Basic cooking skills, part 3: Quick breads

[Basic Cooking Skills parts 1 and 2 are here and here, respectively.]

Few things make you look more competent in the kitchen than the ability to bake bread, and few breads are easier to make than quick breads -- that is, breads leavened with agents other than traditional yeast. (Honestly, yeast bread isn't as difficult to make as you might think, but it does take some time -- so if you're looking for close-to-instant gratification, quick breads are the way to go.)

A general note on baking: You can fiddle-fart around with most types of recipes, eyeballing measurements or altering ingredients, and usually you'll still create an edible result. Baking, however, is a subtler kind of alchemy. If you want your baked goods to come out looking and tasting right, you should follow the recipe closely, measure accurately, and bake at the proper temperature and for the right amount of time. Otherwise you run the risk of baking up a batch of hockey pucks, and nobody wants that (except possibly the Vancouver Canucks).

You will need some or all of the following:

1. a source of clean potable water.
2. a cookie sheet.
3. a clean table or kitchen counter.
4. a mixing bowl.
5. a set of measuring spoons.
6. a set of measuring cups.
7. a knife or other cutting tool.
8. a whisk or fork.
9. a biscuit cutter or drinking glass. 
10. a nonstick griddle or heavy-bottomed pan.
11. a loaf pan.
12. an 8" square glass baking dish.
13. a spatula for cooking.
14. an oven thermometer.
15. a kitchen timer.
16. a stove/oven combination.
17. an oven glove or hotpad.
18. a serving bowl.
19. wax paper and aluminum foil.

Before you begin

A friend of mine used to be solidly convinced that she couldn't bake -- until she moved to a new house. Suddenly all her baked goods started coming out perfectly! The difference: she moved from an apartment with a temperamental, crappy old oven to a house with an oven that actually came up to the right temperature.

Oven temperatures vary a lot, and remember what I just wrote about baking at the proper temperature? Right, so you're going to want an oven thermometer to see what your oven is really doing. Get one of the dial-face thermometers, since it's more reliable. Start with a cold oven, put the oven rack into the middle position and stick your oven thermometer right in the center (or let it hang from the center, if it's a hanging type). Close the door, set your oven to the temperature suggested by your recipe, and let it heat for about 20 minutes (some ovens will beep to let you know they've come up to full heat). Quickly open the door and check the thermometer reading against the temperature. Does your oven run hot? Adjust the temperature down, wait a bit, and check again. Too cold? Bump the temps up a few notches. Trust your thermometer; it will tell you what's really going on in there. Our current oven runs on the cool side, so until we can convince the landlord to get it recalibrated, we have a cheat sheet posted next to the oven that reminds us how many degrees we need to turn it up to get the right temps for baking.

Biscuits

American-style biscuits are little baked quick-breadlets that are closely related to scones. The keys to making light, flaky biscuits are to do most of the mixing before you add the liquid, and not to maul the dough around too much after that -- messing around too much with biscuit dough makes your biscuits tough and hard. Since this is the first actual recipe I've posted, I'm going to go into what might seem like exhaustive detail about ingredients and measuring and blending and so forth. Don't be intimidated. You can do this.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus a little more for kneading the dough
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ cup shortening
• ¾ cup milk

[About the ingredients: All-purpose flour is the kind you can buy in paper (or, more rarely, fabric) sacks at nearly every supermarket; keep it in a cool dry place when you're not using it. Baking powder is NOT the same thing as baking soda; it usually comes in a cylindrical container, and examples of North American brands include Rumford, Calumet and Clabber Girl. Salt is your basic table salt. Shortening can be either a hydrogenated vegetable oil such as Crisco or a naturally solid shortening such as lard (and don't be scared of lard; it's probably better for you than Crisco). Milk is usually fresh cow's milk, although in this particular recipe you can substitute a non-dairy milk such as almond milk and it'll turn out fine.]

