Bad Home Cooking

Oh my Cod

As I opined in my last post, the very fact that I'd even attempt something like a cod cake is testament to the virtues of Mark Bittman's brilliant "How to Cook Everything." They're really not too hard, but you need to have the correct ingredients, and you need to have a standard of calm and quiet in the home so you can concentrate. There are several steps you can trip up on.

I'm finding that a primary problem of mine is pressure. I tend to announce my intentions of cooking for another, and that's when I choke. I have a big problem cooking for people. Not my kids. They don't count. In fact they'd be happier if I stopped cooking for them altogether and just fed them breakfast cereal for dinner. I mean other people. Friends. Tony. My Dad. Those close to me who, like anyone, are delighted to accept the offer of a meal and probably expect a taste sensation or at least something edible put before them on a nice plate. I have the nice plates. It's the edible, tasty part that I can't promise.

I don't remember why we were talking cod cakes, but about a month back I got it in my head to cook up a batch again. I haven't made cod cakes since I left Berkeley in 2003. "Oh, I can make a mean cod cake," I bragged to Tony one night, dimly remembering my one or two dumb-luck successes. "You'd love my cod cakes." Before I knew it I was on the docket for that Friday night. Dinner at home. Cod Cakes on the menu.

The first order of business was getting the salt cod. Back in Berkeley I had access to the famous Berkeley Bowl, with its six different kinds of organic endive and 34 varieties of peaches. It sold small loafs of salt cod in a shrink-wrapped package in the freezer section. All you had to do was soak it overnight; change the water three or four times, and by the next afternoon you had cod ready to cut up and cook.

All I have now is a Whole Foods, which is like Berkeley Bowl's skinnier, better-married sister. It's got half the stuff at twice the price but it sure looks prettier. It has salt cod, but it's flat, unpackaged, and kept in a barrel, I suppose to preserve its rustic feel. I supposed they would fill out upon soaking. I had Tony bring down three fillets later that week.

The big day came and typically I wasted time drinking wine and dancing around until it was 5 and time to start dinner for the kids. I put pasta on for them and started the potatoes.

For cod cakes, you mix the cod with mashed potatoes, dredge in bread crumbs and then fry.

First mine-field: Make mashed potatoes. The Bon Appetit magazine I get (but still don't know why) had a Thanksgiving special section that included an article called "Mastering Mashed Potatoes." It promised a four-step process to perfect mashed potatoes. "What's the secret to light and buttery mashed potatoes? It's all about using the right techniques in the right order."

I can read. I can follow a simple to-do list. So I figured I should be OK. I boiled the potoes for the prescribed time. I "dried them out" by stirring them in the saucepan for "about two minutes," per the instructions. I added the butter. Finally, I mixed in the liquid. The instructions said the milk must be warm so that the potatoes don't become gummy or cold. Check.

What it didn't mention was that you need to pour the milk in a little at a time. I only remembered this after dumping in all the milk at once.

So I had fairly runny mashed potatoes. So much for fool-proof techniques. Bon Appetit should hire me to stupid-proof all their recipes.

Next step. The Cod. Unfortunately, the salt cod floating in water in my refrigerator had not lived up to its promise. I pulled off the skin and was left with two thin flaps of rubbery fish. I cooked it in hot water, which only made it more rubbery. I cut up what I had as best I could and mixed it with my mashed potatoes.

Third step: Dredge in bread crumbs. Because I am detail-challenged, I hadn't bought bread crumbs. I ran out to the store and found some stuff called Panko, Japanese-style bread crumbs. These actually worked great because they're bigger than standard bread crumbs.

Fourth Step: Fry up. Frying is dicey. I don't eat a lot of fried foods and the very act of dumping half my olive oil into a pan caused me great pause, not to mention eye-twitching. I wondered if I shouldn't be using another sort of oil that might pair better with fish, but such instruction was not noted in the recipe.

The frying went off without incident, but throughout the entire cooking process I was vexed by constant fear of failure, anxiety over how I could save face if the meal went horribly awry and Tony was forced to call out for Chinese instead. I felt I didn't dare improvise, such as take a chance with a different cooking oil, for fear I would ruin everything. As it was, with the sloppy mashies and the disappointing cod, I didn't know how things would turn out until I took my first bite.

Tony arrived, bearing Manchego cheese, olives and bread from our favorite place in the world, Say Cheese in Silverlake. My kitchen looked like Hurricane Katrina had stopped by for a quick bite. He set out the goodies and I fell on them without a thought to etiquette, sitting there in my stained apron. When I recovered my senses, I served up the cod cakes without garnish, and realized that I'd failed on the fifth step as well: You can't serve a dish in a vacuum. The cod cakes tasted fine, but I'd prepared nothing to go with them. They became simply another appetizer. Only they'd taken a lot out of me.

Tony seemed to understand. He poured me a big glass of wine and ate his cod cake con mucho gusto, singing its praises with his mouth full.  I agree that they were edible, but with better cod and a thicker potato they could be so much more. I was once again reminded that learning how to cook was very much like learning how to dance flamenco: You have to learn the steps before you can concern yourself with artistry.

And so with me you get a cod cake on a plate. But you don't get the meal.

