Cooking from Scratch

First, there was darkness, and, then a BIG BANG… 19 billions year went by, mankind’s ancestors crawled out of the mud. Not long after that, they published The Joy of Cooking. Viola, we were soon cooking with confidence. Why you say?  Because Irma Rombauer had written down easy to follow information and how-tos for the home chef. Soon we were off confident we could render squirrel, opossum and raccoon so armed with the confident words of this conversational cookbook.

Super markets and more cookbooks later almost anything is practical although a few of us may hesitate to stay up so late at night as be afforded the opportunity for opossum. Cooking from Scratch is quite satisfying. Tara Stolz, a blogger from Florida points out there is “not much that can't be made at home, better and/or cheaper. And, of course, she is right as rain! (http://cooking-from-scratch.blogspot.com)

My friend Bob Kong called me one afternoon and threw down a challenge – did I have a recipe on preparing caviar. His friend Larry had given him a seventy-five pound sturgeon. I quickly searched The Joy of Cooking and found a recipe. I called Bob back with the good news. I said I would help. Turns out, Bob had heard Larry incorrectly; the fish was too big for Larry to weigh but the roe weighed 75 pounds. We did not get out of the kitchen until three in the morning. The effort, nonetheless, was a great satisfaction. We had the best caviar I had ever tasted. Bob gave me 10 pounds of the finish product. I served some to my father who said not only was it as good as Beluga. but it was the first time in his life where he actually had as much caviar as he wanted at one sitting.