Sunday, March 3, 2002
|
Sunday, March 3, 2002 |
|
Cooking my way By MARY JANE HOLT
I am considering changing my ways. Just "considering" at this point, just thinking about it. I'm nowhere near ready to make a decision. So let's talk about the way I do it and perhaps that will help me to decide if I will seek to know more cookery organization. First off, there are no menus. Not since my first year of marriage when I didn't know how to cook beans. Beans or anything else for that matter, except biscuits. Learned biscuits in fourth-grade 4-H. I make an awesome biscuit to this day with lots of variations from my basic non-existent recipe. Yep, it's a memory thing and I never measure. So how do I cook? With no menus? The same way I write or draw or decorate. I use whatever is on hand. "Whatever is on hand" usually means whatever was on special the last few times I was at the grocery. You guessed it, I will not pay prime price for anything. So, it's meal time and I go to the pantry, freezer or refrigerator about 30 minutes to an hour before time to eat, shuffle this or that around, and come out with whatever strikes my fancy. In doing so, I came up with an awesome potato soup just a few weeks ago. I had cubed ham in the freezer, left over from baking a smoked ham a couple of weeks back. There were potatoes in the pantry begging to be cooked. There were several cans of cream of mushroom soup on the shelf. Onions were in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator. I pulled out a few baby carrots to chop, and a stalk of celery as well. That's when I saw the sour cream. I decided it would become the "secret" ingredient for my potato soup. I threw everything together as it felt right, no measuring, and let it all simmer for an about 45 minutes. Then I fried the lacy corn bread, another one of my specialties. It took years to get the hang of it, but now I can hang my lace out with the best of them. That brings me back once more, to all those folks who have real systems. Their own systems may serve them just fine but I have a system of sorts, too. Organization is not at the center of it, but some darn good vittles find their way out of whatever it is that does center me, so I don't think I'm going do any major changing anytime soon. Maybe at another time, on another day, I will reconsider. For now, I feel creative and I hear my kitchen calling. And by the way, I probably have not thrown out more than five specially created concoctions from nothing (nothing meaning throwing things together without a plan) in all my years of cooking. In fact, as the years go by I am learning to like me and all my ways more and more. And my lacy cornbread? I like it so much I'm willing to share.
Lacy Cornbread Recipe Stir water and self-rising cornmeal mix together. For years I used White Lily, but last year I discovered Three Rivers, which is awesome! Don' ask, I already told you I don't measure. Just get a two cup measuring cup if that comforts you and pour maybe three-fourths of a cup of cornmeal mix in it. Now add water very slowly, at a trickle, directly from the faucet. Stir as you add the water. You are going for something close to the consistency of tomato juice. Heat a large black iron skillet. Nothing else will do. Pour in Canola oil to cover the pan, just to cover it. If you tilt the pan, the oil should gently slide to the side. The trick is to have just enough oil in the pan that the cornbread will sizzle when you pour in a miserly dollop that spreads out no smaller in circumference than a coffee cup top and no bigger than the saucer. Brown it on one side on medium high heat, then flip and brown the other side. You will master the art the day that the outer edges want to fall off if you are not very careful as you turn the bread and the inner center is not at all mushy anymore. You can fry three to four pieces at the time and you must add a tad more oil between each frying. Don't let the little crispies stay in the pan between fryings or they will burn and smoke up the house. Once you get the hang of it, you will never look for the cracker box again when having soup. Or peas. Or beans. Or turnips. Plus, if you are lucky, you will begin to appreciate the secrets of those of us who grew up on cornbread and whatever vegetables we "put up" for the year. Making do with the grocery store specials and whatever I still put up from the garden each year, is just downright fun, so I say, why spoil a perfectly good system?
|
||