TGIFOOD

CHICAGO BLUES

Plan B for Dinner: The Curse of the Missing the Main Ingredient Syndrome

Plan B for Dinner: The Curse of the Missing the Main Ingredient Syndrome
Cerberus. (Photo: Chris Pretorius)

Cooking from scratch every day is not always easy. I have fur face tripping me up. I trip myself up. I get tripped up by packaging. By dumb ass recipes. There are so many things out there conspiring against the poor well meaning home cook I wouldn’t know where to start listing them.

I do it every year. And I never learn. Same thing. Every year around mid October, blissfully unaware of the trouble brewing outside, I saunter over and look out the front window early one morning and end up in a state of shock. The maple tree in the front garden is turning red. Autumn. Actually, autumn sounds way too romantic, conjuring up images of yellow leaves rustling in a mellow breeze, like English countryside kind of stuff. I prefer Fall, it’s a lot more brutal. Like I’m plummeting. Taking a nosedive. Plunging into a deep dark icy crevice where I’ll freeze my sorry southern African ass off for close to six months of Chicago winter. Oh god. What a way to start the day.

The maple tree in my front garden turning. (Photo: Chris Pretorius)

I need coffee, so off to the kitchen I shuffle, where more misery awaits. Perched on an uncomfortable little stool by the butcher block, I dip my Ouma buttermilk rusk (sliced, not chunky) in my coffee and my mood darkens even further because I haven’t gotten around to baking rusks for months now. And I’m just not capable of having early morning coffee without a rusk. So, loser that I am, I finally broke down and mail ordered rusks from that South African shop in New York that I mentioned a few columns ago. Yes, the one with the terrible biltong. In fact, I shouldn’t be so disparaging of Ouma’s rusks. Last time in South Africa everybody urged me to try Woolies rusks. I think I mentioned this before, but I thought they sucked. They started disintegrating before I even dunked them in the coffee. Who the hell needs that, first thing in the morning. You want your rusk to stay intact at least until it hits the java.

Frenemies. Relaxing after a long day in the kitchen. (Photo: Willem Pretorius)

But the true source of my misery is not the soggy Ouma rusk. The true source of my misery is covered in spotty white fur and lying on my kitchen couch, eyeing me malevolently. Yes, Hugo the puppy. He still is a puppy, only he has by now turned into a huge puppy. And his destructive powers have increased exponentially, forcing us to move most of the furniture out of the kitchen and set up a barricade to prevent fur face from chewing up the entire house.

What really irks me is that he has colonised my morning coffee spot on the couch, banishing me to perch on this pathetic little kitchen stool. And he doesn’t stop there. His favourite napping spot is right in front of the stove. Just to annoy me. Everybody else thinks he’s too cute for words, but I’m telling you, the furry little monster has my number, making himself at home right under my feet when I start cooking, guarding the oven like a regular Cerberus, his eyes glowing like little coals. So the kitchen, my refuge from the world, has turned into an arena in which fur face and I engage in a silent battle of wills. 

The interesting thing is, my wife Jill walks into the kitchen and sees a totally different scenario. She thinks Hugo the puppy is being extremely cute and wants to play with me. What a sweet little puppy. But I know better. Not only does he have my number, but I have his. I know what his endgame is. He has been sent by the gods to impede my efforts to prepare family meals. Well, in this case, breakfast for my son.

Not that I want to sing my own praises here, but I manage to prepare a sit down dinner for my family just about every single day of the year. Okay, I like to cook and I don’t like going out to restaurants all that much. But still. I do a lot of cooking. Am I a good cook? Probably. A great cook? Nope. And I’m also not an adventurous cook. I like plain food and therefore I cook plain food. Just the idea of suffering through a fussy, expensive tasting menu at some fancy restaurant gives me the heebie jeebies. 

Cooking from scratch every day is not always easy though. For instance, I have fur face tripping me up. I trip myself up. I get tripped up by packaging. By dumb ass recipes. God, there are so many things out there conspiring against the poor well meaning home cook I wouldn’t know where to start listing them.