The only book that matters

Like everyone else, I grew up with a copy of “The Joy of Cooking” in my mom’s kitchen. I never actually saw my mom crack it open, but it stood there on the counter underneath a cupboard for years, along with other yellowing and sticky treatises on culinary arts that were never examined.

Because I was a nosy child, I did on occasion pull the tome out to inspect its secrets. It seemed dated even then, in the mid-70s, what with its promise of the perfect casserole and unorthodox uses for gelatin. Always good for a ponder were the recipes for bear, and possum. In junior high school I discovered the recipes for butter icing, also brownies, which at the time were one of the only things that could soothe my bitter soul. (I confess here that I never attempted “magic” brownies, since even then I knew my limitations in the kitchen. And why otherwise waste a perfectly serviceable dime bag?)

As I got older I got more interested in cooking, which isn’t to say I knew anything at all about it. In my 20’s I learned how to make 20-clove garlic chicken and four-can bean soup (one can of tomatoes, three cans of beans, different sorts). I perfected my rice-making. In my early 30s I was married and had a baby and was spending a lot more time in front of the stove than ever before. My then-husband brought home a new copy of The Joy of Cooking (because it was such an American thing, he laughed, and you know how Brits love to laugh at Americans), and after learning that the recipes for bear and possum had largely been purged (much to his disappointment), we placed it on our counter and rarely opened it again except for use as a reference. How long do you cook an artichoke? Consult the Joy Of!

It wasn't until a few years later that we heard about the Book. It had just been published: A thick yellow tome with the simple title, "How to Cook Everything." I started seeing it around, on the shelves of various people I didn't associate with cooking.  I started hearing complimentary things about it. It was basic, I learned, but not so basic as to be boring, said one friend. Everything I've tried to make has turned out, said another. I picked it up at a friend's house one afternoon early in 2000 and flipped through it while everyone else made merry at the Superbowl party around me. Hmm. One of the first recipes in the book was how to marinate olives. Even I could mix garlic with balsamic vinegar. There was a whole section on vegetables (how to buy, how to store, how best to cook), as well as an exhaustive primer on meats. There were recipes for basic dishes: Roast chicken, for example, but also little sidebars on how to make a roast chicken more sexy.

What sold me, however, was the recipe for crackers. My own saltine crackers. Easy as mixing flour with water, the author promised. It had never occured to me that you could make your own crackers - or at least that someone like me could do so. Page 239.

Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" became my kitchen Bible. The Joy of Cooking for my age. With it, I actually began to have some rudimentary success in the kitchen. I appreciated his many chapters devoted not to recipes per se, but to basic edification. Those more skilled than I might turn up their noses at an essay on how to make tomato sauce, but I, for one, was thankful. "Thirty-one sauces and dishes you can make in the time it takes to boil water and cook pasta" is the kind of side-bar that had supreme relevance to my life.

My copy is now tattered and stained. Whole pages have fallen out (Cookies. And the whole section on beans), and I’ve tucked them back in disorderly fashion along with yellowing newspaper clips of recipes I like the sounds of but may never make. It’s a loved cookbook. Well-used.

The very first recipe I tried: marinated olives. Page 18. It was a boffo success. Everybody ranted about my olives. And I was thus emboldened to push onward.

I learned how to make an ok vinagrette. I learned how to seed a pepper, then roast it (although mine still stick to the tinfoil). I learned how to make really good zucchini bread - useful since at one time I had a plot in the community garden that could feed all of China with its zuch ouput.

I learned that if you poke a hole in an egg with a needle or pin before you boil it your chances of successfully making soft-boiled eggs increases dramatically.

At one point I even made cod-cakes! Me! This involved three steps, which dramatically increases the chances of my bollixing up the entire operation. But they turned out pretty damn good, too! I can hardly believe it now, but part of my success was that at the time I lived in Berkeley and hence had access to the overwhelming assets of the Berkeley Bowl. I could go and find salt cod any time I wanted and all it required was 30 minutes or so circling for a parking space nearby.

I used the gingerbread recipe to universal accolades. Blueberry cobbler! Sauteed roast potato with rosemary! Mashed potatoes!

You must understand what it’s like to make successful mashed potatoes from scratch when you’re someone like me. I have ruined spaghetti.

Not everything turned out, of course.

Lamb patties with Bulgar. As I suppose I’ve mentioned before, I’m mad for Mediterranean food. Lebanese food, in particular, is something I savor. Kibbeh is a big deal in the Middle East, and it’s a pretty basic part of a lot of yumminess. That’s why this dish sounded appealing. Alas, I’m not too good with meat. I don’t understand it. At any rate, this all came off very badly, made a mess and ruined a perfectly good iron skillet as well.

Chestnuts – did you know that chestnuts will explode in your oven if you don’t score them first? I do. Now.
Red beans with meat. Again with the meat. Bad. Bad. Bad. And then there was the coconut milk that made it worse.

Brown rice with lentils and apricots sounds good on paper, but the version I made was way too sweet. Brown rice pisses me off in any case.

But let us not dwell on the failures. My point is that this book changed my life. It gave me all the meager hope I needed that perhaps not all was lost. Perhaps even I could one day be a passable home cook.

Then again, stay tuned for my latest adventures with cod cakes.