Recipe Corner

If it doesn�t make me sound like too much of a simpering baby-doll, I�d like to admit that I am not much on cooking. My main recipes involve some form of cheese, some form of bread, and some heat, applied liberally to the bottom of the pan. Perhaps some form of butter, as well. Before you picture me as pampered nitwit, lounging in marabou-trimmed mules with a bra-ful of take-out menus, because I know that is exactly how you picture me, hear me out.

I can�t help it. Wait! I CAN help it! I choose not to help it, because cooking well seems to involve two things I lack: patience, and the ability to create a grocery list that, once fulfilled, provides the ingredients for some kind of coherent meal. Oh, and skill. So, three things I lack.

My mother also hated to cook, and resented every meal she made for us, as if somehow her traditional upbringing failed to alert her to the fact that as a stay-at-home mother and wife in a typical marriage, she might be expected, on occasion, to prepare food for her family. Her solution to the problem of meal planning was to devise five different menus, and rotate them. Martha, my mother, was obsessed with combining different foods to make �complete protein,� and things like presentation, edibility, and taste meant nothing to her. These menus were equally colorless, in the figurative and literal senses, designed with a sadistic focus on the visually distressing. Monday, we�d have fried liver with chopped onions and bacon bits which we savored as the only flavorful element of the meal. I recall that the liver had, as a side dish, reheated frozen spinach. For dessert, as she gleefully forbade sugar and refined flour, we might have a bowl of plain yogurt with frozen orange juice concentrate dribbled on top. Tuesday might be a previously frozen rectangular block of white fish�cod, maybe�topped with whole-wheat bread crumbs and containing 14,000,000 bones. Frozen peas and carrots provided some festivity there, and for dessert we�d have nothing but the handful of vitamins she�d selected for us. The week progressed like that, and as a result, I never had any training in meal planning or looked forward to dinner time.

I never looked forward to lunchtime, either, because in a gesture of economy and sadism, my mother would pack our bags with something she called �cheese-mustards�: two small slabs of cheddar cemented with mustard. Wanna trade?

My brother and I would try to reason with her. Other nutritious foods existed, we would say, why couldn�t we eat something we�d like? I had not yet learned of a thing called passive-aggression, but I felt the current of resentment that seasoned every dish. In a way, Martha�s approach to food prepared me not only for the writing of this blog, but for the bag of Munchos I have on my desk at the moment.

In the ensuing years, I�ve learned to fend for myself, but cooking is still not something I enjoy, except in specific instances. I love making lasagna, for instance. The act of building it is satisfying, and more than that, it�s nearly impossible to ruin. Another dish I like to make is, oddly, one of Martha�s. It�s odd enough and basic enough that I believe she devised it, but I can�t be sure. She made it only very rarely, but it was one of the few things she made that we really enjoyed. I don�t know what she called it, but I call it Mexican Movie Theatre, for its generally Mexican ingredients and the arrangement of the final product. I have expanded slightly on the original. Here is the recipe:

MEXICAN MOVIE THEATRE

  1. Brown one pound of hamburger in an oven-proof pan, like a cast-iron skillet.

  2. Grate a pile of cheese four inches high by five inches in diameter, or so.

  3. Drain the hamburger and season it with taco seasoning.

  4. Mix in two cans of refried beans

  5. Turn on the broiler.

  6. Stir the beans/hamburger atop the stove, announcing upcoming feature films en espa�ol while the oven heats up.

  7. Remove skillet from heat.

  8. Stick a large number of tortilla strips (very important that they are the �strip� rather than the �triangle� form for this project) into the bean/hamburger mix in rows, so that they are all facing the same direction, like they are watching a movie.

  9. Sprinkle cheese over the top, mainly hitting the �bean/hamburger� area and not so much the �tortilla strip� area.

  10. Place pan under broiler for a short, short time, keeping your eyes on it, because it will burn and it is illegal to shout �fuego!� in a Mexican movie theatre, ha ha ha, but no, really, it will burn up in one instant, so watch it.

  11. When the cheese melts, haul that pan out of there!

  12. Hold up the pan as you take it to the table, making mariachi-style trumpet fanfare sounds and shouting �Mexican Movie Theatre!� and �Bienvenidos al teatro! La pelicula esta noche es �Necessitamos a ayuder el guerrero Ryan�!!!� or whatever pelicula you enjoy to announce that evening.

  13. Serve with more chips. Mmmm. Is good, yes?

You will find that this makes dining a very enjoyable experience.



Star of the day. . .Forrest Whittaker
posted @ 4:15 p.m. on February 09, 2007 before | after

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She lay awake all night,

zzzzzzzzzzz......