Probably the best place to start is with myself. I am pathologically incapable of planning ahead and this fact alone explains why I could never be a great chef. Just can’t do it. So any dish requiring brining or a marinade is absent from my repertoire. Not a great loss because I’m not really a great fan of either. Americans, or more accurately, American men, are obsessed with brining and marinating. I can’t really see the point because as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t tenderise the meat and it obscures the flavour. Tenderness is much more dependent on the cut, the cooking method and cooking time. About the only thing I would consider brining is a thick pork chop, although I never do.

Anyway, there were a few months early in the lockdown when shopping was restricted and we basically did our food shopping once a week. That required planning and what a revelation it was. Quite liberating, actually. Well that only lasted for so long and soon I was back to my old ways of dropping by the supermarket after work and planning dinner while pushing the trolley through the sliding doors.

One of the downsides of this method is I can never remember what’s in the fridge, so we usually end up with numerous bunches of carrots, enough potatoes to last a few weeks, and currently, at least five bunches of parsley. And of course, I always assume we have plenty of onions and lemons, and of course, we never do. 

My dinner menu plans are often thwarted by what I call the missing main ingredient syndrome. Like when I set out to cook West African peanut and chicken stew a few weeks ago. Everything went well, ginger grated, garlic crushed (yes, I use a garlic crusher, and so does Madhur Jaffrey), until, of course, I reached for the main ingredient, peanuts.

“Where the hell did the peanuts go?!”

“We’ve been out of peanuts for age,” comes the answer from somewhere in the house.

Out of peanuts? Or Parmesan? Or jasmine rice? Or bacon? Who ate all the bloody raisins? How can we be out of pepper? What happened to all the limes? I thought we had plenty of limes. Where did all the bloody ham go? How am I supposed to make eggs Benedict without ham? And the litany goes on. And on. It’s probably quite clear by now that this kind of thing happens on a regular basis. My middle name should be Plan B For Dinner. Good thing I’m not running a restaurant. People who run restaurants have my utmost respect. Well, not all of them, most of them.

Perhaps I’m being too hard on myself here. It’s not just my imagination but things do sometimes just disappear. And usually they disappear into the fridge. Americans put everything in the fridge. Looking for the peanut butter? Try the fridge. Or the Tabasco sauce? Or the Worcestershire sauce? Mrs. Balls? Why, in the fridge, of course. To be fair, the label on just about every food product in America tells you to refrigerate after opening. And yes, most Americans have fridges the size of a barn. No wonder everybody here is totally paranoid about dropping dead from some kind of unrefrigerated morsel or another. In our household at least, we’ve agreed not to refrigerate the tomatoes. I know, but it’s a start.

Pesky labels. (Photo: Chris Pretorius)

During my last visit to SA I could not find the eggs at Pick n Pay until I eventually stumbled upon them next to the bread. Here in America, the FDA requires all eggs to be washed immediately after the chickens lay them. This removes the protective outer cuticle from the shell so they have to be refrigerated immediately. And stay refrigerated.

But anyway, not all impediments to my home cooking efforts are generated in-house. Most are external in origin. Think of those tiny little stickers on tomatoes for instance, just to annoy people. They are nearly impossible to peel off. They’re on all produce but for some reason they stick really well to tomatoes and pears. I think I’ve consumed quite a few of them in my morning smoothies. And apparently they are not biodegradable and the number one headache for composting facilities.

Impenetrable shrink wrap. (Photo: Chris Pretorius)

And why shrink-wrap English cucumbers? Here in America they’re tightly wrapped in heavy duty indestructible plastic that’s impossible to remove without shredding the cucumber. While we’re on the subject, why shrink-wrap something like a soft lump of goat’s cheese? By the time you’ve managed to gouge a hole large enough to extract some cheese, it’s all over the counter, the floor and your shirt front. And you’re lucky you haven’t lost a finger. I mean, who are these geniuses that come up with all these asinine packaging ideas. Take a bag of flour. Why does it come in a paper bag in the first place? And the weird way it’s folded over and glued down on top. I don’t think anybody has ever succeeded in opening a bag of flour without spilling at least half a cup all over the kitchen.

