MadCookery

One of my favorite things about growing up in a farming community in the United States mid-east was the food in summer. Everything was fresh and delicious and meals were often prepared by going into the garden and selecting our fare, or walking down the road to a farmers road side stand to purchase theirs. Though I still live in the mid-east, I now live in a city and even though there are farmers markets frequently available the flavors are just not the same. I find that people seem to think I’m crazy when I tell them about the fresh summer flavors, but after you’ve had sweet corn that was cooked within minutes of being harvested; no other corn will ever taste the same. I know sweat corn is a skewed example since from the moment it is picked it starts converting its sugars to starch, but just about all fruits, vegetables, and meats taste better as fresh as possible.

When I was growing up my family always had a large garden filled with vegetables of every type, we bought meat fresh butchered by animal; meaning that we would buy half a cow or swine and have it butchered, and often bought chickens fresh killed from the farmer. We bought our eggs from a man who harvested them from his chicken coups that morning, and we picked blackberries from wild plants behind my grandparents home and strawberries straight from the field. Most of the food we had for the year came in the summer and was canned and frozen to feed us through the winter. At the time I hated harvesting the fruits and vegetables and preparing them for canning and freezing, after all I was a kid who wanted to play not pick berries, but now that I’m older I look back at the memory of picking those berries with my Cousins, or spending a Saturday afternoon snapping beans with my Sisters and Grandmother as some of my fondest memories.

I encourage everyone to go out of their way to discover the flavor of fresh fruits and vegetables. Be aware of what grows around you and when it is in season, and when it is take an afternoon to travel out of the city and find a farmers road side stand or farming community farmers market and purchase some of their goods. Once you have done so, don’t wait, eat them that day or can and freeze the rest without delay. Look for berry fields and apple orchards that allow you to pick your own and do so, once you taste your fare you won’t regret it. It may seem like a lot of work and time, and if you have kids they will complain, but I guarantee both you and your kids will fondly remember those flavors and experiences for the rest of your life.

Now here are three incredibly simple dishes that only taste right from very fresh and ripe items. These have long been some of my favorites and only taste the way they should when the fruits and vegetables and freshly picked.

I. Fresh Tomato Sandwich

People always say the idea of a tomato sandwich sounds horrible, and with grocery store tomatoes they are correct, but with fresh picked, vine ripped tomatoes this sandwich is delicious.

Ingredients:

• ½ fresh Tomato
• 2 pieces of fresh bread (white or sourdough)
• 1 tbls mayonnaise (do not substitute Miracle Whip)

Instructions

1. Slice the tomato into thick slices
2. Spread half of the mayonnaise onto each slice of bread
3. Add tomatoes onto 1 slice of the bread
4. Liberally salt and pepper the tomatoes
5. Add the second slice of bread to complete the sandwich

II. Fresh Berries and Cream

Everyone hears about Berries and Cream, here is a simple recipe that we used to eat while I was growing up. I find this recipe only works really well with very fresh berries, preferably ones you picked that day.

Ingredients

• 1 cup of fresh berries, any type (I prefer blackberries, blueberries, or strawberries)
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/8 cup cream

Instructions

1. Slice berries to bite size pieces
2. Add the berries and sugar to a bowl, stir well and let sit at room temperature for 20-30 minutes
3. Add cream
4. Stir and eat

II. Fresh Sweat Corn

From the time sweat corn is picked it starts converting it’s sugars to starch, so for this to taste the best the corn should be picked as soon as possible before cooking.

Ingredients

• 6 Fresh ears of sweat corn, shucked immediately before boiling|
• 1 gallon of water
• 0-1 tbls sugar (depending on age of corn, see instructions)
• Butter
• Salt
• Pepper

Instructions

1. Bring water to a boil in a large pan
2. If corn was picked within the hour then no sugar will be needed. If corn was picked 1- 6 hours before cooking: 1 tsp of sugar per gallon of water. If corn was picked 6-24 hours ago: 2 tsp of sugar per gallon of water If corn was picked 24+ hours ago 1 tbls of sugar per gallon of water
3. Shuck corn immediately before adding to water
4. Boil corn in water for 3 minutes
5. Server immediately with butter, salt, and pepper to be added by the diner

For most of my life I have heard the horror of rare pork due to trichinosis. While 20 years ago it was true that pork should be cooked to well done, that is no longer the case for North America and Europe. There is no longer a need to waste the flavor of pork by turning it into a dry, well done product. In much of the world this is still a reality, but the trichinosis danger in North America and Europe is almost non-existent in the modern age. The common cooking temperature for pork is 160-180 degrees depending on the cookbook, which leads to a dry piece of meat that is similar to a well done beef steak. Trichinosis is killed at 137 degrees, so there is no need to over cook pork. Trichinosis has become so rare in the Western First World that only and average of 11 cases per year have been reported in the United States since 1996 and the majority has come from home raised swine. While I am not recommending eating raw pork, I do suggest that you give medium pork a try. At 137 degrees all risk of trichinosis is gone and the taste you will experience in amazing. So amazing, in fact, that you will change how you look at pork.

