Cooking With Your Sixth Sense
Growing up, I would pepper my mom with a million questions while she cooked.
“What’s that?”
“Why are you doing that?”
“Can I try it?”
”Can I do that?”
”Is that hot?”
“Are you sure you’re doing that right?”
I used to give my mom all the headaches.
While making her legendary peach cobbler, she would add in a little bit of this or that, taste, then adjust until the dish was ready for the oven. I’d ask how many tablespoons of sugar: she didn’t know-she didn’t measure. I would ask how did she know the pie crust was ready: she couldn’t explain-it just looked properly rolled. Like Dwight from RHOA once said, “A fashion show with no fashions?”. This was a cooking lesson with very few lessons.
It took me until I got older to realize my mom cooked using her intuition. She could taste, smell, touch and see just when something was cooked perfectly. This was intensely frustrating for me but I find myself cooking the same exact way. If I’m in the kitchen and the pan needs oil, I will just tell my husband to count to three while he is pouring the EVOO. Or if a dish needs pepper, I will tell him 10 clicks on the grinder (that’s what she said). We actually measured it out a few days ago, and just by sight-I could figure out 1 tsp of pepper.
I made this beet & four cheese ravioli with shrimp in a white wine sauce before going on vacation, and didn’t write anything down. I just added in Meyer lemon juice, white wine, unsalted butter and a little heavy cream to the pan and gave it a swirl. I sprinkled in *French seafood seasoning, garlic, fresh cracked pepper and chili flakes. Sautéed some onion, and red and green pepper. At the last minute, I threw in some shrimp once the wine had been cooked off (about 7-10 minutes). Finally, I added in a little pasta water from the beet and four cheese ravioli so that the sauce would stick.
*French seafood seasoning contains onion, coriander, turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, cayenne, garlic, paprika and pepper, and is perfect for seafood dishes and crab cakes.
