Admittedly, Having Just One Dish Is Fare-ly Lame

Whenever I start to fancy myself multitalented, I get reeled back to reality by some glaring gap in my skill set. Among the deficiencies in my quest to be a protean powerhouse, a true Renaissance man: I can’t cook for beans.

I was reminded of just how awful I am with pot and pan after reading Lynell George’s profile of Russell Jackson, who gave up a stressful career as a high-end L.A. chef a few years ago, only to find himself unable now to resist the call of the kitchen (“Pressure Cooker,” page 36).

Of course, given Jackson’s considerable prowess, why should he fight it? “His cutting board,” George writes, “looks like a Dutch still life: violet-tinged torpedo onions, new-grass green leeks and green garlic.”

My own cutting board, by contrast, tends to be pitifully pallid: a couple of bagels, sliced unevenly, to stick in the kids’ lunch bags; a splotch of cream cheese that’s fallen off the knife; a few chips (which, in Reaganesque fashion, I sometimes count as a vegetable).

It’s not that I don’t appreciate fine food. I’ve savored meals at some of the city’s best restaurants--Lucques, Campanile and Angelini Osteria, to name but a few favorites. Then there are all the Mexican and Thai places that, for relatively little money, offer their own culinary bliss.

In the last 25 years, “the spectrum has really filled in” across the Los Angeles restaurant scene, says Evan Kleiman, the owner and executive chef of Angeli Caffe and the host of “Good Food” on KCRW. “Now you have ethnic dives, palaces of great cuisine and everything in the middle.”

My wife, Randye, also happens to be a terrific cook, so eating at home is hardly a big step down.

Except when I’m in charge of dinner. This is, I admit, a rare occurrence--far rarer than the bloodiest porterhouse at Nick & Stef’s.

But every once in a while, when Randye is out, I take a turn at the stove, and it’s not pretty: No matter how painstaking I am, I can’t seem to prepare sunny-side-up eggs for my son without the yolk running into the white like a river that’s jumped its banks.

At least, though, I’ve got The Dish.

That’s how we refer to it around my house, as in, “Dad, can you make The Dish?” It’s official name is Baked Pasta with Savory Meat Sauce, though it sounds much more impressive in the Italian: Pasta con la Carne Capuliata.

It’s the lone recipe I’ve ever perfected, and it comes courtesy of the cookbook “Pasta Fresca,” which Kleiman wrote with Viana La Place. It’s not exactly a ham sandwich, either. The Dish involves a fair bit of chopping, grating, simmering and deft coordination between the burner and oven. “If you can make that,” Kleiman told me, “you can make many other things.” Maybe. But I think I’ll stick with my strong suit: I can work an S.O.S pad like nobody’s business.