Tonight's dinner was a good example: my dad is shy with seasoning. And he's lazy with fresh ingredients. His pork chops are given an egg wash, then a bread crumb dredge (packaged crumbs, of course), thrown in the oven, and....that's it. Bland flavor, a texture which alternates between soggy and sandy/gritty, just pretty dreadful all around. Of course he must realize it's not that good, since when he's eating it he drowns it in mint jelly to give it some sort of flavor.
Meanwhile I fried mine in olive oil to put a nice sear on it, and then basted it with butter. The butter had time to soak up the perfumes from the garlic cloves and the sprigs of thyme which I put in there, and I let the pork rest on wood for 4 minutes to let it soak up the juices and remain tender and moist. To deny that the difference was night and day would simply be false modesty.
I don't pretend to be a chef or anything. I'm a decent home cook at best. But I feel like when someone offers to make me dinner, it's unfair to me that I should have to choke down mediocre or outright bad food just to be polite to them. So is there a way to offer advice to my dad on how to cook food properly without coming off like an ingrate? Or am I doomed forever to cook my own meals even when other people are offering?
If anyone else has been in this situation, let me know how you've handled it.
Submitted January 31, 2017 at 04:56PM by apugsthrowaway http://ift.tt/2kOUCTm
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