Author’s Column: Cooking
Are you any good at cooking? Can’t say I am, since I don’t do it very often.
Whenever the mood strikes me, I’ll cook up things like rice and stir-fried vegetables. The best I can manage are simple, one-serving meals. I’m rather lazy for the most part, and I don’t really care about cooking...so most of the food I eat comes pre-prepared.
I was talking to one of my HJ supervisors about this and they said that I could cook frozen gyoza pretty easily, since all I had to do was cook it according to the instructions. That sounded easy enough, so I bought myself a bag and cooked them according to the steps on the back...but they turned out horrible. The gyoza were so burned that they ended up as charred black lumps. When I told this to my supervisor, they went, “How? How could you possibly mess that up?”
I had no idea either, so I went over everything that had happened... Basically, you’re only supposed to turn the gyoza at the very end, so it wasn’t like I had any idea how well they were cooking. The instructions said something like “cook until the edges crisp up, and that’s when it’s done,” so that’s what I did, and they burned! In the end, we concluded that I’d just overcooked them and that I needed to cook them for a shorter time than the bag had stated. With that in mind, I bought another bag and began my second attempt.
...It didn’t go so well. It went better than last time, but the results weren’t all that great. The gyoza were burned in the middle, but the edges weren’t crispy.
“What?!” my supervisor roared upon hearing that. “All you have to do is cover, steam, cook, and eat! It’s easy!”
Easy, huh? Sure sounded easy to say at least. Anyone with a natural talent for cooking would assume it’s easy, but clearly, I don’t have that gift. Still, I was undeterred at that point, so I began my third attempt in earnest.
It was an unmitigated disaster. The gyoza skin stuck to the pan, the filling spilled out... It got everywhere. I started to think maybe my frying pan was at fault. It didn’t look damaged, but I’d owned it for a few years, so perhaps the Teflon coating had washed off. I inspected it closer and found clear evidence of that very thing happening, so I went and bought a more expensive frying pan and tried to cook gyoza for the fourth time.
It went perfectly. The Teflon must have been the issue, since the gyoza crisped up beautifully. What startled me most was how easily the gyoza slid from the pan to my plate. It wasn’t burned or stuck at all. I gorged on the sumptuous feast I’d cooked for myself, content in the knowledge that my previous failures had been the fault of the bad pan, not me!
I was so elated that I forgot to turn the heater off. I left the pan there, burning away as I enjoyed my meal. I didn’t notice until I was done with my meal and I suddenly heard warning beeps coming from my kitchen. Tragically, my brand-new frying pan got burned pretty badly... I also found out that heating up a Teflon pan without anything in it is dangerous, since it can lead to the release of toxic gases. Oh, and apparently, if you cool a hot pan too quickly, like I often do, the Teflon wears away faster.
To make a long story short, I’m not very good at cooking.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login