As a adult, I love to cook. I started learning to cook quite young. I could prepare a complete meal by the time I was about ten years old. I learned by watching my mother cook, by participating in daily meal preparation, and by following recipes. I still rely on recipes and today will often view videos on cooking to expand my knowledge of specific techniques. I have even enjoyed taking a few cooking classes. Given my enjoyment of cooking, it would probably come as a bit of a surprise when I say that there were times when I would avoid the kitchen at all costs. There were certain foods I did not want to watch in the preparation, participate in their cooking and even sometimes in eating the finished product. Here they are:
Don't Look in the Soup Pot
In the 1950s when you bought chicken, it did not come all cut up and neatly packaged. My mother bought whole chicken at the butcher shop. The butcher would cut the chicken up into parts per mother's directions. This often included taking an alcohol burner to singe off any bits of feather that might still be clinging to the chicken's legs. The butcher would also bundle up the liver, gizzards etc. You got the whole chicken, not just selected parts. Mother had lots to work with.
Mother made lots of soup. She regularly made chicken broth. When this occurred, I would try to make myself scarce. Mother very ingeniously (or so she thought) included the feet in the broth. They do provide collagen and flavor. Mother would tie the feet in a bundle with twine. She would then tie the string to a handle of the soup pot. The view of the feet cooking was horrifying to me as a child. If I peeked into the soup pot, I would see an eerie sight. As the spot simmered, the feet would slowly bob up and down tethered to the pot with their harness of twine. Their strange dance was hideously unappealing. Mother liked being able to easily remove and discard the feet intact. Rest assured, I do not cook chicken feet.
The Feast of Seven Fishes Sent Me Out of the Kitchen
The Christmas Feast of the Seven Fishes is an Italian tradition. I love fish and often make fish dishes. I even catch fish and clean it and cook it. So what was my problem with the Feast of the Seven Fishes. The problem was the cleaning of two of the fishes. Eels are delicious and are often part of the feast. They do not go gently into the pot. Most recipes call for skinning the eel before cooking it. Eels are slippery and are difficult to skin. The skin is tough and drys out quickly making it even harder to remove. Once the head is cut off (a bit gruesome, but . . .), the cook must peel back the skin like removing a sock. To get a good grip on the skin, cooks will resort to gripping the skin with pliers and pulling on it. Watching my mother, pliers in hand, grimace with effort to remove the skin was my undoing -- whew a bit too much and I am not squeamish.
With the eel dispatched, I just might bravely slink back into the kitchen and watch mother clean squid, another delicacy. To this day, one of my sisters will not eat squid, won't even try it. In my youth, we purchased squid frozen uncleaned in 3-5 pound blocks. Today, I buy it all cleaned and in neat tubes at the fish counter. Mother always worked with the frozen squid while it was still very cold, with ice crystals still clinging. I actually find squid fascinating. The purple skin comes off very easily, particularly when compared to the eel. The head with its tentacles readily come apart from the body. The ink sac poses a bit of a challenge. Pierce it and it gets messy and is very fishy. We did not use the ink, so the sac was carefully removed and discarded along with the beak and head. We kept the tentacles, for they are delicious. Once cleaned, the tubes were cut in rings and cooked. As one might guess, cleaning several pounds of squid was not a trivial task.
Today I find it hard to imagine many cooks undertaking some of my mother's cooking ventures. It is no small wonder that I am an adventuresome cook, for I have followed her example.
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