That is a dish eaten in a restaurant somewhere in Southwest France. It was a sort of variant of Paella, as I recall. My mother never made anything like it. In fact, if had any sort of seafood in it, she wouldn’t touch it. She never cooked fish that her kids caught, she never ate fish. She was odd, was mom. She was a Home-Economics major at Bowling Green State University when she met dad and married him. In those days, a married woman couldn’t attend college, which is too bad. Mainly because mom learned all about germ theory and sanitation and how to prevent food poisoning but didn’t learn much about subtlety in cuisine. When she cooked hamburgers, they were crispy and black around their outer rim. Until I was all grown up and could buy or cook my own steak, I never knew why anyone liked those things. Well done is too mild a term for how she cooled any meat. Or anything for that matter. This had two major effects:
- Nobody in the family ever got a stomachache from any pathogen while mom was cooking.
- Her burgers were crispy, her steak chewy, her pasta floppy, her green beans gray and limp, and taken all around, she was a lousy cook.
To this day, if I were to repeat the title of this post to a cook, it would probably be an insult. I remember in particular her spaghetti, which was mostly horrid.
On the other hand, she was good at anything that is supposed to have the stuffing cooked out of it. Like a Thanksgiving turkey, or a ham. Meatloaf, not so much, as she also didn’t believe in spice. Pies and cakes get baked well, and she was good with them. I still sometimes make one or two of her dessert recipes, and I still like them. So, if you hear me say that about a red devil’s food cake (that’s a red velvet cake if you leave out the food coloring, by the way) or chocolate pie, it’s a compliment. For most things, though, I try to avoid cooking like mom, and frankly, so should you, and anyone else who reads this. Or who doesn’t read this, come to think of it.
She loved me, and I loved her, but she was a lousy cook!