It didn’t take much for Keith and I to surpass the cooking skills of our parents. They kept us fed and spoiled us with the things we wanted, so it’s not necessarily a slight towards their ability to provide, just the ability to provide good food. My dad made many efforts to cook us new and yummy dishes, but his palette (and mine) has broadened dramatically since that time. We all would have benefited from a greater interest in ingredients back then.
It didn’t take much.
I liked following recipes closely, and then looking into the presented techniques separately. We both watched a lot of cooking shows and dreamed about good food.
Not impossible food. Not even fancy food. Just good food.
When I started cooking for myself, I discovered I liked more foods than I thought. Hmm, suspicious. Only knowing Kraft and its off-brand friends all my years, you would hear me say, “I don’t really like mac-in-cheese,” until a potluck-style celebration of life for Uncle Scott forced me to follow a recipe and bake a mac, and that mac was eaten before any of the other 2 or 3 macs at this celebration. When I made it again, and noticed the apparent techniques used, I understood why, and that’s when I humbly entered the phrase, “Not yo momma’s cooking” into my regular vernacular. Not my momma’s.
My Dad held some goofy ideas about food for a while, ideas that influenced my interests. Steak, my favorite protein, was only seen in restaurants and on the grill in the summer. In the colder months, I tried asking for it, and Dad would always say no, say it can only be done outside, say only on the grill. I remember it being a little dry and flavorless to me once (no seasoning) and mother chastising me for buttering the summer steak. Um, don’t worry about the 10 calories this pad of butter is gonna put on me as I eat a dry steak with a baked potato and a glass of milk. It’s called flavor, and that’s why what I do is not momma’s cooking.
I can cook a good steak to my liking at a high temp in a cast-iron pan on my stovetop during the winter. I did just that this week, and marinated it in stuff I found around the kitchen, because, you know, flavor. Keith, who infrequently enjoys beef, enjoyed quite a bit of it, and I felt like the Queen of England in my sullied apron. I made veggie fried rice with that steak, once reserved for the american/asian cuisine specialists, now whipped up with the random veg that seems to be in endless supply in the M&K household (I even added peas, which I loathe, but I’m trying to deal with that, and they were in the freezer, so in ya go you little green bastards). Not traditional. Not yo mommas. Definitely lots of salt and fat and stuff. Uh, Mama Mia!
Taco night? Perfection. No complaints. I prefer fresh jalapeno over pickled. 10/10. We all loved it.
It brought us closer as a family. I challenge one of you fools to state otherwise.
Dad didn’t like shepherd’s pie. There were always a few issues with this. First off, but not most importantly, it wasn’t shepherd’s pie we were talking about, it was cottage pie. That only matters if you care about those sorts of things, which, growing up, we didn’t. It was a dish I liked, and it always felt like it was sort of for me, but I sympathized with how much my Dad hated it. When I grew up and realized the honest differences between shepherd’s pie and cottage pie, I realized something else:
Momma wasn’t making either of those things!
This was cooked, drained, unseasoned ground beef, cooked, packaged mashed potatoes, and frozen corn baked for like forty minutes or until there is a tiny bit of color on the top. Serve with a salt shaker.
As a kid, I enjoyed the 3 non-threatening ingredients. My Dad would eat everything in separate dishes, probably to receive the calories and no other reason.
Where is literally all the other shit that makes it cottage pie, or (how dare she call it) shepherds pie?
I made cottage pie this week. Ground up the beef, peeled and mashed potatoes, used lots of veg (remember those DAMN peas?) and, yes, there was frozen corn.
Butter. Seasonings. Flavor. Cook until done. Did she ever look up a recipe in her life?
Dad has been experimenting with his own cottage pie. I love our growth.
She also boiled chicken. I wonder if she still does that now. Yeah, just completely throwing her under the bus for that one. Ma, boiled chicken is for sick dogs, not people!
Keith’s ma fancied the frozen chicken. He mostly eats salmon now, having never tried it prior to our meeting. We have similar knowledge of cooking, but Keith’s technical skills surpass my own. I dabble in things he does not, typically baking and things relating to dough. I like to follow recipes until I get a grasp on the techniques. Keith dives right into the fridge and doesn’t hold back. There has been a wide range of results from both methods.
I challenge myself to cook at the end of a long day, like my parents would have had to for me and my siblings. There’s almost always chicken or pasta, and usually enough variety in the fridge and cabinets to whip up dough for pizza or some kind of soup, so even on a lazy day with no special ingredients, I can think up something interesting.
We do stuff I don’t think either of our households did: save the bones, keep mirepoix on-hand, have a true circulation of ingredients and the staples, and most importantly, regularly attempt better recipes.
It’s not always easy, but it doesn’t take much, and it gets better if you learn a few things and get a sharp knife.
I think I’ll pick up some take-out on my way home tonight.
January 27th, 2024
Written by Randa 