Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies Read Free

looked like the Platonic
Ideal of broccoli.
    That evening I said to The Girlfriend, “Today, I feel like a chef.” Of course, she’s used to
my pronouncements from the kitchen, but they’re usually along the lines of “I
can’t believe I spilled all of that,” so this was a big deal.
    For this one particular
meal, everything
worked
. I did all of my prep before things needed to be put in the skillet, and the side dishes were done at the
same time as the main course. I made enough for leftovers; I cooked something
new to me (couscous); most importantly, it tasted good.
    Brimming with
confidence, I decided to improvise a dessert. I usually decide what to make
based on what’s in the cupboard and then figure out what to do with it.
By now, I was a chef, so how hard could it be?
    I didn’t see anything
that screamed ‘dessert ingredient,’ but I saw a can of kernel corn that I had
ignored for weeks. It looked forlorn, continually passed over by the more
popular canned green beans.
    I knew what I had to
do. I resolved to make a dessert, with a can of corn. I google ‘corn dessert,’ (again
wondering how people cooked before the internet), and I find something called ‘
El Atol de
Etole
.’
    What’s weird, is I had
just mentioned to The Girlfriend how I don’t make traditional Salvadoran
corn-based beverages nearly often enough.
    Since I don’t have a
picture to show you, imagine a creamy yellow egg-noggy looking beverage. The
recipe looked to be a breeze—just milk, corn, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon
sticks and a pinch of salt.
    You start by putting
the corn and milk in a food processor. I only have a little one-button wannabe
blender, but it works just like a grownup blender (as long as I only need to
‘pulse’ things).
    In with the corn and
milk I tossed the sugar, vanilla, salt . . . and cinnamon sticks. APPARENTLY I
did something wrong, because after a few normal pulses, I suddenly heard a kind
of ‘ka-chonk’ sound, followed by an otherworldly cry of pain from within my
little blender.
    Also, goop was shooting
out of a hole in the top. A hole I had never noticed before, but which is
apparently there to allow goop to shoot out.
    Alright, I say, maybe
the cinnamon sticks weren’t supposed to go in. Maybe you can’t, in fact, purée
cinnamon sticks with a one-speed three-cup mini-blender from Target. I take the
sticks out, and fire the thing up again.
    This
was going very badly. Put it this way: if a local news crew had been filming in
my kitchen, the anchorman would have introduced the story by describing the
scene as ‘Cornmageddon.’
    More
horrific grinding sounds from within the machine, and I realize it had TRIED to
purée cinnamon sticks, leaving lots of little cinnamon sticks mixed in with the
goop.

    Now
in my defense, nothing on the machine or its packaging expressly warns
against
trying to liquefy cinnamon sticks, and nothing on the jar of cinnamon sticks
said “DO NOT PLACE IN TINY MACHINES.”
    By this point most of
my kitchen and at least one of our cats was covered in sweet, viscous corn
juice, and the kitchen looked like a crime scene
(“At this point, we believe the
suspect leaves clues written in
liquefied corn.”
).
    Clearly
I
had offended the Cooking Gods with my hubris!
Or
,
it was the fact I didn’t really read the recipe that carefully.
    Either way, after
cleaning up the carnage ( cornage ?), I looked at the recipe again. I see that
it says “will thicken nicely on the stovetop,” and I think, “Stove?” I don’t
remember using a stove.
    Gradually, things
started to become clearer. I finally figured out the cause of the fiasco! Only the corn and the milk go in the blender—the other
stuff you add later!
    I have to admit that
the experience humbled me a little. But I learned something very important–that
if I find a great recipe, I should read the entire thing, as opposed to just
the first paragraph. Maybe even print a copy.
    Or maybe I just
need a more powerful