Let's get to know each other...
Yes, I'm here and it's Wednesday. Consider this a causal hello before you're hit with another of my esoteric Friday essays.
It’s halfway to Friday. I’m still recovering from the shock of my laptop breaking down inexplicably sometime between when I placed it into my backpack and when I took it out to do my German homework. But things are looking up, Josef and I moved into our (temporary) forever apartment this morning and I spent a few hours puttering around and hiding suitcases to make it feel a little less like we’re in limbo.
He’s working full-time and I’m left to my own devices for much of the day, something I haven’t been able to say in what feels like forever. Immediately, I try to remember what I used to do when I had time to myself. First, I threw myself into Salt + Spine (seriously, go listen if you haven’t, it’s really fun). Then, my laptop broke, and Josef doesn’t have enough power on his eons old laptop to run my audio editing app. So, of course, I went to grab a cookbook and read it before remembering that my cookbooks now live in Half Moon Bay with my pots and pans.Of course, my digital copies are sealed behind an unyielding, glitching screen. What’s a girl to do?
I did purchase one cookbook upon my arrival, Nigel Slater’s reaction to the pandemic, A Cook’s Book, but I’m not entirely sure how I’m feeling about it. Is it casual? Snooty? Inspiring? Repetitive? I don’t know yet. Nevertheless, I am itching to spend an entire day cooking. To browse recipes, take notes, plan some menus. This really is how I relax. How I get back into my body when I’ve evacuated it because I’m overwhelmed.
So the question comes up: what to cook? And immediately following, a question for you, my readers. Do you want to know what I’m cooking? Would menus or the rhythms in my kitchen be at all interesting or helpful to you?
I’ve been finding that a lot of my cookbooks, magazines, and other publications aren’t geared towards me. A 20-something obsessed with good food with basically no money, a little bit of time, but limited equipment. I’m tired of scrolling through recipes that call for saffron or expensive cuts of meat. I’m tired of recipes being geared toward my kids (no, I’m not a mother) or my 40-year-old friends who are really far away. Most of all, I’m sick of pastry recipes that remind me of what I have lost: my stand mixer. Remind me why I didn’t pay to ship it here?
I want to know what I can shove in my backpack and take to class. What still tastes good after 4 days in the fridge. What I can let simmer while I study German vocabulary words. What doesn’t cost much or can take a less-than-ideal ingredient (i.e. NOT those Nantes carrots from Berkeley that I mentioned last week) and make it feel luxurious. I want recipes that don’t require specific pots or pans and that can adapt to less-than ideal cooking situations. I want it to be nourishing, evening if my kitchen is wacky and my ingredients were cheap. This is the kind of thing I’m working through at home every day when I try to cook.
For instance, tonight, I want to cook something special for Josef and I to break in the new apartment and make it feel like our own. I have 1, 10-inch pan, an immersion blender, a minuscule stockpot (I’m not even sure what to call it or what it might be used for? Soup for 1?) and thankfully, my knife roll. What I cook has to be stovetop, because yes we have an oven, but not a single oven-safe vessel. Plus Berlin is hot right now, and it isn’t romantic hot, it’s just really uncomfortable.
Immediately, what comes to mind: a watermelon salad with mint, feta, pepitas and maybe something spicy? Pork chops, you really can’t go wrong there. Platter-friendly foods: hummus, crudité, etc. Bread that isn’t baked, but cooked on a griddle, which makes me think of lamb (too expensive), how about lentils instead? Sausages, wait we’ve been eating those nonstop now that we’ve located an insanely good Biergarten as old-school and cozy as Juanita & Maude, without the price tag or the genius cocktails, but I’ll take what I can get. Stove-top caramelized carrots with honey (thanks Joshua McFadden). Seared cauliflower steaks with romesco? Pan-seared peaches? This one needs some workshopping, I’ll admit it.
Would you want to know more about my process? How I plan meals ahead (I hate meal prepping, so I don’t do that). Do you care what I do with the odds and ends I find at the end of the week? How I make sure we’re not eating pasta and pasta alone because apparently that isn’t a nutritious diet. Do you actually want to know what happens in my kitchen as I’m falling into an existential crises and listening to Cherry Bombe’s podcast?
Let me know. I’m working on growing this newsletter and hopefully growing me a little in the process. I want to stretch my limits. Learn more about recipe writing, and get to know you all a little better.
PS. An informal reading group is forming, please contact me by replying to this email if you’re interested. Our first book is Taste Makers by Mayukh Sen and we’ll be discussing the intro and chapter next week. So far, I’m loving it. I’m reminded again why I studied philosophy, but somehow I ended up in the kitchen. I’m reminded of the way that the food world takes and takes so much from marginalized people, but how it’s a space where traditions and stagnant ideas are constantly questioned, adjusted, respected and generally reckoned with.
AND: if you know of any cookbooks, resources, etc. that would speak to me a little more directly, send recommendations!
Clea, thank you for writing this. I am not sure I want recipes but more like cooking sketches - how you plunge into your pantry, make do with what you have, your thought process. Cooking is so much more of course than feeding yourself. As you know I live alone and cooking for oneself takes on yet another perspective - is it worth spending the time ? Thinking also in this context about the time it takes to cook something and the time to eat something...... anyway you have already inspired me to reflect on the joy of cooking which I will apply later today when cooking dinner for Lisa + Lisa.