Unsolicited Kitchen Ruminations

I was leisurely driving home from my micro farm/AirBnb, fresh eggs in the cup holder, no top on my Bronco, radio blasting Everything Cookbooks, living the middle aged, aspiring cookbook author dream.  Andrea and Kristen (they probably aren’t aware we are on a first name basis, but I spend more time with them than my family) were interviewing Hetty McKinnon and towards the end of the interview Hetty talks about how different everyone’s process for recipe development is. This really got me thinking about the way I cook and how challenging that can be to translate into the development of a recipe that works for my followers.  So, with a rainy afternoon and a staycation spring break bringing an unusual tranquility to our household, I decided to document my process for creating our evening meal.

I do not know if my process is flawed or genius as I don’t really know how other people cook.  I have a few friends who only follow recipes, others who work from recipes that have always been in the family and others still who have a rotation of meals for each night of the week.  My parents cooked the same general dishes, week to week, with little variation.  So this ‘create on the fly’ style of mine is self taught with a great deal of influence from family, friends and my love of cookbooks. I’ve always done it, failed to follow a recipe from start to finish, not always with success.  My husband of 20 years will be the first to tell you that he has sat down to some pretty terrible meals.  Over the last five-ish years, I’ve become more diligent about eating seasonally and locally which has forced my hand even further into the ‘make it work before it rots in the veggie drawer’ style of cooking.  

Here in Georgia, the veggies I have on hand come from a variety of sources; a local, organic delivery service, the local farmer’s markets, a CSA, and my own garden. Basically, I always have a fridge full of fresh veggies that have been grown nearby. While a request for chicken, rice or pasta may launch me into the kitchen, the creative process really gets rolling when I dig through the abundance of produce gathering in my fridge. So hear you have it, a little peek into my brain during the making of a meal.

In a relatively rare moment of forethought, I had actually remembered to go down to our deep freezer where we keep locally produced pork and beef as well as the elk my husband hunts, and today the pork chops had called out to me so they were already cooking away in the sous vide pot at 6pm. As a side note, the sous vide cooker is an absolute game changer for cooking meat when you prefer to focus on the veggies and grains! Knowing the pork chops would just need to be ‘finished’, I told my husband we could eat around 7. 

I walked into the pantry looking for a grain that would be an upgrade from our usual white rice and was thrilled to realize I had time to cook the wild rice that had been sitting on the overcrowded pantry shelf for a few months. Into the pressure cooker it went with some chicken broth. I then opened the fridge, pulled out the veggie drawers and dug through my ageing muslin veggie bags. It occurred to me that I should give them a good cleaning soon. I removed some rainbow chard, broccoli, a red torpedo onion, which I thought was a garlic chive, a Vidalia onion, radishes, and kale.

  I spent a moment staring at it all, considering flavor pairings and what would taste good with wild rice, which then got me thinking, “What about a wild rice salad? Fewer dishes if I combine the two and how could chard and wild rice not taste fantastic together?!”  I put the kale and radishes back into their muslin bag to be rediscovered another day and took a bite of the garlic chive.  Hmmm, that doesn’t taste like garlic.  I hand a slice to my husband and ask him if it tastes like garlic.  He complies and shrugs his shoulders.  Ok, fine.  I walk over to my computer and login into my fresh harvest account to see what exactly was in last week’s delivery.  Ah, a red torpedo onion.  That makes more sense, although I was really excited about the green garlic.  Now I have two onions out… unnecessary.  The red torpedo wins out and the Vidalia joins the other rebuffed veggies back in the fridge.  

At this point, I’m unclear on how to proceed so I open a bottle of red wine, pour a glass, take a sip and then decide the chard will remain raw.  I slice the stems into small pieces all the while struggling to mentally find their place in the dish. They go into a jar with some water and into the fridge.  I momentarily lament that they will lose some of their vibrant color sitting in the fridge, but back to the task at hand.  I roughly chop the chard and move it to the bowl, but I’m not satisfied with something…another sip of wine. I want this to be a wild rice salad, not a chard salad with rice. I remove the chard and chop it more finely so that it won’t dominate the rice and place it back in the bowl.  I chop the broccoli into a fine mess that scatters about the kitchen and dump the remains, from the cutting board, into the bowl. Olive oil, salt and pepper get added, stir and let sit. 

