Everything Girl

Six years ago, I’d never cooked a thing in my life.

I’m sorry, that’s not entirely true. In high school one year I made a birthday cake for a friend, and I once baked brownies from scratch. They looked awful, lumpy and lopsided, but tasted wonderful. I had a no-bake cheesecake disaster in seventh grade: it never set up and I was left with cream cheese soup sloshing all over my parents’ fridge. Cleanup was such a nightmare that I never tried it again. And I went through a phase at thirteen when I’d discovered that pound cakes were easy and delicious, so I made them all the time. Until I got bored of them, anyway.

In college I lived on dorm food and take out. In grad school I was famous (infamous?) among the other students in my department for having a fridge empty of everything but a bottle of vodka and a wedge of brie. If I happened to heat up a Lean Cuisine one night, I considered that cooking at home. Looking back, it’s so odd to think that I was twenty-three before I realized that knowing how to feed myself would be a useful and gratifying skill to master. It’s even odder to think of the food that made me want to learn how to cook: that bake sale staple, the rice krispie treat.

My friend and I were hanging out, as nocturnal grad students do, and around 1am she said, “Do you know what I’d love? Rice krispie treats.”

I said, “But I don’t know how. Do you?”

She looked at me like I was insane because nothing in the world is easier to make than rice krispie treats, and told me, “Of course. We need cereal, marshmallows, and butter.”

“Do you have a recipe?” I asked, impressed that she knew the ingredients by heart. (I know. Believe me, this story is kind of excruciating in hindsight, and I realize that I’m probably not impressing you as a food writer whose column you’d like to read in the future, but I’ll take that risk. After all, everyone has to start somewhere.)

She told me that, duh, it wasn’t hard at all, and after a quick run to the convenience store, right before my eyes, with a pot my mom had given me but I’d never used, she made our late-night snack. I was so impressed.

It was like she’d done magic or something. This story is making me sound a little slow in the head, but it can’t be overstated how impressed I was. I kept saying, “You made a dessert from scratch!”

(I know. Please don’t judge me.)

A few months later, I was at her apartment for the premiere of the second season of Joe Millionaire, because if there’s one thing grad students love more than staying up all night eating rice krispie treats, it’s watching trashy reality shows. She’d decided we’d cook calvados chicken (chicken with apple brandy) and I was excited to eat something so fancy, but nervous about helping to cook it. The meal involved chicken and cream and apples and calvados and seemed awesomely elaborate. My friend had way more cooking experience, so she was the boss. I was the sous chef and followed her directions. She had to talk me through some stuff, but that was okay. (I didn’t know how to chiffonade, for one thing – if you don’t either don’t worry, we’ll get there. It’s easy.) In one of the most electrifying moments of my life, shouting with excitement the entire time, I lit the alcohol in the pan on fire with a long fireplace match while she laughed hysterically and stood nearby with a lid, ready to smother the pan if the fire got out of hand, and it was scary and nerve wracking and hilarious and so much fun. We applauded ourselves when it was done, and then savored our dinner while we lounged on her bed, watching the misadventures of Paul the Butler and David the Fake Millionaire.

Well, after you’ve made a chiffonade and lit a pan on fire – very fancy things indeed, I thought – cooking just doesn’t seem as intimidating as it used to. Up until that point I’d always imagined that cooking a tasty dinner took a long time. At least three hours. And it would be really complicated, with tons of hard steps that I wouldn’t know how to do and would probably mess up. And I’d have to measure dozens of ingredients very carefully, because if I counted wrong and accidentally put in four teaspoons of something instead of five, or seared something for three minutes instead of two, I would be marked down an entire letter grade and the whole meal would be ruined.

It was an understatement to say that I was surprised and curious that first time I cooked with my friend. The meal was delicious, and it didn’t take three hours. There was nothing pre-packaged about it. She didn’t measure very carefully; she said, “Put in as much seasoning as you want.”

I asked her, “But if I just put in however much I want, what if it’s different from the recipe? What if I do it wrong?” It seems obvious now, but it blew my mind to realize that, if I’m the one who’s going to be eating it, then it only makes sense to season it so it tastes good to me. Who cares what seasoning or browning or sauce consistency was good to the person who wrote the cookbook? He’s not the one eating it; I am. So I should make it the way I want to. It’s just dinner, not rocket science or heart surgery. Nothing to be nervous about. And if something doesn’t turn out, I can always try again tomorrow.

I was off and running.

Home cooking became an even bigger priority for me when I moved in with my fiancé and we started saving for our wedding. And when I started to realize that the things I made at home usually tasted better than what I got at restaurants, I was hooked. As I expanded my repertoire and skills and, yes, finally mastered cheesecake, I started writing essays for my friends to demystify recipes and techniques they wanted to try at home. I also began having regular dinner parties to share my food with others. After all, what’s the point if you’re not cooking to nourish someone you love, whether it’s a roomful of friends or just yourself?

