Things a Monkey Could Cook

Menu Coordination for Beginners

by

Jean Stites

Copyright 2012, Jean Stites.

All rights reserved.

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To Grandma Hazel, who was a natural in the kitchen,

And to Aunt Norma, who told me I should write a book,

And of course to Mom, who—God love her—fed us all.

Chapter One

Introduction

Greetings to you, who longs to throw together tasty treats that can’t be beat, right there in your own home sweet home!

Originally the title of this book was Timing is Everything, but I felt it would be far too dull. Nevertheless, the original point of this tome is to help those already comfortably constructing a sandwich to get an understanding of how to get an entire menu full of complimentary recipes to simultaneously hit the table at the peak of perfection. The monkey thing was just a cheap lure to get you inside the cover, but was also intended to create the impression that cooking can be fun and relatively simple—which it is.

Yes, I’ll bet there’s definitely a contented ape somewhere who can go beyond making a sandwich, and if he or she can do it, surely you can too!

At least I think so...

What, I must ask, do you have to lose?

Not as much as you have to gain, I assure you, if you’ve been living on fast or frozen food. Expect an immediate trade up in terms of sensual experiences and to get a lot more value out of your food dollar. Just make sure you’ve got a fire extinguisher handy....

While I'm only joking, of course.

Or not, perhaps, in the case of those just beginning to monkey around in the intimidating jungle of cuisine....

So anyway, at first this book was all about meal coordination for the beginning cook, and then I realized that of course I had to throw in a lot of desserts at the end to really make it a party—although those of you who already throw perfect parties aren’t going to learn much from me. On the other hand, if you suspect that any primate could throw a better one, I’m going to try to spare you a lot of pain and suffering by telling you in perhaps excruciating detail just what to do when and why.

Please remember that this is only my way of doing these things, and I keep changing my mind. Cooking, like everything else, is enhanced by personal style, and you’ll develop your own tastes—for example, in seasonings—as you gain experience. In actual fact, I hardly ever make anything quite the same way twice, since the experienced cook will constantly be making allowances due to issues like the quality of the ingredients or the tastes of those headed for the table.

Of course, precision in measurements has to do with the complicated chemistry of cuisine, and is much more crucial in baking than in, for instance, salad making. On the other hand, playing fast and loose with ingredients in any recipe is also a recipe for disaster. The main thing to remember when experimenting with something like a pasta sauce or a salad dressing is that in cooking—as in life—balance is everything. The fundamental rule is that no specific ingredient should shout out its identity from the finished dish.

Think circumspect elegance.

Think smooth....

It’s just like Chopin tossing off a nocturne: if you’re really good, nobody will be able to tell exactly what's in there, while the extrasensitive may be reduced to tears....

You can do it!

It’ll all be worth it too, because you truly are what you eat, as they say, so eat good; while in terms of ingredients, I sincerely hope you’ll find at least a few things here that suit your dietary taste and needs, as I try to throw a relatively healthy and happy party.

Also, bearing in mind that a lot of beginning cooks may be watching their budgets, I’ve tried to choose recipes made from things that aren’t too expensive and are readily available in most American groceterias. As a matter of fact, I briefly considered calling this book Dirt Cheap Dining, since—having chosen to spend my life in nurturing occupations—I’ve always lived fairly close to the edge of destruction, and so was forced by my almost insanely demanding personal standards to learn to cook nearly everything my family loves from scratch in my sleep.

There are worse fates!

You are what you eat!

Cooking is the first—and in some respects still the finest—of art forms, as it can nurture both and soul. My Grandmother—to whom this book is principally dedicated—was so good at it that she seldom bothered to write measurements into her recipes, which is one of the reasons why my personal standards became so high in the first place.

Yes, the pathetic, almost unnatural craving I still have for her long-lost chocolate pudding is one of the things that inspired me to write this little book for her great-grandchildren and you by extension, so that she and I can continue to conjure up tasty treats for everybody from the Great Beyond....

I feel, you see, almost a cosmic duty. For instance, my Aunt Norma—a victim of the very same craving as my own—was once foolish enough to try to duplicate the chocolate pudding recipe, over and over and over, in a truly tragic case of creeping insanity.

