The Non-Expert
Culinary Pet Peeves
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week: A reader’s struggle with most recipes’ underestimated preparation times sets off ROSECRANS BALDWIN’s kitchen-related rage, including death threats against Ruth Reichl.
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Question: Hi. I know you guys do kitchen things sometimes, so I thought I’d ask, am I crazy for finding magazine recipes to be completely off the mark for the cooking times? Recipes that say they take 30 minutes take me an hour and a half. Who comes up with these things? They make me so angry! Hope all’s well. —Katie
Answer: I feel your pain! I too have done prep work well past the recipe’s total cooking time! I rage on your behalf and sharpen my chef’s knife—if you ask me to carve out Ruth Reichl’s heart I shall, I shall!
To be serious for a moment, I’ve done zero responsible journalism for your question. But surely the cooking times in recipes are generous allowances for an average home cook to:
1) Prepare all recipe steps in a smooth, uninterrupted flow of brand-new appliances, difficult techniques, and organic, locally grown, heirloom ingredients.
2) Not sweat, not swear, not drink.
3) Plate, garnish, and serve!
What the allotted time does not include (but I always find myself trying to squeeze into the few seconds I save by neglecting to wash the vegetables):
1) Unpacking the 14 pots I have to remove from my cabinet in order to reach the goddamn frying pan.
2) Sweating, swearing, spilling, drinking, reheating, testing, mucking up, more drinking, shouts at the wife, apologies to the wife, drinking, lots more sweating.
3) Burning everything because I had to change the music—iTunes randomly played Phish after Iggy Pop, causing small sections of Brooklyn to simultaneously self-combust.
But never mind my problems, let’s address yours. Or, let’s address yours obliquely by returning to mine: Here is my Mantra No. 1 when I enter my kitchen: “I love to cook! I hate to cook!” (Reichl, I sharpen my knives for you!)
Because this is my central paradox as a home cook: I have no other hobbies that provide as much relaxation or quiet, crafty pleasure as cooking. Nor does anything test my self-control as much as not setting myself on fire when I can’t reproduce Gourmet photo-spread-worthy dishes in the “total cooking time” in my total asshat kitchen before eight people show up! Invited! Because, in fact, it’s impossible. The times are never correct because I have never once made the cut-off time. Reichl, you may change your editor’s letter photo every month, but I know what you look like. And I will find you. And I will force you under threat of exfoliation-by-beak-knife to truly whip up that pancetta-cider glaze in three and a half minutes.
Carried away, I know. I apologize to Ms. Reichl, but I restate my point: Cooking is only relaxing when all issues, anxieties, and pet peeves are left in the living room. Here’s a partial list of mine, and my solutions, in case they help:
Peeve: The cutting board slides all over the place because it has no fancy rubber nubbins on its bottom, making it infuriatingly difficult to chop tomatoes once they start leaking juice all over the counter and my pants.
Solution: Wet a paper towel and lay it down underneath the board, causing the board to get suctioned into place. Great for wiping away herbal detritus, and patting own brow when finished.
Peeve: The recipe recommends sautéing garlic in olive oil until it turns golden, “about five minutes.”
Solution: Are these people cooking on their car hood? Garlic in oil that’s been over a medium flame for more than a minute won’t take more than another 90 seconds to two minutes max to cook golden. More than that? It’s burned! Your meal is ruined! Eat human hair and blankets, loser!
Peeve: Someone instructs you that you’re eating something improperly. Or someone tries to embarrass you for adoring something you find scrumptious, or for not appreciating some esoteric food.
Solution: I could invent an incredible range of punishments for people who are so insufferable—and there are millions of them, motor-mouths all, and a few even live outside New York—but all my tortures would be illegal, with none involving an indelicately inserted roast chicken, because I like roast chicken.