Wash your hands. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. (Check it with the oven thermometer to make sure it's accurate.) While it's heating up, you can do the following:

Grab your mixing bowl, a one-cup measuring cup and a level kitchen knife. Dip the cup into the flour until it's overfull, then use the flat section of the kitchen knife to scrape the excess off the top. You want a nice, level cup of flour. Pour this level cup into the mixing bowl, then repeat the process for the second cup. Don't put the flour away just yet; you're going to need it. Now grab your measuring spoons and the baking powder. You're going to use the one teaspoon measure. One by one, scoop up and level off three teaspoons of baking powder, adding them to the mixing bowl. Put the baking powder away. Get the salt, and scoop up/level off a teaspoon of salt, then add it to the bowl. Put the salt away. Now mix together all the dry ingredients in the bowl (you can use a spoon or your hand or even your elbow) until they're well combined.

To make this next step a little easier, you can take the half-cup measuring cup and run it under hot water until the cup starts to feel warm, but it isn't necessary. Pack the shortening into the half-cup measure until it's full, then scrape it out into the bowl. Put the shortening away. Use the knife (two knives are better, and a pastry blender is even better if you happen to have one) to cut the shortening into tiny pieces, gently combining it with the dry ingredients until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.

Clean out the half-cup measuring cup and grab the quarter-cup measuring cup. Get the milk, carefully pour it into the half-cup measure until it's full, and dump the half-cup of milk into the mixing bowl. Now carefully pour milk into the quarter-cup measure until it's full, and dump that in the bowl too. Put the milk away. Gently stir in the milk, just until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.

Now for some fun. On a clean, flat, washable surface like a counter or table, sprinkle out a handful of flour. Grab the soft dough out of the bowl and lay it out on the floured surface. Put a little flour on your hands so the dough doesn't stick, and knead the dough 10 times (fold the dough over on itself and flatten it down with the heels of your hands). Remember, DON'T KEEP MAULING IT AROUND.

Gently pat out the biscuit dough with your fingers until it's about 1/2 inch thick. Grab your biscuit cutter or drinking glass, dip it into the flour so the dough won't stick to it, shake off the excess and start cutting out biscuits from the dough (pro tip: cut the biscuits as close together as you possibly can and you won't have to re-roll the dough). Get out your cookie sheet and place the cut biscuits on it, giving them a little room to expand as they bake.

Check the oven thermometer. If the temperature looks right, use your oven glove or hotpad to remove the thermometer. Slide the cookie sheet with the biscuits on it into the oven and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the biscuits just start to get golden brown (set your timer for 10 minutes and check to see what they're doing after that). Once they look about right, use the oven glove to remove the cookie sheet full of golden-brown biscuits and set it on a heatproof surface. Open one biscuit (carefully; it's hot) and taste it to see if the batch is cooked through; if it looks and tastes good, use your hotpad to remove the biscuits from the cookie sheet to a serving bowl. Serve immediately with butter, jam or honey. (Now put the flour away, and wash up after yourself.)

You can easily fancy these up by adding goodies to the biscuit dough (savory biscuit variations: half a cup of grated cheese, or several tablespoons of finely minced scallions or chives, or small amounts of dried herbs, or a half-teaspoon of curry powder). But the first time you make them, just follow the basic recipe and see what they're like.

Pancakes

Pancakes are almost the ultimate breakfast food (since the coveted first-place spot goes to BACON), quick to cook and delicious. You may think that pancakes are hard to make, or that they take too much time to prepare. Ha! Let me show you how to put a batch of these together on a lazy weekend, then freeze the rest for instant gratification breakfasts on busy mornings.

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons oil, plus a bit more for cooking
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt

Wash your hands. Crack the egg, open it up, and pour its gooey contents into a mixing bowl. Throw the shell away. (If you accidentally got any bits of shell in the bowl, fish them out and throw them away.) Use a whisk or fork to scramble up the egg until the yellow and clear stuff are thoroughly mixed together. Add the milk and oil and whisk again, then add the dry ingredients (measure them the same as in the other recipe -- dip, level, pour) and mix the batter until it's just blended together (pancake batter doesn't need to be super smooth).

Set your stove burner to medium to medium-high heat; after you've done a few pancake batches you'll figure out which is the perfect heat to cook the pancakes just right. Put the griddle or pan on the stove and let it heat up for a minute (you can check it with the water test to see if it's hot enough). Once it's hot, add a small amount of oil to the griddle and gently swirl it around to cover the bottom.

