I Cook? Again?

After a month and a half of hitting the kitchen like I hit the weights, with an open palm, because, let's face it, if you hit the weights with a closed fist you'll break your hand, I took a brief hiatus from the hot plate in favor of someone else's cooking. For about two weeks now, I have been bouncing around from restaurant to restaurant, avoiding the act of preparing my own meals like someone who's fallen off the horse. But, I had Chinese food a few nights ago and the subsequent morning got sick directly in front of my departing guest, Mary Kate the Actress, who came to Rome after I visited her in London. I gave her quite a send off, with fireworks and everything.

So I've decided, especially in the light of my remaining funds, to recommit myself to the culinary arts. In fact, I've so recommitted myself that I'm going to go ahead and throw all of the suppositions and standards of cooking out the window and create something that truly reflects who I am. I won't be held by petty traditions. I will make meat sauce.

Meat sauce is about the only thing I haven't touched, and thus mangled beyond edibility. I have sauted mushrooms into peanuts, I have cooked fish into chips, I have swung three times at alfredo sauce and struck out. So I thought, why not screw up the meat sauce part, too.

Pretty much all you need, I was told, is a block of hamburger stuffs and possibly some spices. Put the hamburger in a pan and the pan on a hot plate for however long your heart tells you, then add those various spices, just like Emeril. Then probably some sauce.

Did you know that the grease that comes from meat hardens, real fast? DO NOT pour it down your drain. It is known to cause problems.

I Cook?

As you've probably read, or divined, because to divine this secret you do not need the stars, or even a solid knowledge of me, I do not cook. The girls I live with cook, and I do the dishes and handle directions. Symbiotic.

A week or so ago, however, I was feeling rather can-do, so I went to the store, and bought everything I thought would be needed to bring about a steaming bowl of pasta. Everything that I thought, which was everything that I bought, turned out to be a stick of butter and a bag of noodles. I took these home and set up shop in our airplane bathroom of a kitchen, eager to prove myself. It occurred to me that plain jane pasta wasn't good enough for a first try, so after rummaging around a bit, I pulled together some other ingredients we had stowed for rainy and/or hungry days. My recipe was as follows:

1) Boil the pasta.

2) Put this much butter in a pan, followed by that much oil.

3) Followed by a handful of uncoothly colored mushrooms and tomatoes.

4) Sprinkle salt and mystery spice like a fairy.

5) Go read a book.

Not only did that concoction turn out to be edible, but I didn't start a grease fire, either. And if you say, I would like to try some of this so-called Cass Pasta, it's impossible. I wasn't even eyeballing amounts of ingredients. I cut the stick of butter with my eyes shut.

In the days following, I graduated to sausages, which, left unchecked, will blow a gasket and spurt meat juice like a geyser (not a geezer; this sausage had much more spit power). Nothing creates a false sense of impending doom like a single stream of flying grease.

Next week, anticipating the arrival of my mother and sister (they will come to Rome for the first week in March), I am pushing up my sleeves in preparation to make alfredo sauce from scratch. Virginia the Architecture Student recited the recipe to me; I recently went over the notes from that conversation and found my transcription lacking.

You too want to make alfredo sauce from scratch? Here's the recipe I wrote down:

1) Butter

2) Flour then milk

3) Parmesan (?)

4) Garlic and pepper

There's a surprising lack of numbers, but my favorite detail is the punctuation: whether it was that I did not know if it were parmesan or not, or if I thought parmesan was a questionable cheese choice, I do not know. I'll give you an update afterwards.