Come dinnertime, it’s every man for himself

(From the Register-Pajaronian)

I am a halfway decent cook.

For some reason, that surprises a lot of people. They see a single guy who works nights and whose interests seem to center largely on pushups, video games and mild workplace insubordination, and they think to themselves, "Now there’s a Taco Bell man if I ever saw one."

Not true. I will go straight into that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans until you can’t hear yourself think. Then I’ll chug all but the last half-inch of milk straight from the carton, put it back in the fridge, stack the dishes right in the sink without a rinse and leave your wife begging me for the recipe.

While a lot of the guys I went to school with have turned out to be passable chefs (either because their parents were progressive or because they finally got sick of dorm food), I know that a lot of our peers haven’t. It seems that while the average man’s cooking skills were on the rise for a while, many young guys have once again begun to consider kitchen illiteracy to be almost a point of honor and food prep something best left to women.

I disagree with this view on two counts: Firstly, knowing how to do a bit of everything is the mark of a self-actualized person. Secondly, if I had to rely on girlfriends for my meals, my life would consist of long periods of starvation punctuated by sudden bouts of violent food poisoning that can only be quelled by drinking increasingly obscure microbrews and moving out of the state.

I truly can be trusted to make dinner, though, if you would just stop standing behind me and tell me where you keep the spatulas. I’m brilliant with pasta (carbonara, anyone?) and solid on stir-fry and stews and casseroles that don’t involve more than six or eight ingredients. Good on most slabs of meat, too. Really. Go about your business. I’ll call you when it’s ready.

The thing is, I’m not exactly classically trained, so things sometimes go awry. For instance, I am big on one-dish affairs, which means if I can somehow blend the vegetable into the main course, I will do it whether it makes sense or not, side salads be damned. That’s fine when I’m dining alone, but some people apparently have an aversion to pan-seared ahi á la frozen corn.

I’ll also occasionally make unreasonable substitutions or additions to recipes. I blame this on my father, quite a good cook who is always adding impromptu drizzles of truffle oil or handfuls of chocolate chips to things partway into the process. His stuff always seems to work out, but somehow I always wind up stirring maple syrup in at just the wrong time and spending the rest of the day chipping ash out of the cookware. Should have gone with the molasses after all.

Cooking style is one of those things that seems almost genetic in the way it passes from parent to child, and the fusion of my parents’ methods in me has been something less than seamless.

When I lived at home, my mom would often plan dinners days ahead, paying careful attention to each family member’s nutritional needs as well as the delicate balance of flavors and textures (this on top of teaching high school and authoring a successful series of children’s books). On the appointed day, she’d hurry home from tutoring a disadvantaged student and spend several hours in the kitchen.

Then, about 5:15, my dad would call and say, "Matthew, this is your father. They’re having a sale at the grocery store. I need you to preheat the oven and get out all the marmalade. Have your sister open ‘The Joy of Cooking’ to the section on shark. Your mother isn’t making anything, is she?"

I’d look at the painstakingly crafted turkey tetrazini my mother was just pulling from the oven. Then I’d consider how cool sharks were. Then I’d say, "No, Daddy."

Today, I plan out several big dishes before I go to the store. Everything goes according to plan as I load my cart with steel-cut oatmeal, crisp bunches of spinach and various lean meats. Then I walk past a display and think to myself, "I bet it’s not that hard to deep-fry a banana. I could totally do it. I wonder if you can fry hamburgers. Or burritos. Hmmmm..."

And soon my shopping list has been abandoned in the produce aisle and my cart is filled with things I’ve never made before that require superheated oil or a creme brulée torch to be cooked properly.

Nature or nurture? One never knows with these things. In any case, you may want to stand back. I’m not sure what will happen when I put this on the fire, but with luck, we’ll be having Bananas Foster and blackened halibut for brunch.