ac&ar

A few weeks ago, I drove one of my best friends to the airport. She moved to the other side of the globe (quite literally) so the name of the game was comfort food.

We used to live together and cooking in our tiny kitchen was a lot of fun. It was hot year round, and very poorly vented, so we would simmer in the sweat lodge, washing dishes along the way to try to free up what little counter space we had. We burned wooden spoons and shooed hungry raccoons off of our patio and crash landed in the “real world” together. Dinner was one of our rituals, along with baking my grandmother’s east Tennessee biscuit recipe on lazy Saturdays. Saying goodbye to her and our old place in the same week made me feel especially grateful.

The new kitchen is beautiful. My roommate and I can comfortably cook, hang out, and dance to Taylor Swift’s new album in there without being anywhere close to knocking into each other. I had a field day organizing and cleaning the new space (my speciality) before gathering the courage to confront our electrical stove. I’ve only ever cooked with gas, since I grew up in hurricane country where power outages were a dime a dozen. Luckily, my roommate is a pro and agreed to coach me.

The dish: tacos!

I didn’t follow any kind of recipe. I just wound my way through Trader Joes, grabbing tortillas, ground turkey, and pretty veggies (along with Scandinavian Swimmers, my vice). I chopped up half of the onion smoothly. I think I’ve finally mastered the ‘right’ way to cut it up where you don’t cry so much. (Although that didn’t mean no tears were involved.) I didn’t cut anything but the onion though, which I count as a major success.

I cooked the onion and turkey slowly, mixing it with my homemade spice combo, fiddling with the dials until I found the right spot on the heat. I grilled a beautiful orange bell pepper and made guacamole from scratch with one ripe avocado, multi-color cherry tomatoes, lime juice, and probably a little too much cilantro.

After heating up the tortillas, I got to build up the final product. Not professional but not bad! With all the bowls laid out on the counter, all that space feels like a total luxury.

Four spoons for taste. Three for execution!

Also, I learned (thanks to a lot of smoke) that electrical burners take a long time to cool down. Thanks to my roommate for the assist!

One of my best friends is in town! And we decided to tackle Shakshouka, Instagram’s latest pandemic food fad. Luckily, I had most of the ingredients. So we only needed a grocery run to stock up on zucchini and Jeni’s ice cream. Shakshouka is a mediterranean/North African dish that’s meant to be a hearty, breakfast stew eaten with bread. She checked a recipe once or twice, but we we mostly cooked from memory, catching up and winging it over margaritas.

First, you chop up one big onion and bell pepper (green if you want it to pop, red to blend). Be sure to budget a long time to cook down the veggies until they get soft and translucent. We were definitely not mentally prepared (or, prepared with snacks) for the total cook time.

I showed off my new garlic chopping skills, and she cheered. When we lived together, my abilities were limited to clean up and burning everything.

We added garlic, different spices, and crushed tomatoes to make the base (after what felt like a century of cooking down the veggies). We borrowed my roommate’s cast iron skillet, which admittedly neither of us knew how to use. It takes a minute to get hot and forever to cool down, so when we added the eggs, they burrowed down in the stew and couldn’t reach the heat. So while the tomato base dried out, the eggs struggled to heat up. Oops! (Next time, I’d bake it to cook the eggs quickly or use a skillet that’s not quite so deep.)

When the eggs finally cooked, we topped it with cilantro and feta cheese. We served our Shakshouka over spinach with toasted bread to go along with it. The end result was delicious, even though it definitely wasn’t stew!

Our compiled votes: Four spoons for taste. Two for execution. Five for fun!

Over the past however many weeks, I’ve been cooking a ton (but not writing it down to share with you all). I could blame the pandemic, and the life-altering shift everyone’s been going through worldwide. But I think it’s also in part because my progress has been gradual, and meandering, and I haven’t been able to laugh as easily at my own mistakes with the shared pain in the world right now.

Full disclosure: I ordered Chipotle delivery once. And I’ve caved to make terrible boxed spaghetti with pre-made sauce a handful of times. I’ve also cheated with canned soup and peanut better jelly sandwiches here and there, but for the most part I’ve really been trying. And making tasty dishes. I’m failing some but burning less. And I don’t see cooking so much as a chore. I get why people see it as a creative outlet. I’m beginning to understand how cooking good food is an expression of love, of kindness – a gift, to yourself or to others.

I haven’t been following the program that I’d set out for myself so much, though. I’ve found recipes online. I’ve cooked with what I had on hand, trying to stretch the grocery runs as much as I could.

So, the new project is just AC learns to cook. I’ll use different cookbooks, blogs, and texts from my mom to try to teach myself. But I’m moving away from the sole focus on AR. She made some comments recently that I found upsetting. (If you didn’t hear about it, do a quick google.) It looks like she’s genuinely confronting her behavior and trying to change, so the optimist in me is going to keep making her recipes. I’m a white woman in the states, too. And I need to wrestle with my own unconscious biases and privilege to learn how to be actively anti-racist, too, now more than ever.

If you’re looking for a distraction from the state of the world, here are my top three most memorable dishes from the past weeks of lawless, time-bending quarantine:

Exhibit A. I tried to make AR’s steamed artichokes. I have really fond memories of artichoke, but I’d never made it myself. I think of it as flaky, salty, almost sweet. I remember eating it with my childhood best friend by her backyard fire pit on breaks from college, drinking red wine with our mothers. Artichoke reminds me of home, of reunions, of an appetizer turned meal with laughter and losing track of time.

So I was excited to make it. But, I didn’t know how to measure out an inch of water. I eyeballed it and poured too much into the pan. The veggies became waterlogged and soppy after taking a bath instead of a spa style steam shower. I chewed and chewed, but it only became grainy and thicker.

The butter sauce turned out great, though. I bathed garlic and salt in the butter over time, letting the flavors get to know each other. So the sauce was a win, even though I ended up having to throw the dish out.

Nostalgia factor: 5 spoons

Execution: 1 spoon

Exhibit B. I’ve discovered that no one should suffer through broccoli when broccolini exists in this world. I think we can all be honest here and agree that broccoli is fine. It’s good for you, and if you bathe it in butter, it’s salvageable. But I’ve never purchased broccoli and thought: wow, yes, cannot wait to get this in my belly.

Broccolini, however, was such a surprise. AR’s recipe is easy: chop um up a little, shower them in oil and lemon juice, layer with cheese, and bake. They turn crunchy and salty, with a lemony bite and a smooth Parmesan finish. I’ve made these more times than I can count. It’s not revolutionary, but it is a dish I genuinely like. Also, the oven does most of the work.

AC’s vote: 5 spoons!

Only burned 1 out of every 5 times. 🙂

Exhibit C. My biggest accomplishment so far: Caesar salad dressing.

I made it completely from scratch! I dove into Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat like it was 2017 and found I’m finally starting to put the puzzle pieces together. It’s textbook-like (which appeals to my inner enneagram type 1), covering how those four pillars of cooking work and how you can make them work for you. It answers the big why questions of cooking for me, which puts a lot of my previous cooking fails in perspective. I felt like Samin Nosrat was letting me in on some big secret.

The recipe didn’t have specific measurements. It was intuitive. Beat the egg until it thickens into mayonnaise. Add salt. Add anchovies. Taste. What does it need? And I went from there. I didn’t worry about messing up. I improvised. And it turned out really good on my homemade Sweetgreen Kale Caesar knock-off lunches that week.

AC’s vote: 5 spoons!

Someone once told me “if you can read, you can cook.” They meant it to be encouraging, but I thought it was a bit disheartening. I love to read. It was the bedrock of my education. I spend a lot of my personal and professional time devoted to reading, so I was always frustrated when I couldn’t translate the words into something tangible on my plate. But I’m learning to love it, like I learned to love stories. So, I’m proposing an amendment:

“If you can learn to read, you can learn to cook.” (Hopefully, stay tuned!)

I find recipes very intimidating. Maybe it’s because I can never spell recipe right on the first try. (I always want to add an extra ‘I.’ Is that just me?) More likely, it’s because the format and process of bringing those words to life in the shape of real, actual food has always been a challenge.

So, to start, I decided to go with cookies. The really famous shortbread chocolate cookies that took Instagram by storm whenever AR’s first book came out.

I saved them for the Galentine’s holiday when I knew I’d have a best friend coming over to celebrate. (And then I promptly made lots of promises to her so I couldn’t back out.)

The shopping went okay. I wandered through the aisles longer than I’d anticipated. And it took a lot of hunting to find the right baking chocolate, which I did not know was different from regular, snaking chocolate (which I’d already fully stocked in my kitchen). When I got back with my knock-off sugar, because it was last minute and I couldn’t find exactly what she wanted, I was very excited to get going.

Step one: Lay out the cookbook on the counter and gather your ingredients.

Step two: Read the first line and get started without checking to make sure you know what you’ve gotten yourself into.

Step three: Realize you have the wrong paddle attachment for the mixer. Weigh pros and cons. (The clock is ticking down. You might not pull this off.) Use the wrong attachment anyway.

Step four: Wow. I am killing it. The wrong attachment totally works. GO AC! Why did I ever doubt myself? Makes a note to call the Great British Bake Off in the morning and apply. Mary Berry, who?

Step five: Oh no. I didn’t buy any flour. I have no flour.

Step six: Race to grocery store. Clerk is a little judgey since you were just there thirty minutes prior.

Step seven: Time pressure is really amping up. You’re sweating. Friend texts she’s running late. (WHEW). Tell her that’s amazing.

Step eight: Start dumping in the flour. Mix away. Realize this is what makes it shortbread. Dough starts getting heavy.

Step nine: WOAH. Dough is really heavy! Mixer starts to whir even slower and slower. She’s humming and hot. She dies. Unplug. Re-plug. Yep. Time of death: 7:08 PM.

Step ten: *A moment of silence for your $10 Hamilton Beach mixer your mom used once before when she came to visit.*

Step eleven: It’s ok! The dough is most of the way mixed. Use a spoon to force the sticky dough out of the dead mixer’s paddle. This takes muscle.

Step twelve: Read that you were supposed to let the dough rest in the freezer for several hours. *Colorful curse words.* Friend texts she’s almost ready.

Step thirteen: Roll it out and cut them up anyway (un-frozen). Make an egg wash. Dunk the cookie edges in sugar and throw them in the oven.

Step fourteen: Friend arrives, and you catch her up on the saga. She laughs and says, “this is the most on brand thing I’ve ever heard. Don’t worry, they look great!” even though the comparison between the cookies and the cookbook is laughable.

Step fifteen: But wait, they taste AMAZING.

Final rating:

Four spoons for taste!

One spoon for execution!

Follow-up: When the extra dough was frozen and then baked properly, the cookies looked just like the picture and were the perfect treat for another friend’s birthday. This recipe was more labor intensive than I initially expected, but now I wouldn’t be scared to make them (with the right paddle fixture and flour that is).

To say that I am a disastrous cook is putting it lightly. I have shared soupy cookie butter pie at a Friendsgiving, burned and under cooked broccoli (somehow on the same pan), and hodge-podged empanadas out of half-frozen, half-thawed pie dough to create an end result that resembled a child’s art project more than food. Important people in my life have taken various recipe steps right out of my hands, partly because I was close to injuring myself, and mostly because I was doing it very, very wrong.

But I love to eat. I treasure new foods, fancy tasting menus, and meals so memorable years later you can close your eyes and remember every bite. So eating my pitiful homemade meals has been a drag.

Enter: ac&ar. In the vein of Julie & Julia, I will be attempting to learn how to cook by following Alison Roman’s recipes. My friends shared her New York Times soups with me, and I was drawn in by the gorgeous photography and her friendly, approachable way of writing about food. Also, sharing a mutual love of Burt’s Bees pomegranate chap stick with the chef didn’t hurt.

I’m sharing these attempts to keep myself accountable and give the friends and family who have tried (valiantly) to teach me to cook a good laugh. I’ll rank my execution for each dish out of five spoons, sometimes featuring guest judges, and keep a running tally of how many times I set off the fire alarm throughout this project. (Previous count was high. My neighbors love me, I’m sure.) Let’s rock and roll.

AC