Cooking for gimps...

[johnpalmer]

I’ve become a pretty good cook, recently, though I have to admit my range is pretty limited. I had to learn to cook a good marinara while Milli, my wife, was in rehab for a broken hip. Now, you’d ask, how could I, a gimp who loses his working memory (hence, forgetting he is cooking!), manage to become a good cook?

It started with good equipment. We have Portable Induction Cooktop, or PIC. We have cookware that works on induction – both cast iron, some stainless, and Hexclad (which seems pretty good so far). Key thing: PICs set a precise temperature, and, have timers. Worst case, my food won’t finish cooking, because I forgot to add more time; but, an induction cooktop can’t cause a fire (except, possibly, at “max sear”). If you don’t have a temperature higher than 375, well, nothing in my kitchen will combust at 375, so, there’s no danger of fire.

The problem I ran into is patience. Now, before any Italian folk speak up, I have to confess to one of the Original Sins in Italian cooking. I use dried herbs. I’m a gimp; I’ll improve, if, and when, I can do so easily. So, with that sin in mind, my problem was patience, because those Italian grandmothers considered time on the cooktop to be love infused into the dish. But I found shortcuts. You can caramelize onions by cooking them down at a lower temperature (say, 175), but then, when they’re really pale, and totally wimpified, kick the heat up to 250, or 275, and be ready to keep stirring.

Don’t stir too much; if your onions aren’t submerged in liquid the entire time, they’re not staying at the temperature you need for good caramelization. Still, as long as the onions are submerged, you can keep them moving slowly, so none of them scorch (which causes a bitter taste that you might enjoy, but is considered a cooking flaw in a competition). Once they’re starting to go brown, that’s when you are ready to make your marinara.

But let’s back up. You start, if possible, with enough glugs of extra virgin olive oil (okay, all right, “evoo”) and butter, so the onions collapse into liquid. But no onions yet! Here, you add your dried basil, and I find a quarter cup for 1 28oz can crushed tomatoes is a good start. I then add a quarter cup of oregano, as well, and then, once the herbs are saturated in the oil, I start cooking the onions, 2-3 cups per 28pz can of crushed tomatoes.

Do you need to rest after stirring the onions until they’re brown enough for you? That’s okay. Here’s a secret: you can also caramelize onions in the oven, roughly the same as you do in a frying pan, and you can learn how long you need to bake at 250, 275, whatever temperature you choose. You just want it low enough that you can forget about it for a bit too long, and come back, and still rescue it (if needed). You might prefer 325, and more frequent checks, and I won’t tell you not to!

Still, the key: get those onions starting to turn to onion jam. (I understand that there is “a thing” called onion jam, but a spoon of caramelized onions does have a jammy quality to it.) You don’t have to take them all the way; just some browning brings out new flavors.

Now, you add garlic to taste, which for me, means a handful (at least) of garlic buds, per 28oz crushed tomatoes. Chop it as finely as you desire; there's no magic in shaving them super-thin, not if you're adding enough garlic! You can add the garlic earlier, during the onion cook time, but garlic might scorch. Again, some like the flavor, but, a judge would assume carelessness, not individual taste. You want it to soften up.

Fun fact: shortly after eating garlic, before it gets to your large intestine, if you’ve eaten enough, you’ll fart garlic. Laugh now, but when it happens, you’ll be forced to agree. If you eat even more, the smell might come out of your pores. This tends to happen if you eat so much garlic, it’s a vegetable, not a mere seasoning ingredient. It’s a decent vegetable.

Now, before you add crushed tomatoes, make sure you’ve added everything that needs more heat than a mere boil. You can’t put too much heat under a pan of marinara sauce, without worrying about the bottom scorching, so, the oil is where everything must be more-than-boiled. Earlier, I could have added some ground carrot to my marinara, but it needs to cook even longer than the onions, for my taste. Some folks insist you need a bay leaf, and if so, I see no reason not to let it infuse with the olive oil, and possibly spread its flavor even better. Still, this is the big moment, you’re about to dump the tomatoes. Believe it or not, some of you will someday try adding one, just one, anchovy here, and let it melt, and then dump your 28oz can of tomatoes into the pan. Well – technically, you should open the can, and dump only the crushed tomatoes in.

Now, right now, at this moment, you have a delicious sauce, one that is very healthy for you, but if you simmer it, just right, slowly enough, you’ll boil off a lot of water, and notice “damn, there’s a lot of evoo in this sauce!” This is the place where marinara is amazing magic, even with dried herbs and garlic from a jar.

Now; take a frozen pork chop. Plop marinara over it. Put it in the oven until the pork chop is a clean, clear, 165-F or higher. The sauce and slow cooking tenderizes the pork chop. Throw in meatballs instead, and you get something equally amazing. Throw in chicken, that works just as well (but it is odd, if you’re not used to chicken in tomato sauce). And a good marinara sauce, with water added, makes a dandy poaching solution for frozen fish!

Now: maybe you can’t cut up 2-3 cups of onion, and do the rest. You can still improve store-bought sauce with olive oil and simmering, but be careful: evoo makes tastes a lot more intense, because of its high saturated fat content. That makes tastes tend to coat  your tongue, so a bad taste can be intensified! In point of fact, the evoo you use for cooking would, in a perfect world, pass the tongue test. Put a drizzle on your tongue. Wait about 30 seconds. At this moment, you feel a desire for that oil to leave your mouth, and if it’s any good at all, you swallow it, because it tastes nice; or you spit it out because EEEEWWWW!!! (Or, you don’t want to swallow any empty calories – but evoo is actually good for you.)

The key is, sauce, plus meat, plus oven (or slow cooker, or the PIC, but I have to watch more carefully…) makes for a vegetable-laden, protein containing, meal, and one that invites the use of cheese for protein (rather than “just” meat). Look, carnivores, no disrespect, but, it seems our bodies are healthiest when we get our protein furthest away from us, so, red meat is worst for us, poultry is better, and fish even better; beans and nuts and other protein sources are even healthier still. That means a pork chop, cooked in marinara, with a cheesy pasta-marinara side dish, would be delicious, and as satisfying as a boring old “two pork chops – YAY LO-CARB!” but the former would also include a surprisingly large amount of veggie matter.

You can do a lot of the same thing, Mexican style, with salsa, which you can make yourself, or buy whatever commercial brand you like. If you want, you can goose your salsa with some tomato paste, extra onions, and extra jalapeños, if you can afford to keep those things in your pantry. Be very cautious adding evoo to salsa; this is how I know evoo magnifies heat! And again, if you’re a gimp, you can dump a load of that salsa on top of beef, pork, or chicken, and let it slow cook to amazing flavor and tenderness, while providing a lot of vegetable-y goodness to your body.  You can use the meat plain, or, you can wrap it in a tortilla to make a taco, or burrito, or, put it on top of one tortilla to make a tostada, or between two, to make a quesadilla, along with cheese, and other Mexican goodness.

So if you’re tired of fruit smoothies and protein powder, and Tyson chicken and salad kits, here’s an easy-ish way to get a lot of nourishing plant matter into y our body, alongside your protein of choice. Good luck staying alive out there, and here’s hoping y’all find time and space in which to live fully, while staying alive.