Karl Klockars

As Arnold Schwarzenegger once famously said in the beginning of Red Dawn, “You should not drink and bake.”

Wise words.  It’s rare for the Ahnuld to have an influence on your culinary outlook, but when it happens, it’s pretty awesome.

They’re words I should have taken into account last night as I prepared some baked chicken drumsticks with a chipotle/adobo puree brushed onto ‘em. I took the sheet pan/baking rack out of the oven with a gloved right hand, put it onto the counter and as I set down the glass of cheap jug wine, reached over and thought I’d move it with my unsheathed left hand.

Now I have three slanted lines across my fingertips to remind me to not be stupid.  And since my jobs involve either typing or button-pushing, I’ve had a lot of opportunity to remind myself of said stupidity.

However, there are a number of upsides to setting part of your hand on fire.  It’s a learning moment in a lot of different ways.  For example, now I can accurately imagine what it would feel like to be a steak.  I had the oven set at about 375 degrees, so the metal must have been pretty warm – if that’s what it’s like when you’re searing a piece of flesh on a hot-but-not-smoking cast iron skillet with a little vegetable oil in there, then damn.  That’s some powerful stuff.  If I had some salt and pepper on my fingers before I pressed them up against the hot metal, I bet it would have smelled pretty good.

In addition, I never really understood the theory of holdover heat, and how meat continues to cook when you take it away from a heat source.  A healthy and illuminating example of that is when you set your hand on a hot piece of metal and it continues to burn and throb for the next hour or 2.  The irony of thinking to let the previous night’s steak rest, and now doing the same thing with my left-hand digits was not lost on me.  And I’m pretty sure that fingertip flesh is fairly tender – like the filet mignon cut of the hand.

With one hand out of commission you rapidly realize exactly how dependant you are upon your smart hand.  (I’m a lefty.  They probably would have beaten that out of me in a less progressive Catholic School.)  I spent my meal, once the rice was finally finished cooking, sitting on the floor in front of the couch, holding a knife with 2 fingers and failing at cutting, followed by just shoveling rice into my gaping maw with my right hand.  I feel like I learned something about other cultures.  You know, the “eat with your right hand and ____ with your left” places.

Thankfully, a bag of ice and some further mind-numbing took care of everything.  I highly suggest that everyone of a food-centric mindset burn the shit out of their hands every now and then.  Try it, won’t you?  Tell the hospital burn unit that I sent you.  Bring the chicken with.  They don’t get enough home-cooked food over there.