I move on to the red torpedo onion…I don’t really want the white ends raw as it’s quite pungent, a dressing?, no…Of course, fry it up with some garlic because of the many things I’ve learned from Yotum Ottolenghi, the fact that fried alliums are never a bad idea is at the top of the list.  

Back to panty for avocado oil, then remember I’m out.  Olive oil or coconut oil? Olive oil is no good for frying as it’s not stable at high temperatures, but coconut oil is definitely not the right flavor.  

The oven clock catches my eye which seems to indicate that 7 has come and gone. Shoot, I guess we won’t be eating at 7, and now I don’t have time to linger over decisions. I will just use the olive oil and keep it to a low temp fry, although I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing. Frying is underway with the diligent attention I’ve learned to pay, during this process, after many burnt batches of fried garlic.  But my mind is trying to think of what’s missing from the dish.  Yes, that’s it!  Hazelnuts and goat cheese.  Oh, but the 13 year old doesn’t like goat cheese…goat cheese on the side then.  My husband strolls into the kitchen, gently removes garlic skin from my hair, then tries to eat a scoop of the unfinished salad from the bowl.  I give him THE look and he puts down the spoon and gives A look back letting me know he’s hungry.  No shocker there.  Relax, we are close.

The rice is done to perfection, something that I could never count on prior to using my ninja multi pot on the pressure cooker setting. (Nope, not a sponsored plug, I’m just a fan..I mean have you seen how few followers I have?)  I scoop about half the rice into the bowl, mix and am thrilled to realize I can add all the rice which will make it much easier when I try to put this into a recipe at a later date. As if the amount of rice will be the difficult part. HA.

After a brief conversation with the hubby about grilling vs air frying, the pork chops are moved from the sous vide and into the air fryer to finish. It won out due to proximity and speed.  I decide I have time to toast the chopped hazelnuts in a pan while the pork chops are searing.  Pork chops are removed and placed on a plate, hazelnuts are added to the salad and everything is mixed.  I take a bite, mentally evaluate, add some additional salt & pepper.  I reach for the toasted sesame oil in the pantry which happens to be next to the fig vinegar so I grab that also.  A drizzle of each, taste again and decide we are ready to eat.  

A few minutes into eating and it’s agreed that the wild rice salad is a success at which point I realize I forgot to put out some goat cheese.  It’s retrieved from the abundant dairy drawer and added to my husband and my portions. Phew!

A note to add that during the dish washing, we became aware that the previous laziness which led to the use of the air fryer came back to haunt us as the clean-up was way more work than walking downstairs to the grill would have been…next time.  Which brings me to the fact that, for me, there must always be a next time when trying to actually get a dish like this into a recipe. In fact, there will be many next times for most dishes. Inevitably, I will forget to measure the olive oil, or the salt, or the greens, or that little thing that I decided to add at the last minute.  For cooked dishes, I will extend the cooking time a bit, but completely forget to pay attention to actually how long I extended it. When I decided I would send regular recipes out to my volunteer testers, I  had no idea how difficult it would be to translate my dishes into recipes. This decision has forced me to really evaluate why I cook and why I want to share what I cook. I’m learning about my own methods, my thoughts, and the way others cook and read recipes.  It’s challenging and humbling and I’m here for the challenge because I still feel I have something to contribute.  I’d love to hear how others view their time in the kitchen.  What makes that time enjoyable for you?  What makes it miserable? Do you use recipes and if so, how? Do you start with a recipe or start with ingredients?  Daily cooking can be lonely at times, so let’s share our stories so we can have the company of other’s thoughts while we feed our families!