Are you a good cook? Do you make an enormous mess? Are you afraid of your oven? Do you own a mixer? Or do you just heat things up?

And do you think my cake will be all right? Please be kind.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

Answers

I would say I'm a pretty decent cook. I regularly scare the shit out of my housemates with my wheezing, squeaking, hissing pressure cooker; they are convinced that I have but a tentative grip on its proper usage and will someday blow up the house. Still, I'm the only one in the house who can cook rice (for example) in 3 minutes, which everyone seems to think is witchcraft. Anyway.

When I bake, I love to set everything out ahead of time (a la Beth and Julia Child)- that way I don't forget anything important, and I also feel pretty cool with all my little bowls and measuring cups lined up like little soldiers on my counter. "It's like I'm a professional! On a cooking show!" My delusion is typically burst when my lumpy and/or too brown cookies emerge from the oven. Julia Child doesn't make cookies (especially imperfect ones); she makes flourless chocolate cakes and other such decadent and complicated things. She also doesn't have to wash all of her little bowls. Goddamnit!

And Beth, I'm sure your cake will be fine... I bet the filling will serve to moisten the hockey pucks and it will all balance out.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

Yes, yes I am.

I'm still developing the perfect chocolate cake recipe though. Last time it had too much cocoa powder and not enough eggs. I should try again tonight when it's 108 and the a/c is blasting.

And I do believe my cheesecake spoke for itself.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

Okay, a little piece broke off when I was taking it out of the pan, and I tasted it.

Oh, my. This is the richest cake ... definitely bordering on too rich. It's very moist; it's just super heavy. I think we'll be slicing it by the half inch tonight.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

Um...no.

I've lived in my apartment for almost 4 years and I've never actually used the oven. I'm not even sure I know how to turn it on.

Many of my friends are spectacular cooks, and I always seem to date guys who can cook as well, but I've never actually tried to make anything more adventurous than a bowl of cereal or slice and bake cookies.

I am however, a VERY good dishwasher.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

When I really put my mind to it, I'm a good cook. The rest of the time, I'm a re-heater.

It ain't cookin' if all the mixing bowls aren't used and if there isn't flour or egg-white or Lord knows what on the floor and ceiling. I'm weird in that I like to kind of clean as I go. When you only have a limited amount of counter space to work with, you either clean as you go or you end up setting used bowls on the couch.

I have a decent set of Henckels knives; a Kitchen Aid mixer; a Cuisinart; spring-form pans, and the other baking accoutrements. And I know how to use them. However, if I'm just cooking for me, it's cereal and yogurt...cuz why go thru all the trouble if I'm the only one to enjoy it?

And your cake will be FINE. Promise.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I've never mastered the art of the pressure cooker, but other than that, I have to say that I am a pretty good cook. It is something that I really enjoy. I like to experiment with recipes, changing things here and there to see if I can improve them.

I had guests last week and made herb roasted pork with apples and onions, which was a big hit. I also made a chocolate mousse pie, which is basically my own recipe.

I clean as I go along. My kitchen is tiny, with very little counter space, so I can't have the clutter. When I had a bigger kitchen, I made a bigger mess.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I have some expertise here. As a Canadian, I know hockey pucks, and I am a great cook, so in my not so humble opinion, I would say that this sounds like a fabulous flourless cake you have just made.

I love to cook, if I am in the mood for it, and I am good at it, but I have to say, before you all blow darts at my big ego to deflate it,that when I screw it up in the kitchen, I really screw up big time. Like, I have cooked about 10 really perfect, juicy, turkeys that won rave reviews, but I also had a turkey blow up in my oven once.

Really. It exploded.

I make an enormous mess, which my husband is usually good enough to clean up for me. There is a two ingredient minimum down the front of my shirt when I cook, and every time I bake I drop an egg on the floor, which the dog eats.

And, btw, after seeing pics of your new fridge, I am deep in the throes of icebox envy, and it isn't pretty.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

Sometimes I'm a good cook. I tend to be a little wacky sometimes, trying stuff. This is fine if you're making, say, stew, but it can be disastrous if you're baking. (Baking is chemistry. I forget which cookbook of mine says that, but it's true.) The other sad thing is that if I come up with something really winning, half the time I have no idea at all what caused it.

