Cooking a la Estrop

My early attempts at cooking were, in a word, atrocious. It is only natural to assume they were probably on par with everyone else’s early attempts, but I think I had my struggles later in life because my mother was such an avid cook. We ate a square meal every night after everyone got home, so I never really had the opportunity to cook for myself. In fact, I found it a treat to “cook” an afternoon snack of Kraft Mac and Cheese at my friend Jenna’s house every now and again (there was no way mom would ever let me make that at home). It wasn’t until the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college that I started to cook for myself, since I ate at the cafeteria during the school year.

Tom remembers, without much zeal, I’m sure, an early meal I made for him – grilled chicken breasts that were flavorless and charred, rubbery steamed broccoli, and crunchy, microwaved potatoes. At home, I was experimenting – half-heartedly – with pasta, olive oil, and garlic powder. I ate it because it was there, but I really didn’t get into cooking anything more complicated until I moved in with Tom and we started following recipes.

Ah, recipes! Why hadn’t I really followed them earlier? They made food taste good! Soon we were amassing recipes from America’s Test Kitchen, thanks to Tom’s dad, and later we joined Brian and Kela four to five nights a week for dinner and my cooking advanced more. For a long time I was cooking a la Hamilton, and things were more delicious than ever. Chicken Teriyaki and Beef Stroganoff, Chicken Piccata and Crab Legs – I had really moved on from half-cooked potatoes and charred chicken.

Now that I’m living on my own and cooking for others very rarely, I’m sort of developing my own style. Cooking a la Hamilton is far too much for just one person, although I have been known to pull out the America’s Test Kitchen cookbook on more than one occasion. Thanks to Tom, I’ve developed a taste for Strawberries and Cream. And thanks to my mom, I know how to pick out good salmon. It’s kind of cool to have my own ways of doing things, and I think that as I cook more, I will become better at certain things and there will be a style, a la Estrop, all my own. Until then, I’m experimenting with my own buffalo wing sauce, the tastiest method for cooking asparagus, and re-discovering my good friends Ben and Jerry.

And what good friends they are…