The first pancake is a test run to see if the griddle is at the right temperature, so let it cook all by itself. Scoop up about 1/3 cup of batter (you can use a measuring cup if you want to be precise) and pour it onto the hot griddle. The batter should spread out a bit. Keep an eye on the pancake, but don't poke at it or otherwise mess around with it. You'll know it's time to flip the pancake when two things happen: 1) the edges of the pancake start to look "dry" compared to the rest of the batter, and 2) bubbles start to pop and form holes on the top of the pancake. Grab your spatula, slide it under your pancake and gently flip it over. What you're hoping to see is a nice golden brown color on the flipped pancake. Even if it's a little darker brown than golden, it's still fine to eat, though you may want to adjust the temperature down for additional pancakes.

You don't need to keep the flipped pancake on the griddle very long -- just enough to brown the bottom (you can lift the pancake with the spatula to check). Don't let the pancake get cold -- once it's done, slide the spatula under that pancake, move it to a serving plate, drizzle it with your topping of choice and SCARF IT DOWN! (Oh, and take the griddle off the heat if you aren't going to make more pancakes immediately.)

Ideas for toppings: melted butter or coconut oil, honey, maple syrup, agave syrup, chocolate syrup, peanut butter, fresh fruit, fruit jam (lingonberry jam is particularly fantastic), or you can go the savory route and make yourself a pancake sandwich with sliced ham and cheese.

This particular recipe makes about 10 standard-sized pancakes, but most of us can't eat that many in one go. So after making a few pancakes on a lazy morning, you may get full fast and be tempted to tip the rest of the pancake batter down the sink. DO NOT DO THIS. If you have a freezer, some wax paper and some aluminum foil, you can make Instant Gratification Pancakes. How's this work? I'mma tell ya how!

When you're all fulla pancake-y goodness, don't put the griddle away just yet. Keep cooking pancakes until you're out of batter. Set the finished pancakes on a clean plate, but don't put any toppings on them and don't stack them on top of each other. You want these pancakes to cool down, and they'll cool faster if they're separated.

Once the pancakes are cool enough to handle, tear off a section of wax paper big enough to cover a pancake, and put it on the top of the first pancake. Stack a second pancake on top of this one and top it with another sheet of wax paper. Continue until all the pancakes are stacked and separated by sheets of wax paper. Then tear off enough aluminum foil to wrap them all together (tightly, but not compressed) and make a foil-covered tower of pancakes. Stick that thing in the freezer. Because the pancakes are separated by wax paper, they won't stick to each other as they freeze. Pancakes frozen like this will stay high quality for 2 months.

Now on busy mornings when you want pancakes for breakfast, just find the foil tower you created, peel it open and pull out a pancake or two, tossing the wax paper as you do. (Wrap up what you aren't going to use and stick it back in the freezer for another day.) You can toast your frozen pancakes like bread, or nuke them for a minute or two in a microwave. Ta-daa, hot pancakes!

Cornbread

I promised I'd teach you to make cornbread, didn't I? Well, here we go. Possibly the best thing to accompany a bean dish -- not only do they taste good together, but beans and cornbread constitute a complete protein.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup milk
• ¼ cup butter, melted
• 1 egg
• 1¼ cups cornmeal
• 1 cup flour
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• a little shortening for greasing the dish

Wash your hands. Make sure the oven rack is in the center of the oven, then preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Grab your 8" square glass baking dish and grease it with shortening (one easy way to do this is to cover your hand with a plastic sandwich bag and wipe the shortening around the sides and bottom of the dish; when you're done, toss the sandwich bag).

In a large mixing bowl, crack and whisk up an egg, then add milk and butter and beat them together. Stir in all the remaining ingredients at once, and mix just until the flour is moist (the batter will be lumpy, but that's OK). Pour the batter into the prepared dish and slide it into the preheated oven.

Bake the cornbread 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean. Cut into squares and eat with gusto and many happy noises. Also eat with beans.

Pumpkin Bread

In the autumn, pumpkins and other squashes are cheap. But in North America, you can buy canned pumpkin purée pretty much any time of the year, and this is one of the best ways to use it. So go get your pumpkin on!