The kitchen looks as though hurricanes hit it if I make so much as an omelette. I hate my kitchen. I have about three feet of counter space, separated by a sink. The only time I've been afraid of my oven is the time I opened it and found a fireworks display within. The element was burning out in the most spectacular way imaginable.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I'd like to think that I'm a good cook -- but I guess you'd have to get Sabs' testimony to back me up.

I'm good at throwing meals together on the fly from whatever happens to be in the fridge. Sometimes these are delicious, most of the time they're just edible, nothing to write home about, but hey, you know, that's a valuable skill when all you've got is some lettuce, a can of tuna and maybe some chicken broth kicking around.

Sabs is a Diva Cook. He plans this elaborate meals with delicious sounding ingredients. Often, these meals turn out as he'd intended. Other times he struggles with his timing. He forgets that you need to start vegetables and potatoes before pan-cooked meats, cooks pasta first before prepping his meat and veggies ... etc. etc.

I am however, a great baker, though I still lag behind my mother in one specific department. I bake delicious cookies, cakes, breads etc. etc. But I just can't rival my mom's apple pie. *sigh*

I'll probably be working 'til the day I die on the perfect pie crust.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I'm not much of a cook, and I don't really care. I'm not impressed by other people's cooking skills. Restaurant food is way better than home made in my experience.

I used to be a pretty good baker, though. I regard that as a different skill from cooking. I make good pie crust and have a great pound cake recipe that everyone loves. I also get all the ingredients out and measured before I start.

Your cake will probably be good, but I think polluting chocolate with raspberry is a crime.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I'm trying to become a good cook. I'm living alone for the first time, and I can tell you that after a while, even pasta can be worn out. I'm getting bored with chicken.

I have to learn new recipes.

My boyfriend is really good at this whole cooking thing. Really, he's great. He can cook anything out of anything. I make Kraft Dinner.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I can be.

I do tend to cook some things more than other people like (I hate gooshy eggs), but I haven't actually set spaghetti on fire for years. I tend to make better desserts, but that is because those are the recipes that usually look best, and the ones I have the easiest time getting other people to eat.

I credit the vast improvement in my cooking skills over the past few years mostly to Cook's Illustrated, the Food Network, Alton Brown, and just having to fulfill my own food cravings and have alternatives to frozen/fast food. And going out and getting good tools (pressure cooker, good baking sheets, etc). And getting a whole bunch of free cooking magazines when I worked at the Co-op.

Not being afraid of burning myself helps a lot, too. Well, maybe not with the health of my skin, but with the cooking.

And the cake sounds wonderful.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

Nope...but I'm a mighty good eater.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I lived in the barracks for eight years, in the Air Force, and didn't cook much besides beef and chicken liver yakitori on an hibachi grill.

In college, I was on the food plan, and didn't cook. I ate in the dining hall. I love that chow hall food, from the Air Force.

When I got married, Brenda and I learned to cook, together. She could already bake biscuits and make gravy.

One of the books we learned from was The Joy of Cooking. The Brunswick stew recipe told how to skin a squirrel. Another one was Cross Creek Cookery, which told how to clean a turtle. And used ingredients like chayote squash (mirliton).

I was a reader of cookbooks. Including the Larousse Gastronomique and Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit, by Adelle Davis.

In New Orleans, we could get exotic ingredients, fresh, and go to ethnic restaurants to try meals we were going to cook, but had not eaten.

By the time I dug at Shadows-on-the-Teche, in New Iberia, I was able to plan the menu, shop for a week at a time, and cook three meals a day for a crew of four. We ate an oyster loaf at the pool hall on Main Street for lunch every Friday, and headed for New Orleans.

La Mediatrice. Fried oysters on a pistolet with melted butter and Louisiana hot sauce.

Basically, I cook a creole cuisine--a mixture of Italian, French, Mediterranean, and soul food. Heavy on the seafood and with mostly fresh ingredients. With the exception of things like salt cod, dried beans, smoked sausage, leather britches. A lot of cream and butter. Stocks. By stocks, I mean chicken, turkey-neck, veal, beef, turtle, fish-head, shrimp-hulls.

