James' Department of Food Safety and Security

James made rib eye steaks with a herb butter sauce and french fries (Steak Frites if you prefer) for dinner on Sunday. James makes the best damn french fries in the whole wide french fry world. Granted the first time he made the fries there was a lot of cursing and yelling at the stove. This time the whole process was smooth and quiet, albeit a little smokey. The french fries were fried to the most perfect golden color and then sprinkled with parsley and salt. Ali remarked that they were comparable to the Dumont fry. I made a salad with cucumber, heirlooms, green bell pepper, a drizzle of olive oil and some sea salt. As usually no one loved the salad more then myself. I am my biggest fan. It was a delicious and fresh meal with all the vegetables coming from the Greenmarket.

Last night as I scrolled through the recipes on Epicurious searching for something James could make with the eggplant I realized that I can cook too! He doesn't even like eggplant and I think it is such an interesting vegetable. I decided that I would take the reigns on this one. Few people know this, but James doesn't like my cooking. He will deny this if you bring it up. Ask him what his favorite dish that I make is and he will have no answer, avoiding eye contact while trying to think of something to say. If you ever see James eating a meal I have made you will notice that the first thing he does, without even tasting it, is pour an obscene amount of salt and pepper on it. His second step is to look through the food on his plate to make sure there is nothing strange hiding in it. I don't know what he thinks he will find but he has yet to discover something. After he is done mangling the food and finds no concrete evidence as to why he shouldn't eat it, he goes through it again. This time it is to pick out all the bits he won't eat. These include any member of the onion, and tomato family which are two really important vegetables for cooking, particularly in turkish food. When he is done with his inspection, half of the food is pushed to a corner of the plate (the "inedible"). The other half is pushed, mashed, questioned, separated and eventually veeerrrryyyy slowly he manages to push a couple of forkfuls into his mouth. After he is sure it looks like he has eaten enough to make it look like he actually enjoyed the food, he is miraculously full. As if he has just finished eating an entire pig and drinking 8 pints of beer. At this point I am on my second helping and joyously declaring how fine a cook I am when this happens...

Me looking at his plate: "How come you didn't eat anything?"
James: "I did."
Me: "You don't like anything I make."
James: "That's not true."
Me: "You haven't eaten anything all day, you must be starving."
James starting to get defensive: " I'm full. I had a peach for lunch. I really just can't eat anymore."

I feel like the middle school lunch lady.
So after years of scrutiny, arguments and overall loss of self confidence I decided a few months ago that I no longer care if he eats what I make. This approach has been beneficial to my overall health. I find that I enjoy preparing meals much more. Everything tastes better when I don't have James' judgement to worry about. I have also found he is more likely to eat the food I make when I ignore him. I think it's called playing hard to get.

For the record, I am not a bad cook. I come from a blood line of bakers and I am sure that the food culture I grew up participating in is way better then the food culture he grew up with. I would also like to point out that other people have said that the food I make is great and I think they were being genuine with that sentiment. So last night I felt confident and I decided to make a brown rice stir fry using the eggplant, zucchini and red onions. It was really delicious, healthy and colorful. Just don't ask James what he ate for dinner last night because he might answer something like " Mystery Rice". You see James refers to everything I make as a "Mystery" something.

I only used half the eggplant for the stir fry so I used the other half to make a turkish meze, patlican ezmesi. The far less romantic sounding translation is mashed eggplant.
1 pound of eggplant is what I had. You adjust accordingly.
1/4 cup cold water
2 Tblspn separated lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 garlic cloves
Parsley
Some Olive Oil

Poke some holes in the eggplant and bake it at 450 for 30-40 minutes or until it is near collapse. Let it cool. Meanwhile mix the water, 1 tblspn lemon juice, 1/4 tspn salt. Peel the skin and soak the eggplant in the water/ lemon/ salt mix for 10 minutes. When that is done put the eggplant in another bowl, mix in the garlic, olive oil and the remaining salt and lemon juice. Put in a food processor to smooth. Mix in some parsely and your done.

In my next post I will write about James' role in the kitchen when I am cooking. It is almost as humiliating as when he is eating what I have made.