Ingredients:

• 1½ cups sugar (or half sugar and half molasses)
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1⅔ cups flour
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon each cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves (or use 1½ teaspoons pumpkin pie spice)
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup oil
• 1 cup pumpkin purée
• a little shortening for greasing the pan

Wash your hands. Make sure the oven rack is in the center of the oven, then preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a mixing bowl, mix together dry ingredients (and/or molasses, if you're using it). In another bowl, crack and scramble the eggs, mix them together with the oil and pumpkin purée, then add the wet ingredients to the dry stuff in the first bowl and stir to combine well.

Grease your loaf pan with shortening and dust it with flour (put a little flour into the bottom of the pan, roll it around the sides and bottom until all the shortening is coated with flour, and toss the excess), so the loaf doesn't stick to the pan. Pour the batter into the loaf pan, making sure the batter extends all the way to the corners, and slide the pan into the preheated oven.

Bake the loaf 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. When it's done, remove it from the oven (turn the oven off) and let it cool in the pan about 10 minutes before you gently remove it and let it finish cooling. OK, if you can't resist sawing off a still-warm hunk of pumpkin bread and inhaling it with butter, I won't tell anyone.

There are lots of other quick breads to try out, but these should get you started. And especially if you get good at making pumpkin bread, you are on your way to being able to bake goodies for Christmas, which means people will LOVE you. Enjoy!

Basic cooking skills, part 2: Beans

If you've been living on your own for a while, you probably already know that not all cheap food is good, and not all good food is cheap. But a few foods are both. Dry beans and other legumes fall into this category. They've got all kinds of great nutrients, they're super cheap (as I write this, you can buy a pound of dry beans -- which cooks up to about 6 or 7 cups of rehydrated beans -- for less than $2), they can be paired with rice or corn to make a complete protein, they feature in all kinds of recipes and they're absolutely delicious.

So if dry beans are so awesomesauce, why don't more people cook them from scratch? Well, because most people are clueless about dry beans. They don't know where to start, or they think it's going to be super-difficult and take a long time, or they worry about the heartbreak of flatulence, and they have a complete mental meltdown. None of these things are going to be an issue if you know what to do. And you will know what to do by the time you finish reading this!

You will need:

1. 16 oz. or about 2 cups of dry beans, any type you like (or whatever's on sale)
2. a place to spread them out, such as a clean countertop
3. a source of clean drinkable water
4. a colander or sieve
5. a large cooking pot with a lid
6. a stove or fire
7. savory additions (optional; see below)
8. a lazy weekend to cook your first big mess o' beans

Sorting it out

The first thing you gotta do is sort your beans. Find a clean countertop or tabletop and spread the beans out on it, sorting through them bit by bit to get rid of any rocks, dirt clods, seeds, sticks and other non-bean objects that were lurking in the bag. (Don't think you can skip this step. Once when I was a kid, my mom took a chance with dry beans that looked "ehhh, clean enough" and proceeded to make a big batch of homemade chili flavored with rocks and dirt chunks. YEARS of therapy, people.)

Spread the beans out on a clean counter or tabletop. Working methodically, pull a few beans aside at a time, looking for hidden dirt, rocks, straw, and anything else that isn't a bean. When you find a non-bean, discard it and keep going until you've sorted the whole batch. That's it!

Washing it up

Once you're done sorting, dump the beans into a colander or sieve (anything that will hold beans, but won't hold water) and rinse them thoroughly under clean running water -- under the tap of a sink is ideal. By "rinse them thoroughly" I mean turn all the beans over in the sieve with your fingers, getting them completely wet. You're looking to get rid of any lingering dust and dirt, which if you're wondering is not delicious at all.

Prepping and cooking

Pour your washed beans into a large cooking pot and cover them with water, several inches above the level of the beans. (They're going to soak up water and expand as they cook, so you need to give them enough water and enough room.)

If you have beans that don't require pre-soaking, such as Anasazi beans, you can skip right to cooking, but most dry beans must be pre-soaked before they're cooked. You can do this one of two ways: the lazy method or the fast method. The lazy method involves just putting the lid on the pot and letting the beans soak about 6 hours. The fast method involves putting the beans over the stove or fire, letting them come to a boil, IMMEDIATELY PULLING THEM OFF THE HEAT, clapping the lid on and letting them soak for an hour. (This one time I started quick soaking a pot of beans and went off to run some errands, forgetting to take them off the heat. Did you know that burned beans smell like really bad coffee? Well, our entire apartment complex knew it by the time I got home. Pull them off the heat. Please.)

