli in sauce with sesame seeds that was mighty tasty.

What didn't work was a batch of spice cookies called 'Joe Froggers'. I was initially intrigued by the chemistry of the cooking process (where you add baking soda to some molasses and it slowly doubles in volume - neat!), and the history of the recipe (it is an old New England tavern recipe originally made with seawater and rum, and sailors took these with them to consume at sea). Not only were they a giant pain in the ass to make (the stickiest batter I've ever worked with, the need to refrigerate the batter overnight, having to roll out the sticky dough and attempt to cut out cookies, and oh - I burned half of the first batch), neither one of us is crazy about the way they taste. The flavor is 'interesting', but that is like saying your blind date has a good personality. It is still disappointing. I'd say 'Joe Froggers' definitely seems like the kind of thing an old salt would like to eat. Me... I'm not an old salt.

UPDATE: Those 'Joe Froggers' are growing on us. They seemed to taste better the second day. We both ate a few last night, and as I packed some to take to work today I noticed that PDM had done the same. The molasses overtones are still stronger than I'd like, but the spice mix is unusual for a cookie and actually kind of good.