During the ten years we lived in Delray Beach, when the boys were young, I was the houseperson in the home, for five years, and they watched--helped--me cook. They know their way around the kitchen.

They can catch, clean, and cook anything found in surf, stream, or forest. On a campfire, a charcoal grill, an electric range, or in an oven. Crock pot, pressure-cooker.

Owen's in the Bluegrass Cookbook, and other bands park their buses near his band bus, for his cooking.

Balder is an apprentice to Chef Doug Alley, at The Fancy Tomato, in Seaside, Florida, this summer. Chef Doug has a show on PBS called Thyme in the Kitchen.

If you go to About, at The Daily Bugle (www.thedailybugle.com), and click on Owen at Work, or Balder at Work, you'll see them playing music and cooking.

The both make things from scratch, with natural ingredients, and can improvise around the basic methods, and knock your socks off, with whatever is in the larder. So can I.

One year, when Owen was between bands, and seine-fishing (he was the cook on the Friendship), and I was out of work, we lived on trash fish he brought home and the crabs, surf clams, whelks, and cockles I brought home from walking on the beach, toward the west end of Tyndall AFB. Ah, that scungilli marinara over angel hair pasta. Mullet from a cast net.

The gathering, painstaking preparation, and leisurely consumption of food was a big part of our family memories. When the weather turned cool, we'd get a bag of oysters, and eat them raw, broiled, baked, stewed, and fried. Sometimes the boys would go to Polecat Bayou in the canoe and rake up a cooler full of oysters. During deer season we always had venison.

When the oysters and deer, and mullet, are gone, a way of life will go with it.

Brenda always has a garden with tomato, bell pepper, garlic, and onions, and a couple of chickens, for yard eggs. A rooster to fertilize the eggs. The chickens roam free, during the day, digging for bugs, and we feed them table scraps, in addition to scratch feed and laying meal.

Brenda and Owen both make wine. We buy tupelo honey in a 30 lb carboy. Use waterground cornmeal we keep in the freezer.

Grits and grunts. A Florida cracker will make do. Make your own mojo criollo, with oranges off your own tree.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I am a damn good cook. I love to cook, I make a huge mess. I just hate, hate, hate to wash dishes.

I own so many kitchen gadgets it's frightening.

Your cake sounds like it will be wonderful. Raspberries and chocolate yum.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

Yes, I am. Rob and I were both professional cooks, before we came to our senses and got gigs that didn't rate up there with air traffic control for stress level.

But I still miss it, occasionally. I collect cookbooks (like my mother, and her mother), and have lots and lots of kitchen gadgets and appliances, and love to try different cuisines.

Rob thinks he's *just* as good a cook as I am, but it's not precisely true.

Yeah, the kitchen gets in an awful mess. On the bright side, we have a dishwasher, the kind you roll up to the sink and it makes a dreadful racket for about an hour. When we were moving in together, I thought it would take up too much space- "honey, are you sure you want to keep this thing?"- and he just looked at me, mouth literally agape.

Heh. I can't believe I ever said such a thing. It's the bomb, baby!

A tip: with cooking, you have a fair bit of latitude. An extra splash of this or pinch of that, no problem. But baking relies on precision. You've got to measure everything exactly. It really is chemistry.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha no.

(NB This outburst of hysterical cackling applies only to the question "Are you a good cook". The cake will be fine, I'm sure.)

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Dear lord no I don't like kitchens. As a kid I refused to learn how to cook. My mother kept asking me what I was going to do when I grew up and got married. I told her I was going to marry a man who cooks. Did too. He taught me to cook a little. My kids learned to cook early, in self defense.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

I can make *some* things really well. I make killer lasagna...traditional, and an alfredo kind with shrimp, spinach and mushrooms. I make awesome bracciole. I have a sinful caramel brownie recipe that's really easy to do (if anyone wants it, just email me.)

Mostly, I nuke stuff or eat out. I *can* cook if I have to, I just don't *like* to. Luckily, my boyfriend loves to cook, and he's great at it.

