A not-so-eggcellent cook

By: LOUISE ESOLA - Staff Writer | Saturday, September 10, 2005 12:12 AM PDT ∞

I believe the irony I encountered on the home front this week is on par with Madonna, the iconic "material girl" once famous for (censored by the Federal Communications Commission) on stage, now having her very own spot in the children's book section of every major bookstore.

Flabbergasting, isn't it?

Well, that ain't nothin'!

You see, out of my small kitchen in my tiny, tiny condominium of Newlywedlandia, I have become an amateur master chef. I have cookbooks galore, my own recipe journal of clippings from the newspaper food section and a natural talent for knowing what a cup of rice looks like without the measuring cup.

I even know what a Dutch oven is, and it's not, as one might imagine, an oven in Holland with a double-braided blonde milkmaid standing before it in her wooden clogs.

I have taken it upon myself to develop these kitchen skills now that I am, gasp, married.

(The feminists are going to hate me, I know.)

But as a women of a household with a husband whose appetite resembles that of man with a tapeworm, and whose kitchen habits resemble that of a blind man fumbling through the fine china section of a department store, I am gladly cooking for two.

(For the record, I was raised in a Latino household by a mother who always told me that it is "berry, berry good" to know how to cook for your man.)

Over the past week, I made Greek tabouli, a lovely Asian barbecued salmon, peppercorn-crusted London broil and a pot of black bean and chicken chili with fresh cilantro and garlic. The week before, I made fresh fish tacos, with my own salsa created using my new food processor.

Becoming a goddess in the land of strainers, mixers, wooden spoons and oven temperatures is a huge change from what I was in my single days as the gal who ate microwave popcorn for dinner.

For years, I lived alone in a small studio apartment with, mysteriously so, lots of kitchen cabinets but not enough closet space. A real ingenious thinker, I stored some of my shoe boxes and purses in the kitchen. And when anyone opened my fridge, you could hear the faint echo: "Hello, hello, hello. Is anybody there, there, there?"

But this is not the ironic part that had me standing before the stove Thursday night in utter amazement and, truthfully, ultimate cabinet-slamming frustration.

I cannot, simply cannot, properly boil an egg.

You see, I am an avid lunch-packer. Almost every day I bring to work a lovely salad with all the fixings: tomatoes, red onions, cucumbers, green and red peppers, etc. And recently, I wanted to add hard-boiled eggs to the mix. Donkey Kong, my husband who doesn't want to be attached to my musings, is also a fan of the nutritious hard-boiled egg.

This seemed simple enough ---- prepare a dozen eggs on a Sunday night and have them for a week's worth of lunches.

Um, not quite.

I will remind you that it was Thursday night when I hit rock bottom and came to this conclusion: While I could probably take on a crowned rack of lamb head-on, I am a dud when it comes to probably the simplest cooking procedure known to man, after the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, of course.

And it took a lot of eggs ---- Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday nights' worth ---- to realize this. I even perused the Internet for tips. I consulted my jumbo "Joy of Cooking" book. My pride kept me going.

But it seems, sadly, that my oven timer and stove-top settings have conspired against me.

All I got was either a rubbery egg white and a chalky yolk, or a slimy mess.

Donkey Kong was also a tad puzzled by this late-night determination to conquer the boiled egg.

His solution? The unthinkable, dear ladies of the Martha Stewart cult: Without my knowledge, he called his mother in New Jersey to ask her how to boil an egg. Might l remind you that if it is Thursday night here, it's almost Thursday middle-of-the-night there.

I am sure, as she gave him her pointers, that she was thinking: "What kind of a woman ... ?" She probably had visions of her youngest son starving, cheeks sucked in, belly out, flies buzzing around, at the hands of a wife who can't even boil an egg.

To say I am embarrassed is an understatement. Again, back to that whole Latino, take-care-of-your-man credo, embedded in me when I my got my first light-bulb-powered Easy Bake Oven for my seventh birthday. It's sad, I tell you.

I can serve roasted pork tenderloin with fresh fruit chutney and acorn squash ravioli with Gorgonzola cheese sauce, but I may never create a decent egg-salad sandwich or a batch of chili-laced deviled eggs.

All because I can't put an egg in hot water.

Staff writer Louise Esola covers Oceanside schools. She can be reached at lesola@nctimes.com.