On to cooking! Drain the soaking water from the beans and top them up with fresh water. It's not crucial, but if you can find an herb called epazote at a Mexican market or in the Hispanic food aisle of the supermarket, add a little bit to your beans now. Put them over the fire, bring them to a boil, drop the heat down to a simmer, put the lid on slightly tilted for ventilation, and let the beans cook until they soften and become tender enough to mash between your fingers, about 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours depending on the type and age of bean and your kitchen's height above sea level. (Soybeans take FOREVER to cook; don't bother.) Stir the beans every now and then so they don't stick to the bottom of the pot, and check to make sure they're not running out of water, adding more if it looks like they need it. Notice there's no mention of putting salt in the beans. That's because beans take longer to cook if you add salt or acid to them. Oh, and fish out the epazote before the beans are done.

Jazzing it up

Now you have a whole pot of basic beans, without any additions or spicing. Right now they're dead boring. So here are some ideas for jazzing them up:

Salted and/or smoked pork products and beans love each other. Leftover ham, pork hocks, salt pork, cooked crumbled bacon, smoked sausage -- they're all yummy with beans. They're also salty, so let the beans cook on their own for a while before you add the pork. If you can't get enough of the smoky flavor of Babe, pick up some liquid smoke seasoning at the supermarket and add about a quarter teaspoon or so to your pot of beans. (WARNING: This stuff's concentrated, so go easy with it until you know how much you like.) Also, here's my mom's super secret addition: in the last half hour of cooking, add a can of evaporated milk (NOT sweetened condensed milk) to the pot of beans, and mash up about a cup of beans and add them back in. It makes the bean broth thick and velvety and super delicious.

For a basic vegetarian mess of beans: chop up an onion, sauté it until it's translucent, and throw it into your beans. Throw in some pressed cloves of garlic or some garlic powder (or both! Why not?), and a teaspoon or two of dried thyme. Near the end of cooking, fling in some canned tomatoes or a combination of tomatoes and diced green chilies. Taste to check for seasoning. Eat with cornbread. (Yes, if you're interested, I can teach you how to make cornbread.)

Drain most of the liquid off the beans, mash the beans up with a potato masher, fry them in a little lard or bacon drippings (adding some liquid back if necessary), and you've got homemade frijoles refritos. Sprinkle with Mexican white cheese and eat with gusto and a spoon, or spread on a tortilla as part of the filling for a bean burrito.

Make yourself some red beans and rice. Sing praises to the glorious gods of New Orleans cooking.

Cut up some bell peppers and a red onion, mix it with a cup of corn kernels and a cup of drained home-cooked beans, pour some Italian dressing or vinaigrette over the whole thing, stir and marinate in the fridge a few hours, and you've got a delicious bean salad.

It's time to explore some chili recipes. Or, if you're from Down East, baked bean recipes.

You can even make desserts with beans. No kidding. This awesome flourless chocolate cake recipe features blended black beans (say that three times fast), and black bean brownies have gotten popular with moms who are trying to sneak some nutrition into their kids' desserts.

Silencing the musical fruit

The biggest problem most people have with beans is the dreaded Fart Factor. Beans contain a sugar that humans cannot completely digest, and the result is usually post-meal tooting. I've already identified two ways to cut down on the musicality of beans: change the soaking water before cooking, and add a little bit of epazote to the beans. You can also cook the beans until they're soft (al dente texture is not a virtue with beans) and make sure you chew them well to cut down on flatulence. If you eat beans regularly, your body will adjust to digesting them. And if you're still consumed with social anxiety, buy a bottle of Beano and take a few pills before eating your beans.

Finding time to cook

"Cooking beans takes too long," I hear you whine. (Really, you've got a carrying voice.) Well, yeah, it takes longer than fast food, but most real cooking does. More than time, though, what real cooking takes is a small amount of planning ahead -- and adults know how to plan ahead. With that said, there are ways to cut down on bean-cooking time.

