Baking Vs. Cooking

For those of you who have seen the show “Top Chef,” you may notice something when it comes to the chefs on the show. They have no problems in most of the challenges, and skate by with ease. However, when it comes to making dessert, they become panicked. These all-confident chefs become lumps of fear when dessert is mentioned.

I can relate, as when it comes to baking, I start to cry in a corner and rock back and forth. I can cook you anything -- if you need a soup, entrée or appetizer, I’m your gal. But baking? Oy vey. You don’t want to be around for that one.

Mind you, I can follow baking recipes. If I have one for a cookie or cake, I can make it. But coming up with my own is a scary proposition. It’s not like with cooking, where I can start with next to nothing and come up with something. In baking, things have to be exact in order to get your desired result. Everything has to be in the house, ready for you to make it.

This reality didn’t hit until yesterday, when I was planning to make a cookie for my friend Lisa. She was hosting a cookie exchange, where people made their best cookie recipe to share. I was planning to make a cookie with ollaliberry preserves, a hybrid raspberry/blackberry only native to Northern and Central California (which has the power to confuse people and get them to think of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”).

Then it happened: Everything went wrong. The preserves were way past their prime. The pasty blender that I purchased immediately clumped up. Flour began to fly all over the kitchen. To paraphrase a former high school teacher of mine, “Murphy is quite alive” -- and kicking me in the butt every step of the way of my cookie-making fiasco.

Luckily, there is always a plan B, and mine happened to be a concoction known as cookie pizza (see the recipe in the blog post “Telling Stories”), which looked pretty as could be for a last-minute disaster. Although one day I would love to be able to bake and develop my own recipes, I think for now, I will have to just be the cook who can make a soup out of almost anything out of nothing – not to mention an entrée.

In the spirit of Reina-can’t-bake, I am going to post a soup recipe.

BLACK BEAN AND CORN SOUP

3 cans black beans
2 cans whole kernel corn
3 tablespoons oil
1 red pepper
1 large onion
1 large carrot
3-4 cloves garlic
3 stalks celery
1 bay leaf
3 cups water plus 3 teaspoons beef bullion
1 teaspoon ground cumin

Chop the onion, celery and garlic, and sauté them with a bay leaf in a soup pot with the oil. Once the onions are translucent, add the red pepper and let soften. Add carrots. Drain the beans and corn and add to the mixture. If desired, some of the beans can be mashed to thicken up the soup.

Add the water, bullion, and cumin and allow to simmer for 20 minutes. Serve.

Quick Tip: You can drain and rinse the beans in a drainer in order to remove all the packing liquid. However, in a soup like this, I don’t really mind it so much. You should drain and rinse the corn, though.