A woman I worked with in Florence, Italy, who had lived there previously and spoke fluent Italian and was very proud of her Italian-ness, instructed me that no decent Italian dunks his bread in olive oil, and to do so is embarrassing and gauche. To this day I remain a hearty dunker of bread in oil, and my memory of her profile has gained ten pounds per year, but for a moment I felt guilty, like I had made some horrible cultural gaffe. Then I got over it and mocked her behind her back (and now in public). Like margarine on your cake? Good for you—I recommend two slices! Like potato chips with ketchup? Have two bags for lunch! And if you’re like me and you put mayo on everything, let’s have lunch next week!
Thus, Mantra #2: “I am what I eat, not how I eat it.”
Then there are the snobs, the blowhards who know more about who’s working at which restaurant than they do about their children’s report cards, who insist we must eat and love everything fancy and strange, particularly when it’s either elaborately prepared and foamy, or coquettishly homespun and cut from the parts of a pig even a pig wouldn’t eat. They’re the jerks who force their dinners under your nose, who chastise you for not trying an extra helping of bacon ladened with lardo, who get self-righteous about offal. Hate sushi? Hate carpaccio of anything? Hate the windbag at your table forking foie gras onto your plate, insisting all dislikes can be overcome for the good of gluttony when you’re about to vomit?
So do I.
(These are the same characters who would make you feel guilty for certain bands you loved when you were 16. Shame on them: I will die with a “Foie Gras? Nah!” sign in my hand, and at the wake they will play Phish.)
The point of eating is to satisfy yourself, and hatred is a dish best served with mayo. Leave these people behind when you enter your kitchen with Mantra #3: “I am what I eat, not what Eric Ripert ate last week.”
Peeve: Wine parties where you’re handed a charm for your wine glass so you can distinguish it from other glasses in case you carelessly leave your glass on the mantle.
Solution: OK, this has nothing to do with yours or my kitchen, because we are decent people, but it should be addressed. Obviously the best solution is to leave immediately with as much wine as you can steal, but that’s not always polite. Another might be to switch people’s charms when they’re not looking, but that can lead to group herpes.
The best option is to apply some self-righteous reason: People! What is so wrong with just plain enjoying wine that you have to dress up the occasion with party favors? Why not drink and dance and screw? Why the many complicated expensive-airplane-catalog-rabbit-crappers to open a bottle when a waiter’s corkscrew works better, costs less, and looks rad on your belt? Why fuss up something fun with trinkets! Damn you!
Peeve: A recipe for roasting chicken calls for that roasting rack that you keep meaning to purchase.
Solution: Cut up some fingerling or red potatoes to make speedbumps on the bottom of your roasting pan, then set the chicken on top. When it comes time to flip the bird, you won’t lose any skin from it sticking to the bottom, plus you’ve got a tasty, juice-soaked side when you’re done.
Peeve: The recipe, for grilled food, goes out of its way to say that a gas grill will impart a “gassy” flavor.
Solution: This is ridiculous—not only do millions of good grilling Americans who vote prefer gas grills to charcoal fires, I have also not once in a zillion times tasted any butane in my burgers. Perhaps the recipe author ate their food over the grill and thus inhaled some scent of gas? Or, perhaps, they’re a total snob?
Grill with gas and enjoy, and let the suckers pay big bucks for their aromatic-my-ass hardwood fires.
Peeve: The recipe assumes you agree with big-city culinary standards
Solution: Don’t get me wrong, I love my fleur de sel as much as the next loser, but when recipes call for “sea salt” I want to barf, particularly since it’s kosher salt that’s the standard for most chefs, and sea salt’s only practical benefit is its big salty crunch when it’s added as a last-minute garnish (rather than cooked and dissolved and rendered expensively useless).
I am reminded of my grandmother-in-law, who has spent her life preparing delicious feasts in Durham, NC, and who recently commented that she’d never heard of anyone cooking with olive oil. I was astonished, and also ashamed. It’s good to remember that by cooking we’re simply preparing a small gift to our stomachs (and hopefully those of our friends’ and lovers’) and that, as proving grounds for insider wonk status, the culinary realm is a particularly lame one in which to prove our mettle.