Divide the labor between days to make it easier. You can cook your basic beans on a lazy weekend day (as suggested up top) and refrigerate or freeze them in small containers. Then they're prepped and ready to use whenever the urge to sling hash happens to hit you. Frozen beans tend to break down, so it's best to use them in recipes where the beans don't have to be whole, like cream soups and bean-based desserts.

Beans can become fast food if you have a pressure cooker. The time needed to cook beans under pressure drops from hours to minutes -- five to eight minutes at 15 pounds pressure, to be precise. NOT ALL BEANS PLAY WELL WITH PRESSURE COOKERS, however, so read your cooker's directions first or you could end up with beans all over your ceiling.

If working with a pressure cooker scares the beans out of you, try the other end of the spectrum and use a slow cooker. You can load it up with soaked beans and liquid and other goodies in the morning, plug it in, set it and go to work or school or Disneyland or whatever else it is you're doing for eight hours. Come home and you'll have a hot meal waiting for you.

Beans are glorious! They are delicious! They are dead cheap! And they don't have to be musical! Mastering the art of dry bean cookery sets you free from oversalted, overpriced cans of beans -- and it also makes you a magnet for the honeys. Really. Try it if you don't believe me.

(More basic cooking skills to come. As always, send in your requests for the next installment.)

Basic cooking skills, part 1

Today I'm going to teach you how to cook EVERYTHING!

Actually, no I'm not. Mark Bittman has already written a whole series of books about that. But what I will do is get you started with a few basic kitchen skills everyone should know. How far you choose to branch out from there is up to you.

If I could give you one bit of advice regarding cooking, it would be this: if at all possible, learn how to cook by watching and participating with another cook in the kitchen. You'll pick up all sorts of little tips and tricks just by watching a good cook do her thing and by getting hands-on experience.

You will need:

1. a source of clean potable water.
2. a frying pan, preferably a good nonstick one.
3. a medium-sized cookpot with a lid.
4. a spatula.
5. a sharp kitchen knife.
6. a cutting board.
7. a kitchen timer.
8. a stove/oven combination.
9. a colander or large sieve.
10. a serving bowl.

Boiling water

Yep, I'm gonna teach you how to boil water. Someone has to, right?

Get out the cookpot and fill it with fresh cold water, no more than three-quarters full. Put it on the stove, turn on the burner under the cookpot (double-check that you've turned on the correct burner) and let the water heat up. You can put the lid on the cookpot if you want the water to boil a bit faster. (Don't walk away from the pot! You'll start doing other things, forget about it, and pretty soon... well, let's just say I've destroyed a few pots in my time.) When large bubbles are rising from the bottom and breaking at the top of the pot, the water is boiling.
NOTE: The temperature at which water boils is different in different areas. The higher the elevation, the lower the boiling point -- and the longer you'll need to cook certain boiled foods like pasta. Most recipes assume you are at or near sea level, so if you're at a higher elevation (about 4000+ feet) you will need to adjust your cooking time to compensate.

Chopping, slicing, dicing, mincing

These are all specific ways to describe cutting food into smaller chunks, an essential skill if you want to learn to cook. Slicing usually involves cutting food into thin slices. Chopping is cutting it into rough chunks, approximately the size of the end of your thumb. (But don't chop off the end of your thumb, please.) Dicing means cutting a food into small cubes, about 1/2 to 1/4 inch in size. Mincing means cutting a food even smaller than dicing, almost to the point where it becomes a paste. The easiest way to cut any food is to use the right tools: a sharp kitchen knife and a cutting board. If you've never cut food up before, take your time and try to get some one-on-one practice with an experienced cook. Barring that, look online for a good video on basic knife skills and practice your form.

Eggs

Eggs are magic. Seriously, they are subtle and powerful agents of alchemy in the cooking world. They help hold together baked goods, emulsify homemade mayonnaise, and are used in everything from omelets to quiches. To start off, you should know three basic ways to cook an egg.