At a recent cooking exposition I attended I tried pork tartare from a piece of meat acquired and prepared by a well renowned chef, and it was one of the most amazing pork dishes I have ever tastes. While I do not recommend trying such a dish at home, unless you can be absolutely sure of the quality of pork you have, I do recommend that you end your fear of undercooked pork and expand your horizons for the Other White Meat.

Mad

1. Disordered in intellect; crazy; insane.
2. Excited beyond self-control or the restraint of reason;inflamed by violent or uncontrollable desire, passion, or appetite; as, to be mad with terror, lust, or hatred;
3. Proceeding from, or indicating, madness; expressing distraction; prompted by infatuation, fury, or extreme rashness.
4. Extravagant; immoderate.
5. Furious with rage, terror, or disease;
6. Angry; out of patience; vexed;

Cookery

The art or practice of preparing food.

Most people view cooking as a rigid science. These people receive a formula and these people follow the formula. The cook may be encouraged by the lack of ingredient to make simple substitutions, or they may add, remove, or replace simple spices and then congratulate themselves on their ingenuity. This leads to boredom, this leads to the cook being a drone following directions, this leads to bland food with no expression and no matter how good the food tastes thee is no reward. No matter how it turns out the cook might as well microwave a TV dinner. They can pretend they made some great achievement, but it is not theirs. Cooking by formula is not always a bad thing. Sometimes it is nice to settle back with a simple dish made without thought, sometimes it is required to follow the directions to achieve a quick and simple meal at the end of a long day, but other times any true cook needs something more, they need to create.

There is a simple set of rules that I follow to smash through the wall of the mundane. I encourage any cook to try them and discover the sense of achievement and adventures in food they can lead you on. It can be a frightening leap of faith in yourself, but the rewards are well worth facing the fears of failure. You do not need to have gone to culinary school to enter the world of cooking as art and experiment rather than formula and mindless creation, you do not need to be a chef, just a cook with a love of trying new things, pushing your skills and imagination to their limits, and a fearless sense of adventure in your cookery.

Here are the 10 rules of Mad Cookery:

1. I will not follow recipes
2. I will not cook the same dish twice in the same way
3. I will try new ingredients and techniques and not fear them, even if I have in the past not liked it, and I will not ask what can I do with this ingredient, but instead what can I make this ingredient do for me
4. I will not buy what I can make, except for base ingredients that I do not wish variation on for the dish that I am working on (e.g. pasta noodles when working on a sauce) or items for which the payoff is not worth the time spent (e.g. some spice mixtures)
5. I will not be afraid of failure, it does not exist. Even a complete disaster is an experience in taste and instruction in cooking
6. I will not always plan my dishes in advance, I will create them as I go
7. I will try the same dish multiple times, making changes each time to reach perfection. Once I feel I have a dish has reach perfection I will continue to try to improve it.
8. I will not follow rules of cooking, ingredients, or flavors except for the basics, which I will always expand upon (e.g. the mother sauces, base dough, and other base elements). This includes the rules of Mad Cookery when deviation is needed to expand a dish.
9. When I want to learn something new I will read about technique, theory, and many recipes for the item not just a single recipe. Once I have studied this information I will create my own variation on the dish.
10. I will constantly endeavor to push my own limitations of technique, skill, and knowledge

I found that by following these 10 rules cooking can go to new levels that are never repetitive and never boring. Sometimes you will fail, that is okay and failure is inevitable, but other times you will succeed beyond your wildest imagination, and those times will make all the failures worth it. Sometimes you will spend weeks, months, or even years perfecting a recipe only to find that you created an almost exact duplicate of an existing recipe. Some will believe that this is a failure, but it is not, because there are times when a near perfect recipe exists and rather than follow it you have worked to the same perfection through your own experimentation. It all can be summed up to say that the goal is to: learn; expand; explore; experiment; enjoy, and most importantly, have fun doing it.