How to Become a Five-Star Home Cook

I love cooking shows for many reasons.

"Iron Chef", for instance, is useful for those of us
who have unlimited grocery budgets, million dollar
kitchens, and award-winning sous chefs on staff.

"Chopped" is for the more relaxed home cook.
You get a basket of ingredients--typically
something like popcorn, a rubber boot, crankcase oil,
and a fungus amongus from Mongolia.
Or an anchor chain, cotton candy, a pickle,
and a lizard shank; the kinds of things
you might find in the fridge, after work.

It is easiest if you like Italian food.
Make your own pasta, order a $200,000. wheel
of parmesano regiano, and wear rubber clogs.
Tomatoes everywhere. Octopus. Nothing to it!

Some shows have judges: piss ants
who pretend they will die if they find
a fish bone in the food, or that the carrot pieces
are not precisely the same size, by girth and weight.
They like their pasta "al dente"; i.e., cold from the box.
The sternest judges announce, afterwards,
they they do not like peppers. Or salt. Or food,
and that's what you did wrong.

Then there is the Southern Belle
who never cooks anything. She drawls
and stirs and stirs and drawls.
Somebody else--I cannot remember her name--
gives household hints involving paper bags,
and says, "Umm, umm!" to show what good taste is.

There is another cook with a House of Wax face
who combines the best of ingredients with a fixed smile
and a decolletage that causes you to yearn for goat milk.
You know the rules: goat milk, a rope, Hungarian pickles,
and anchovies. Make a dessert! Serve it
to some friends from the Broadway musical!

All of these things have made me a better cook.
They have made me appreciate tripe and rubber band salad.

Tripe, a gopher, rubber bands, and arthroscopic remnants:
make a salad! Truffles, of course!
.

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