I cooked up a ragu Bolognese last night for the 3rd time. Don’t let the name throw you off, that just means a meat sauce originating from Bologna, Italy. Here is my mise en place: white wine, chicken broth, canned tomato puree, chopped onions and garlic, diced celery and carrot, pancetta, butter and a pound of ground beef. Ingredients I forgot to photograph: olive oil, milk, cinnamon, chili flakes, salt, pepper.

The recipe comes from FXcuisine.com, the site perhaps makes it look incredibly hard and involved but it’s not actually so bad. Here are the basic steps:

1. Dice everything.
2. Get organized. (Seriously, this is the most important one.)
3. Cook off vegetables, add pancetta and then put aside.
4. Brown meat in batches, re-add vegetables, add wine.
5. Transfer to a pot. Add milk, tomatoes and stock.
6. Season and simmer for 4 hours.

Ok, so it’s not a beginner recipe but it’s fun for the more experienced home cook if you want to perhaps capture the romantic idea that you’re cooking in the traditional Italian way.

Celery, onions and carrot cooking together in delicious harmony. These are the delicious vegetables that form a base for many French and Italian dishes. It really pays to spend the extra time to get a good dice on these.

The meat has to be cooked in a hot pan in small batches. You want a good sear on it like a burger patty and you want bits to get stuck to the pan. Don’t worry about cooking it the whole way through, it’s going to simmer for 4 hours anyway.

Everything into a pot, together with the milk and tomatoes and stock. I didn’t really think this through so the simmer began at 9pm and lasted until 1am. Next time, start cooking earlier.

While waiting, it’s also a good time to throw together some homemade pasta noodles. Again, it’s something that sounds ridiculously hard like milling your own flour but it’s way easier than making cookies or baking a cake or even baking bread. You just need flour, eggs and olive oil. Knead it, rest it, roll it, eat it.

I was so excited to learn new recipes and discover that my own two hands are capable of reproducing some pretty interesting food as long as I had the recipe in front of me. But I started to get bored because it sometimes felt like paint-by-numbers. Sure, the food was good but it was never my own and I had trouble understand exactly what made it good.

I think after you’ve achieved some basic competency in cooking, it’s easy to just stay inside a box. Maybe you only cook pasta and you’re happy with that. If you want variety, you can eat out and everything else is just pasta, pasta, pasta. That’s all well and good but I have different objectives when it comes to cooking.

I enjoy cooking because:

• I love eating
• I get to multitask and feel like I’m juggling
• It’s sometimes a direct lesson in physics and chemistry
• I imagine something in my head and duplicate it on a plate
• People are always impressed by good food

I’m slowly fighting my way through a rut at the moment. Cooking and food shows always help. I recommend everyone try watching a cooking show while they cook. For me, it stimulates the part of my brain that thinks about food in a creative way. I’d always be running to the kitchen whenever I was watching Top Chef, Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, or more recently: MasterChef Australia.

Another thing I’m doing is reading a lot of cooking blogs. Well, when I say “reading”, I mean subscribing to and suddenly falling behind on. You know how it is. But there’s one video blog I’d like you all to check out, it’s from Chef Todd Mohr and his website I Hate Cooking Recipes. His focus is on teaching methods and understanding the how and why of cooking so you can create your own flavors and not be a slave to any recipe. I think his lessons assume a certain level of competency but it’s perfect for where I’m at.

I live in an apartment building where on one side of my abode and the windows are on the other. Little air flows through the kitchen so I’m sensitive to garbage and bad food smells. Deodorization is difficult.

A bad smell has been haunting me for a while and I didn’t immediately find the food because it was my girlfriend’s leftovers and she had put it into a plastic bag that just made me think it was fresh groceries and not leftovers that were already a week old.

I would catch this smell in tiny whiffs as I moved through the kitchen. I thought it was the trash so I emptied it and let the trash can air out by the window for a while. Nope. I got frustrated and I cleaned the stove and all the counter-tops. The smell of the cleaning agent dominated for a while but by the next day, the bad odor was back.

Fast forward to yesterday and I noticed that the bad odor was coming from inside the fridge.Each time I shut the fridge door, it would force out a small puff of stinky air and I would blame the trash can or the unclean stove. Fool me twice and I can’t get fooled again, fridge. Oddly enough, the smell was also quite strong inside the freezer compartment and the dishwasher. But I didn’t have time to ponder over this because I knew for a fact that these leftovers smelt very very bad.

I set to work throwing out the inconspicuous bag of leftovers, evicting it from my apartment and cleaning out the tupperware container that housed it. Relief washed over me as I’d finally made defeated my villain.

But. The villain’s calling card remained.

There was still some residual gym sock smell in my fridge, freezer and dishwasher. And then I remembered my baking soda. I have this big orange box of baking soda and I’ve ever only used a few teaspoons for… well, baking. But I figured that this could exorcise the last the stench out.

Three small bowls filled with baking soda and two-to-three hours later, there was no more evidence of the death and decay that once haunted my pair of kitchen appliances. I had escaped from the killer in the first movie and now I have condemned it to hell in the sequel.

