START HERE
the cookbook that hit the spot
In the past five days I’ve made a roast chicken with turnips, chicken soup with bone broth, lemon anchovy salad dressing, egg fried rice and a Bolognese sauce, which is probably more than I’ve cooked for myself in the past 5 years combined. I also made a mozzarella and tomato salad that I ate with flakey salt and balsamic vinegar and tomorrow I will use my little dash waffle maker to knock out some breakfast for my kid. Of course by Friday evening I will be poking around in the fridge trying to make something out of nothing but let’s just say I keep my own promise to try out a version of miso soup with softened seaweed and get a small slab of that sushi grade salmon to cook up alongside. If I did manage that, I think it’d be safe to say I’m on some kind of roll.
But let’s not celebrate too soon. There will still be three whole days left of the week in which to make myself and a picky small person a meal we both have traditionally despised eating outside of a Japanese restaurant.
There were several contributing factors to this new found level of self care: the first is spending a shit ton of money on a Dutch oven. This thing is so heavy that I almost don’t want to wash it except for that it’s otherwise so easy to wash. The ceramic coating makes it both easy to clean and also not horrible for the environment and that’s well worth paying for. While it’s true I had to walk out of Sur La Table with my eyes closed when I saw the new color (LILAC!) I do like the practicality of a navy blue. It’s by far the nicest object in my kitchen but it’s lonely at the top.
I also live within the delivery perimeter of Bi-Rite market which stocks farmers market produce from all over California and the best of pantry items. Once I bought a navel orange in season from Bi-Rite and I literally have never tasted anything better in my entire life. Each segment was perfect. I learned about Bi-Right when my friend, Sara, was eating a chicken curry salad at the beach. When I said it looked good, she said the words “Bi-Rite” and shook her head with the same amazement I had when I ate that orange. How could anything taste this good? It felt impossible, as if it was something I was learning late in life; like a secret that I had stumbled upon while simultaneously having been searching for it desperately.
I’ve always struggled with food and for this I will blame my mom. I know last week I was on the verge of what might seem like compassion–the kind people talk about getting after having kids of their own and seeing how hard it all is and what a bind we’re all in and how their parents truly did the best with what they had. But I am not one of these people. For now let the record show that my mom taught me one thing about cooking and that was that leaving an open can of tomato sauce in the cabinet and then eating from that can again would give you botulism and then you’d drop dead. My mom is definitely reading this and laughing, in case you’re wondering how I had the courage to write that. She once told me that she knew I wanted her to help me learn how to bake but, oh well she didn’t.
I knew as soon as I was pregnant, that cooking was going to be an issue. I asked a friend who was a single mom how she dealt with cooking, knowing I would be pretty much alone with that aspect of parenting.
“Do you have a crock pot?” I asked as if I even knew what one was. She assured me that it was going to be quite some time before my kid needed anything that came from a crock pot. Little did she know just how long—I nursed Olive until she was five (not exclusively). When I finally weaned her completely, I took her an indoor play space filled with all kinds of narrative toys that I hadn’t stocked in our own house. Within a few minutes of arriving, she found a baby doll and held it up and looked me dead in the eye and said:
“Apologize to baby for not having the food she liked.”
Of course I did as she asked but still, for another three years, when 5pm came around I’d act like someone had come to take me to prison OUT OF THE BLUE.
The big turnaround came in February (new year, new me) when I bought Sohla El-Waylly’s “Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook.” Her book starts with a chapter on all the things you need for your kitchen, which not coincidentally does include a good Dutch oven, along with the caveat that they can often be found on sale at Goodwill for much less than their high retail price. She also tells you what kind of cutting board you need and how many and what size to use for what. Some things I already had from my previous failed attempts at cooking: A micro plane for zesting. A juicer for citrus. Within a few weeks of reading the first chapter (it was also a revelation to me that people read cookbooks from beginning to end) I was buying myself saffron. I chopped radicchio and endive and then smashed the saffron together with salt. Then I zested the oranges and peeled them, pulling the pieces of fruit out from their white casing, and mixed it all together with olive oil. This salad is simple enough to be called a salad while adventurous enough to be called fresh and life-changing and a New Year’s resolution come true.