The Food That Made Me

Kids, I’m impatient. I generally have an hour and a half to cook dinner. So, I’m generally mise en place everything, starting with veggies and then meat, because I don’t want to clean another cutting board. Generally I start the dishes pretty well.

Here are some bad habits that are suboptimal for cooking:

1. I tend to use more ingredients than the recipe calls for because, for example, I don’t want to waste the rest of the celery.
2. When there are batches for the wok, I just overcrowd it because with multiple batches, you need to wash or wipe it out after each batch. So, I’m just lazy.

But now I’m not overcrowded for the most part. I’m struggling with the heat and temperature, so it’s a catch-22. But, I’ll tell you about that another time.

Tips:

1. Learn from my mistakes.
2. It is okay to be lazy and fail. It is part of learning.
3. If you cook in batches, the food will actually taste better.
4. Don’t throw everything on your cutting board. You increase the probability of cutting yourself. Also, with less space, you are taking longer and making yourself more frustrated. Yeah…. I don’t know why I still do it. I just did it yesterday.
5. Split the food into two pans for roasting. When you have lots of broccoli, split it into two sheets for roasting so that things cook evenly. If you have three sheets worth, then admit defeat or be patient and do a third sheet later.
6. Using the right size bowl for mixing is similar to using the cutting board. Why do I use a small bowl and fill the mixing liquids up to the brim? It would be so much easier to mix it in a bigger bowl. How else would I practice not spilling things? The GIF is from Initial D, one of my favorite racing shows growing up. The idea is that he can’t spill the water in the cup, or else the tofu that he was delivering would be smashed. Since daddy doesn’t race, daddy has to live dangerously by mixing things.
7. Measure out everything. The meat, veggies, liquids, and flour. Especially with cooking at work, everything cooks really quickly. You don’t have time to measure out the black pepper later.

I would love to tell you that I’m a master at it by now. But that is far from reality. There are times when I follow my own advice. And, there are sometimes when I get lazy, and then I regret being lazy. One of these days, I will no longer crowd the wok. Until then, please enjoy the dry and overly charred broccoli.