I try to be an organised person – in particular I always
make sure I have food ready to defrost and cook just in case I find myself unable to cook and I am
faced with the dire threat of Beloved cooking. Beloved reheating I can just
about manage (though it’s criminal what he has done to my food before now), but
cooking? I’m a good person, I don’t deserve that.
Unfortunately, as has been previously obvious, Beloved
gets his little… obsessions. The garden is continuing, he seems to be
revitalising interest in the damn fish –and he wants to cook. To cook. The man
who cannot reliably toast bread wants to COOK.
So, unable to cook, I left strict instructions on what
beloved was to defrost, how he was to do defrost it and how exactly he could
turn the frosty into the edible.
While he ignored.
Instead he decided he would inventively cook pork steaks
in apple sauce with baked potatoes. Now, on the plus side it has to be said
that he chose a less-than-inventive meal that should not be very taxing. After
all, he couldn’t get this wrong, right, could he?
Ah-ha oh yes yes he could. I honestly don’t know what he
would have done if we didn’t live together since university (yes, we lived
together before we dated. Complicated). He would literally be dead now, dead,
if I couldn’t cook. Dead. I’m actually sure that years ago he COULD cook
competently back then – I seem to recall eating meals he cooked (for a given
value of cooked) without fear… so maybe he’s right* and he has just rusted from
lack of use.
Anyway I returned home to find this… meal prepared. And I
was afraid, dear readers, I was sore afraid.
Like the baked potatoes. Now, there are 2 ways to do
baked potatoes – slowly and lovely in the oven. Or quickly and not nearly so
lovely in the microwave. Apparently there’s also a third method – quick and
oven baked, all you do is set your oven to HOTTER THAN THE HEART OF THE SUN and
then put in the spuds (presumably wearing Hazmat suits to get close to the
oven) and they will cook in record time! With charcoal-like skin and completely
raw centres.
Then there was the pork steaks. Now there are many ways
we can cook pork steaks and make them delectable. Top of the list of things
never ever to do? Do not put them under a grill (a raised grill at that) and
slowly bake out every last drip of moisture and every iota of flavour. This
steak wasn’t dry, it was desiccated. In fact, we need a whole new word for how
dry this was. This is the aftermath of a world destroyed in fiery apocalypse.
This is what happens if a desert became food. This is the very essence of
dryness. So dry was this steak that we could have dropped it into a body of
water and it would not only still be dry – but it would destroy all liquid it
came into contact with.
And the apple sauce… now, I didn’t complain about the previous items on the plate not being seasoned because, well, it’s rather like complaining that a serial killer said mean things about you. But I found the missing seasoning – it was in the apple sauce. All of it. In fact, I think that someone needs to assure me that the North Sea still exists since I think Beloved dropped one of the steak in there and, after all of the water was absorbed, he scooped up the tons of salt remaining and put it into this… sauce. This over-cooked, stewed, salty mass of vileness. It was actually so salty it was nauseating.
In a perverse kind of way, I almost want to see him cook
again – just because I am impressed at how truly awful his cooking can be.
*something I will deny ever ever saying, under torture
