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Cooking – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Cooking. So in the conversation that AJ and I had, I was talking about how I enjoy making gazpacho and guacamole. I’ve been making guacamole for a while, gazpacho more recently. So, y’know, I haven’t been making gazpacho as long.

Guacamole, like I said, it’s a food that comes from, originally from, I believe, Mexico, and it’s…it’s got avocados in it and garlic, salt, we put some cumin, which is an herb, so it gives it flavoring. It’s a, y’know, a dried herb so it’s been crushed up into a powder, and lemon juice. So there’s no cooking involved. It’s just putting all of that stuff into a bowl and then mixing it all together.

Oh, and by the way, if you don’t know what an avocado is, it’s actually a fruit. I don’t think of it as a fruit because I usually think of fruits as being very sweet foods. But an avocado is a fruit. It’s got an outside part which is dark green, almost looks like it could be black, which you don’t eat. So that’s the peel, you just, you don’t eat that part. So you gut it open and inside is a pit or a big seed. So you take that out and then you have this light green, creamy food or fruit. But like I said, it’s not sweet.

And it mixes up very nicely with the other things I just talked about because it can become then kind of creamy. So guacamole is a…it’s one of my favorite foods, I love it. And you can eat it then with chips, or, y’know, dipping chips in it or other vegetables like carrots or celery. Or you can put it in something like a burrito which is another food which I believe is originally from Mexico.

And then there’s gazpacho, which I also talked about in the conversation. And the gazpacho that I make and that Joe makes, has tomatoes, we use two different kinds of tomatoes and we’ll put also olive oil in it and garlic and onion, cucumber, parsley, which is a green, leafy herb or plant, and basil, which is another green, leafy herb. Y’know, they have very different tastes but it gives the gazpacho, the soup, a really….they add a lot of flavor to the soup.

What else, there’s salt in it. I think that’s basically, oh, some vinegar we put in also. So you cut those all, like the tomatoes, the cucumber, the onion, you cut those up and put in a blender. Blender is a…it’s a machine that has a sharp blade like a knife in the bottom and you turn it on and whatever’s in there, it’ll spin and the food items then will get, however you’re wanting them to get.

They can get to be a creamy consistency like a really creamy soup or it could be, if you do it for less time, if you run the blender for less time it might, the soup could turn out to be more chunky, not so smooth and creamy. So that’s another really favorite food of mine. I love to eat gazpacho in the summer because,

like I said, it’s a cold soup. I mentioned that in the conversation. So it’s really a nice treat to have in the summer when it’s hot.

I actually went to a party recently where I made gazpacho and most of the tomatoes that I used were a yellowish color, so the gazpacho turned out to be like a light yellow color. And this guy came up to me at the party and he said, “I don’t…that doesn’t look like gazpacho to me. Gazpacho is a tomato-based soup. Why isn’t your gazpacho red?” And I was like, “Oh, that’s because most of the tomatoes I used were actually yellow. Yellow, heirloom tomatoes, heirloom is a type of tomato.” And he was like, “Oh, okay.”

But I’ve actually had gazpacho also where, like I was talking about the blender, how you can run it for less time and the vegetables, the soup will be more chunky, not so smooth and creamy. So I, a guy, a friend of mine one time made gazpacho that was red, because all of the tomatoes he used were a red color and it was more of a chunky soup, y’know, not smooth, not creamy. It was very good though, as well, just very different. I think also what makes the gazpacho that Joe and I make, what makes it very smooth is the olive oil. We put a lot of olive oil in it.

I went to another party a couple of months ago and took some guacamole that I had made and someone at the party was saying, “Wow, this guacamole’s really good. It’s so simple. It doesn’t seem like you put a lot of ingredients or a lot of things into it.” And I was like, “No, actually, there’s only a few things.” And I told him, lemon juice, salt, garlic, avocado, yeah, that’s pretty much it, I think. And he’s like “Oh, okay.”

So sometimes people will put like tomatoes in their guacamole. They might put cilantro, which is a green, leafy herb which gives it a lot of flavor. They might put onions in as well as the garlic. What’s something else? Sometimes people actually put sour cream in guacamole, too, which I don’t think that’s very common but sour cream is a white color and it comes from a cow so it’s a cream and then it’s made to actually sour, so there’s a sour taste to it. So there can be a lot more things added to guacamole. I just happen to make it with less ingredients. I got the recipe from Joe so it’s very simple actually.

Usually, as I said in the conversation, I don’t really like cooking. So usually when Joe and I make dinner, he’s the one who cooks and what I do is I end up helping by cutting up vegetables or what I do a lot is the dishes as throughout the cooking process I’ll be cleaning the dishes so that the dishes don’t pile up, meaning they don’t start to collect in the sink for us to do all at one time at the end.

So I’ll be washing dishes as we, as he’s cooking. Cutting up vegetables, like I said. Sometimes actually, like, for example, if we’re making Thai food, I’ll use a mortar and pestle. So this is a mortar and a pestle. And I’ll put peanuts inside or chilis and then I, I crush them up. I keep pounding them until they’re

crushed into a powder. I actually like doing that. I think it’s fun. But yeah, then Joe does all the cooking and he’s a great cook, actually.

So you could actually say that I’m a sous chef and he’s the head chef. Those would be the terms, those would be the words used if we worked in a kitchen. So head chef meaning he’s…he’s the main cook and sous chef, I believe that’s a French word, sous, means…is like the helper to the cook.

So do you like to cook? And if so, what do you like to cook? Y’know, what kinds of foods to you like to cook? Or if you don’t cook, what kinds of foods do you enjoy eating that you grew up eating? Share it with us on our social site. We’d love to hear from you about it.

Okay, that’s all for this commentary for the conversation Cooking. Have a good month and I’ll see you next time. Bye.