Although I don't enjoy cooking, I have an obsession with kitchen gadgets. I love em! My mom and I will be at the maul (mall for you folks that like that kinda thing) and see some kitchen gadget. "Oh, Mom. I've GOT to have that! That is SO COOL." I'll say. She just asks, "Will you actually USE it?" Well, of course I won't, but I just can't seem to resist.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

When I was growing up, my mom had enough to do keeping us all fed, so she said that if we wanted dessert, we were going to have to make it ourselves, and I thought, that's fair. I learned to bake and make some pretty good desserts, which greatly confused my first girlfriend, who was a great cook. She couldn't understand somebody who would learn to bake but not cook. Since then, I've gotten some gourmet cooking lessons (wedding present), and when I have the time, I can make some killer food.

And the cake will be fine. It's got all the right stuff in it, and even if it's hard and dry, hey, people eat biscotti, don't they?

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Beth, if anybody asks, the cake is supposed to be dense as neutron star material. Half of being a good cook is being a good liar.

I'm a good cook, I think, though I've made some pretty spectacularly bad stuff. I have a tendency to do experiments - which sometimes turn out really good, and sometimes are just horrible. I made dwarf bread last week, for example, as I sleepily thought wine would be a good substitute for water in my bread machine (it was midnight; give me a break).

What I'm really bad at is cleaning up after myself. I have a tendency to let everything pile up and then do marathon cleaning stuff for a few hours every ten days or so.

Joanne

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Yes, Laurie and I are both good cooks. She's much better at the timing than I am though. I can never seem to get everything to finish at the same time. People who can get my utmost respect (and envy). We cook a lot based upon what's ready in the garden or what we find at the farmers' market.

I am of the "measure and set everything out ahead of time" school. If I'm being especially compulsive I'll even wash the bowls the ingredients were in as I go along. Laurie will measure as she goes and when she's done every counter and the sink will be covered with utensils and debris.

My oven doesn't scare me but it is tiny and has hot spots which can be frustrating. I bake pretty well except for pie crust (I can't seem to roll it correctly). And every third or fourth loaf of bread from the bread machine is what we refer to as "mutant bread". I love our KitchenAid mixer. I don't know how I lived without one.

Both of our mothers felt that if it was boxed, canned or frozen it was appropriate dinner fare. I guess that's why we enjoy cooking from scratch so much.

Beth, I'm sure the cake is fine. It sounds really good.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

I'm a decent cook. I deal with regular homestyle cooking (as opposed to gourmet cooking). I'm a very good baker, though.

Greg, I have a KitchenAid mixer, too, and don't know how I lived so long without one. Big Blue has made my annual Christmas-cookie bake- fest *so* much more fun.

So, Beth, how was the cake? I thought it sounded delish - raspberries and chocolate, yummmmmm.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

The first thing I did after reading yesterday's journal entry was to print out the cake recipe and add it to my pile of delicious recipes I will probably never make.

The imagination/reality gap was even greater when I lived in New York. There I cooked about once a year, because of the cockroaches, but I saved recipes from the New York Times Magazine for dishes of Czarist opulence - delicate caramel cages protecting scoops of raw vanilla and rosewater ice cream, cakes with glossy meringue surfaces suitable for painting pictures of your country house in food coloring, truffle stuffed lobster, that kind of thing.

But now that I live in a roach-free Arctic climate I actually do bake things like shortbread and Sally Lunn cake - it's just meat and raw vegetables that I can't stand working with in real life. And it's berry season. So maybe I will make this cake. What do you do to melt chocolate if you don't have a double boiler or a microwave?

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

I am a good, if unimaginative, cook. I just about never cook without a recipe, maybe I don't trust my instincts or something. I can do the pasta with veggies and olive oil without a recipe, but anything much more complicated than that or a stirfry, I need instructions.

But I can follow a recipe damn well and make some fabulous meals....

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

I'm fairly good at most things - although I hate cooking for just myself - i'm much happier when there are other people coming over to help me eat it.

Having said that though - I've had some disasters - although I mark it down to experience - at least I experiment.

Diana - to melt chocolate - a sturdy pyrex bowl (or something else heat resistant) on top of a saucepan of simmering water. A DYI double boiler.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000