This routine kept me going for a while until I needed a little variety. I think boiling potatoes, and cooking rice was a great leap forward for me. It may not seem like much, but in a world where there was only fried food, and things out of a can, it was a pretty big deal. My meals started to look and taste more like what I used to get at home, and memories of home cooking, of course I mean Mama's cooking, started to influence my cooking. When I think about some of the stuff she cooked I think about great northern beans, collard greens with ham hocks, and stew, as some of my favorites.
I didn't do any real cooking before I left home, Mama did all that. I would scramble an egg now and then, or fry up some bacon, but for the most part I payed no deliberate attention to what she was doing in the kitchen, but we lived in a small house, and one couldn't help noticing some of what was going on, but what I had not noticed, was how long it took to cook some of that stuff. I had not noticed that some things just took a long time to cook before becoming editable.
One day I just up and decided I would cook a couple of smoked ham hocks. I knew they were to be boiled, because I always remember them coming out of a big pot of liquid. So I put the ones I had into a pot of water, turned on the heat and sat down with a book. After about fifteen minutes, I went to check them, and they were as hard as when I put them in. What was up with that? So, I grabbed the book resigned, to give them another fifteen minutes. To my dismay, things had not changed very much, so after the next fifteen minutes of very little change, I just decided that I had gotten hold of a couple of defective hocks, and threw them into the trash.
After telling this story to a more knowledgeable friend, I was told that smoked ham hocks take much longer than that to cook. So I tried it again with my new found knowledge, and patience, and I came out of it with a couple of perfectly cooked hocks. I had them with some left over rice, and a can of the ever present pork and beans. This new cooking, method (long time cooking) opened up a whole new chapter of possibilities, like beans, not from a can, and collard greens.
One more thing had to fall into place for me to think of myself as a serious cook. I didn't understand why meat was sometimes tender, and sometimes tough as shoe leather. I thought it was just a chance you took when when you bought meat. I had been cooking for quite some time before I understood, that tender, or tough, was directly related to the part of the animal it came form, and that these tougher cuts could be rendered, fall off the bone, tender by utilizing the same low, and slow cooking method I had learned to use in cooking beans, and smoked ham hocks, and there was even a name for it, "brazing". I must have gotten that from a television cooking show, because I almost never touched cook books, back than, and not much now. We braze all the time around here now so here is what happened to the chuck roast that came out of the freezer a couple days ago.
I salted and peppered, and floured it good on both sides, while our cast iron Dutch oven was getting hot on the stove. I put a light coating of canola oil in the Dutch oven, and layed the roast in. While the first side was browning, I quartered about seven medium to small potatoes, two large onions, and the last carrot in the refrigerator. All this went in after I had flipped the roast. The first side had browned very nicely. Brazing one of these roasts you can use what ever liquid you want. Broth, water, wine. I decided to use tomato sauce. The label on the jar said 4 pounds 3oz. What I had was what was left over from five pizzas I had made over the last three days. It came almost to the top of the roast, and I added a cup more of beer. The whole thing came to a rolling boil, and I turned it down to a simmer. Two, and a half hours later, we had this roast that could be pulled apart. And that's what we did. We pulled it apart, and enjoyed it with the potatoes, and some mixed veggies.
Brazing is like making bread. It takes a long time, but most of the time is just waiting. Good time to read a book, or catch up on a few recorded episodes of Sponge Bob Square Pants. Once you get the hang of it, theres noting to it, but some good eat'n.
