Lessons 2-4: Noah, the Egg, and Shrimp from Taiwan

Admittedly, I feel a wee bit self-conscious since I know that there are a handful of you out there actually reading this (thank you, to each of you). I was inspired by reading Julia Child's My Life in France and the new film Julie and Julia that just came out (which you all should go see) and said to myself: "self, you can do this too, even though you barely know what the internet is or how it works." So here I am and here are the variety of lessons I've learned in the past 24 hours as I've taught myself to cook...well:

Lesson 2: Noah and the Vegetables
Through the age of 18, I was a faithful Sunday School, Church, and Youth Group attendant (all three, each week). So imagine my great frustration yesterday, as I read pages 173-272 of The Professional Chef and realized I'd been lied to about Noah and his arc. You see, yesterday I decided to give myself a boost of confidence: "Laura, this isn't going to be that hard. You know lots about cooking and know more ingredients than most people. Why don't you quiz yourself in The Professional Chef on all the meats, fruits, and vegetables that exist?" And so I did, and so I failed my quiz -- royally -- and realized that Noah did not just bring two of each 685,320 animal species but also one or two of each 7,326,814,052 vegetables, fruits, grains, and herbs. Holy moly. So they left this piece out at Church and I feel that you all ought to be privy to the truth -- there's a crapload of other things Noah had to stack on the arc and as best as I can tell, the vast majority of them were tugged from the ground or picked off a tree. Let's start with meat: I successfully identified lamb, quail, veal, beef, pork, octopus, squid, lobster, variety of crab species, blue mussels, Cherrystone clams, and venison. And most of these things were all skinned and chopped up, so this was harder than it sounds, mind you! Within meat, I failed at the following: identifying the approximately 20 cuts of meat each that come from pork, beef, venison, and lamb (I got bone marrow and tripe right, interestingly). And I also failed at poultry, but only because of the 685,320 species on the arc, 681,987 are apparently forms of chicken or cousins to chicken. A dead, plucked bird looks like a dead, plucked bird. Apparently I am not savvy enough to know the difference between the Buddhist duck, Moulard duck, chicken, Squab, and Guinea fowl. (And don't get me started with fish ... didn't do well there either). So this brings me to the pinnacle of this particular lesson: if you're ever looking for a confidence boost, do not quiz yourself on identifying vegetables, herbs, and fruits listed in The Professional Chef. While it sounds easy, you will stare at things like Gooseberries (with and without the husk), Chayotes, Salsify, Fiddlehead Ferns and Malanga Root and think to yourself, "how did anyone ever realize they could eat this strange thing?" Of the 7,326,814,052 fruits/veggies/grains/herbs, I correctly identified approximately 16. They really should tell you the full truth about Noah's job in Sunday School.
Lesson 3: Eggs Can Swim
I'll be brief, the lesson learned here is that I've been cooking eggs -- ALL eggs -- wrong my entire life. I realized this about poached eggs in the film Julie and Julia when Amy Adams cracks a raw egg into a pot of open, boiling water with no net or gadget of any kind to keep the egg together. Three minutes later, she scoops out a perfectly poached, coagulated egg. Who knew! My brother and I LOVE poached eggs; my mom makes them in a heavenly way, always cooked perfectly with the yolk runny (but not too runny). But we grew up watching my mom use a special little pan to poach our eggs: it was a sauce pan filled with water, and then a little grate was placed ontop of the pan, and then four small little cups sat inside the grate (the cups held and poached the eggs). She'd top each egg-in-the-cup with butter, cover, boil, and voila -- a delicious poached egg. So naturally this is the way I've always done it. But yesterday, in my pursuit to get a culinary education, I was reading Larousse Gastronomique (which is like a 3,000 page food dictionary that's been around for a couple hundred years and weighs three pounds less than I do) and read that eggs can swim, just as I had seen in Julie and Julia. Poached eggs at least. You're supposed to just drop them in a big pot and let them be free, no life jackets or ropes. So then I decided to read about the fried egg, the scrambled egg, and the hard-boiled egg to see what magic they could do. In short, I've been cooking those wrong too. I'll spare the details and let you read Larousse Gastronomique on your own. To summarize, only poached eggs can swim independently; other eggs need some form of arm floaties.

