Saturday, February 16, 2013

How To Cook

I just threw a casserole dish of cube steaks in the oven and I've been thinking as I've cooked about all the different influences that go into that dish.
They're venison cube steaks so that's my husband's influence, of course in that he brought home the deer and I had never cooked cube steak until I cooked the deer ones so I had no idea how to do it. I asked Billy to ask MawMaw how she did it because he always bragged on her cubed steak- beef, not venison, but still.
Turns out you have to soak the meat in Pet Milk before you cook it and although I don't use Pet Milk, just regular milk, I soak it. I also add Worcestershire sauce to the milk, not too much, just some, and garlic salt too. Then, I do like MawMaw says and dip that meat in some flour with salt and pepper and although MawMaw sort of deep fries hers, I just brown mine in the skillet with some olive oil and then put the pieces in a baking dish and let them rest there while I cut up onions or leeks and mushrooms, mostly, usually, portobello mushrooms and saute them in the same skillet I did the meat in. When they're tender, I put them over the patiently-waiting meat and then I make a gravy of sorts. I use olive oil and whatever flour I had left from the breading of the steaks and the leftover milk and Worcestershire marinade and more black pepper and I make that according to how I learned to make a white sauce from a cookbook I grew up with and still have a copy of which is so old that the pictures in it are hand-tinted and I cherish it.
I add some soy sauce which I learned from a Farm Vegetarian back in the day, y'all, on a hill in Tennessee on a meatless Thanksgiving Day, one of the coldest days I remember in my life, and I remember the woman telling me that she'd put her soy sauce gravy up against her mama's chicken gravy any day and I think she was right.
I put that gravy over the meat and onions and mushrooms and I put a lid on it and I bake it in the oven.
It's real good.

So there's my husband in there and my childhood cookbook and that Farm Vegetarian and her chicken-gravy-making mama too. And Maw Maw and Billy, of course. And probably Granny Matthews whom I really learned to cook from, watching her walk around the kitchen wearing a nylon negligee grabbing a little of this and crushing it up and stirring in a little of that and tasting it all and putting a lid on it and letting it simmer.

I've got potatoes and garlic bubbling away together in salty water and I'll smash them up with some milk and a little sour cream for mashed potatoes and I'm warming up some okra and tomatoes I made a few days ago and that'll be supper. It'll be good.

I'm thinking about my mother tonight and how she got dinner on the table every night and how it wasn't ever really delicious but it was okay and we grew up fine on what she cooked, even if the meatloaf had suspicious alphabet noodles in it and I wonder what it was that my mother did for a creative outlet and I do not know. Which makes me as sad as anything. I am remembering the day she discovered frozen loaves of white bread in the grocery store and how when she brought them home and thawed them and let them rise and baked them something happened in my brain and I suddenly understood that bread did not necessarily come from The Sunbeam Bread Girl.



And then I went to Europe and learned more about bread and then I came home and followed the path of the hippie girl and then I moved to neighborhoods where I learned about cooking cornbread and beans and was told by my across-the-street neighbor that I could cook better than any white girl he ever met and that was one of the proudest moments of my life except for when I was told that I danced real good for a white girl.

I don't even know how it all happened. I just know it did.

Clean as you go. That's my advice. Don't worry overmuch about seasoning your cast iron. Just use it. It'll last forever.

It's been a real slow day but we're going to eat well tonight.
I hope the same for you.

Love...Ms. Moon



12 comments:

  1. Sounds so good. We had homemade pizza and salad tonight. It was delish too. And I did the dough by hand. Ha!

    ReplyDelete
  2. If a recipe calls for "bread flour"....whats the difference between that and all purpose? What do you use to make bread with? I tried to make bread tonight and it sucked.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That does sound absolutely delicious, and I wish you could come here and I'd watch you make it and then I'd eat it with my boys and Sophie.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I shouldn't be reading about your yummy food before bed... makes me want to eat, not cook. Sounds just great. S. Jo

    ReplyDelete
  5. An interesting exercise in the Buddhist concept of connectivity -- exploring your connections to all those other people. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. beautiful :)

    WV is 'xceptho' - is a ho the only thing missing from the dinner?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Everything I learned about cooking was from my MIL, my mom could burn water. My MIL? Could make dinner for ten with a leftover potato, a cup of noodles and slab of meat. I miss them both.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I try and mix up the cooking but I always run out of ideas. I also stand by the 'clean as you go' haha

    ReplyDelete
  9. Sounds good. Clean as you go. That's what I'm trying to teach my grandgirl that likes to cook. Neither of her parents do and omg the mess those girls have to clean up.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Syd- I love to make pizza. It is one of my favorite foods to eat and to make.

    SJ- Bread flour has a higher gluten level or something. I don't know. But it DOES work better for yeasted breads and that's just the truth. I recommend the King Arthur brand.

    Elizabeth- That sounds a lot better than a bag of raw chicken, doesn't it? I would like to cook for you and your kids. We could talk. And laugh.
    It would be joyous.

    Ms. Fleur- Back at ya.

    S Jo- It was GOOD!

    Steve Reed- Unlike the Republicans here, I truly realize that I didn't build anything by myself nor do I. Ever.

    Jo- NO, The ho would be me!

    heartinhand- Some people have it in their blood. The cooking thing. And some people just do not.
    And that's okay.

    Wayne- I run out of ideas too! I feel like I make about three different things these days. I swear.

    Ellen Abbott- I don't think I truly learned to clean as I went until I had kids of my own. I would DIE if I had to face a kitchen after I cooked a meal if I hadn't washed up what I could before hand.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Great advice. I love hearing about your cooking. Years ago I thought I would never ever have any sense of the delight you get out of cooking or the idea of where to begin, how to do it, especially your wonderful soups. But you just start and keep going and you learn along the way. I'm late. But it's so fun and satisfying and I think you jump started me. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete

Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.