{"id":1923,"date":"2010-09-28T17:00:40","date_gmt":"2010-09-28T15:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2010-10-09T18:23:10","modified_gmt":"2010-10-09T16:23:10","slug":"the-jody-blum-culinary-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2010\/09\/the-jody-blum-culinary-institute\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jody Blum Culinary Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\"Jody<\/a>\n\t

Jody in the kitchen of her Culinary Institute<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Growing up, my mother refused to let my brother and me into the kitchen. While this created a carefree cooking-neutral childhood, it hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t served me so well as an adult.<\/p>\n

Whenever my wife Jody goes away \u00e2\u20ac\u201c whether for an evening activity or an overseas trip \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I slip into panic mode. Tackling menus terrifies me. Sure, I can follow a recipe, but it takes me at least three times as long, and I usually burn something or render it otherwise indescribably unusual<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When the issue raised its hungry head again recently after Jody was spontaneously called away at dinnertime, I realized that \u00e2\u20ac\u201c after 22 years of marriage \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it was time for a change. So I enrolled in Culinary School\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6run by none other than chef Jody.<\/p>\n

As Jody and I began to think about the best way for me to learn to cook, we realized that I was missing even the basics. For example: how to prepare rice.<\/p>\n

It sounds simple enough, but there are a lot of steps to ensure the rice is neither soggy nor overly crisp.<\/p>\n

So at the Jody Blum Culinary Institute, there will be no assumptions. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll start with the basics \u00e2\u20ac\u201c like boiling \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and move on to more exotic topics such as sauces and saut\u00c3\u00a9ing.<\/p>\n

We decided to open up the lessons to the rest of the family. To our astonishment, Merav \u00e2\u20ac\u201c our 16-year-old cooking whiz \u00e2\u20ac\u201c said she wanted to be a student too. She didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how to make rice properly either. Her big brother joined in too.<\/p>\n

Now, some people might just throw some Uncle Ben\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s into a pot. Jody\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s technique takes a few extra steps \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth it.<\/p>\n

Jody uses only brown rice unless she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s following a recipe that specifically calls for white.<\/p>\n

First, you have to measure out the rice. How many people do you want to serve? One cup is enough for our family. Two cups or more are required when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re hosting for Shabbat. It may seem obvious to the more experienced, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s far from intuitive to the kitchen clueless.<\/p>\n

The next step is to lightly fry the rice. One tablespoon of olive oil and one teaspoon of salt for every cup of rice. Heat on a low flame and stir while preparing the water \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 2 cups for every cup of rice. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re like me and you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t multitask, remember to measure out the water in advance. Seriously.<\/p>\n

Pour in the water and bring it to a boil. Then you cover the rice and set the timer. 30 minutes should do it\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6unless it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not enough. How do you know? Well, first of all make sure you use a pot with a glass top. That way, you can tilt the pot to see if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s any liquid left without needing to lift off the top, which ruins the whole process. Smart cookie, that Jody.<\/p>\n

It took a lot of hand holding but eventually the rice came out perfect. No one at lunch complained about an inadvertent \u00e2\u20ac\u0153barbecue\u00e2\u20ac\u009d flavor. It was just rice but I was beaming with pride.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be chronicling my ongoing adventures in cooking here, or perhaps in a separate blog. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re culinarily challenged like me, I invite you to follow along. Who knows, someday I might even conquer a quiche!<\/p>\n

(P.S. Jody is leaving Thursday night for a 2-week trip to the U.S. It’s going to be rice every night, baby! Seriously, wish me luck with my new found skills.)<\/p>\n

This post originally appeared on Israelity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up, my mother refused to let my brother and me into the kitchen. While this created a carefree cooking-neutral childhood, it hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t served me so well as an adult. Whenever my wife Jody goes away \u00e2\u20ac\u201c whether for an evening activity or an overseas trip \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I slip into panic mode. Tackling menus terrifies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,9],"tags":[23,102,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1923"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1928,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions\/1928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}