Misadventures in Cooking

Cooking by following a recipe after not doing so for a long time feels a lot like when I started my translation work. I think I know what all the words mean until I really get into it. I start doubting my understanding of the language and probably way over-think it.

Do I really know the difference between chop and dice and mince? I guess it's a given that I'd peel the potato before chopping it? If you simmer onion in broth do you need to bring it to a boil first?

I managed to stumble through the first recipe, which was for a Harira, and it turned out pretty well) and ran smack dab against the second recipes, which was for Greek spinach rice balls.

It called for scallions, and since I was flustered I read that as shallots, especially because they called for browning it. I've put scallions in the oil first but I never really think of that as browning. I only think of browning onions or garlic or meat or shallots (hence my confusion). Next I discovered that I didn't have bread crumbs even though I remember seeing the container in the drawer, so now I had to use panko crumbs instead.

At this point I thought about turning back, but in Chinese there is a saying (a real saying, not like the "may you live in interesting times saying" for which I still haven't found a Chinese version), "When you're wrong, be wrong to the end." I think it can mean to stick with something and see it through to the end to see what happens, or can be talking about someone who stubbornly clings to misguided views. It really depends on the context, or your perception of the situation. Plus I subscribed to the Joey Tribbiani school of eating, if the components taste good the final product can't be that bad, right?

Anyway, back to the regularly scheduled programming. Then the recipe calls for steaming the spinach. I don't really have a steamer so I settled for sort of cooking it all in a little bit of water, so it was kind of like blanching and steaming it at the same time (or so I hoped) and then I spent some time squeezing all the water out. It also called for brown rice but we have this healthy rice mix and the rice was still a little damp after I cooked it twice. Finally I was ready to roll up the mixture into balls and dip it into the panko crumb and then put it in the oven.

It came out ok. The ball of rice was still on the loose side, probably because the rice and the spinach were probably still too damp. It was also a little odd to taste dill in rice. Ah well, maybe I'll put it in the Harira and see what happens.