Fried: Grab your frying pan, put it on the stove and set the burner underneath it to medium-high heat. Get out an egg, and maybe a teaspoon or so of butter. Melt the butter in the pan until it foams. Turn the heat down to medium. Crack the egg on the side of the pan and gently separate the sides, opening it up close to the surface of the pan so the egg gently touches down without breaking the yolk. (If you're nervous about this, you can crack the egg into a cup instead, then pour the contents of the cup into the pan.) The white should start to set up and become opaque. Grind some pepper over the top of the egg, but otherwise leave it alone. When the white is firm and the edges start to curl up, it's ready.
This basic variation of egg-frying is called sunny-side-up, and it's perfect if you like a warm but runny yolk. If you like your yolk cooked a bit more, slide the spatula underneath the egg and gently turn it over in the pan, taking care not to break the yolk, and cook it about 30 seconds longer; this version is called over-easy. Of course, if you break the yolk and sorta scumble it around in the pan, you can also create the time-honored version known as the train wreck.
My hubby likes to make what he calls one-eyed sandwiches: you cut a round hole in the middle of a piece of bread, using a biscuit cutter or the edge of a drinking glass, then put it in the foamy butter and let it toast a bit. Break the egg right into the hole in the middle of the bread. When it starts to set up, flip it over and let the other side of the bread toast. Get yourself a glass of milk or juice and voila, instant breakfast.
Scrambled: Same frying pan, same foamy butter. But this time, break an egg into a small bowl and use a fork to whip it around until the white and yolk are thoroughly intermixed. Add a bit of pepper and a few drops of hot sauce if you like (I prefer Cholula), and pour it into the pan. Stir the eggs around with the spatula. They will slowly set up and begin to separate into curds. When you see no runny liquid left, the eggs are ready. (Don't cook them too long or they'll start to get rubbery.) Salt to your liking and eat, or add a little salsa, ketchup or brown sauce. Om nom nom.
Hard-boiled: Personally I can't stand the taste of hard-boiled eggs, but I know I'm a freak of nature, so here goes: It's best to make several hard-boiled eggs at once, to lessen the chances that one will break during the cooking process. Put the eggs into a medium-sized cookpot filled with cold water (covering the eggs by an inch or two). Bring the water to a boil on the stove. Once the water has reached a full rolling boil, remove the cookpot from the heat, put the lid on the pot and set your kitchen timer for 12 minutes. Leave the eggs alone until the timer goes off. Then pour off the hot water and submerge the eggs in very cold water to stop the cooking process. (Some people suggest putting the eggs under cold running tap water so the water stays consistently cold. Others suggest throwing in a few ice cubes.) Let them stay in the cold water until they're cool to the touch. Gently roll a boiled egg on the counter to crack the shell, then peel the shell off, preferably under cold running water. You can eat them as is with a little salt, or use them to make deviled eggs or egg salad or whatever takes your fancy. Just don't make me eat 'em.

Pasta

Thanks to the wonders of jarred sauces, pasta is one of the simplest and most economical meals to make. And you look more competent making this stuff than you do with a packet of instant ramen.

The important thing in cooking pasta is making sure you have enough boiling water, so that the pasta can "swim" freely as it cooks. If you cram pasta into a small pot, it will take ages to cook, get gummy and cling to itself. Yech. So make sure it's got plenty of room. When in doubt, give it more water than you think it'll need; more is better than less.

Heat up the water first in the cookpot (if in doubt, read "How to boil water" above). Add about a teaspoon or so of salt to the water. Once it's at a nice rolling boil, add the pasta, a little at a time (about a palmful at a time for small shaped pasta), and let it do its thing in the water. Check the side of the container for cooking times. Fresh pasta (sold in the refrigerator case) takes almost no time at all, while dried pasta (sold in boxes on the shelf) can take up to 15 minutes to cook.

The easiest way to check for pasta's "doneness" is to fish a piece out and bite into it. If it's cooked all the way through to the center, it's perfect. Don't let it overcook and get mushy. Put the colander into the sink, carefully (!) carry your cookpot over to the sink and pour the contents into the colander. The water goes, the pasta stays.

Now you're going to want some sauce. Ideally you should start this a few minutes before you estimate the pasta will be done. Grab your frying pan, put it on another burner and add some of the jarred sauce of your choice. (Hint: most Americans use too much sauce on their pasta; you don't really need much, especially for fresh pasta.) Heat it over medium heat until it's hot. Once the pasta is well drained (shake the colander a bit to get any hidden water out of the pasta), put it into a bowl, add some of the hot sauce and toss to coat. It's ready to eat.

