I convinced my daughter to help me cook dinner the other night. (A little bribery was all it took.) Aside from the time she kabitzed on our worlds best hamburger recipe, cooking with my daughter usually means me telling her what to do. I don't mind. There's a reason why I cook.
But this time I wanted to raise the stakes, and not only tell my daughter what to do, but why. I wanted my daughter to start thinking like a chef, to be comfortable altering recipes, to see what it’s like to put a meal together from scratch.
Little did I know, she would be schooling me.
“What can I do?” she asked.
We were making asparagus pasta, risotto style.
“Chop an onion,” I said.
“Onions make me cry,” she said. “You do that. What’s the next step?”
Okay then.
I figured she’s chopped plenty of onions in her day. She’s doesn't quite have the onion chopping prowess of Julia Child in Julie and Julia, but she’s certainly capable. I didn’t mind her passing on the onion task.
“Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in the frying pan,” I said.
She cut off a chunk from a stick of butter and dropped it in the pan. I finished chopping the onion, then brought the chopped onion over to dump in the pan. The butter had barely started melting.
“Can you break up that big chunk of butter so it will melt faster?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m watching it dance around the pan.”
Anyone who remembers the movie American Beauty, and the video of the plastic bag blowing around, can certainly appreciate that my daughter was finding beauty and life in an inanimate object. But I had onions to sautee.
I dumped the onions in, even though her butter wasn’t melted. You can imagine how that went over.
I instructed my daughter on cooking the pasta, mixing in warm chicken broth, adding the asparagus, doing things at five minute intervals. She waved me off and took over. Fine. I went about making bruschetta: fresh tomatoes, garlic, salt, pepper, basil.
My daughters friend floated into the kitchen. “Don’t put in too much garlic,” she said.
“I won’t,” I said.
“But you always do.”
“I’m making this late. The flavors won’t have time to meld. It will be fine.”
She shook her head. “One clove, no more. And be sure to use fresh basil.” She’s half Italian, so she gets the real deal from her mom’s house.
“I don’t have fresh basil,” I said.
She heaved a sigh and shook her head. “Here, I’ll make it.”
Some cooking lesson I was giving.
With both kids preparing dishes, I figured I might as well shake myself a cocktail. My margarita recipe is to die for.
“Can I make your margarita?” my daughter asked.
“No, you’re too young,” I said.
“I already know how.”
Great. But I wouldn’t be swayed.
I started by rinsing the rim of the glass under running water, so I could dunk the rim in a container of margarita salt, and the salt would stick.
“That’s not how you do it,” my daughter said. “You’ll end up with salt inside the glass. You need to run a wet towel around the rim, instead.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I watched them make margaritas at the Mexican restauarant.”
We’d sat at the bar of the Mexican restaurant plenty of times, eating while watching soccer on TV, usually when the restaurant was fairly empty. (I once hit on a woman in front of my daughter at that Mexican restaurant bar. It wasn't easy.)
I followed my daughter’s instruction, and wouldn’t you know, the rim salted perfectly.
Okay, so maybe I had nothing to teach the girls in the kitchen this particular night. Next time I’ll make something more complicated, like chicken and dumplings, and really show them the ropes.
Then again, the asparagus pasta and bruschetta came out pretty good. Maybe I should let the girls cook every night. We might start eating better.
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