Follow the instructions and any monkey can cook

I can’t really cook, but nobody in my family believes my confession when they’re tucking into the culinary extravaganzas I like to bring out of the kitchen.

It’s a trick I carried out of my days working as a reporter: As long as you know how to find experts and pay sharp attention to what they say, you can usually pull off looking like you know your way around intricate subjects.

Published recipes are the experts in my kitchen, and after some years of trial and error (I’m still sorry about the watermelon curry halibut, honey) I’ve built a good little library that lets me impress a table from breakfast to nightcaps.

Although I’ve figured out how to whip up a couple of my own original dishes, the key to success most of the time is to do every single thing the real cook who wrote the recipe lays out, and not one thing more.

Follow that advice and someone’s bound to lay down his fork mid-meal and wish aloud that he could cook like you.

When that happens, it’s easy to just bask in the glory. Even when folks actually see you constantly shifting from the stove to a cookbook most of them don’t get how simple it is.

But I like to share the secret that anyone can look like they know how to cook if they’re any good at all at opening a book and doing what they’re told.

Because so few people seem to believe me when I tell them that — and reading that the U.S. Copyright Office says there’s no protection for the ingredients list of even the most complex recipe — I’ve been thinking the best way to spread the word might be to steal real chefs’ recipes and assemble simple versions of them into a new cookbook: “Any Monkey Can Cook!”

Back in the ’70s you could build a marketing campaign for a book like that around a real monkey — or more likely, a chimpanzee.

About all I know about trying to train a chimpanzee is that it’s a bad idea for the chimp and its owner to about the same degree. But if you could find a way to do it that was humane for the both of you, there’d probably be a recipe in that book that even a chimp could cook.

A breakfast dish sounds perfect. Teach your chimp to scramble eggs in a bowl, pour them into an omelet pan, sprinkle a little cheese and herbs, and flip it all, and there you go — ignore the hair in the dish and enjoy the proof that anyone who can follow directions can cook.

Way back when, you could get booked on a morning TV show with an act like that.

It would have been one of those rare plans that worked almost as well in failure as success. Either the chimp impressed viewers with a tasty breakfast and you sold a bunch of books, or the chimp made everyone laugh by leaving the TV hosts an eggy mess and you sold a bunch of book.

I know better than to get into the performing chimp business, but I do have two boys who’ve been paying attention to the way I put together their favorite dishes.

The little one likes to take over my whisk or spatula for a bit sometimes, and I can see that he’s getting a handle on how to keep things in control on the stove. His big brother’s already surprised me by making a big bowl of fiery salsa on his own while I was at work, and my wife says it turned out better than mine.

These kids are finding their way around the kitchen early enough that they have a good shot at becoming adults who can really cook by smell and taste and sight one day, not just by faking it by doing what a cookbook author tells them to.

But for now the younger one, at least, is still little enough that it would be impressive if I could teach him to follow some recipes on a morning show.

Maybe I still have a shot at my cookbook.

Richard Espinoza is a former editor of the Johnson County Neighborhood News. You can reach him at respinozakc@yahoo.com.

This story was originally published October 28, 2016 at 10:10 AM with the headline "Follow the instructions and any monkey can cook."