Claire's Cooking

Just ask my sister Katie about my cooking. What she'll probably say, as she rolls her eyes way up to the sky and back to earth again, is something like, "For the longest time I hated chicken because of the way that Claire cooked it." The only way that I knew to cook chicken was to shove it on a baking tray and bake it to death. When the smoking and dehydrated chicken was put on a plate in front of her, she just drowned it in ketchup so that it wouldn’t get lodged in her throat and obstruct her airways (and to add some flavour).

You see, Katie had to eat all the food I cooked while we lived together at university. This was the time that I taught myself to cook. Well, I say that I taught myself to cook, but that doesn't mean I always cook well. You see, I'm an adventurous cook and I hate to throw food away. What that means is that sometimes my combinations of the odd ingredients that were left in the fridge that particular day come out great. But sometimes these concoctions of mine come out, well, less than great.

For example, there was the time that I decided to buy a gigantic slab of salmon. I remember staring at it in the kitchen not knowing how to get the scales off. Surely you weren't supposed to cook the fish with the scales on. So I got a knife and started scraping at the scales. They were really stubborn and I had to scrape with all my might. So when they finally gave way, they came flying and popping off at a high speed. Luckily I didn’t get any scales in my eyes, but my right arm was sore the next day and we found fish scales all over our kitchen for months after that.

Then there was the other time that I decided to buy some ground lamb. I'd never had lamb before and had never even seen lamb meat before. I had absolutely no idea what to do with it, but somehow that didn’t stop me when I bought it in the grocery store. I bravely decided to make some meatballs with it. I did make meatballs, but they just made the whole apartment stink and we didn’t dare to eat anything that smelled so bad.

And both Katie and my husband, Paul, can attest to my affinity for making what they call goulash. For some reason there are nights when I get a twitch in my right hand. Even though I’m making what is probably a perfectly fine meal, my hand starts twitching uncontrollably. All by itself it starts to add more stuff to the pot, like whatever needs to be used up from the fridge. 85% of the time it tastes good even if it looks like a pot of unidentifiable goo with strange lumps in it.

Poor Paul is used to being served strange meals and even though I ask him in a menacing voice “So, what do you think?” he is pretty much always honest with me. But last night was one occasion where I didn’t even bother to ask this question. The question was already answered for me as the steam rising from my food was actually making my eyes water. I knew this was one of my weird, but not wonderful, meals.

You see, when I was preparing this meal, my hand started twitching and eventually took over. It (my hand) decided to make a sauce by blending up 1 onion, 1 tomato, garlic, olive oil and parsley. It would have been tasty if I would have cooked the onion. But I just blended up the ingredients, heated it up and served it over rice. My hand was laughing at me as I sat there staring at my steaming plate through tears, determined not to be defeated. Paul wouldn’t touch it, but I soldiered on alone. That night, Paul slept as far away from me as possible. He said it was like sleeping next to a giant onion. The next day I still had onion breath and could have used it like a dragon uses fire to destroy its foes.

Don’t worry. If you come to my house to eat, I’ll make sure that I use a recipe or something that’s tried and tested and hopefully my hand will behave.