Kiss the cook

It took me about an hour to pan-fry a chicken breast on my first ever attempt, which is pretty pathetic when you think about it. Considering how quickly meat cooks when tended to by someone who actually knows what they’re doing, devoting an hour to that simple task is like a Christmas enthusiast carving out a week to decorate the tree. The job gets done, but obviously, someone forgot to read the instruction manual.

Late bloomers are forever playing catch-up with the world. Much as it pains me to admit it, I’m now at an age where supermarket cashiers refer to me as “sir,” and I’m pretty sure I can’t sit down anymore without emitting the long, slow grunt you hear from movie cowboys tweezing buckshot out of their buttocks. Considering that, it stands to reason I’d know how to prepare chicken by now. And I figured it out, but only after a slow process of trial and error, marred by cursing and the kind of smoke one associates with the rubble of a cannon-blasted Civil War fort.

Cooking, man. It’s a pain in the neck.

Cooks and chefs inspire both my admiration and my jealousy. To take pleasure in the act of cooking is a gift that should never be taken for granted – as bizarre as it seems to schlubs like me, who view it as akin to enjoying a donkey kick to the you-know-whats. The people who dislike it do so for their own personal reasons, and in my case, it’s impatience. I don’t want to spend half an hour preparing something, and then ten measly minutes eating it. That ratio of wait time to gratification is okay for amusement park rides, but lemme tell you, eating chicken is no roller coaster. Unless you undercook it, in which case the pang in your gut is about the same.

There’s only so long you can avoid it. Years ago, when I first moved into my own place, I thought I had the problem licked: I’d just eat cereal all the time. In full know-it-all whippersnapper mode, I rationalized this decision by sticking to the cereals that were supposedly “healthy,” like Special K and Raisin Bran. Those cereals are perfectly fine if they’re confined to a single meal, but when you consistently pass these off as dinner, there’s only so long before your mouth starts watering at the sight of chipmunks and small birds. Bodies crave the kinds of nutrients only found in real food, not the fare that comes in boxes decorated with pink dinosaurs riding unicycles.

With a newfound commitment to a little concept called “health,” I knew it was time to start expanding my options. It’s a classic bachelor move to start eating lots of take-out, but it’s difficult to find take-out options that don’t ultimately end in a pair of defibrillator paddles and a backless hospital gown. It also gets ridiculously expensive. A recent visit to a local sandwich shop resulted in soup, some stringy roast beef, and almost 10 fewer dollars in my wallet – money I could have spent doing something worthwhile, like catching a movie, or getting a henna tattoo of a Magic 8 Ball on my head. There are only so many five-dollar footlongs a dude can pound down before he realizes, “Hey! I’d better cook something!”

Plagued by that pesky impatience, it was difficult to find meals that could be prepared quickly; subjected to any drawn-out, time-gobbling meal prep, I’d feel like I was wasting away in a doctor’s office, waiting for a friend while blankly staring at a Highlights magazine. I settled on chicken because it’s relatively hassle-free – compared to, say, carving a marble statue, or building an internal combustion engine from scratch. Simplicity notwithstanding, there were still early attempts that left uncooked swatches of meat in the middle of each bite, increasing both my risk of bacterial poisoning, and palpitations brought on by rage. The last time I got that angry at a dead animal was when a skunk croaked in front of my driveway.

It’s hard deciding whether a propensity for cooking, or the lack thereof, is a product of nature or nurture. Are people just genetically programmed to feel a certain way about it? My mother taught me some rudimentary cooking skills when I was a wee tot, but I was generally unresponsive; mostly, when I think back to those long-ago kitchen sessions, it’s the cookie-baking that stands out in my memory: Mom with her giant bowls of dough, and me watching rapturously with the fevered attention of a dog begging for table scraps. I came away with love handles and a crippling sugar addiction, but no real culinary mastery beyond macaroni and cheese. Sometimes people ask me if I’m related to the famous chef, Emeril Lagasse. No, I tell them, I most assuredly am not.

Hindsight being 20/20, I wish I had paid more attention, because as uninspired as I felt pouring over recipes, it would have come in handy later in life, when the nose-studded sandwich maker at my local sub shop was the guy who basically kept me alive. That chefs actually make their livings preparing food for others inspires my respect, because it speaks to a skill and passion I can’t even fathom. Slowly, I’m making progress, but I’ve miles to go before I reach the promised land.

The next step? Beef tacos. Cows, you’ve been warned.