Lesson 4: Don't Buy Shrimp from Taiwan
Angie chose the meal last night: Chipotle Shrimp Tostadas. (FYI: this recipe is SUPER easy and also healthy with a few adjustments). I've cooked this one about a dozen times; we like it because it's fast, pretty healthy, and easy to make. Here's the recipe, again from Food and Wine: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/chipotle-shrimp-tostadas#
You'll note that my picture posted looks a bit different than the one on the webpage; that's because my personal recipe has several adjustments (I bake the tortillas vs. fry them as a healthy alternative, use two-to-three times the amount of ingredients mentioned, and I mix all the ingredients [minus shrimp] into a slaw). In any case, it's yum and you should try it. And if you don't have chipotle chile powder, you can use cayenne but I really recommend the chipotle stuff -- it's smoky, delicious, and surprisingly, a lot less "hot" than cayenne. Now to the shrimp: we shop 3/4ths of the time at Harris Teeter and 1/4th at Whole Foods. Shrimp 100% of the time come from Harris Teeter. This will have to change. The reason we (used to) procure shirmp at HT?: they have buy-1-bag-get-the-2nd-bag-free deal on shrimp about every other week. We get frozen, large Tiger shrimp (about 25-30 shrimp per bag). Since each bag costs about $25, the buy-1-get-1-free deal rocks. In any case, as I was thawing the shrimp last night, I noticed on the label the phrase "farmed in Taiwan." I don't know much, but I knew this was bad news: as a rule of thumb, the closer the animal/fruit/veggie originally lived to you, the better. The last geography course I took was in 5th grade, but I know for sure that Taiwan is not close to DC. So I picked up my iPhone and went to a handy, free new application that I recently downloaded called "Seafood Watch" which helps you choose the most sustainable, eco-friendly fish at the grocery store. I quickly looked up Shrimp (imported farmed) to see in red, "AVOID." This likely comes as a surprise to no one; essentially, the way these shrimp are farmed causes a ton of pollution from the processing farms, destroys natural habitat, and, typically, isn't very hygienic since the shrimp are over-populated and swimming in tiny spaces together. The application recommends US-farmed shrimp as a good alternative, since we have laws to minimize the negative impacts of the aforementioned bad things.

So ... Lesson 4: make Chipotle Shrimp Tostadas, but with shrimp that used to live someplace near you (or at least in the same country). AND get an iPhone and download the Seafood Watch app. The end.

PS -- tonight I am making a vegetarian meal for those of you who prefer Noah's veggies to his animals. Plus, pizza dough from scratch for the first time. Wish me luck!

Lesson 1: Grilled Bread Doesn't Make Good Leftovers

Three days ago, I moved back to D.C. from Queens, NY where I live and work during the summer. After two nights of indulging myself in the restaurants I'd missed for 8 weeks, I ventured back into the kitchen to cook my first meal in three months. The result: Grilled Chicken Sandwiches.

But not just any Grilled Chicken Sandwiches! -- the organic chicken is marinated in orange juice, the bread is grilled on my roof top deck, and the sandwich is smothered in a delicious remoulade topped by shaved lemon slices and arugula. This particular chicken sandwich was accompanied by a little salad, which was intended to be arugula. However, to my dismay, Harris Teeter -- our local grocery store -- had sickly looking arugula (only one good batch, which I snatched to put on the sandwich; this was tres disappointing since arugula should still be in season). So instead, I grabbed one bunch of red leaf lettuce and escarole, neither or which I had played with before, chopped it up, and sprinkled the salad with lemon juice and olive oil.

