Mr Milk is turning into a regular Nigel Slater. This month a la carte de famille du Lait: Chicken saag with homemade dahl, pan fried chicken livers with a balsamic reduction, roasted loin of pork with braised cabbage and crispy lardons. Yeah a bit poncy, but bloody delicious all the same. He’s even started making things up. When my cupboard’s bare (no naughty symbolism intended) i reach out for Mr Heinz’s finest green tin. When Mr Milk’s cupboard is bare he does some kind of dinner arithmetic and lo and behold a creation is born. Soon he’ll be sprinkling salt from a ludicrously high altitude with or without the Ainsley Harriott camp backward stablising hand, buying a 3ft pepper cellar to display his manliness, treating frying onions like a pancake, all shuffle shuffle toss and describing a dish as “the closest to a warm cuddle you can get with food”.
Meanwhile Mrs Milk is busy making the kids meals. Shepherd’s pie, sausages, pasta, casserole. No salt, no herbs (green things, ugh), no spices and definitely no wine based reductions, poaching, frittering or anything remotely resembling a ganache or a honey glaze.
It’s just all a bit too bloody stereotypical.
The thing is, once Mr Milk is home i’ve already cooked once and i’m *cked if i’m going to cook again. i don’t find it relaxing. It’s not how i choose to unwind. So he takes over, does all the grown up cooking, and before you know what’s happened he’s sous cheffing at l’Escargot while i’m working the grill at the local tesco’s cafe.
So all that practise and ponsing is well and truly starting to pay off, and much to my dismay the irritating stereotypes are starting to play themselves out in the Milk household.
Do men naturally make better chefs? No. They’re just more likely to get the practise in. *shock horror* woman takes on household chores while husband gets to ponse about with tools.
(Footnote: Mr Milk does of course do his fair share of the ironing, cleaning and kidlet ferrying…. everything else is subject to our standard terms and conditions, please read the footnotes with any accompanying literature, don’t ring now or your vote might be charged but not count, blah blah blah, bum cover bum cover….)
They’re great (and possibly better) at Statement Meals – you know, the posh dinner party meal w rare, pricey, rich ingredients. But get them to try and prepare a healthy family meal, and suddenly they forget how to operate the stove.Grr.
My hubby does cook but it is all very basic & limited. He does find ironing very relaxing so I’ve happily handed that over. As you know from my posts, he also enjoys washing up!
Yes but your hubby, like me, has a tendency towards mild OCD so he doesn’t count as typical ;<)
I’m not sure Mr Muddling is a better cook (at least I’m fairly certain he isn’t) but any cooking he does is an enormous performance requiring milimetre perfect measuring, every pan we own and a lot of fuss
So much fuss that he then has to collapse on a sofa listening to the praises. Strangely when I cook it gets done, with a minimum of fuss, most nights…
Ah yes the weekly cooking extravaganza. Does he actually cook, or does he pay a pack of articulate foxes with rabbit loins while he goes off for a few in the pub?
I am the better cook in my house – the Missus is not very good unless she follows a recipe to the letter and uses every available saucepan, skillet, spoon, fork, knive, work surface, chopping board and measuring beaker.
I enjoy cooking and do probably 90% – kids stuff too. Only household chore I despise is hoovering. I find ironing quite zen.
Well Zen your way over to the Milk household would you please, there’s a pile of 6 month old ironing over here ;<)
Wow, I am beyond impressed. My husband never made anything more complex than a frozen pizza. And that was for the adults, not the kids. Fortunately, I get to enter the man lotto again.
Excellent point about men getting more practice because they’re less weighed down by the responsibility of everyday cooking. And it shows in families where both partners have similar responsibilities outside the home. So my husband takes a certain pride in doing everyday cooking – he makes big batches of shepherd’s pie, ratatouille, soup, goulash, etc, to freeze so that he more or less produces all our week day meals. On the other hand he’s happy to let me cater for our dinner parties and I make all the desserts! But that’s where our anti-stereotype behaviour stops – no way I make as much of a mess as he does when I cook, and I use far fewer utensils!
Not sure if they make better chefs, but my OH does most of the cooking in my house – I can’t think of anything worse than slaving over a hot stove! But then again, I know lots of women who are fantastic cooks.
Babes cooks really well, I just do bare necessities. Maybe it’s to do with stereotypes. When women cook, they feel like housewife drudges, when men cook they feel like chefs.
My hubby spun me a line that he liked cooking. Every time he gets into the kitchen he protests that he doesn’t know how to cater for so many (five!) Sigh. The annoying thing is that I used to be a real foodie and used to be very into catering and entertaining but now cooking has turned into drudgery. It’s just not the same when the budget is limited.
assembling something from chickpeas and celery just ain’t gonna be as exciting as a nice piece of juicy beef….
Loving the footnote! I’m the same, I an whip up something fancy for a dinner party but otherwise I stick to homely meals whereas the ex would cook (once in a blue moon) and create some sort of fancy pants masterpiece!
We’re making the assumption here that chef is better than cook though, and that’s not true (imo) they’re just different.
Now that is a very interesting point. hmmm.
Still a bit of a stereotype though isn’t it. man = professional chef, woman = homely cook.
Better not go there, it is YOU i’m talking to here ;<)