zole.org

I’ve been meaning to learn how to cook for way too long, and that scary “processed food will make you fat and dead, you uncultured Cheeto-stained American” article in the New York Times has somewhat spurred me into action: tonight I am going to make something. And I’m going to get all Web 2.0 on your asses and liveblog it.

I’m making Chicken Marsala, not to be confused with Chicken Masala, although I’ll happily eat either. It’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that I’m making it, though: I’ve got a packet of chicken and a jar of Marsala sauce from Trader Joe’s, so there is some prepared food involved, but the ingredient list on the sauce is pretty short, if you ignore the paragraph-long parenthetical after “SEASONING”. The bottle even has instructions — I wouldn’t quite call it a recipe — on the side. If I’m understanding this right, I’m to “cook boneless chicken until done, add sauce and saute until heated through, about 10 minutes”. I’m planning to add pasta to the whole deal, to make it at least sort of like the Chicken Marsala I’ve had in restaurants. So let’s get started.

7:10. We have a shitload of spices on the shelf above the stove. In the old apartment we had more cupboards so you couldn’t see them all at once. I’m not going to be using any of them, but damn. OK. Cook the chicken. I remembered to take it out of the freezer this morning, so we’re on the right track. Oh, right, pasta. I’ll have to time this right. 10 minutes to saute, 8 minutes to cook the pasta… shouldn’t be too hard.

7:15. Well, clearly the first step is to put a pan and a pot on the stove. Laura suggested using olive oil to either cook or satue the chicken. Or both? Does it matter? How does sauteing differ from cooking, apart from jiggling it around in a jaunty fashion? How do you type an accent egout in Linux? I’m going to put a thin layer of olive oil in the pan and then heat it up. Wait. Shit. Does the pan need to be hot already? Let’s see what kind of olive oil we have. Also, while we’re on the subject, fuck Popeye.

7:21. OK, here’s some olive oil. Apparently Rachael Ray calls this stuff EVOO, so it’s either really critical to cooking or Rachael Ray is fucking annoying. So how about this: I’ll split the difference and preheat the pan to kinda-sorta warm. This one web page about sauteeing said that you don’t want the pan to be cold when any of the ingredients touch it, but that’s not until Stage 2, so I really don’t know. I’ll put the oil down and see how it bubbles. Then I’ll go look at the chicken.

7:26. Am I going to get salmonella on the keyboard? Maybe liveblogging wasn’t a good idea. I guess this should really be a podcast.

7:30. I put the chicken on and the motherfucker went up like a Sizzle Bomb. Did I use too much EVOO? I’m trying to practice sauteeing, since I’ve never done it before except in Wario Ware, and the chicken breasts really aren’t budging. How will I know when they’re done? I’ve cooked chicken before, I’m not a total novice, but it was always either cut-up chunks or tenders, so I’m not sure if the signs are different or what.

7:34. Laura wandered in and she says it looks OK. The timer is almost up to 5 minutes; I’ll flip them when it gets there I guess.

7:37. The pan is still sizzling and popping like I’ve angered the Shinto goddess of olive oil and her tiny pixie warriors, or something. Luckily I have one of those meshy cover things, but it makes flipping the chicken a frightening experience. I think I have time to get my laundry out of the basement.

7:41. It’s been like 10 minutes and these things are whiter than me. I’m turning up the heat, Shinto goddesses be damned.

7:45. All right, now I’m just starting to get bored. I thought I had to stay here the whole time; I could’ve played like 150 WarioWare games in this time. It’s starting to smell like something’s burning in here, but the chicken still doesn’t look done. I guess it’s just because I’m using larger pieces. That sauteeing page said that the whole point was to cook things quickly, before they lose their moisture, but everything will be all cooked by that point. Why does adding the sauce change up the agenda? Yes, I’m overthinking this. Cooking is not as easy as experienced cooks make it sound. If this was perl I’d be doing great.

7:51. OK, flipped the chicken again. Interesting: the pieces that were on the far side of the pan, which have less olive oil because our oven isn’t level, were more cooked. Maybe I did use too much oil, and it’s making the — WHOOPS smoke alarm went off. OK, I definitely had the burner too high. Am I done? The chicken’s still really pale on the sides, but maybe that’s just how it goes (and I’ve way overcooked them).

7:53. All right, I’m declaring the chicken done. Now, my next problem: how will I know when the Marsala sauce is “heated through”? And should I try to drain out the olive oil first? I guess I’ll leave it in.

7:55. OK, whole bottle of sauce in there. A lot of mushroom chunks. The sizzling went way down right away, so clearly sauce > olive oil. Everything’s gliding around nicely when I make what I imagine the “saute motion” to be. I should boil the water.

7:59. This might not get all done on time. That’s OK, I think I way overcooked the chicken anyway. It occurs to me that I don’t know how to serve everything once it’s done. Is the sauce supposed to be all goey and all over the chicken? They look like awkward roommates, at best. They’re mixed more poorly than a Rainer Maria album. Also, the water’s not really boiling at all. The pasta is going to be hardcore late.

8:14. And the rest of it was pretty messy. At least I know how to use a Swiffer mop now. The sauce all burned off, so now it’s Chicken Marsala mostly in memory. The pasta is cooking slower than any pasta I’ve ever seen before.

8:23. All right, the freaking pasta is done enough. It is eating time, and it only took over an hour! I’ll be back to let you know how it went.

8:45. I think my main achievement of the evening, aside from not starting a grease fire, is that Laura did not burst into laughter and/or tears after sampling what I made. If that chicken were any tougher, it would be Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox.

Overall, I would say that went not particularly well. But I’ve learned some things, like not to cook things for as long as I otherwise would, and how to type an accent in Ubuntu: you have to go to the Keyboard control panel and define a “compose key”, then you hit that key and the apostrophe at the same time, and then you type your character. Like this: sauté. Fresh.