My apologies to everyone, the last few days have been rather hectic for me. I think the highlight of my week is going to be Tuesday, when, after spending two hours out in a large, snowy field with the dog because I couldn't find the toy she was chasing (a note to the woman who tried to help me, I appreciate the effort, but you were stomping around in snowshoes, and that just flattened everything). This was then followed up with another hour of my searching for my keys that apparently fell out of my pocket.
Today was spent with a metal detector in said snowy field attempting to locate my keys. No luck.
So after the hours yesterday spent in the cold and today spent trying to catch up on everything I missed out on doing because of hours spent in the cold yesterday, I'm just now really getting up to speed.
Plus, since that doesn't really answer a real question, I think I'll do one more.
To Erik: What got you interested in cooking?
I've never really disliked cooking, I just never really appreciated it for many years. I took an international foods course in high school ("hey," I thought, "that looks like an easy elective, plus I can have it right after lunch, so why don't I just eat lunch in there and make myself food?"), which is the first time I made pasta by hand, learned that different meat cooks to different temperatures, and a few culinary tricks from around the world.
However, it wasn't until 2001 that something caught my eye. I was mildly interested in cooking shows, I'd see a glimpse of Emeril now and again, enough to know who he was. I knew who Bobby Flay was. However, I was mostly living out of prepared foods and easy to assemble ingredients because it really didn't seem like any chefs on television were willing to start with basic steps and build up from there. Instead of teaching me how to butterfly a quail, why not teach me about how to salt water for pasta? Instead of showing me how to poach a lobster tail, let's start with how to work a grill?
And then I saw this:
In fact, it was this exact episode. A guy teaching a kid about how to scientifically build a sandwich, what each layer was for, and how flavors were supposed to combine. He demonstrated how to keep the insides from falling out, how to keep the bread from being soggy, and even how to cheaply make your own paninis without fancy equipment.
I was intrigued, but I never caught the name of the show. I had no idea who this strange man with his charts, models, and science was. So I looked it up online and discovered Good Eats with Alton Brown.
Surprisingly enough, I don't really think I've talked about Mr. Brown much on here, despite him being one of my idols. I'll discuss his podcast in an upcoming episode, but for now, let's focus on Good Eats.
Whether it was learning about scallops, cinnamon, gyros, or something as basic as how to make an omelet, this was the show I had always waited for. I had science explaining what happened when food cooked, why certain ingredients interacted well, and it was able to take something that seemed to be "grab some X and mix it in a pot with Y, just eyeball it" and was able to make it into clear cut directions for me to follow.
I filled an entire little notebook with recipes from the show before I realized there's a fan page out there that has all the recipes and transcripts of the episodes.
Most recipes I cooked for the longest time were Alton Brown ones, because they made me confident in the basic building blocks of cooking. I use his macaroni and cheese recipe because it's simple, basic, and I can explain why each step is important, even if it just looks like I'm stirring flour in the bottom of a hot pot.
I've since moved on, but I keep recording every rerun of the show I can, because the human mind can only recall so much and any time I see him break down a cooking puzzle or introduce a new, creative way to prepare something that doesn't cost a ridiculous amount of money, I get excited to cook all over again.
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