May God have mercy on us all!

Amen.

Helpful Safety Tips

And now, here’s the first round of what will surely be several important safety tips, inserted throughout this book in a somewhat maternal fashion, because I just can’t help myself.

First of all—in the spirit of prevention—I’ve come to feel that those who yearn to cook are often also creative, right-brain types who cringe at the realization that survival in the kitchen requires third-grade math skills, and so I begin with the following equivalents:

*

3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon

4 tablespoons = 1/4 cup

5 1/3 tablespoons = 1/3 cup

1 quart = 2 pints = 4 cups

*

This should be especially helpful when doubling recipes; and I realize that readers outside the USA may be thinking metric, and so apologize that there’s no such equivalents in the recipes.

I’m sorry, but being a right-brainer, I just hate math....

Next: please remember that a great kitchen—like a great mind—is usually a clean and calm place as well, so tidy up along the way and yours will be more efficient, healthier, and less accident-prone. Better to compulsively wash and dry everything than to spread germs and slippery havoc wherever you go. Go buy a package of cheap bar wipes, rather than spend a small fortune on paper towels. Julia Child always had a kitchen towel hanging from her apron, and when I noticed that my life got a lot easier.

And then, when learning to slice and dice—and forevermore—never, never, never take your eyes off the knife once it’s in your hand. This is dangerously bad form comparable to taking one’s eye off the ball in games of sport, with potentially much more serious consequences. For instance, once little Chopin’s parents realized that he was destined to be one of the greatest pianists that ever lived, he was thereafter forbidden to even touch a knife....

And on that note, we come to the most important safety tips of all: keep that knife way out of reach of your toddler and leave those pot handles turned at angles that can’t be bumped; while if you feel yourself moving too fast, you’re probably asking for trouble. Watch out, in particular, for cats and kids underfoot....

Keep cool, as a rule.

While another classic way to ask for trouble is to turn the heat on anything all the way up. You really don’t need to do that to achieve a vigorous boil or bring oil to frying temperature, while the highest of heat equals the greatest potential for things to start moving too fast. Contrariwise, don’t turn the heat down too low. If it’s not bubbling at all, the magic of kitchen chemistry is not kicking in.

And speaking of heat, although these days almost all ovenware is relatively indestructible, should you decide to keep something on hold in the refrigerator before baking—and you’re using some cool, perhaps inherited, glass or ceramic cookware—please be very sure that your treasured bakeware can go cold into a hot oven without cracking, or you’ll be so very sorry on a multitude of levels....

Similarly, if you decide to freeze something like leftover applesauce in glass jars for long-term storage, remember to leave a little headroom in those jars for expansion, since we all remember from science class that water expands when it freezes; and if you didn’t pay attention in class—and you still haven’t learned to pay attention to me—well then, you’ll just have to learn the hard way, and the rest of the class won’t feel sorry for you, now will we?

Let’s see: what else...?

Ah, here’s a good one: never serve anything that requires dunking of any kind to a crowd unless you’ve removed all the furniture and carpeting from the room. Even then—especially if there’s children present—there’s bound to be at least one laundry-related tragedy. Ditto anything remotely runny or easily crumbled—like tacos—where the potential messiness factor goes right through the roof, because if that stuff drips on somebody’s shirt, it may just stay there forever....

While in a similar vein, here’s an especially important tip for beginning bakers: flour + an open window + a delightful summer breeze = disaster.

Plus, here’s something that I was in denial about for years, but which is actually very important for those of you who plan to cook for crowds: be aware that—in terms of your personal health—tasting this and that all day long for testing purposes can actually amount to eating another entire meal if you’re not careful. Especially if you start indulging in a nice big spoonful, when you know very well that a tiny taste is all that’s needed, because—well, it just tastes and smells so good...

And mulling over the subject of healthier cooking now brings me to the subject of parchment paper: a minor miracle that’s always been available to chefs—now to be had in my groceteria; and if you can find it and afford it, I strongly advise you to line your bakeware with it. Not only does it turn even the most antique of pans into a truly non-stick surface, it takes a major chunk of fat out of your diet, while making everything brown correctly. Now that I finally have access to it, the hours I used to spend scrubbing bakeware have begun to seem like nothing but a bad dream....