All that remains is to remove the bowls of baking soda and hope that I’ve actually removed the source of the smells and it’s not some dead rat that’s trapped underneath my fridge.

Jack’s first apple pie! :-O

So over the weekend, I had made two apple pies from scratch. Using the recipe, I somehow managed to cobble together my very own buttermilk pie crust. It wasn’t that long ago that I didn’t even know buttermilk was a thing; I know “butter” and I know “milk” but I did not know that another anomaly existed betwixt the two.

It’s a big achievement for me because baking has always been this big unknown to me. No one in my family is a baker and I’ve always avoided it because I thought it was an art that was far too anal about its measurements. To some extent, I still believe that but I’m quickly developing a love affair with dough because it is this crazy malleable beast that sometimes requires gentle coaxing and other times requires you to beat the shit out of it (all the Psych students reading this blog just got a raging boner).

For your information, the pie was delicious. If I were to make this again, I would change the apple slices into apple wedges for purely cosmetic reasons. Other than that, it’s perfection (especially if you eat it while it’s still warm). Over the course of this weekend, my girlfriend and I probably ate half a pie each and it’s probably time to switch to eating something else.

Other magnificent recipes that I have tried from Joy are:

• Her father’s buttermilk pancakes that are so fluffy and gorgeous
• Oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies that inspired more guilt in me than the Catholic church could ever manage

Cut to this morning when I see an invitation to very important review meeting. An invitation that was sent at 11am. For a 12pm lunch meeting. What the fuck, people. First, give me a little fucking notice here. Second, this is like meeting #9 in a review that should have only taken 2 hours. People need to stop letting reviews turn into week-long, fucking training sessions. Argh.

Deep breaths. …Six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.

I’m actually feeling ok today, thank you for asking. I took yesterday off and I mean off. I didn’t stop by the office, I didn’t promise to do any sort of work and I only checked my email twice. I spent most of my day concentrating on wearing this illness away.

I tried really hard to sleep in but I only managed to nap until 8am. Instead, I headed over to the grocery store and stocked up on some fun things. Top of the list was two cans of Campbell’s Chicken Soup, orange juice, ice cream and ingredients for the beef stew I like to make. Then I settled in for the day with the Friends DVDs that I’ve been borrowing from my girlfriend. In my memory, it was always such a superficial and saccharine show but I’ve been proven wrong. It’s actually very enjoyable and not at all as painful to watch as, say, Seinfeld DVDs.

Around dinner time, my sore throat was really starting to bug me and I came up with the brilliant idea of making a ceviche. I went back to the grocery store and picked up a quarter pound of Chilean sea bass (you can slap me here for being such a yuppie), a lemon, some white onion, tomatoes and coriander. By no means is this some sort of authentic recipe but it’s something that’s very easy for me to throw together in fifteen minutes and the lemon juice does wonders for my throat pain. Simply amazing. I’m going to make it again tonight.

This morning, my throat feels a little better. I think my sinuses are aching more and this will probably lead to headaches and drowsiness later in the day but I’m back at work anyway. Maybe I’ll take the afternoon off if it gets bad.

I’m actually super-excited about cooking these days. After the beer can chicken, I learned to make some cornbread (who knew it was so easy?) and just yesterday I spent 4+ hours of my life making beef stew. Now, the actual shopping and prep work for this stew took less than 30 minutes but the cooking time was 4 hours. I love me some slow cooking.

So the way I burned my arm was that the stew was incubating in the oven and I tried to live the heavy cast iron lid up to see if I had burninated it into oblivion. As I lifted the lid, my arm came in contact with the top of the oven and the rest is history. “History” because this is the first time in my life that I’ve ever wanted to use moisturizer.

Cooking makes me feel like a mad scientist sometimes and that’s a very good feeling. Right now I feel a certain affinity for “peasant food” because it involves lots of simple ingredients and simple tools. No need to buy stupid crap like thermometers, ramekins, pairing knives, etc. I’m also totally digging on ceviche because I love lime juice and cilantro.

One last thing: I don’t get Japanese food. There, I said it. I spent a measly two weeks in Japan and I don’t understand their food culture anymore than I did before I left. Whilst over there, I ate practically the same stuff I find in the food courts here. Where’s the real Japanese cuisine? What do people eat in their homes? Where are the vegetables? God, it confuses me. I feel like there’s the same smokescreen of restaurant food vs. home food that exists with Chinese food.

In an unrelated incident, when Lachlan was visiting he had brought a six pack of beer and we had drunk five of the six before he left.

And so, where some might see two unrelated events, I see providence. It was finally time for me to make some beer can chicken.

If you don’t know what “beer can chicken” is: it’s a BBQ chicken where you slowly cook it with a beer can up it’s ass. The intention is that the beer will gradually boil off and keep the chicken super moist whilst cooking.

So this was my first time ever roasting a bird but it was pretty darn easy. Basically you clean the chicken and rub it with spices (I had rosemary, thyme, lime zest and chili flakes lying around) and then you stand it up on this beer can and cook for two hours.

My oven is not quite as pressurized as a BBQ so I probably missed out on some extra flavor but I still think it came out fantastic. I was super proud of myself. I also threw in some potatoes and squash to roast alongside and suck up the beer and chicken juice.

