the hungry tiger: Alone in the kitchen

May 21, 2002

Alone in the kitchen

The wonderful Laurie Colwin wrote, "Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam."

I rarely dine alone, so I entertain my weirdest cooking urges when I am working at home all day. Last year I ate black bean and sweet potato burritos three days a week for a month. At the start of the week (or two) I would make a little pot of black beans with onions and cilantro, and bake a small sweet potato. Both went into the fridge. Then, when I was good and sick of working, I would turn on the oven, pull out a piece of foil, and fling a flour tortilla upon it. I would also start a pot of coffee in the stovetop Moka pot. If there was leftover rice from dinner, that went on the tortilla, then beans and a cross-section of the sweet potato, cut into tiny cubes. Slices of mozzarella cheese went on top and I did a tidy little maneuver to roll up the burrito and encase it in foil all at once. Into the oven it went. While it heated, I finished the coffee and cleared a little space among the books. Then I unwrapped the dense little cylinder onto a plate and ate it while I drank my coffee, with my feet up on the chair across the table, reading an article about something-or-other, which might or might not make it into my bibliography.

Today it was potatoes mashed with olive oil and extra milk, seasoned with za'atar, salt, and extra sesame seeds. I put in a handful of fresh English peas and cooked them as I cooked it down. The result was a lovely sludge, tinted slightly green from the za'atar and studded with sweet peas. It was far too strange to share with anyone else, but just perfect for me.

Posted by redfox at May 21, 2002 10:15 PM (etcetera)