Amateur for Life

There are a number of good reasons I’ll always stay an amateur cook. I’m waaaay too obsessive and waaay too slow.

I can’t stand cooking with other people in the kitchen, let alone cooking WITH them. But I’m obsessive about a lot of things . . . taking the little green shoots out of garlic cloves; removing the stems from parsley before chopping it; taking out the top and bottom eyes on tomatoes, peeling every single brown spot out of potatoes, cutting onions by removing top and bottom, then peeling and processing them instead of those “pro” chefs who just cut ‘em in half, then peel them; making sure every single seed is removed from a green pepper; and washing EVERYTHING.

Plus, because I’m so methodical in the chopping, dicing and slicing that it takes way too long. I’ll do a large white onion in fine dice and the dice will be perfect, but it will take me five minutes. Rachael Ray’s handlers would do it in 30 seconds.

And then the cooking . . . I take my sweet time about it. The counter has to be constantly wiped down and the sink has to be completely empty. The stove has to be clear. There can be no dirty anything. No shitloads of water everywhere, either. My utensils have to be where they always are; my chef’s knife has to be cleaned before going on to the next vegetable, the scraper has to be hanging in the right place, the colander has to be cleaned between vegetables . . . *sigh*.

All pans have to be inspected before shoving stuff in them. I have a pot rack and don’t use some pans so often, so they collect a bit of grease fumes/dust. Must be WASHED. Must be DRIED before going on stove.

Food has to be timed. I’m not so obsessive about that, but I know I sometimes forget stuff and I need to be reminded about when a pot of pasta water is about to boil if I’m distracted.

I would not make a good chef. And I WOULDN’T MAKE A GOOD YOUR CHEF-INSTRUCTOR, either!!!!!