Semi-Charmed Life

Home Ec 101

I made marinated and cooked my very own dish for the first time last night!

Ever since I moved out, I became reliant on pre-marinated meats from a certain supermarket in Chinatown. It was easy and hassle free, but eventually I realized how crappy the cuts of meat were. Loads of fat everywhere! It's also more expensive by about a $1/lb, which is pretty significant.

I decided to give marinating my own dish because I saw my roommate doing it the other day and she made it seem pretty simple. I went to the market after work and brought home a few pounds of pork ribs. The whole experience turned out to be more laborious than I expected. First, the ribs I bought were still in strips, which meant I had to cut each one to separate them into bite sized cubes. It sounded easy in theory until I tried to wield the Chinese butcher knife and realized just how completely inept I was at using it. Prior to my new roommates moving in, I had used a shitty general purpose knife and I had never cut meat before. I didn't realize how difficult it was to do a simple thing like chopping strips of rib into pieces. First thing you need: accuracy. Every swing of the knife carried with it the fear of chopping off a finger. You can come down with the cleaver with less force but it does not cut as nicely. Every cut was like a golf swing. I would measure up against where I wanted to cut, give a few imaginary swings before actually chopping down. And I did all this really slowly.

The recipe also called for minced garlic. I've never really minced anything too fine before, and especially not with a Chinese butcher knife. It took me an inordinate amount of time to do a simple thing like mincing garlic.

I know this sounds retarded, but it was a humbling experience to realize how shitty I was at using basic kitchen cutlery. The finished product turned out pretty well though, and I'm super proud of myself and now I can cross off "marinating meat from scratch" from my bucket list and add it to my great list of insignificant accomplishments.

I have to say, living with somebody who cooks and is willing to give advice is awesome. Before I would randomly text or call a friend up whenever I needed to know how much of an ingredient I should use for this dish or how long I should be cooking that dish for. Now I can annoy my roommate.

Hopefully I'll be able to make a few more dishes by the end of the month, but for now I have black bean and garlic spare ribs in my utility belt.

My other roommate asked me if I'm going to go back to pre-marinated meats because of how difficult it was for me. I told him I'd stick with this because it's a skill I have to learn. I mean, something as basic as knowing how to use a cleaver should not cause me this much distress. It's like swimming. I don't really enjoy it but I feel like it's something I have to learn. If my future kid is drowning in a pool, I want to be able to save him. And if my kid is hungry, I want to be able to cook a home cooked meal and not have to resort to take out.