Also: Using expensive cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil for cooking isn’t cost-effective—save it for garnish, dressings, or last-minute drizzles, and use cheaper oils for your sautéing.
Question: Hi. I know you guys do kitchen things sometimes, so I thought I’d ask, am I crazy for finding magazine recipes to be completely off the mark for the cooking times? Recipes that say they take 30 minutes take me an hour and a half. Who comes up with these things? They make me so angry! Hope all’s well. —Katie
Answer: I feel your pain! I too have done prep work well past the recipe’s total cooking time! I rage on your behalf and sharpen my chef’s knife—if you ask me to carve out Ruth Reichl’s heart I shall, I shall!
To be serious for a moment, I’ve done zero responsible journalism for your question. But surely the cooking times in recipes are generous allowances for an average home cook to:
1) Prepare all recipe steps in a smooth, uninterrupted flow of brand-new appliances, difficult techniques, and organic, locally grown, heirloom ingredients.
2) Not sweat, not swear, not drink.
3) Plate, garnish, and serve!
What the allotted time does not include (but I always find myself trying to squeeze into the few seconds I save by neglecting to wash the vegetables):
1) Unpacking the 14 pots I have to remove from my cabinet in order to reach the goddamn frying pan.
2) Sweating, swearing, spilling, drinking, reheating, testing, mucking up, more drinking, shouts at the wife, apologies to the wife, drinking, lots more sweating.
3) Burning everything because I had to change the music—iTunes randomly played Phish after Iggy Pop, causing small sections of Brooklyn to simultaneously self-combust.
But never mind my problems, let’s address yours. Or, let’s address yours obliquely by returning to mine: Here is my Mantra No. 1 when I enter my kitchen: “I love to cook! I hate to cook!” (Reichl, I sharpen my knives for you!)
Because this is my central paradox as a home cook: I have no other hobbies that provide as much relaxation or quiet, crafty pleasure as cooking. Nor does anything test my self-control as much as not setting myself on fire when I can’t reproduce Gourmet photo-spread-worthy dishes in the “total cooking time” in my total asshat kitchen before eight people show up! Invited! Because, in fact, it’s impossible. The times are never correct because I have never once made the cut-off time. Reichl, you may change your editor’s letter photo every month, but I know what you look like. And I will find you. And I will force you under threat of exfoliation-by-beak-knife to truly whip up that pancetta-cider glaze in three and a half minutes.
Carried away, I know. I apologize to Ms. Reichl, but I restate my point: Cooking is only relaxing when all issues, anxieties, and pet peeves are left in the living room. Here’s a partial list of mine, and my solutions, in case they help:
Peeve: The cutting board slides all over the place because it has no fancy rubber nubbins on its bottom, making it infuriatingly difficult to chop tomatoes once they start leaking juice all over the counter and my pants.
Solution: Wet a paper towel and lay it down underneath the board, causing the board to get suctioned into place. Great for wiping away herbal detritus, and patting own brow when finished.
Peeve: The recipe recommends sautéing garlic in olive oil until it turns golden, “about five minutes.”
Solution: Are these people cooking on their car hood? Garlic in oil that’s been over a medium flame for more than a minute won’t take more than another 90 seconds to two minutes max to cook golden. More than that? It’s burned! Your meal is ruined! Eat human hair and blankets, loser!
Peeve: Someone instructs you that you’re eating something improperly. Or someone tries to embarrass you for adoring something you find scrumptious, or for not appreciating some esoteric food.
Solution: I could invent an incredible range of punishments for people who are so insufferable—and there are millions of them, motor-mouths all, and a few even live outside New York—but all my tortures would be illegal, with none involving an indelicately inserted roast chicken, because I like roast chicken.
A woman I worked with in Florence, Italy, who had lived there previously and spoke fluent Italian and was very proud of her Italian-ness, instructed me that no decent Italian dunks his bread in olive oil, and to do so is embarrassing and gauche. To this day I remain a hearty dunker of bread in oil, and my memory of her profile has gained ten pounds per year, but for a moment I felt guilty, like I had made some horrible cultural gaffe. Then I got over it and mocked her behind her back (and now in public). Like margarine on your cake? Good for you—I recommend two slices! Like potato chips with ketchup? Have two bags for lunch! And if you’re like me and you put mayo on everything, let’s have lunch next week!
