I commented to someone, probably
Caroline, that I found cooking to be a
lot like writing fiction. You start out with a vague I dea of what
you’re trying to do, some really firm building blocks (ingredients;
characters/settings), some rather impressive limiting factors (time,
physics, literary conventions), and a number of equally good options
(narrative voice, baking, chapter organization, broiling, pacing,
frying) and then you get on this roller coaster where, despite whatever
training you have, and formal knowledge about how things should work,
you mostly just pay attention to your gut and pray that you don’t make
a huge mess of things as you’re shepherding your lunch/novel from the
refrigerator/mind to your stomach/readers.
Needless to say, I rather enjoy cooking.
I have a few tendencies in cooking that determines my method: I
generally like to cook a lot once, maybe twice, a week and then reheat
and reconfigure whatever it is that I made again and again. So I’m a
fan of soups, stir-frys, roasted veggies, vegetable/pasta salads and
pestos, and things like that. I’m also prone to just cooking up, say, a
lot of zuchini, and then making omlets/pasta/etc. with it throughout the
week (without lots extra fuss.)
I should also add a few things. First I’m not a vegetarian, really. I
don’t mind eating/cooking meat, but I do so with a lot of moderation,
and while there are some vegetables that I don’t really understand the
appeal of (celery? wtf. beets? feh), I’ve found that my use of meat in
meals is often pretty minimal. My natural tendency, having said all
this, is to eat quick things (tuna fish with mayo; noodles; etc.) rather
than actually have to cook at all, but sometimes it’s good to resist
this tendency.
As part of my tenure helping my grandmother out, I’ve been doing a lot
of cooking, so I’ve been doing a lot of this, and I think it’s worked
pretty well. Last week I was cooking. I had bought some eggplant which I
wanted to roast and make a sort of eggplant/tomato/mushroom sauce to
serve over rice. Roast eggplant, mix in tomato sauce, with some red
peppers and mushrooms, sounds good?
Like good novels/meals, it got into the pan and decided to be something
totally different. On the upside, it was amazing. Here’s a brief
recipe/guideline for what I made:
Ingredients#
- Garlic, Fresh, in great quantity. Cut cloves in half.
- 1 Can of artichoke hearts, drained and quartered.
- 1 can of straw mushrooms, drained.
- Some amount of beef sausage (12 oz?) sliced (optional)
- 1 or 2 red peppers, sliced
- 2 or 3 Zucchini, sliced
- 1 sweet onion, chopped
- 2 - 3 Eggplant roasted with skin and seeds removed (cut in half,
spray/apply a minimal amount of olive oil, and sail for roasting, when
the skin is blackened and separated peel it, remove seeds and chop the
remaining eggplant.)
- A bit of olive oil
- Rice vinegar (though other white vinegars should work)
- Rice (I used sushi rice, but that’s personal preference.)
Preparation#
Get all of the ingredients ready. Eggplant roasting can happen earlier.
Once everything starts cooking it goes pretty fast.
Begin by heating the oil with garlic and onion and sausage until they
begin to brown, add zucchini and red pepper and cook until the zuchini
gives sings of browning. It might take 15 minutes to get to this point.
Add Eggplant, mushrooms, and artichoke hearts, cook for ~3-5 minutes,
add 3/4 cup of vinegar (or more depending on how much food you’re
making. You can use wine if that’s your speed.) Turn heat down slightly
and simmer for 3-5 minutes.
Use your judgment, my times are really estimates/guesses.
Serve with rice and enjoy.