On Cooking at Home

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When I think of cooking, I inevitably think of my mother, standing at the stove in our New Delhi flat, mopping her head with a small kitchen towel, cursing the heat of the kitchen, of the city, and the lack of an air conditioner or fan with which to cool down her irritation. It was not that she hated to cook—she in fact liked it—but that the conditions in our kitchen were somewhat lacking. The exhaust fan was loud and inefficient, the stove never once worked properly, the materials on hand were usually sub-par, and the heat was unbearable. I used to always hang around the entry and peer in at my cursing mother, curious enough to watch and observe, yet leery enough of the incredible heat that, once you stepped out of our dining room (which was air-conditioned), enveloped you like a steam bath; sweat would instantly begin to drip down your neck and back, my glasses would fog over with condensation, and my mother, grateful for something else to hurl imprecations at, would hiss at me, “Get out of the kitchen!” And I would gladly oblige her, because it really was uncomfortable, and my only reason for going inside was boredom mixed with that strange curiosity of what happens from vegetable chopped to meal served on a platter.

In those days, I was quite young, and I would limit my own forays into cooking to preparing eggs and toast, frying bacon and ham, basic breakfast preparations. Generally, the morning was the most forgiving time of day, and the kitchen’s marble floors were pleasantly cool, especially compared with the heat they radiated after sunset and at night. Beyond being more pleasant, though, I cooked the things that I had seen my mother prepare, eggs, breakfast meats, cut-up fruit, pancakes, French toast, anything and everything that I’d eaten at breakfast, because that was usually when I’d be allowed or able to watch—lunch and dinner were completely different affairs.

It was when I was in college, and perhaps right after, that I began to want to mimic those more substantial meals. First, of course, I progressed towards lunch, pasta being the easiest and most satisfying. Sandwiches, intricate as they can be, were old hat by then, being no different in scope and difficulty as frying an egg, slicing some garlic, chopping up parsley. But pasta had its own chemistry, required a more deft touch, some restraint, some knowledge. The first “sauce” I learned how to prepare was a lunchtime favorite (and also one in which my mother took great pride): anchovy and mushroom sauce. The preparation is simple, the ingredient list is small: linguine, mushrooms, oil, anchovies, garlic, and a little parsley. You slice the mushrooms thin, sauté in butter and garlic, and when they’ve released most of their juices (though they should be a little undercooked) you add the anchovies, finely chopped, and wait for them to dissolve. Stir in the parsley, place on top a mound of linguine, and serve.

So I started cooking this dish for myself, and as it always happens, in my mother’s kitchen, with her no more than a shout away, I did passingly well. But when I tried to replicate this success in another, foreign kitchen, inevitably something would go wrong. Juggling a pot of boiling water and a hot sauce pan with striated oil is a little much when you’re a beer-addled college student, working in disorganized communal kitchens, with little to no actual experience. The mushrooms would frequently be overcooked and dry, the pasta overdone and mushy, and when plated the dish would be black on top (tasting of burnt garlic, powdered black pepper, and oily anchovy) and the pasta would be a pile of gloop, seemingly intent on reverting to its original, inchoate shape of a mound of wet, processed dough. And every time, mollified and shamefaced, I’d say to my friends, “I don’t know what happened, really, I don’t. Next time, though, next time...it will be better.”

When you’re learning to cook, “Next time” is the best motto, for it implies that you will not give up, that you’re intent on being, if not successful, a little bit better, each and every next time. Cooking at home need not be a long and protracted process, though it is one that requires thought and deep consideration. Today, I approach it as I did chemistry experiments: writing up labs is the closest comparison. Recipes must be read and re-read, ingredients written down and measured. Each step must be present in your mind as a logical continuation of the step before. Time must always be kept in mind.

It must be said that I am by no means an accomplished cook. I can roast a chicken pretty well, sear a piece of meat to a near-perfect doneness, caramelize onions to almost-golden brown, and I can almost feel comfortable with high-heat cooking. But the continuous home-cooking that I aspire to and the kind of kitchen I wish to have are far off on the horizon, and indeed they might be chimerical, abstruse, and far beyond my reach. The ideal home kitchen is still, to me, some sort of pastoral admixture, French, Italian, and Japanese, where the fish is fresh and the vegetables seasonal, the larder stocked with pickles and preserved fruit and meat, limp carrots, unused bones and discarded onion tops saved up and put to use in some inevitably delicious stock; the wines used are from some neighboring vintner, the olive oil from some nearby mountain press, and the miso and rice are from a farmer down the block. Nothing is ever wasted and everything tastes great. Now wouldn’t you love to be part of such a home?

This kitchen could only exist within a certain context, probably in a time when refrigeration wasn’t so widespread and the brine bucket was a more reliable method of preservation. More importantly, it would require a true home (with kids and spouse and strange, Russian-like cousins always hanging around). You need large groups of people and vast quantities of food to keep a seemingly self-sustaining kitchen chugging along, and nowadays there’s no way, unless you run a restaurant or, in fact, cook for eight on a daily basis. I live alone, so the challenge is quite great, and the meals, when planned and prepared for days in advance, tend to be too similar to warrant any superlative expressions. And often, because of the minor niggling hassle of chopping veggies and de-boning meat, washing dishes and keeping the kitchen somewhat neat, the thought of what I’m going to make myself eat inspires a desire for pizza or take-out, for variety or for ease.

