My mom was a chef, but my father was a straight fast food guy. So you knew, if we were with my father, we were eating out. But my mom's a good cook, and wouldn't splurge. She'd be real basic: lentils, rice, eggs and rice, or she would make these White Castle-style little sliders. Every so often, she would dip off to gourmet land, challenging us with some tofu or a machination she learned in school.
There are two things I can make well. There's this scallop dish I can throw down on real tough--a stir-fry Chinese hybrid-type thing I'm really badass at. And there's a spaghetti dish I learned watching Anthony Bourdain. It's just spaghetti and onions, a Sicilian dish, and I am f$%king awe. some. at it. You take five or six onions--full-on, grapefruit-sized onions--and cook them super slow in butter, some oil, a little bit of garlic, and some apple cider vinegar. You normally cook it all down with wine, but I don't use alcohol, so I substituted the cider for that. The onions lose all their acidity and harshness because you cook it for f$%king three hours, and it becomes this super-sweet sauce in itself. It's so good.