The recipe is here: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/grilled-chicken-sandwiches-with-remoulade-and-shaved-lemon. (I recommending trying the recipe as-is once and then playing with all the ingredients to get it just the way you like; my remoulade is now a bit different than the one here, but it was a great starting place).

Since I am not at a place in my cooking where I can make up full meals off the top of my head, I rely a lot on recipes. I'm very picky, though, about where the recipes come from and so far, I've had a ton of success with Food and Wine. This particular recipe may be the best way to cook chicken that I've ever tried -- it's a favorite of mine, plus it's easy, so it was my first go-to recipe after a stint out of the kitchen.

In anticipation of my favorite chicken dish, I got a little over zealous at the grocery store last night when procuring items. I thought to myself, "I'll get extra bread and make double the recipe so I can have delicious sandwiches for dinner AND lunch tomorrow." So I grilled a full loaf of rosemary bread, each side basted with olive oil, salt and pepper.

In short, the meal last night was incredible as it has been each time I've prepared it. But for further summary, the meal today (lunch) was lackluster at best. Which leads me to Lesson 1: don't grill extra bread for leftovers. Even though I broiled it for a few minutes in the oven to reheat and re-crisp, the bread was hard as a rock and super chewy by the time I chomped into my sandwich for lunch. Another thing I noticed about the sandwiches, aged 1 day, was the lemon (which I had sliced last night to save prep work today) was especially bitter. Is there something chemical that happens after lemon sits for a day to make it so astringent?

In any case, in my attempts to become a professional cook, lesson learned: don't buy two loaves of bread to grill in anticipation of leftovers because some things are actually worse with age, including grilled bread.

And So It Begins ...

My name is laura and here's my story:
I currently work in education reform for a large education non-profit and, before that, I taught middle school, junior high, and high school literacy for several years in Washington, D.C. public schools. I am deeply passionate about educating children -- especially children who, because of where they live, might not have access to a strong, public education. My current work is incredibly rigorous and rewarding, but it leaves me with limited time to pursue my personal passions. As it turns out, one of my most fervent interests is something I know very little about: cooking.

Just over five years ago when I was a first-year teacher in D.C., I had several significantly failed attempts at cooking (including a disaster with tofu, some lettuce-wraps gone horribly wrong, and a lasagna that, due to a misreading of ingredients, included 2 12-ounce cans of tomato paste versus 2 6-ounce cans. I tasted tomato for weeks afterward.). These events prompted three years of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, frozen hamburger patties, and sauteed chicken and spinach (the only cooking technique I owned was throwing protein in a hot skillet with olive oil). When I left the classroom to work in education more broadly, I also moved to a new apartment with a larger, renovated kitchen and a roof-top deck with a 12-foot planter perfect for herbs and small veggies. This was two years ago, and it began my quest to cook...well.

Fast forward two years: I am now what I would call a proficient home cook. I am able to navigate my way (albeit clumsily) through fairly complicated recipes (a 2-day, from-scratch barbecue, for example, or Coq au Vin), I own several three-generation-old cast iron skillets which I successfully restored from dust and rust and re-seasoned on my own, three Wusthof knives (one 3.5-inch paring, 5-inch paring, and 10-inch Santoku), and the following books: The Professional Chef, Knife Skills, Larousse Gastronomique, and My Life in France. Additionally, the sole TV program I have any remote interest in watching is, of course, Top Chef which, when on, gets the fullest possible attention known to mankind and religious silence. I subscribe to Food and Wine and Saveur magazines. So where does all of this leave me? -- Not much further than where I was five years ago, with nightly chicken dinners and bad lasagna. True: my food is tastier and I am more fluent in the kitchen. But I am nowhere near being a Chef.

And so: welcome to my journey. I can't promise I'll be posting often (potentially, the better for you), however -- my quest is to cook and to cook well. Too busy and too afraid of copious student debt (and frankly, too damn stubborn and insistent that I can do this myself), I have eschewed culinary school in the hopes of teaching myself how to cook...well. We'll see just how good a teacher I really am. Cheers!