tlcorbinBurnt Offerings…ala, Mad Man Cooking.
June 26th 2007 03:56
Category: No Category
There are few things in life, that strike the chords of fear and trepidation into the heart song of a woman, as does the voice of her man offering to bring home the bacon , and worse; to cook it as well. Unless that is, you actually count the nefarious offer to do laundry and clean the toilet bowel. Intuitively women sense something about those kind offing’s is unnatural, and always disingenuous. Usually, it strikes a nerve in her sensibilities that screams: warning, warning, ..that is just plain wrong! War trauma and plane crashes can be easier for a woman to overcome than that simple offer.
Determined to treat my exhausted wife, Tisha, to a well deserved ‘day off’. I tidied the house and hired a few neighbors to haul the resulting mounds of take out cartons, pizza boxes, empty ice cream containers, soda bottles and assorted unidentifiable objects that needed to be discarded rather than identified, to be condemned to the local dump. Which the long suffering lady of the house reminded me wasn’t located in the family room, nor on the coffee table in front the television. That was a hint I could grasp readily enough.
Continuing the process of treating my exhausted wife to her well deserved day off, I decided to prepare an American gourmet Thai dinner for her. Usually not a stretch for me, we live in Thailand periodically, Hat Yai, Sarat Thani, Bangkok and next, Chiang Mai. Well, that was my plan until she placed a curse on my efforts with the following words, hahaha…are you going to burn the house down as well???
On that note, let me rise up and announce, “I can do those fine chores referenced above with great finesse.” And further, burning the house down isn’t an idle statement for this cook. When on a roll, I am not only able to create heavenly culinary delights while simultaneously thrashing any kitchen built by man, I have also mastered the little known cooking style of the Tom Baht Yum School. It’s a school for men only; it teaches the ancient art of Asian open flame combat cooking. It’s not a really well known school for you culinary insiders here in America. Actually, it’s not all that common in Asia either, now that I think about.
The tidying up process was completed with only 6 or 7 man-hours of labor required from each member of my three man team. The cost for all of this was under a paltry $250USD; it included dump runs, a cornucopia of miscellaneous treats for the crew, an almost endless supply of liquid refreshments, and the subsequent taxi fees for their ride home. Feeling smug, I complimented myself under my breath (wow, I was going to need to brush my tooth after all of that refreshment stuff, the raw garlic was gonna come back to haunt me). All was going well; this home management thing was a snap to pull together.
House stuff done, I sent the laundry out via taxi cab to a near by dry cleaners; Iife was good. Rice was steaming in the rice cooker; the veggies were ready to be stir fried with shrimp and then to have a mild oyster sauce applied before serving. My mouth was starting to water at the thought of the savory dish’s headed our way….mmmmmmm. Earlier, I had washed and cut up a couple of chickens, purchased at a local market place. All had been sautéing in a mixture of finely chopped up rat shit chili, garlic cloves, ginger, cilantro, lime juice, water, Hungarian paprika and a dash of sea salt for a couple of hours. It would impart to that chicken an opportunity to be deep fried to a crisp golden brown color; sealing pungent flavors that would explode in to the world of your taste buds and announce that you were dining extremely well.
None of the eyewitness to this event are really sure about this part of the story, things are still a bit hazy, but I believe this is were my rose tinted glasses from the 60’s got mixed up with my reality check glasses of ’07. Or, it may have been a spontaneous adverse reaction to the liquid refreshment the crew had shared with me in our attempt at male bonding, but that is still open to debate.
I remember putting the small pot of oil on the burner earlier and allowing it to heat up. The cast iron wok was heated to perfection and I was browning some whole garlic cloves. The oil in the small pot now seemed hot enough to test fry a piece of the chicken, so using my favorite stainless steel tongs, I removed a handy candidate from the sauté, shook it a few times and began lowering it into the hot oil. That’s when it happened, that moment frozen in time and etched into my psyche forever; I lost control of the piece of chicken and it abruptly sank into the damn hot oil and which then erupted into the hell of frothing, boiling, angry oil bent on escaping the small pot that confined it. It did, damn oil hit the stove top and exploded into a flaming inferno that engulfed the entire range top, its companion microwave and everything else in its path of destruction which included my shirt. Just to be clear with everyone, this was not the kind of action I had been anticipating.
Simultaneously, my wife and visiting oldest son broke out in laughter so hard that they were ill and had collapsed into a heap in chairs at a nearby dining table. I found myself confronted with a scene from Dante’s Inferno, a vision of a flaming stove top hell. I had to move a cauldron of flaming oil from the source of heat, move a very heavy wok that had over heated and was now the source of a heavy black smoke cloud which blended nicely with the smoke from the little pot of flaming oil. The fire alarm system spontaneously went off with the smoke and flames adding it’s cacophony of noise to the confusion surrounding this start of a never ending tale of chaos.
