Favorite Cooking Things

2. Chopping herbs (if they've been washed and dried).

3. Chopping lettuce.

4. The sizzle when food hits the hot pan.

5. Using lots of little bowls and putting off washing the dishes until much later.

6. Stripping the carcass of a roast chicken.

(This is #1 evah for all time evah)

6a. The cook's perogative of nibbling on whatever bits of roast chicken he/she fancies in the process of stripping the carcass.

7. Drinking while cooking, duh.

8. kneading bread dough

(thanks for not making this a poll, btw)

9. The magic moment when the hollandaise/mayonnaise coalesces

9b. when the egg whites form peaks

(or 9a, i guess that should be)

10. The way my pantry smells (all the spices/chilis/country ham/garlic)

11. There's this way I make mushrooms, right? I got it from a Tom Collicchio cookbook of my dad's. You slice the mushrooms thinly, and saute them over high-ish heat in olive oil, without overcrowding the pan, for a couple minutes a side. Then, for the final minute of cooking, you add minced garlic, thyme, and butter--the smell of that garlic and thyme, somehow aided by butter, that I love.

12. Frittering the work day away thinking about cooking. Esp. cooking for a party. Which I have been doing all day today.

13. Things that go glossy, eg. melted chocolate with added egg yolks

14. comedy vegetables

15. schlurping out the first spoonful from a big bowl of jelly

16. the volcanic bubble of something really thick, such as porridge, over a low heat.

17. The smell of coffee and frying bacon.

18. Violently bashing out dough! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

Also, I practiced 6 and 6a last night - so so good!

19. I really like the way the stems come out of mushrooms.

4a. the way little drops of water dance in the pan when you test to see if it's properly heated and it is!

Coming back to bread during the first proving and seeing that it has become a huge, dome-topped monster in your absence.

Oh, that was #20 by the way.

21. Raw cake mixture, lick lick lick.