Last modified: Tuesday, September 9, 2008 8:09 AM PDT Confessions of a Foodie: Aspiring to culinary greatness By Tami Hart What makes a great cook? To me, it’s a number of things. It’s being able to follow a recipe to turn out a consistent piecrust or pot roast time and time again. At the same time, it’s taking a recipe, making some ingredient changes and turning it into your own. It’s also being able to look in the pantry and put together a good meal from what you have on hand. And most of all, it’s enjoying the time you spend in the kitchen and maybe even having fun while you’re there. At this point in my life, I would call myself, not a great cook, but a good cook. I’m no Emeril or Wolfgang Puck, but I feel quite comfortable in the kitchen. I can follow a recipe, and I’m pretty good at putting a meal together on the fly. Still, I continue to aspire to culinary greatness. Soufflés continue to confound me, and even a good pie crust is a trick I can’t seem to master, so I have a ways to go before I can hang up my apron with Rachel Ray. Up until about 15 years ago, I wouldn’t have even called myself a good cook. I was, at best, a decent one. I was okay at following a recipe as long as it didn’t have more than four ingredients, and I was a whiz at throwing together a box of Hamburger Helper. When I got married 27 years ago, I would have been hard pressed to even call myself a cook. My idea of cooking was to mix the orange juice concentrate in the blender instead of stirring it with a spoon. The one attempt I made at “serious� cooking ended in a disaster that still brings a blush to my face and a grimace to my husband’s when we look back at the memorable pot roast that I tried to cook. There’s probably shoe leather somewhere that is tenderer than the dried, shriveled chunk of meat that I produced from the oven. I would like to blame my failure on the fact that I was cooking in our first apartment in a kitchen that was as wide as an arm span and on a stove that was about the size of a child’s EZ Bake Oven. What it all came down to, though, was the fact I had no experience in the kitchen. My mother was a good cook but of the firm belief that any more than one person in the kitchen was too many. The only times I was allowed to “help� was to peel potatoes or scrub carrots, things she felt were truly within my limited expertise. Frankly, I never expressed any interest in learning how to cook. It was one of those things I figured I’d just pick up as I went along, so I was woefully unprepared when I entered my first kitchen. Through the years, I’ve managed to redeem myself from that horrible pot roast, although my husband is sometimes still suspicious of my culinary endeavors, even when it comes to the most basic of dishes. My problem is, I can’t seem to leave well enough alone when it comes to the simplest things. I’m always trying to improve on dishes that are tried and true. No macaroni and cheese out of a box for my family. I have to make a four-cheese macaroni, cheese topped with homemade breadcrumbs from the loaf of white bread I baked. Even the basic hamburger isn’t exempt from a little spicing up. “What did you put in these,� my husband asked the other night, looking suspiciously at the burger I had concocted on the grill. “Nothing,� was my innocent reply as I concentrated on reading my new issue of “Bon Appetit� magazine, knowing full well I’d added Italian seasoned breadcrumbs, steak sauce and a beaten egg to bind the mixture together to make a great tasting burger. Thankfully, my children seem to share my passion for cooking. My son likes to consider himself the master of the grill. My 20-year old daughter, Amanda, is beginning to do some cooking for her boyfriend, and she’s always calling me from the grocery store asking about cooking methods and ingredients. For Abby, my 11-year-old, our time together in the kitchen is her opportunity to pretend we have a mother-daughter cooking show on the Food Network, and she loves to provide the narration as I cook. I’m crossing my fingers that maybe the curse of the horrible pot roast is broken. When she’s not writing about food and wine or experimenting in the kitchen, Tami Hart is the catering and events sales manager for the Holiday Inn Ontario. She can be reached at tahart@cableone.net or in care of the Argus Observer, 1160 S.W. Fourth Ave., Ontario, OR 97914.