February 21, 2005

Ready when you are (and even when you're not)

This weekend I suddenly remembered that a had a bag of leftover Deep Fried Truffles sitting in the freezer. It's an excellent thing to realize that you can heat up a small pan of oil, pop half a dozen of them out, and 30 seconds later you have a real neat snack. Let us not talk of the hour of prep that goes into making the batch, shall we? Or of the monster from the black lagoon coating of egg, flour, and bread crumbs you end up with on your hands. Instead, let us all think of only the good things that come from molten deep fried chocolate!

This reminds me of a funny story. Melissa was over at a friends house. The friend suddenly says, "Oh! Let's make cookies!" The friend then proceeds to remove from the freezer home-made yet frozen rounds of cookie dough, all ready for the oven. All of those in attendance marvel at the idea. Cookies! Quickly! Ready when you are, right there in your own freezer. I can just see Melissa's little moue as she responds, "oh, we only have fish heads in our freezer."

Because, of course, Derrick is like all chefs. He hoards those remains of fish, meat, and even vegetables in order to make stock. One meal's fish isn't enough, so you need to freeze them until you have collected enough. And as wonderful as it can be to have fish soup prepared on a cold winter night; it's probably just not the same as ready made cookies. Even worse, if you thought about cookies and ran into the kitchen, there at eye level you would have a red snapper head confronting you.

In my mind I can just see Melissa standing before the open freezer. Sigh. Fish heads again? Darn.

Posted by dowdy at February 21, 2005 08:24 AM