The Curse of Cookbooks

Being an amateur cook can be both fascinating and frustrating. After a couple decades of learning, observing, reading and doing I feel like I've come close to perfecting a handful of dishes.

That said I still feel like there's room for improvement. Last week I roasted a chicken that I would rank among my Top 5 Roast Chickens of all-time. Today, I grilled a whole chicken -- no beer can, I just threw it on one half of the grill and turned off the corresponding burners -- and the result was a spicy, slightly smoky bird with deep flavor right down to the bone. A grilled whole chicken! From a boy who was taught growing up that you grilled two things: hot dogs and hamburgers, and neither of them particularly well.

Unfortunately, cookbooks and cooking magazines keep arriving and push me to try new things, though I think Chris would be happy with a steady rotation of what have become my "signature" dishes: Latin Pork Roast; Beer Can Chicken; Oven Fried Catfish; Tilapia with Pineapple Basil Glaze.

But this weekend I wanted to flex my culinary muscles, try a few new things and see how the results turned out. Well, the results were mixed at best. A seafood salad made with steamed shrimp and lump crabmeat was tasty and enjoyable, but also kind of expensive to concoct. Especially when you're a guy who's happy with a tuna sandwich or (gasp!) McDonald's Filet-O-Fish.

My other culinary adventure was also a recipe from a recent Cooking Light, Cornmeal Crusted Scallops with a Mint Chimichura Sauce. I like sea scallops and would never have thought to dredge them in yellow cornmeal, so the recipe jumped right out at me. As for the chimuchura sauce -- made with mint, honey, peppers, green onions, etc. -- I should have known better. It screamed "overpowering" and I probably would've been better off with a nice simple tartar sauce. (Sorry, I love ths tuff.)

Anwyay, the result was as disastrous as you might expect. Though I liked the cornmeal crust on the scallops, the meat was a bit bland and could've used something. (If I try a variation on the recipe in the future maybe I'll kick up the cornmeal or season the scallops before dredging.)

The chimichura sauce, however, was even worse than I could have imagined. It tasted like someone had ground up a bowl of leftover potpourri, dumped some water in it and threw it on top of my scallops. Luckily, the cornmeal crust kept the sauce from penetrating too far into the meat and I was able to scrape most of it onto the side.

Let me put it this way: when the frozen broccoli cuts in cheese sauce are the highlight of the meal, thank your lucky stars there's a grilled chicken in the fridge.