While I’ve been cognisant of pomegranate molasses since at least 2001 (thanks to Christine Cushing harping about it every chance she got) it was never an ingredient I rushed to experiment with.
Examining my habits, I’ve found that my cooking experimentation and infatuation with ingredients tends to be rather transient. When I hone in on something that intrigues me, I work with it obsessively until I get bored and then move on. In essence, I’m trying to “master” the ingredient in a way that I find palatable (not in every way, because that would take a lifetime) before I take my next step. In some ways I suppose you could say that I have culinary ADD (attention deficit disorder) because I jump around so much to ensure I keep those synapses popping.
As I mentioned in a previous post, while I was visiting The Spice Trader on the weekend, I happened to grab a bottle of the aforementioned pomegranate molasses, along with some argan oil (more on that later), more coffee olive oil, and some white balsamic.
I first read about argan oil back in 2007, in a book called In Bad Taste?: The Adventures And Science Behind Food Delicacies by Dr. Massimo Marcone. Argan oil comes from the argan tree. In Morocco, goats climb these trees and eat the argan nuts, and then dispose of the rest. What’s left when they’re done eating is collected and oil is extracted from the remnants. When I saw it on the shelf at The Spice Trader, I knew I couldn’t resist picking up a flask of this highly unusual oil.
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Tags: argan oil, beets, Christine Cushing, In Bad Taste?, Massimo Marcone, molasses, New Projects, pomegranate, pork, Purveyors, Recipes, The Spice Trader
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Not to generalize, but I’m of the mind that there are 2 types of people in the kitchen; those who are fearless and do everything guns-ablazing, and those who are skittish and slightly uncomfortable with just about everything they do.
Two guesses which type of person I think I am 
7 years ago Christine Cushing wrote a cookbook called Fearless In The Kitchen which I have but never use because I collect cookbooks for inspiration and a love of photography, not for recipes (with the exception of baking instructions which are a precise science). I read online recently that she is translating that concept into her own reality show, where she’ll hook up with clueless kitchen neophytes and attempt to teach them a thing or two to impress their loved ones and generally improve their skill level a bit.
I’ll admit when I first read the description I had a little chuckle, if only because I wondered what sort of blowback there’d be if I anonymously signed the Everyman up for an episode. I love the Everyman more than anything in the world, but he is pretty basic in the food preparation department. The fact of the matter is he doesn’t really cook because he never had to (though he makes the meanest grilled cheese – with shortrib or without!) I find that most people who learned to cook at home started doing it out of fiscal necessity or strong ties to other family members in the kitchen, and in the Everyman’s case, he had neither. When we first started living together it took a lot of compromise and adjustment to finally reach a happy medium on the food issue, mainly because he was accustomed to eating much more processed, pre-packaged or takeout foods than I’d ever keep in the house. But what 20-something bachelor doesn’t?
Because of that we often don’t cook together, and that’s primarily my fault. Unfortunately it’s my nature to be impatient, and that doesn’t mesh well when trying to work/instruct/guide someone at a different skill level than your own. On the rare occasions he cooks for me, it’s always from a recipe and he’ll only mix it up after he’s made something successfully a few times first. Plus after living together for almost 4 years, the only things he can regularly find in the kitchen are glasses, bowls and dinner plates (he claims I constantly move things around).
After cooking with his mother a few times I began to realize where he gets it from, because though she does all the cooking at their house, she never cooks without following a recipe either. There’s nothing wrong with that, but to further bring my point home, I’ll recount an anecdote from a weekend at the cottage with her last year.
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Tags: Christine Cushing, Cooking, Fearless In The Kitchen, ramblings
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