Never mind annoying packaging. How about food writers. If there’s something that can really stick a fork in your cooking wheels, it’s a dumb recipe. Like recipes that tell you to remove the seeds from a tomato before cooking with it. Why on god’s earth would you want to do that? Not only is it a waste of time but the seeds and the surrounding gel contain three times more savoury glutamates than the flesh. And the idea that the seeds have a bitter taste is utter nonsense. Those same people tell you not to wash mushrooms but to wipe them with a damp cloth.

Speaking of tomatoes, canned tomatoes are just fine to cook with so just ignore it if they tell you to use only fresh ones. They are usually picked at the height of the season and are consistent. Here where I live in Chicago, good fresh tomatoes are nearly impossible to come by anyway. And that probably goes for most of the world. So find a good brand of canned tomatoes and cook away happily.

And don’t feel guilty using frozen spinach. Fresh spinach takes quite a while to reach the shelf and it starts losing nutritional value the moment it gets picked. On the other hand, good frozen spinach is flash frozen the moment it’s picked, locking in its nutrition. Also, vegetables grown to be frozen are left on the vines or in the ground longer, allowing them to mature, enhancing their nutritional value.

Here’s another one. Food writers just love to make you feel guilty about using powdered garlic or ginger. First of all, the whole of Morocco uses powdered ginger. And, I suspect, so do large swaths of Indian cooks. Back in the early Eighties I used to hang out in a little restaurant on Upper Pepper Street, Cape Town, watching the elderly owner hand mix his curry powder in a big bowl clutched between his knees. Not only did he use powdered ginger, but his curry rotis were the best in town.

And don’t even mention garlic powder. Thing is, it’s better to use garlic powder in spice rubs for meat, for instance. And if you occasionally get lazy and use it in a stew or on a roast chicken, who’s going to know? And let me tell you, it tastes perfectly fine. It’s just an uncool thing to do. I’d be surprised if most people could actually tell the difference. I know this is going to get my editor’s hackles up but one day I’ll catch him out in a taste test. Seeing as I’m on a roll, I might as well keep on confessing. I’ve even been known to use stock cubes and dried herbs. How uncool is that. [TGIFood Editor’s note: I also use powdered garlic sometimes, but keep it to yourself okay?]

Speaking of uncool, here I’m sitting, venting my head off and my coffee has gotten cold. Nothing like cold coffee and a soggy Ouma rusk to get going first thing in the morning. And fur face is still reclining on the couch, giving me the beady eye. Better get Willem’s breakfast going. He’s going fishing with his PE class today. Not kidding. His school is right in the middle of downtown Chicago and they go fishing. Go figure. The first time I heard this a few weeks ago, I nearly fell off my little kitchen stool.

Apparently the senior kids have a choice. They can either do regular PE in the gym, or they can sign up for “adventure” PE. Where the hell do they fish, in the swimming pool? Apparently the school has a whole supply of fishing rods and they amble over a few blocks and fish in the lake. So of course all the nerdy kids signed up to go fishing. Willem has been wearing this ankle-length thrift store coat so I find the idea of a bunch of nerdy kids wandering around downtown with their fishing rods totally hilarious. So what happens when the lake freezes over, they cut holes in the ice and do ice fishing?

Well, when the lake gets too rough or freezes, they go bird watching. Birdwatching in the middle of Chicago? What are they going to watch, pigeons? Cranky Lake Michigan seagulls? I did, however, remind him not to bring any fish home, in case he did manage to snare one. To tell the truth, if I had been given a choice back in my school days I would have gone fishing or bird watching like a shot. Anyway, I need to get my useless Afrikaans boy ass off this little kitchen stool and do some home cooking. Till later, dudes, as they say here. DM/TGIFood

The author supports Isabelo, chef Margot Janse’s charity which feeds school children every day. Please support them here.

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