How to Cook Like Someone Who Can’t Cook and Doesn’t Particularly Enjoy It
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.