However, memories linger, to the point where I myself am old enough to always be suspicious of the phrase non-stick cookware—especially when it comes to the delicate art of baking. Nevertheless, even back then—occasionally up to the elbows in the slimy fallout of some amateur meltdown—I knew what I’m once again telling you now, which is that all this bubble, bubble, toil and trouble is well worth it.

You can do it!

Would I lie, just to sell a few books?

Trust me, I want life to be a party for my loved ones and the rest of creation by extension, and a party—as everyone knows—just doesn’t really feel like a party without great food....

Well all right then, let’s go monkey around in the kitchen!

Chapter Two

Chili and French Bread

Well, way back in the Pleistocene Era, when I first started keeping house, one of the best friends I ever had told me with divinely reassuring conviction that any fool can make chili, and she was right. If I were going to actually try to teach a monkey to cook something, this recipe might be it. Hopefully, the ease of chili-making will then leave your mind free to learn how to bake bread if you’ve never tried it before; but if you’re intimidated or bored by bread-making, just go buy a loaf or some flour tortillas and you’ll still find plenty of satisfaction.

However, if you’ve begun to think that this cooking thing is kinda fun and you get really excited by the aroma when you drive by a bakery, then you’d be doing yourself a big favor by learning how to bake bread. I’ve cranked out thousands of loaves, and had a great time spoiling my family with it to the point that I’ve come to feel the need to leave this book behind, if only to prevent them from going into some sort of withdrawal.

Plus, I hope I’m correct when thinking that I’ve also saved thousands of dollars that were much better spent at the bookstore, while eliminating at least a few cryptic chemicals from our diet....

So why not give it a try?

The next time you find yourself with a cold winter’s day and nowhere to go, fill your home-sweet-home with the smell of this meal and by dinnertime everyone will be your slave. The longer the chili simmers, within reason, the better it tastes. Plus, you can make vast quantities and freeze the leftovers for a fast and just-as-good-as-the-first-time treat.

While in terms of timing, this is a menu that can take all day, or as little as three hours if you shorten the process by using the canned kidney beans; but if you do it’s really not such a good idea to buy something labeled chili beans, since they may already contain added flavorings.

Otherwise, this whole thing takes about seven hours, but the first four are just a soaking period for the beans, during which time you could go rob a bank or something and come back. This is an especially good idea if you plan to also buy your bread at a bakery, since a little extra cash will come in handy in that department; plus you get to run two errands at the same time, so you see it really pays in so many ways to cook from scratch!

Live and learn...

Well anyway, after the soaking period, you start the beans and chili simmering away on the stove, and then go to work on the bread, where rising time will vary according to the air temperature in your kitchen. However, during both the rising and the baking you’re once again free to do something else—just checking in once in a while to stir up the chili and make sure that it’s still bubbling away in a low-key sort of way. I’d have to ask Betty Crocker to tell you why, but for some reason it’s one of those things that just tastes better if it simmers away—blending those flavors nice and slow—for a really long time....

And then, this recipe will feed four of the aforementioned slaves, who may trample you when the bread comes out of the oven. Don’t stand between them and it while trying to explain that—to really be at its peak—the bread needs to cool off for just ten minutes or they may turn on you.

You think I’m joking, don’t you?

I just hope you have the good sense to grab the best piece.

Sequence of Events

For best results, start soaking the dry kidney beans about 7 hours before you plan to serve.

After about 4 hours, proceed with the chili recipe.

Mix up the bread once all is bubbling away on the stove, leaving everything to simmer and rise for about 1 hour.

Shape your loaves—letting them rise again for ½ hour, and then it’ll need another 20 minutes to bake.

Once the bread’s done, let it cool for about 10 minutes before slicing—and at this point your meal can wait for hours if necessary, since the chili will only be improved by a long, slow simmer, while the bread can be briefly refreshed in the oven.

Chili

*

½ cup dry kidney beans

1 pound ground beef

1 large onion, chopped

½ teaspoon salt

2 to 4 tablespoons chili powder

2 large cans = 1 to 1½ pounds fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped