Courtesy of writer/culinary student Mara Miller.
Cutco - the official knives of blog host, Lorraine Ranalli (now if they'll just pay for the endorsement!)
I’ve recently taken to strolling West Philly with a purse full of knives. I really ought to put them in a different bag, I know. But on Tuesdays when I glance at the clock and realize my cooking class starts in ten minutes, all organization goes out the window.
As a birthday gift, my mom signed me up for six weeks of introductory lessons at the Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College. You have to understand what we’re working with here: I’m a somewhat-recent college grad who has subsisted for entire summers on cereal, yogurt, and Easy Mac bowls that my grandma liked to send in care packages.
I’ve always thought it was Mom’s fault. She’s such a good cook (no, she really is) that I never bothered. I’d come home from school to delicately toasted flatbread paninis, perhaps topped with ham, asiago, and designer mustard, while the other kids could only hope for Uncrustables. She cooked a delicious dinner almost every night, and I became both spoiled and lazy in the culinary skills department.
So flash forward to now, when I find myself with a decent kitchen and a sizeable cabinet full of cooking implements gifted by various relatives. Yeah, I could buy an economy-size box of granola bars and be all set for two, maybe three weeks. But as I turned 24, the age when my mom got married, for Pete’s sake, I thought: “Dang. I better get my act together.”
Thus, the knives.
I knew I’d enjoy the class, the same way I enjoy any class. You show up not knowing something, you listen to a guy talk, and then bam, you know stuff. But I also genuinely looked forward to feeding myself, and to feeling a little more grown-up.
But I think the biggest gift (whether my mom intended to give this, too, or not) was understanding, maybe, why she enjoyed cooking for us in the first place.
There is no better vessel for love than a saucepan.
People who’ve cooked their whole lives probably find this glaringly obvious. But after day two of class, when I brought home from-scratch mushroom risotto and shared it with my boyfriend after a long night at work, it was like a light switch flipped on.
“I made it!,” I gushed, as if it were a gold-dusted souffle. He loved it. I beamed.
Next class, we learned how to tie up and roast a cornish game hen. I texted him: “Made u a hen! Gonna fry u sum banana fritters now!!” He got the message and bragged to his friends, showing them the phone. “Check it out, my girlfriend loves me!”
I made the fritters again tonight. He helped me plop a few into the batter and then the sizzling oil. I dusted them with powdered sugar and blobbed some Nutella onto the plate, and then we sank into the couch and shared them.
I’m still not a good cook. I almost lose a finger every time I try to julienne something, and I’m constantly Googling things like “can you put plastic in a deep fryer?” or “how many raw eggs before you die?”
But I’m so excited for what I’ll try to make—and get to share with my #1 customer—next.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Visit Mara Miller at The Effect Effect.
photo credit: Cake Journal