Thus, Mantra #2: “I am what I eat, not how I eat it.”
Then there are the snobs, the blowhards who know more about who’s working at which restaurant than they do about their children’s report cards, who insist we must eat and love everything fancy and strange, particularly when it’s either elaborately prepared and foamy, or coquettishly homespun and cut from the parts of a pig even a pig wouldn’t eat. They’re the jerks who force their dinners under your nose, who chastise you for not trying an extra helping of bacon ladened with lardo, who get self-righteous about offal. Hate sushi? Hate carpaccio of anything? Hate the windbag at your table forking foie gras onto your plate, insisting all dislikes can be overcome for the good of gluttony when you’re about to vomit?
So do I.
(These are the same characters who would make you feel guilty for certain bands you loved when you were 16. Shame on them: I will die with a “Foie Gras? Nah!” sign in my hand, and at the wake they will play Phish.)
The point of eating is to satisfy yourself, and hatred is a dish best served with mayo. Leave these people behind when you enter your kitchen with Mantra #3: “I am what I eat, not what Eric Ripert ate last week.”
Peeve: Wine parties where you’re handed a charm for your wine glass so you can distinguish it from other glasses in case you carelessly leave your glass on the mantle.
Solution: OK, this has nothing to do with yours or my kitchen, because we are decent people, but it should be addressed. Obviously the best solution is to leave immediately with as much wine as you can steal, but that’s not always polite. Another might be to switch people’s charms when they’re not looking, but that can lead to group herpes.
The best option is to apply some self-righteous reason: People! What is so wrong with just plain enjoying wine that you have to dress up the occasion with party favors? Why not drink and dance and screw? Why the many complicated expensive-airplane-catalog-rabbit-crappers to open a bottle when a waiter’s corkscrew works better, costs less, and looks rad on your belt? Why fuss up something fun with trinkets! Damn you!
Peeve: A recipe for roasting chicken calls for that roasting rack that you keep meaning to purchase.
Solution: Cut up some fingerling or red potatoes to make speedbumps on the bottom of your roasting pan, then set the chicken on top. When it comes time to flip the bird, you won’t lose any skin from it sticking to the bottom, plus you’ve got a tasty, juice-soaked side when you’re done.
Peeve: The recipe, for grilled food, goes out of its way to say that a gas grill will impart a “gassy” flavor.
Solution: This is ridiculous—not only do millions of good grilling Americans who vote prefer gas grills to charcoal fires, I have also not once in a zillion times tasted any butane in my burgers. Perhaps the recipe author ate their food over the grill and thus inhaled some scent of gas? Or, perhaps, they’re a total snob?
Grill with gas and enjoy, and let the suckers pay big bucks for their aromatic-my-ass hardwood fires.
Peeve: The recipe assumes you agree with big-city culinary standards
Solution: Don’t get me wrong, I love my fleur de sel as much as the next loser, but when recipes call for “sea salt” I want to barf, particularly since it’s kosher salt that’s the standard for most chefs, and sea salt’s only practical benefit is its big salty crunch when it’s added as a last-minute garnish (rather than cooked and dissolved and rendered expensively useless).
I am reminded of my grandmother-in-law, who has spent her life preparing delicious feasts in Durham, NC, and who recently commented that she’d never heard of anyone cooking with olive oil. I was astonished, and also ashamed. It’s good to remember that by cooking we’re simply preparing a small gift to our stomachs (and hopefully those of our friends’ and lovers’) and that, as proving grounds for insider wonk status, the culinary realm is a particularly lame one in which to prove our mettle.
Also: Using expensive cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil for cooking isn’t cost-effective—save it for garnish, dressings, or last-minute drizzles, and use cheaper oils for your sautéing.
—Published July 22, 2005
