Challenge Met: Gourmet Meal Just in Time for ‘Murder’

I have faced up to the challenge and prepared a dinner for me and my wife.

I had noted here that my wife usually pops microwave dinners into the oven when she comes home from work, and we dine at TV trays while watching a sex-and-violence movie on television.

Several women had written to suggest that I prepare dinner for a change, see what it’s like, give my wife a rest.

I do believe in the fair division of chores between husbands and wives, though I admit that we tend to fall into habit patterns. Historically, my wife has prepared dinner while I take care of other chores, such as turning on lights, checking the TV log and turning on television.

I concede, however, that cooking dinner day after day can become a tedious chore, with diminishing rewards. Microwave dinners especially seem to have taken the challenge and the creativity out of cooking.

Having my wife’s 1,000 cookbooks to choose from, I had no trouble finding a promising recipe. It was in “Gourmet Cooking for Two,” by Beatrice Ojakangas, an expert in Finnish cookery. It was lamb chops with gjetost sauce. For one thing, if I was going to cook dinner, I wanted it to be nothing less than gourmet quality. Also, since I was cooking for two, a recipe for two seemed prudent.

It called for the following ingredients:

2 large lamb chops, 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick

1 tablespoon salad oil or olive oil

salt and freshly ground pepper

1/4 teaspoon oregano

1/4 cup shredded Norwegian gjetost

1/2 cup sour cream

1/8 teaspoon salt

That didn’t seem too difficult. My wife said she had oregano, ground pepper, sour cream and, of course, salt. All I had to buy was the pork chops and the gjetost. I had never heard of gjetost. Mrs. Ojakangas said, “Shredded gjetost (available in the cheese section of many supermarkets), this brownish goat’s milk cheese comes from Norway.”

My wife said she might be able to get some at a Scandinavian deli near her place of business. I went to Bristol Farms in South Pasadena for the lamb chops. The butcher asked me what kind I wanted. I don’t know one lamb chop from another. I pointed to a pair that seemed thick enough. They came to $5.46, which I thought excessive. (I doubt that I had ever previously bought lamb chops in my life.)

My wife brought home some gjetost, but it was not shredded. It was creamy, with the viscosity of paste. It tasted sweet. “It will probably do,” my wife said.

I measured the chops. They were only 1 1/4 inches thick. My wife said, “Those look like shoulder chops. How much did you pay for them?

I told her $5.46.

“No wonder,” she said.

So I had started out badly by buying cheap chops. And the gjetost was the wrong kind. However, I was determined to go ahead.

Fortunately it was Sunday afternoon, and my wife was home. I didn’t want her to do any of the work, but I thought she might help me with the ingredients. She got out the oregano, pepper, sour cream and olive oil and placed them on the counter.

As directed, I rubbed the chops with oil, sprinkled on salt, pepper and oregano, and put them in a frying pan over moderate heat. Meanwhile, I stirred the gjetost and sour cream together and heated until they were blended in a creamy sauce.

When the chops were done I put them on plates, poured the sauce over them and served. Meanwhile, my wife had made salad. I didn’t want to be distracted by salad while I was preparing the main dish.

I got the dinners on the TV trays just in time for “Murder, She Wrote.” The meat was tough, but altogether the dish was palatable, if not gourmet.

“It’s very good,” my wife said, evidently wanting not to discourage me in what she must have considered a step in the right direction.

“What shall I do with the plates?” I asked her, thinking that cleaning up was probably part of the drill.

“Put them on the counter,” she said. “I’ll give the bones to the dog.”

I don’t know why we watch “Murder, She Wrote.” Maybe it’s because it’s on at 8 o’clock and the real sex-and-violence movies don’t come on until 9. Not that “Murder, She Wrote” doesn’t have sex and violence. But it’s all rather upper class. It never dips into the sordid milieu of the streets. And almost invariably the murderer, imagining himself trapped in what is nothing but a flimsy web of circumstantial evidence, confesses.

Now that I’ve proved I can, I plan to cook dinner again. Next time I think I’ll try the tamale casserole from “The Great California Lifestyle Cookbook” (Lawry’s Foods Inc.). That sounds like a challenge.

By the way, I didn’t know what to do with the frying pan, so I left it.