Cooking With Chaos: Learning to Love Your Kitchen Catastrophes

I am not a confident cook.  After 21 years of marriage, I can follow a recipe pretty well as long as it doesn't start speaking a lot of French or throwing around words like "emulsify" or "render" or "spatchcock" or "de-vein".

Or for that matter, "truss", "scald", "macerate", "grate", "beat" "grind", "shred", "whip", "mince", or "inject".  On principle, if it sounds like torture, I don't want to do it to my food.  If it happens, fine, but I don't need to know about it.

There are culinary operations I am willing to perform.  For instance, "open a can of ..." I can do all day. 

"Bake" is fine.  "Drizzle"--great! 

"Cream", "dot", "dust", "fold", "marinate", "simmer", "steep", and "whisk"--also no problem!

But if you put me in a kitchen with raw ingredients and no simple-to-follow instructions, I'll panic and order a pizza.

It's not that I don't love food.  I'll eat anything and enjoy it, but I wasn't raised to be a foodie.

Growing up, my family normally viewed cooking as something you did to keep yourself from starving to death.  Life didn't revolve around meals, rather meals existed to provide the raw fuel for life. 

We came together in a tumble around the table from our various (usually outdoors) activities and ate the simple, wholesome meals my mother prepared without much thought to what was in them.  My Dad's tolerance for spices was narrow  (actually, just salt) and my mom focused more on the nutritive value of what we ate than on fancy prep and presentation.  

She also faced the daunting task of satiating the hyperactive Hudson metabolism that my Dad, my brother, and I inherited from our distant hillbilly relatives. 

There was no such thing as a light snack in our house.  Whole chickens, loaves of bread, hunks of beef, vats of potatoes, giant bowls of broccoli and peas and spinach all disappeared with alarming speed around the dinner table, and then usually we were back to clean up the scraps an hour or so later. 

In fact, I didn't know until after I was married that it was not normal to be wakened from a sound sleep by a middle-of-the-night craving for toast, cereal, and bananas. 

*Side note:  How sad for all you "normal" people who outgrew your 3a.m. feedings in infancy! I have such fond memories of running into my various family members downstairs in the wee hours and sharing a sleepy conversation over bowls of shredded wheat...sigh*

Anyhoo, fast forward 20 years and I still love eating, but unless it is a special occasion, cooking is something I remember with alarm every night around 5:30.

This is not the case in my circle of friends.  I have the good fortune to be surrounded by some culinary wizards, many of whom have blessed me with their favorite recipes so that now, when circumstances call for it, I can pull out a meal that causes people to ask ME how to make it!

I found this to be an enjoyable occurrence for the first decade of my marriage, but then I had kids and my cooking became slightly more--erratic.

While I still cannot make food without a recipe, I find that now I often cannot even cook WITH a recipe, due to the relentless, serial interruptions which seem to happen at inopportune moments during the cooking process at my house.

For instance, there is the emergency phone call from *someone* who calls me to say that they are *somewhere*, but actually need to be *somewhere else*. 

Right Now. 

Or the blood curdling screams (sometimes accompanied by actual blood) coming from the various small individuals who live here. 

Common decency requires that I at least investigate these occurrences, but try explaining that to the onions that are caramelizing or the chicken that is five degrees from being done.

Even if I manage to follow a recipe through to completion, pop it in the oven, and set the timer, I now have a helpful tribe of wandering kitchen elves who have made an art out of hearing the oven beep, turning off the timer, and forgetting to tell me that it rang. 

Consequently, I have served a number of seared, blackened, and toasted dishes that weren't originally supposed to smell like smoke. 

Homeschooling has also helped "revise" many of my meals, because despite my intentions to have our school day wrapped up with a bow at 4p.m., by dinner time I am often still helping edit papers, deciphering Latin declensions, and collaring small boys whose math problems need to be redone for the third time. 

This is the primary reason my children think that the bottom inch of a pot of rice is supposed to be a desiccated pancake of charred starch.  (They're OK with it because I've told them it protects the pot from getting banged up by serving spoons.)

It occurred to me that I may not be alone in this. 

I can't possibly be the only one who carries the guilt of being unable to complete a recipe as it is written. 

There must be others who are routinely mocked by simple, straightforward dinner instructions that look as easy as a dot-to-dot but end up feeling like a lesson in advanced calculus.

So! I came up with a cookbook idea for moms in my position.  It builds the distractions, mishaps, and calamities right into the recipes, ensuring the beleaguered cook a feeling of success no matter what the food looks (or tastes) like in the end.

I call it "Cooking With Chaos: Recipes for Disaster" and here is a sneak peek!

Taken from real life.  Tested in the Birmingham kitchen, I am please to present:

Potato Leek Soup

Ingredients:

1 cup butter
4 leeks, sliced
3 cloves mashed garlic
salt and pepper to taste
2 quarts chicken broth
2 T. cornstarch
8 cups Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
4 cups half and half
diced chives
shredded cheese
bacon

In a large pot, over medium heat, melt butter.  Add leeks, garlic, salt and pepper and cook until daughter lets the dog escape.  Turn heat down.  Run outside and yell to see if anyone has caught the dog.  If so, turn heat back up and keep stirring until leeks are tender--about 15 minutes.  If not, turn stove off, get on boots and slog off through the neighbor's field with a raw hot dog and a leash until dog is located and captured.  Then, turn heat back up and stir until leeks are tender--about 15 minutes. 

Stir cornstarch into broth.  Unless you discover you are out of cornstarch.  Then try flour.  Unless it has managed to get those stupid brown bugs in it that have infested your pantry in the last month.  If this happens, order pizza.