DON'T RINSE YOUR PASTA. The sauce will slide right off the pasta if it's been rinsed.

Once you've got the basics down, you can add various other goodies to fancify your pasta -- cook meat, fish, or vegetables with the sauce, grate a little hard cheese over the finished pasta, etc. You can also branch out into filled and baked pasta, like manicotti or lasagne. And I may teach you how to make a few homemade sauces as well. But for now, you've got a simple, cheap and tasty dinner.

Salads

Most salads don't count as "cooking" since they're uncooked, but you should know how to put several together anyway. They taste good and add all sorts of nifty vitamins to your meal.

A general rule about salad: if you're using lettuce or other fresh vegetables, try to make only as much salad as you'll eat in one sitting. A dressed salad, even if it's covered and put in the fridge, starts to wilt quickly.

Green salad: Get a head of lettuce (it can be iceberg, red leaf, green leaf, Romaine, butter, or anything else that looks tasty and is on sale this week) and wash it under cold running tap water. (Yes, I know you can buy bagged salad at the store, but whole lettuce is fresher and usually costs less, and you shouldn't be scared to handle food the way it comes out of the ground.) Shake as much water out as possible, then pull off a few leaves and dry them with a clean kitchen towel. Break the leaves into bite-sized pieces, putting them into a serving bowl. If the lettuce you've chosen has large white ribs through the middle of the leaves, such as Romaine, remove these ribs and discard them; they tend to be bitter. This plus a little dressing constitutes the most basic salad on the planet, but most people like to add in a little something else -- say, cherry or cut-up tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, thinly minced green onions or chives, and some croutons added at the last minute so they don't get soggy.
There are lots of variations on green salad. Try fiddling with this basic formula: lettuce + fresh fruit (or raw vegetable) + dried fruit + crunchy addition (nuts, croutons, bacon bits) + cheese + fresh herb (optional). We like pear salad: start with a bed of lettuce, then add a pear or Asian pear cut into small chunks, a handful of sweetened dried cranberries, some walnut or pecan pieces, and a little bit of cheese (chunks of feta, chèvre or gorgonzola) with a vinaigrette dressing. Nom. And any green salad can become a dinner salad if you add some protein (slices of cold cooked chicken, chopped ham, salami, etc.). Just don't add the dressing until you're ready to eat it.
Cucumber-tomato salad: If you have a big cucumber and a good fresh tomato, you have the fixings for a salad. Wash the cucumber. You can peel it or not, depending on how well you like cucumber skin. Slice crosswise into very thin slices. Now grab a nice ripe beefsteak tomato, wash it well, and cut it into similar slices. Arrange in a circle in a serving bowl, alternating a slice of cucumber and a slice of tomato. Sprinkle with salt and pepper (or Montreal steak seasoning), drizzle olive oil and a little vinegar over the top, and add a bit of feta cheese. Easy, delicious, and it keeps better than a green salad.
Pasta salad: Got some leftover pasta with no sauce on it? Good! Get out your serving bowl and fling in some pasta. Chop up a little protein (it's usually ham around here, but it can be any cold meat or even a meat substitute) and add it to the pasta. Wash a green onion, cut off the root end and slice it into very fine slices, then add it in. (If you don't have a green onion, you can dice up about a quarter of a regular onion, rinse it in a colander under cold running water, and add it to the salad instead.) If you like celery, wash a stalk and cut it into fine slices, then add it in. If you're like me and think celery is of the devil, get a green pepper, pull off the stalk, cut the pepper in half, remove all the seeds and rinse well under cold running water, then cut into small chunks and throw it in. You can also throw in a handful of washed cherry tomatoes or some drained canned olives if you like them. Then get a dollop of mayonnaise (no, not Miracle Whip; that stuff is the work of Satan) and add a bit of spicy brown mustard, mix it up and stir it into the salad until everything's thoroughly mixed. Unlike green salads, pasta salad should sit in the fridge a few hours to let all the flavors marry. Eat with gusto (and a fork).

(Want to be able to make some other basic recipes? This is the first of a series. Send in your requests and I'll cover them in later articles.  Part 2 is here and Part 3 is here.)