CrackPot...

With a history as a line cook, I have only a vague and untrusting opinion about slow-cooking. I've always (mostly) used high heat cooking methods, which require one to pay close attention to what's in the skillet, pan, pot, fryer, whatever. But with these methods I can get a feel for how the dish is coming together in a matter of minutes. I understand that low-heat methods are required for a number of things I cook (hollandaise, well basically anything with eggs) and anything that needs to reduce. But to me there is a mystique around slow-cooking items. I am no baker, it seems that you mix things together and then put them in the oven and wait, then magically hours later it is something else entirely. From batter to pastry, or whatever. Something magical happens in the oven, and only when I am not looking...I suspect elves are involved. 

This quirky realization got me thinking that perhaps there are two types of cooks: Bakers and Line Cooks. I know there are more than these two, but for the sake of my brilliant analysis, humor me). 

Bakers are the engineers, the mathematicians of the culinary world. They follow instructions exactly, use precise measurements, and trust that the process will yield the outcome promised by the recipe. 

Line Cooks are the artists, the philosophers, the ones who question everything and operate by feel rather than faith. The line cooks see the recipe as mere guidelines and eyeball measurements and tend to add things in on the fly, so that the end product is sort of a distant cousin to the original recipe. 

If you haven't guessed yet, I am the latter. I am a line cook by trade (years ago) and by comfort. So I have a healthy mistrust of ovens and slow-cookers...In order to overcome my deeply held suspicions I have decided to try my hand at the crock pot. Which I never seem to use as instructed...For example, this evening I made a jambalaya pasta, which means that I browned sausage (in a skillet) then made a roux (skillet) and made a cream sauce, to which I added roasted garlic (tin foil). I DID manage to cube chicken, dice red peppers and onion and seasonings and start slow-cooking them (actual crock pot!). However, after an hour of cooking, I'd browned the sausage, added it to the crock pot, roasted garlic and made a roasted garlic cream sauce from scratch; only to open the crock pot to see still raw chicken. Again, I get it, slow cooking, but to me it was the heating equivalent of stoically breathing on it...I also get that I am using it wrong, but that is why I am trying my hand at it. 

Crock pots are as wonderful as they are maddening. I love the fact that you can toss everything in the pot in the morning and at dinnertime have a cooked meal that needed absolutely no attention the entire day. My frustration is that, one, I must trust that I don't have to stir, scrape or season it every ten minutes and two, that recipes for crock pots seem to stay in the genre of soups, stews and dips. Two of these I am opposed to on moral grounds...ok, well I just don't really care for soups and stews since I come from hot climes and prefer not to sweat (unless its spicy) whilst eating, but dips are a-ok. I realize there are other options like crazy desserts and if you add rice you can make something less stewy, like some of my cajun faves, jambalaya, étouffée and (well) gumbo. But these are only a few of predominantly soup-like recipes. However, I think the ease of set it and forget are beginning to outweigh my line cook tendencies. 


Let the adventure begin/continue!....pictures and anger to follow...