Monday Night Dinner

Some of my best friends make recipes out of Martha Stewart Living.

This is actually true and not just a facetious statement, and since occasionally they bring us the fruits of their labors and thus far haven’t shown any signs of alien possession we call this quirky and endearing rather than insane.

Admittedly I occasionally read Martha Stewart Living – usually when I’m over for dinner at afore mentioned friends’ house – but I’ve never seen a recipe of hers and thought, “now that’s something I’m going to make”.  It isn’t that her recipes are unappetizing, it’s just that they’re unrealistic.  They’re for desserts that call for 30 eggs and involve three cakes stacked together to make a single centerpiece.  They’re for stews that have 18 steps and take five hours to make.  I lack that kind of patience.

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I am a child of the internet age, or at least I’m an adult of the internet age. When I graduated from high school personal email addresses were still unusual enough to cause comment. By the time I graduated from college it was understood that if you couldn’t find it on the internet it didn’t exist.

I probably own 20 or 30 cookbooks, but I only use them if I already know the recipe I want. I don’t browse them for recipe suggestions – unless I’m really desperate for ideas on a Sunday morning. I like flipping through cookbooks in the bookstore, but in the real world I find myself hampered by the inability to key word search them for an ingredient, and by the lack of user feedback. I’ve been spoiled by the reviews section of epicurious.com and foodtv.com. When I read a recipe I now want to know if it really works before I try it. I want to know if it needs to cook for longer than written, or if it’s okay as written but spectacular if you add half a cup of cheese. I want to know if people would make it again, or whether it was more trouble than it was worth. Also, I’m lazy and I never want to have to put away the stack of cookbooks, with the internet all I have to do is close my laptop.

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All hail the mighty power of the internet.

When I was in high school I discovered the greatest cooking show ever filmed. It is a tragedy of Greek proportions that it has never been released on DVD. However, youtube and google came through for me and I recently found a few clips of the show online.

Tournedos d’Anguille
Gratin de Fruits de Mer
Cuisses de Grenouilles
Magret aux Pruneaux
(fair warning, it was a French show but I think they’re worth watching even if you don’t speak French, although possibly slightly less amusing)

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The complicated part about making dinner isn’t learning when chicken is done, or how to make rice, or even how to plan a balanced meal. The hard part is having everything be done at the same time.

Sautéed chicken
Corn pudding
Green beans
Salad

Most weeks I spend a little while on Monday evenings doing prep work for dinner on Wednesday. My roommate works late on Mondays so there’s no one home to distract me with things like conversation, and I find cooking in a quiet house is very soothing. Sometimes I listen to an NPR podcast, sometimes I dance around my kitchen while my cat looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, but most of the time I kind of let my brain go off line while I cook. Unless I’m trying to scale a recipe up or down, or do complex geometry to figure out how many individual tarts the recipe for a 9” quiche will make, cooking doesn’t demand much conscious thought. It’s not quite autopilot, but it’s different thinking skills than I use at work or in conversation. I can let my hands go on about the tasks of slicing and sautéing without much active thought being involved. It’s relaxing.

This Monday night I went out and had noodles and ginger cheesecake and saw a movie and that was relaxing too, but in an entirely different way. Since I knew I was going to go out and play on Monday night I planned a dinner that I have made so many times I could do it half asleep, and one that didn’t require any advance preparation. It doesn’t hurt that everyone loves corn pudding and I get greeted like a hero every time I make it.

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