Sigh, things could have gone seriously downhill at this point. However, the unholy rollers collapsed at the table were finally able to compose themselves long enough to help treat my burns, put out the roaring fire and to help me clean things up enough to finish cooking my now infamous meal. We all ate our meal in silence, at least I did, certain others crucified me with their unholy laughter for the rest of the evening. Wow, they did enjoy themselves; my wife would gaze at me with coy eyes and snicker herself into a bathroom dash, my son settled for posting comments and photos on his MySpace site. He’s still getting feed back from the photos. Me, I spent hours the next day, or so, cleaning up the smoke and fire residue. Neither of the ingrates would help me with that clean up task. Wankers. Who knew that flour would ignite so easily when it looked so much like baking soda under those very, very, very stressful conditions?
Like I stated earlier, things had gotten fuzzy. Has anything like this happened to you?
Raven is asking
Determined to treat my exhausted wife, Tisha, to a well deserved ‘day off’. I tidied the house and hired a few neighbors to haul the resulting mounds of take out cartons, pizza boxes, empty ice cream containers, soda bottles and assorted unidentifiable objects that needed to be discarded rather than identified, to be condemned to the local dump. Which the long suffering lady of the house reminded me wasn’t located in the family room, nor on the coffee table in front the television. That was a hint I could grasp readily enough.
Continuing the process of treating my exhausted wife to her well deserved day off, I decided to prepare an American gourmet Thai dinner for her. Usually not a stretch for me, we live in Thailand periodically, Hat Yai, Sarat Thani, Bangkok and next, Chiang Mai. Well, that was my plan until she placed a curse on my efforts with the following words, hahaha…are you going to burn the house down as well???
On that note, let me rise up and announce, “I can do those fine chores referenced above with great finesse.” And further, burning the house down isn’t an idle statement for this cook. When on a roll, I am not only able to create heavenly culinary delights while simultaneously thrashing any kitchen built by man, I have also mastered the little known cooking style of the Tom Baht Yum School. It’s a school for men only; it teaches the ancient art of Asian open flame combat cooking. It’s not a really well known school for you culinary insiders here in America. Actually, it’s not all that common in Asia either, now that I think about.
The tidying up process was completed with only 6 or 7 man-hours of labor required from each member of my three man team. The cost for all of this was under a paltry $250USD; it included dump runs, a cornucopia of miscellaneous treats for the crew, an almost endless supply of liquid refreshments, and the subsequent taxi fees for their ride home. Feeling smug, I complimented myself under my breath (wow, I was going to need to brush my tooth after all of that refreshment stuff, the raw garlic was gonna come back to haunt me). All was going well; this home management thing was a snap to pull together.
House stuff done, I sent the laundry out via taxi cab to a near by dry cleaners; Iife was good. Rice was steaming in the rice cooker; the veggies were ready to be stir fried with shrimp and then to have a mild oyster sauce applied before serving. My mouth was starting to water at the thought of the savory dish’s headed our way….mmmmmmm. Earlier, I had washed and cut up a couple of chickens, purchased at a local market place. All had been sautéing in a mixture of finely chopped up rat shit chili, garlic cloves, ginger, cilantro, lime juice, water, Hungarian paprika and a dash of sea salt for a couple of hours. It would impart to that chicken an opportunity to be deep fried to a crisp golden brown color; sealing pungent flavors that would explode in to the world of your taste buds and announce that you were dining extremely well.
None of the eyewitness to this event are really sure about this part of the story, things are still a bit hazy, but I believe this is were my rose tinted glasses from the 60’s got mixed up with my reality check glasses of ’07. Or, it may have been a spontaneous adverse reaction to the liquid refreshment the crew had shared with me in our attempt at male bonding, but that is still open to debate.
I remember putting the small pot of oil on the burner earlier and allowing it to heat up. The cast iron wok was heated to perfection and I was browning some whole garlic cloves. The oil in the small pot now seemed hot enough to test fry a piece of the chicken, so using my favorite stainless steel tongs, I removed a handy candidate from the sauté, shook it a few times and began lowering it into the hot oil. That’s when it happened, that moment frozen in time and etched into my psyche forever; I lost control of the piece of chicken and it abruptly sank into the damn hot oil and which then erupted into the hell of frothing, boiling, angry oil bent on escaping the small pot that confined it. It did, damn oil hit the stove top and exploded into a flaming inferno that engulfed the entire range top, its companion microwave and everything else in its path of destruction which included my shirt. Just to be clear with everyone, this was not the kind of action I had been anticipating.
Simultaneously, my wife and visiting oldest son broke out in laughter so hard that they were ill and had collapsed into a heap in chairs at a nearby dining table. I found myself confronted with a scene from Dante’s Inferno, a vision of a flaming stove top hell. I had to move a cauldron of flaming oil from the source of heat, move a very heavy wok that had over heated and was now the source of a heavy black smoke cloud which blended nicely with the smoke from the little pot of flaming oil. The fire alarm system spontaneously went off with the smoke and flames adding it’s cacophony of noise to the confusion surrounding this start of a never ending tale of chaos.