And now, six years after those magical rice krispie treats, I can honestly say that I love food. I love shopping for it, preparing it, serving it, eating it, talking about it, and writing about it. In this column, I hope to share favorite recipes, cookbook and equipment reviews, and my thoughts on food. When it comes to eating and cooking today’s consumer has more options than ever before, and I’m excited talk with you about what I know, and my successes and failures. Whether you’re the sort of person who whips up twelve course organic feasts with aplomb or the sort who gets hives in the grocery store, whether you’re interested in advice on what to do with leftover chicken or how to make a chocolate soufflé, formal holiday meals or casual cocktails with friends, brunch, lunch, or midnight snacks, your kitchen is the center of your home and what you cook is worth thinking about. After all, you have to eat every day, and dining well is one of life’s great pleasures. Nourishing yourself, your family, and your friends is one of the most satisfying things you can do, and a skill anyone can learn.

Pan-Fried Haloumi with Spiced Dates and Pears
Adapted from Spice (William Morrow) by Ana Sortun

As I learned the night of the calvados chicken, there’s nothing quite like a flambé. It gives your food great flavor, it’s dramatic and impressive, and everyone will think you’re a genius in the kitchen.

This dish is a simple first course for four or cocktail snack with a big payoff. Not only do you get to light it on fire, but the taste is out of this world. It’s based around haloumi cheese, which you can find at the grocery store. It’s like feta in that it’s made of goat’s milk and brined, but it doesn’t have the crumbly texture. You can brown haloumi in a pan without any oil because the sugars in the brine will toast and the cheese won’t melt.

Spices that you grind right before you use them taste fresher and stronger than spices you buy already pulverized because the essential oils haven’t evaporated yet. When I use whole spices I grind them with my mortar and pestle. If you don’t have one of those you can use a hand-held coffee grinder (run some uncooked rice through it first to clean all the coffee out) or do what my mom does: put the spices in a zip-top bag and crush them with the heel of a heavy pan or a rolling pin. You won’t believe the difference it makes in flavor.

Ingredients:
½ tsp. each ground cumin and coriander
¼ tsp. each ground cardamom and black pepper
the juice and zest of one lemon (grate the zest off with a microplane or peel the aromatic yellow skin off with a sharp vegetable peeler – leaving the white pith – and chop it fine)
1 tbs. brown sugar
8 dates, pitted and cut in half
¾ lb. haloumi cheese
1 pear
olive oil
sambuca (an Italian anise-flavored liquor)

Preheat your oven to 350F.

In a little pan, mix the lemon zest and juice with a tablespoon of brown sugar, and stir them around over medium heat until the sugar melts. Then add the spices and dates. Cook until the dates are softened, which will take fewer than five minutes. Use your judgment, though: when they seem soft to you, that’s the time to stop. Most of the liquid in the pan will evaporate, and the spices, sugar, and lemon will cling to the dates. Stir in a little glug of extra virgin olive oil and then put the spiced dates aside in a bowl until you want them. You can do this part ahead of time if you’d like.

When you’re ready to eat, cut your haloumi into eight slices and brown them on both sides in a dry pan over medium heat. While the cheese toasts, core a pear and cut it into eight slices. Don’t bother peeling the pear. Once the cheese slices are golden brown on both sides, move them into a small oven-safe dish. You don’t need anything fancy: as long as it’s not nonstick, even a pie plate will work. Put the cheese slices side by side, not overlapping.

Pour a little glug of extra virgin olive oil into the pan where you just toasted the cheese, and cook the pear slices until they’re golden brown. Add them to the baking dish with the cheese. Put a spiced date on top of each cheese slice too, and make sure every bit of spicy oil in your date bowl makes it into the baking dish. You don’t want to waste it; it’s delicious. Then stick the whole thing into the oven for about five minutes to warm all the way through.

When the dish comes out, set it on a cooling rack on the table. Gather your friends and loved ones and turn out the lights for maximum dramatic effect. Pour over a couple shots of sambuca and use a long fireplace match to set the whole thing on fire. Graciously accept your guests’ oohs and aahs while you wait for it to burn out, leaving just the sweet hint of licorice in the pan with the spicy dates, the creamy, toasty cheese, and the floral pears. At two slices of cheese and pear for each person, this is a delicious way to start a meal.

Megan Homan is an event planner for a Boston-area non-profit. In her free time, she can be found pursuing new challenges not only in restaurants around Boston, but also in her own kitchen.

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