I’ve had a super busy last couple of weeks and have fallen a little behind on my blogging. The good thing about being busy is that it has fueled the blogging brain with things I’m excited to share. Yey!

It’s not often that I cook with my mother. When I want one of her recipes I usually call her and get instructions over the phone, or in a series of text messages that read like this: “Mix in eggs n romano. Not too much, but enough. Eyeball it.” Or, “If medium pan fill water half way, if bigger than medium but not large, fill 1/3. Judge by size of escarole head.” Very specific. I know exactly what I’m doing.

If you have an Italian mother like I do, you know exactly what I am talking about with the vague ingredient amounts, and multistep procedures of cooking Italian. That’s because in this heritage, cooking is certainly not a science… it’s an art.

On Sunday my mother came over and I mentioned that I was going to make Chicken Parmesan. Whenever I tell her I am making something that she specializes in I can sense the silent cringe. This time was not an exception. As I took out the ingredients and started the prep work, I had a sneaking suspicion that my mother did not have the will power to leave these precious cutlets alone in my care. She starting correcting and suggesting and next thing I know I am the student in my mother’s Intro to Chicken Parm class. Fine by me.

I learned two time-tested tips in the kitchen with my mom. The first is this: Brown shopping bags are a perfect surface to place food that has just been cooked in oil. They are thicker and larger than paper towels, and can withstand becoming soggy when saturated with oil. Also, it’s a great way to re-use and re-purpose those brown bags and save about 100 paper towels it requires to soak up the excess oil produced by 20 chicken cutlets.

The second tip I learned is something I thought I already did, but was mistaken: Clean while you are cooking. I say I was mistaken because I always pick-up-and-put-away when I cook, but at the end I am still left with a sink full of dirty dishes and pans, and countertops that need cleaning. My mother was wiping counters, filling the dish washer, and scrubbing pans in between flipping cutlets. Talk about multi-tasking. By the time all 20 cutlets were laying on their brown bag beds, my kitchen was cleaner than before we started. Amazing.

I think it’s easy to find cooking overwhelming. By the time you buy the food, prepare it, cook it, and clean, you’ve nearly lost your appetite and just want to take a nap. Combining the cooking and cleaning into one step is a little corner that can be cut to make the process more doable. And a hot meal is a lot more appealing in a clean kitchen, isn’t it?

Needless to say, my chicken parm was award winning. I gave a portion to my sister-in-law who said they were breaded to perfection. They would be after 30 years of cutlet-frying experience. Watching someone who knows what they are doing is the best way to shorten the learning curve on whatever is it that you are attempting, and avoid the frustration of learning by your own mistakes. And an extra bonus- it’s more entertaining to cook with someone else!

Class in session! My mother will kill me for posting this shot I snapped of her in action.