Sigh, things could have gone seriously downhill at this point. However, the unholy rollers collapsed at the table were finally able to compose themselves long enough to help treat my burns, put out the roaring fire and to help me clean things up enough to finish cooking my now infamous meal. We all ate our meal in silence, at least I did, certain others crucified me with their unholy laughter for the rest of the evening. Wow, they did enjoy themselves; my wife would gaze at me with coy eyes and snicker herself into a bathroom dash, my son settled for posting comments and photos on his MySpace site. He’s still getting feed back from the photos. Me, I spent hours the next day, or so, cleaning up the smoke and fire residue. Neither of the ingrates would help me with that clean up task. Wankers. Who knew that flour would ignite so easily when it looked so much like baking soda under those very, very, very stressful conditions?
Like I stated earlier, things had gotten fuzzy. Has anything like this happened to you?
Raven is asking
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Comment by katyzzz
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Oh by the way, I'm really sorry I will have to cancel that little holiday I planned with you all [psst, Orblers, I thought the wife would do the cooking.]
It sounds like you had some of than non-water drink you spotted on my site, I warned you.
Please return with your name in tow so I may receive my just reward in votes. Especially as I'm just about to put you over the line with mine. Very prosaic type, I am.
Do keep up with the cooking classes and don't give up your day job.
See ya soon,
katyzzz....I was pleased to see you had a brain when you attempted my brain puzzler, others either don't have a brain or are not prepared to put it on show. You done good, Rave, better'n ya cookin'
Comment by tlcorbin-raginravensview
Coffee Quip
A Global Citizen
Paranormal Paranormal
Is Why
Alaska Chronicle
I just returned with red nose in tow from your site and reposting my comment. I get so focused it blinds me to the anonymous warning label. Twice tonight.
The Lasagna pictured on the post is an actual picture of a meal I prepared and Tisha, as displayed above, has me on probation now and is verrry insistent about doing all of the Thai cooking for a while (again) ; she can be a tad bit sensitive about her meals being burnt at times.
The kitchen shown is the one I tried to scorch and burn to the ground.
Raven
Comment by Wendi
Such beautiful intent gone so wrong... blast the Universe for its wicked sense of humor and Murphy's law! *grins*
Has anything like that happened to me? Uh, no... but, I'm a domestic Goddess, so I'm exempt from such catrastrophes (knocks on wood and says "just kiddin" to the universe before it slaps me down with another lesson in humble nature) *LOL*.
But ya know... I bet the laughs the wife got were as good, if not better, than the would-be results of your best intentions.
Excellent story... a delightful account of the precious moments life is made worth living for.
*warm smiles*
W
Comment by tlcorbin-raginravensview
Coffee Quip
A Global Citizen
Paranormal Paranormal
Is Why
Alaska Chronicle
All I can say is that it was a memorable experience. We all laugh about it now, but I was truly shaken by the ordeal.
Fortunately is wasn't a pivotal point in our marriage; it did showcase my wife's patience and tolerance. Or I'd either still be sleeping on the couch or in my bag out on the tundra covered in seal oil. Neither option very appealing.
Wow, I didn't realize that you had so fully mastered the *girly arts* that you had joined the exalted ranks of those ladies worthy of the title Diva and or Goddess: I believe, I believe...
I am pleased that you enjoyed the offering.
Raven
Comment by Nickoftime's Sanity Corner
now the picrure you posted "looked" good food wise, and to me seemd like a really good attempt! And giving the wifey a day off was a really really nice thing to do!
LOL
Since I don't have a wife, think I'll have to do my own cleaning though!
Great post! Made me laugh and go awwww at the same time!
Take care,
Nick
Comment by tlcorbin-raginravensview
Coffee Quip
A Global Citizen
Paranormal Paranormal
Is Why
Alaska Chronicle
Awwww...Thank you. Had the house gone, this comment may have wound up carved onto a coconut shell and floated over to you.
Things were rather hot around here for a bit, LOL.
Raven
Comment by Ash
Australian Traveller
Flashes of memories
I have to quote Wendi on this:
Has this happened to me? Um yes! First time I was allowed to drive alone after I got my drivers licence (I have strict parents - this took a while!) I was so excited to be able to go the shops to get potatoes that I forgot to turn off the stove where I was heating oil.
Everyone else was having an afternoon nap and I got home to black clouds of smoke billowing out the front door. I ran inside to find the pot on the stove on fire, the kitchen was thick with black smoke - I had to crawl to the stove to get the fire out - everyone else? Fast asleep and none the wiser! We never had fire alarms in Africa!
I am now quite the super Chef - I have learnt the hard way to TURN OFF THE STOVE WHEN UNSUPERVISED!
Thanks for the laugh
ash
Comment by tlcorbin-raginravensview
Coffee Quip
A Global Citizen
Paranormal Paranormal
Is Why
Alaska Chronicle
It's nice to know that I am not the singular buffoon in the hood.
I was 21 before I started to drive. And had served with the Marine Corp in Viet Nam and was married for 3 years before I started cooking.
Now, I am back to supervised cooking again.
Thanks for the smile, you made my day with your confession.
Raven