Bringin Sexy Back

I don't think I'd ever had corned beef hash till we made it for brunch yesterday. And by "we," I mean I pretty much muddled the lime and horseradish for the Bloody Marys and that was about it. That's not the usual circumstance in my kitchen, but I gotta admit, I kinda like playing the sous chef once in awhile.

We needed some quality food-bonding time after a couple revelatory evenings double-dating with my gay husband and husband-in-law where their conversational digging managed to unearth the fact that my sometime cooking partner not only does not eat leftovers..... he also doesn't really like other people eating off his plate, and he definitely doesn't eat off anybody else's.

This was an admitted blow.
And not in a good way.

Yeah, yeah, he did get food poisoning once, BUT it's not like he got it from either leftovers or sharing food, so it's not like this is a public health crisis. (Though nobody appreciates an irrational neurosis better than I do. Just grazing the tip of my own Crazy Iceberg is a fulltime job.) But the man eats mayonnaise for chrissake (my personal kryptonite), thereby forever forfeiting his vote on food-borne illness.

He and Joe don't understand why Nick and I take this sharing reticence so personally, arguing that, particularly in restaurants, it's not like we even MADE the food. "It's not like it's an extension" of us.... Ohhhhhhh, but. it. is. And as for the hygiene argument they have against eating and drinking after other people? Please. I can understand how he might not wanna sip a community latte, but he perfectly well knows where my hands and mouth have been (...and that they don't necessarily have to make any repeat visits). Let's not get coy.

So we needed a little kitchen therapy this weekend. The corned beef hash came up as a menu item because one of our friends asked everyone at dinner Friday what we would all have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if we knew it was our last day on earth. We never did get past breakfast. And corned beef hash made several lists -- though Nick admitted he actually liked the Alpo version straight out of a can. I'd never had it, and we had all the stuff, so it quickly became the next morning's agenda.

Though I can't take any credit, it was delicious. It formed a perfect crust (which I now understand is integral to a proper corned beef hash). The potatoes had a slight crisp and retained their texture without mashing into the corn beef, and the side of sour cream with a few sprigs of thyme on the rye toast brought it all together. While I've always said I don't think there's anything sexier than a man who can cook, I was wrong. There is.

And that is a man who cleans up the kitchen afterwards. The dishwasher was unloaded and reloaded (if you can imagine... because my Mom hadn't loaded the top shelf to his rigorous standards earlier in the week) and the pots and pans were actually washed. By hand.

We do have admittedly different styles (as we do on about everything). I'm a clean-as-I-go cook, and he sorta leaves it all to the end. But the rule heretofore in my house has always been that the person who does the cooking doesn't have to do the cleaning. (I made that rule, cause it's my house, and cause I have always been the one doing all the cooking... and, it goes without saying, making all the rules.)

I haven't figured out how these new adjustments work, but this is what's known in this family as a "a high class problem."