Cost is the primary limiting factor, especially when cooking for one. If I feel like, say, roast chicken on Sunday, I am going to have to eat roast chicken for at least one or two days the following week. Serving size, I’ve come to realize, is an extremely important measure. To cook a meal of some substance, like a stew or a hearty soup, anything that serves four to five to six, is a peculiar doom for all who cook alone. If you follow recipes, and if you subscribe to the general rule of thumb that when you cook in large quantities the taste is better, more flavors marry with more other flavors, the end result is a huge pot that takes up fridge space or makes for repetitive meals –but it is always best to follow the rule, even if you’re cooking for one.

In any event, even with said rule in place, I’ve tried to come to some compromise. I usually buy one whole chicken a week. I cut off the wings and legs, separate breast from bone, save the cut up carcass in the freezer, and then contemplate my meals. One leg a night, which equals two days of repast, then I’ve got some tasteless breasts on my hands. Chicken cutlets are always a good bet, if a bit messy to prepare, because they can be eaten for dinner or in a sandwich for lunch (lunch is always a good way to use up excess food, as you’re never quite hankering for delicious or memorable meals at midday). Another way to get around chicken breasts is to make them into individual meals, say, chicken breasts stuffed with herbs and goat cheese, or, if the mood takes you, steamed chicken breasts shredded and dumped into some stock simmering with vegetables for a quick and light soup. In any event, one whole chicken a week is a lot of chicken to eat for one man, and it gets boring by the second night. Then you’ve got to think, What else? What else could be put in the chicken’s place?

Cuts of red meat, the desired cuts, are always a little too expensive when eating alone. I eat rib eyes and shell steaks perhaps one, maybe two, times a month, if I’m lucky or indulgent. Skirts and flanks are more recurring stars, as are shoulders, though roasts and the tougher meats usually take too much time to be on the menu too often. Pork is rarely seen in my kitchen save as an accoutrement to some other meat in the form of bacon or prosciutto (which are, in themselves, luxuries), though I do get strange yearnings for a simple sautéed chop with a bit of mustard, but it’s usually less satisfying in the mouth than it is in the mind. Lamb, duck, and other types of meat, like rabbit, quail, or Cornish hens, are usually too expensive for me to get on anything resembling a consistent basis, and so they’re usually saved for special occasions, generous pay-days or days of depression. Fish is, though a favorite, one of the most perplexing meats to prepare (and given my upbringing and thinking of my mother, I always believe that fish—any fish, any dish—could always use a sprinkling of soy sauce). Shellfish don’t thrill me, though oysters and clams do, and though I’ve never shucked an oyster I indulge my desire for clams twice a month.

Then there are grains, and I generally eat a lot of spuds simply baked, for ease, for lack of a mess, for living on the cheap. Veggies are always interesting and strange, because, unlike meats, I can eat the same vegetable in accompaniment to any meal for five to six days straight. Thus, the great zucchini era, when I ate them every day for two weeks, or the green bean extravaganza, four days, cooked one way, steamed then tossed with shallots and garlic wilted in butter, adorned with a lemon, generously squeezed. Macerated cucumbers with a little lemon, oil, and pepper accompany about fifty percent of all my meals.

So I do okay, and I cook every day. Next times abound, though I usually catch myself dreaming of some future era, when I’ve got money and oodles of time, when I make by own bread, my own noodles; gnocchi sealed in one pound bags, are at the ready in the freezer. There’s confit in my fridge, three months along, demi-glace and chicken stock frozen in ice cube trays and packed away, a hanging ham in the basement, herbs in the garden and a chili bushel on the window sill. My knives are all razor sharp, my kitchen pristine, recipes are no longer followed, and I’m pretty close to my dream. But there’s one thing I can never envision, one aspect of my perfect kitchen that never quite comes together in my mind. With all the food in the larder or in the fridge, for all the money I’m spending on gourmet items and extravagant things, I can never quite see the people who’d consume the food, the others and the family, the hungry then happy bellies. I can only go so far in projecting the future of my desire, and though I might one day roast a chateaubriand like a pro, I still feel like I’d be performing for a small crowd, an empty house, and I’d be cursed and doomed to eat the most succulent of meats for dinner the next day, or for lunch, reheated. And though I do, still, think of my mother and cook, I can’t get so far in the future to thinking of a wife or a son, watching me curse and spit amidst clouds of steam or a red hot oven, sucking burnt thumbs or cut fingers, or weeping over cut onions. I can only see myself patiently plodding through yet another process, more confident in the stroke of my knife, the flip of an omelet, and the loneliness of life. I can only see myself cooking, and perfecting, at home and alone, a meal for one.

—SS

ESSAIS