If not, pour broth into pot containing leeks and garlic.  Realize halfway through that because you doubled the recipe, the broth will not fit into the pot you have chosen.  Stop pouring.  Slosh 1 cup of broth onto leg and floor.  Call dog over to lick floor.  Run grab applesauce pot.  Pour remaining broth and mixture from original pot into bigger pot.  Splash more broth onto floor.  No big deal.  The dog is still there lapping up the original mess. 

Take a phone call which requires writing a message.  Forget to turn on burner under new pot.  Take message, check on kids outside.  Break up fight over Nerf football and comfort daughter who has done a face plant in the sandbox because she was wearing her brother's boots that are two sizes too big for her.

Go back to check on soup.  Wonder why it isn't simmering yet.  Discover burner is off.  Panic (mild) because boys have to eat before practice.  Turn burner on medium high but tell yourself it won't burn because you will stir it the whole time.

As you are stirring, notice that the leeks look like tapeworms floating in broth.  Calculate the odds of your boys and husband eating anything that looks like tapeworms.  Decide to spoon out leeks and put them through food processor.  Forget to turn down burner as you are grinding up leeks.  Scorch broth (just a little),  panic (medium), and remove pot from heat, sloshing 1/2 cup onto hot burner. 

Open window to let out smoke from spilled broth.  Turn on new burner (medium) and replace pot. 

Remember you still have to peel potatoes.  Yell upstairs to girls to come help peel potatoes.  Yell outside to boys to come in and change for practice.  Start peeling potatoes until daughters arrive.  Then stir broth and pureed leeks until soup begins to simmer.  Notice that it smells good, looks better, and might actually be eaten by even your picky child.  Take a moment to congratulate yourself on the decision to grind up leeks.  

Start chatting with girls about music.  Pull out vegetables for salad, but get distracted by conversation.  Stop slicing vegetables.  Lean against counter.  Make a great point, but notice that you are gesturing with the knife and the salad is still not made.  Look at clock.  Panic (medium to high).  Throw potatoes into pot.  Turn up heat again.  Tell girls not to stop stirring!!!  Notice that the boys are still outside.  Run out and yell for them again.  Realize that they have taken the dog out for a run in the..."Hey!  WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THE CREEK WE NEED TO LEAVE FOR PRACTICE IN 20 MINUTES AND DID YOU SERIOUSLY HOOK THE WAGON TO YOUR BIKE WITH DAD'S JUMPER CABLES!!??!"

Run back into house for towels.  Notice that girls have made salad (awww!) but have left the kitchen to change the playlist on the i-pod and the potatoes are sticking to the bottom of the pot (aghhh!) 

Turn down heat.  Try to unstick potatoes.  Observe that small black chunks are rising from the bottom and abandon efforts.  Accept that this recipe also requires that a "protective starch layer" be adhered to the bottom of the pot and move on.

Dump in half and half.  Give a quick stir and sort out pile of wet boys, dogs, clothes, and shoes that has coagulated in the doorway.  Look at clock.  Panic (high).  Push two boys into the shower, two boys toward the van with their dry clothes and sports equipment, and one wet dog into kennel. 

Run back to stove. Sprinkle in a handful of chives, a generous smattering of shredded cheese and top with crisp bits of bacon.  Note the lovely simmer and scent of your soup: thick and creamy with tender chunks of potatoes bubbling up among little bits of bacon and pepper and chives--and not a tapeworm in sight! 

Take three seconds to admire your handiwork and then picture two boys eating bowls of soup and salad in the van on the way to practice and surrender to reality.

Set burner to "warm", grab your keys, and stop at Little Caesar's on the way to the field.  

Success!  You have managed to make leftovers for tomorrow night and your boys are only 10 minutes late to practice. 

See?  Anyone can make a recipe like this!  I have other great ones to add as well--like the "salted chocolate chip cookies" that you make by forgetting to add salt to the dough and try to salvage by salting the tops during the baking process. 

These are also the cookies that you take out before the timer rings, but then your daughter comes in 10 minutes later and points out that they are actually raw so you put them back in, but you are impatient and put them in while the oven is still preheating so the tops end up too brown, so you pull them out again and they might still be undercooked inside but you don't notice because, hey--it's a warm cookie and once it is mashed up in your mouth you don't even notice that the tops were too salty. 

And then there's the meatloaf recipe that is really a team effort because it requires one person to turn on the oven and put the loaf in, one person to come through the kitchen and think Mom left the oven on with nothing in it and turn it off, one person to come back through and notice that the oven is off (usually the same person who put the meatloaf in) and turn it back on, again forgetting that the "preheat" function will scorch the top, one person to come through and see smoke coming out the oven vent and turn it off, and one person to order pizza when Mom comes back to start the potatoes and discovers the scorched/raw lump of meat in the oven. 

This same technique can be applied to many different recipes with similar results!  So easy!

A few notes:

Irritation and frustration are optional ingredients which I have put into most of these recipes at one time or another.  Yes, they are readily available, but I can't recommend them since they do not improve the flavor of the dishes at all and in fact throw a negative vibe over the ambiance of the whole place.  

I might also mention that my cookbook does require a healthy pizza budget and also a tenacious and dedicated pot-scrubbing crew, but given those things--anyone can successfully make these recipes!

Finally, while these dishes are suitable for close family and polite friends, they would not be welcome at most potlucks and bake sales.  For those venues, I recommend Costco's deli and bakery sections--unless you are trying to make other cooks feel better about their own offerings, in which case, cook away!  

My recipes are actually perfect for building self-esteem in others so I guess I am just saying, know your audience. 

And the phone number for your local pizza joint;)