Last night the GF and I made dinner. Not terribly interesting on its face, I’ll grant you. It wasn’t mind-bogglingly complex or overly difficult to make – just some salmon filets and mixed vegetables. What made the dinner so much fun was how we cooked the salmon. We obviously had many options; frying, backing, even grilling on Mr. Foreman. But the GF had a recipe that on its face looked bizarre, so bizarre that I couldn’t help but try it – we cooked it in the dishwasher.
Yes, that staid but sturdy member of the household appliance family. Little DW had probably never dreamed of rising up above his humble beginnings as a collection of plastic resins, hunks of steel sheet and lengths of three-wire grounded copper cable. He had been raised for a single purpose – cleaning off all my food scraps, coagulated cheese, and ensuring that each glass was sanitary for use in the next meal. Yes it was hard work, but DW took to it with a panache and verve unseen in the rest of my appliances such as the diva-esque refrigerator (“Treat me with the respect I deserve of I’ll leave the freezer door open a crack and ruin all your frozen veggies! Oh that had better not be tap water you’re putting in here, where’s the Evian?”), the manic-depressive microwave (“There you are! Ohmygodit’sso-goodtoseeyouhowhaveyoubeenyouknowwenevertalk-anymoreIlovecookingvegetablesforyouitfeelssofulfilling-suchaRUSH!!!HeyywhereareyougoingIknowthefood’sdonebutIthought-wecouldhangoutokayyou’rebusyIknowCallme?Please?Ohgodhehatesme…”) and the lonely cuisinart (“Is there anybody out there? Hello? It’s kinda dark in this cupboard. And it’s been about 6 months since we chopped up those almonds…Anybody?”). It was a mutually beneficial arrangement – I got clean dishes and DW received a steady supply of Jet-Dry.
Yet the GF took one look at DW and saw something more. Being the empath she is, she saw that he aspired to greater things. So she found a recipe where you wrap the salmon filets in aluminum foil and fold up the edges tight to keep out the water. Then she just put the packet on DW’s top rack and ran the cycle (even with soap! I never knew DW could multi-task like that!). When the cycle was done, so was the salmon. It came out tender, flaky, and scrumptious. Quite the feat, needless to say I was very impressed.
Of course, we made the veggies in the microwave, because I think he would’ve been inconsolable had he not gotten some credit for the meal.
Yes, that staid but sturdy member of the household appliance family. Little DW had probably never dreamed of rising up above his humble beginnings as a collection of plastic resins, hunks of steel sheet and lengths of three-wire grounded copper cable. He had been raised for a single purpose – cleaning off all my food scraps, coagulated cheese, and ensuring that each glass was sanitary for use in the next meal. Yes it was hard work, but DW took to it with a panache and verve unseen in the rest of my appliances such as the diva-esque refrigerator (“Treat me with the respect I deserve of I’ll leave the freezer door open a crack and ruin all your frozen veggies! Oh that had better not be tap water you’re putting in here, where’s the Evian?”), the manic-depressive microwave (“There you are! Ohmygodit’sso-goodtoseeyouhowhaveyoubeenyouknowwenevertalk-anymoreIlovecookingvegetablesforyouitfeelssofulfilling-suchaRUSH!!!HeyywhereareyougoingIknowthefood’sdonebutIthought-wecouldhangoutokayyou’rebusyIknowCallme?Please?Ohgodhehatesme…”) and the lonely cuisinart (“Is there anybody out there? Hello? It’s kinda dark in this cupboard. And it’s been about 6 months since we chopped up those almonds…Anybody?”). It was a mutually beneficial arrangement – I got clean dishes and DW received a steady supply of Jet-Dry.
Yet the GF took one look at DW and saw something more. Being the empath she is, she saw that he aspired to greater things. So she found a recipe where you wrap the salmon filets in aluminum foil and fold up the edges tight to keep out the water. Then she just put the packet on DW’s top rack and ran the cycle (even with soap! I never knew DW could multi-task like that!). When the cycle was done, so was the salmon. It came out tender, flaky, and scrumptious. Quite the feat, needless to say I was very impressed.
Of course, we made the veggies in the microwave, because I think he would’ve been inconsolable had he not gotten some credit for the meal.
Comments
There is also a movement to cook food in the hood of one's car (same idea - a sturdy foil packet containing the meal contents) as you drive home from work. If I ever get a car, I want to try that too.
I always wanted to turn an iron upside down and fry eggs on it. You could probably iron a piece of salmon.
I have also wanted to cook a meal at my lab bench using the bunsen burner and a ringstand. The professor mother in "A Wrinkle in Time" did that all the time.
Once he brought up a story about some students of his that were also birders like him, so they'd travel around the country doing bird-watching type things keeping track of each particular bird they saw. However, they had a second list of all of the animals (as in road kill) they cooked under their hood as they drove.
Apparently they felt that they were very environmentally savvy (despite the driving around the country) so they thought that it was a service to pick up the ROAD KILL on the way and cook it under the hood until it was done enough to give them a nice little road snack. Ummmmmmmmmm... Yum...