My Husband the Cook

I'm blessed to have a husband who is an amazing cook. It comes natural to him. Probably gets it from his mom, who is also a great cook. He knows it too. On more than one occasion he has to me, " I don't know how I do it, but I do." Which makes me laugh, because I know it's true. He never follows recipes. He just instinctively knows what something needs, and how much to put in. I have no idea how this happens. See, I on the other hand, have to watch countless hours of the food network. Stare at a million recipes. Buy the exact ingredients. Have my grandma (Mima) explain to me repeatedly how to make something. All just to hope my food comes out decent. I'm not a bad cook. Just not great like Mitch is. Last night he made ribs. He got up and randomly decided to make them. They ended up being really good. Like the slightly charred on the outside, yet tender on the inside kind. With a sweet, almost cinnamony barbeque sauce. (Apparently cinnamony is not officially a word, I looked, but you know what I mean.)  He also makes great meatloaf, pizza, steak, cuban food, perfect cuban coffee. He also makes something called a Mitchacchino, like an iced coffee. Basically anything he makes is good.

Just for fun though, and since even the best cooks have random fiascos, I'll tell you about my favorite Mitch cooking bloopers. Lets see, last week he made a corn and beef stew (guiso de maiz), and almost blew up our kitchen. First it called for chicken broth, which when I came into the kitchen was told by him that he used cream of chicken because it's the same thing. I laughed. Then he put the corn in the stew and put it all on the stove in a pressure cooker. Mind you, I have been placed in me, by my family, the fear of God regarding the pressure cooker.  So I tell him, "Mitch the cream and corn create foam in the cooker, which clogs it so it can blow up." He says it will be fine. Ten minutes later the thing is clogged and not releasing pressure. He then realizes and turns it off. Sure enough when we told Mima what we did, she said you can never put corn in the pressure cooker. Of course though, once the fiasco was avoided, the stew came out great.

Now my favorite cooking blooper of his was when he put butter in our coffee. You would think it was mistakingly, but it wasn't. For some reason he saw his friend put something in his coffee, which he said was a secret ingredient. He thought it was butter. So he brews up a batch of cuban coffee, adds sugar and then adds a dollop of butter on top. I can't even write this without laughing. You can imagine what it looked like. A nice steaming cup of coffee, with a layer of melted butter floating on top. It was funny. He quickly realized that butter was not the secret ingredient, though, threw it all out and made a fresh batch of good ol', not buttered cuban coffee.

He really is a great cook. The best part is that he loves to cook. So in our house it's not a chore. It's usually one of the best parts of our day. He gets to show off his skills, and I get to have a delicious meal because of it. It's a win/win situation.