Going forward, I would tweak a few things:

1. Find a way to keep the legs and wings more moist.
2. Find three other people to eat this damn chicken.
3. Learn how to carve a chicken.
4. More awesome spices.

So it was this Saturday that I did something unprecedented. We visited a grill place, it was my second visit. Having ordered one of the most expensive things on the menu last time (the filet mignon), I decided to pick one of the cheaper items for a comparison. I asked for the short ribs and I was thoroughly disappointed. The ribs arrived on a little grill thingy with an absence of seasoning and no sauce. I’m all for a celebration of the taste of meat but I need some real flavor here. So I decided to stop after only eating one of the three strips of meat and take it home in a box. At home, I would make them better!

I’ve cooked short ribs before but I’ve always braised them, never grilled them and left them rare. I’m not afraid of rare meat but I’ve always preferred to break down the tougher cuts. So, I cut them into manageable chunks, seasoned them the way I like it and it was a success! I was in a meat-induced bliss rather than meat-induced boredom.

It makes me think: What if I took the money spent eating out and spend it on my own cooking. I’m not talking about saving money, but trading what you would have spent on restaurant overheads and apply it directly to improving my cooking skills and my taste buds.

On Sunday, we were invited to a dinner party of sorts and my girlfriend talked about hosting a dinner party of our own. This excites and scares me. My creative pursuits are mostly done in private. Cooking alone, singing in the shower and posting to a blog that gets an average of five comments a month. I am shy about my mistakes – a character trait I attribute to my parent’s strong desire for children with perfect grades. It was not until I started to disappoint them in all areas outside of my specialty and exhibit forms of social retardation did they acknowledge that perhaps it was ok to have some slack in the leash.

So I approach this idea of a dinner party with many “what if it’s not perfect” concerns and a vague scoff at how tragically cliché it is for a couple to host a dinner party. But I’m excited to cook for others too.

I’m more than happy to cook steak. Mind you, I’m no genius at it. My process usually involves keeping as much of the flavor of the meat as possible. I season it heavily, let it sit to room temperature, throw it on a hot pan, render the fat, crisp up the sides and then focus on getting the insides right. I personally love it somewhere between medium rare and rare depending on the cut of the steak. I didn’t have the patience nor the lack of conscience to cook hers to well-done; she got medium (just pink in the centre). I make steaks, not shoes.

I’m not sure why but when you have steak in restaurants, they tend to keep the sides very simple. Mash or steamed vegetables. Blah. I personally prefer a salad to take the edge off the heaviness whilst complimenting it at the same time. This time around though, I decided to use what I had. I mashed up some Yukon Gold potatoes, boiled up some asparagus and made a sauce out of the pan juices, vegetable stock and mushrooms. It all worked out beautifully but could have used a lot of refinement. Tasted good too.

Anyway, this is just me navel-gazing about being in the kitchen. How much it excites me. How it tickles all those delicious multitasking centers in your brain. How the patterns begin to emerge. How subjective taste can be. How much fun it is to cook for others when it’s not a chore.

I’m heading to Vegas for the first time this weekend. I skipped out on buying a ticket to the Cirque du Soleil show with all the naked people because nobody really tried to sell it to me. Also, I’ve heard there are a zillion other places in Vegas to see some skin so I don’t know why we need to make a big song and dance about it (is that too literal? hrm).

We’ll be staying at the Palazzo and doing the typical stuff like eating, drinking, clubbing, gambling, eloping, etc. I don’t really know what to think of Vegas. On the one hand, I want to be completely electrified by it and on the other hand I want to be the snarky hipster that hates it so. Decisions, decisions.

I drove to Leavenworth, WA two weeks ago and it was interesting because it was the first time I’ve driven that far (120 miles there and another 120 back). Also, my car was already one month overdue for service. Now it is one month and two weeks overdue for service. I am really shit at car maintenance, even when all I have to do is let someone else look at it.

Leavenworth is a German-themed town full of the kinds of buildings that gingerbread houses are modeled on and every sign uses Gothic lettering. Even the Starbucks. I half expected it to be called Stars und Bucks Haus. The place was very touristy but a fun way to spend a sunny weekend. We ate sausage, ate ice cream, ate gingerbread, ate chocolate and then we all fell asleep on the drive home. I wanted to fall asleep at the wheel but instead I kept myself awake by talking on my phone, applying make-up, checking my hair and sipping my latte all at the same time.

This week, we’ve baked chocolate cookies and chocolate brownies and I am amazed at how easy this shit is. I’ve always had a phobia about baking and I always thought there was no such thing as easy baking but there you go. Cookies only needed like 8 minutes in the oven and they were done. I think my thinking comes from my mother and her Sisyphean struggle to make spongecake.

Lately, I’ve become extra obsessed with cooking in general. I’ve been watching Top Chef, catching Iron Chef America (Mario Batali is a god-damned genius) whenever it is on and going through episodes of Jamie At Home. Slowly but surely, I am talking about food in a more and more pretentious way. I think I will need to be an asshole about food for a while before I get to a better place.