Making something out of small miseries (and some recent kitchen atrocities)
When things go horribly awry
We all have complete and utter failures in... everything. Most of my crushing small failures happen in the kitchen. Just last week I: overproved my challah, leading to it being a little bit wrinkly, and I burnt a pan of squash (still ate it though.) After that I grabbed a skilled that had been in a 425 oven with my bare hand, and gave myself a pretty bad burn, and kind of ruined dinner. I mean, dinner was delicious, I ate it, thought it was fabulous, but Noah was very worried about the second degree burn I had just given myself and spent all of dinner reading about burn care and not eating. (Now, a few weeks after my horrible burn despite the skin intially blistering, it has healed back completely, I won't even have a scar, nor will I get the asbestos fingers I'd been hoping for, but I can say that I have the regenerative powers of a young person who consumes a lot of vitamin c!)
"blackened" acorn squash. It was... not supposed to be blackened.
Here's another recent catastrophe: I tried to make a different marinade for my typical roast tofu and vegtables. I was following a recipe, sort of, but I thought "wow that's too much soy sauce" so I cut the soy sauce in half and.... it was still too much soy sauce. So last night what I made for dinner was: inedibly salty tofu that wound up burning even though it was only in the oven for 20 minutes, because the marinade had molasses in it, which I THOUGHT would give the tofu an interesting bitter flavor, but actually just made it caramelize too fast. Anyway, it was totally disgusting, and I have to eat it three more times this week because I'm so busy with school stuff I don't have time to make another big dish to have for lunch. Tragedy!!!!
But that's not the point. Often, I like cooking because I am good at it. When other things are spiraling out of control in my life, I can count on myself to do some things in the kitchen really well. This is what makes it so upsetting when I completely fuck up a recipe. I am still distraught by the day a few months ago when I burned tofu I was frying. I burned tofu. I didn't even know you could burn tofu.
This is a picture from a few months ago, Noah and I were trying to make Marcella's fried zucchini pasta and she said "salt the zucchini liberally" and I added, oh, I don't know, maybe two or three full tablespoons of salt, which was a HORRIBLE decision. We had to throw them all away.
I feel like--and, you know, maybe this is a lie I tell myself to provide comfort--I probably have more just like, really miserably bad cooking experiences than most people. Like, you know, law of averages or whatever (not sure what that means but it sounded like what I might say there) I cook a lot, so of course sometimes it will be... really very bad. But! When it is really bad, because I've made being a competent cook a part of my personality cooking a dish that's like, horribly seasoned or unfixable in some way feels like an even bigger failure. Like if I'd made getting along with dogs a part of who I am and then some placid golden retreiver bit me, or like, if I was a weightlifter who one day couldn't do a push-up.
Recently, I've had a lot going on at school and work, and, I mean, fuck, the state of the entire world is... very bad. It's enough to make anybody feel like they are losing control. This week, I don't have a lot to say. I'm trying to teach myself how to make maps, and do GIS analysis, and that's hard, and I'm really really bad at it. I have to clean data, and cleaning data requires patience and persistence, two things that I often lack.
It's times like this that I find comfort in cooking something really easy. Something that I've never messed up, and something infinitely adaptable. Recently I've been eating a lot of oatmeal for breakfast. It's a dismal food, but I'm taking the advice of one of my calcium obsessed friends and cooking the oatmeal in fortified soy milk, and having it with almond butter, so that I can consume more calcium. This alone, however, tastes like garbage. It is sad, and boring (and grainy because almond butter is a Cursed Food). Here is my very easy intervention into the oatmeal genre:
Sauteed Apples (yes, everyone knows how to make sauteed apples)
This is less of a recipe, and more an idea. It is infinitely scalable and adaptable. It can have as many or as few ingredients as you want. I usually find that one apple is good for two breakfasts, so sometimes I'll cook a few apples at the beginning of the week and just add them in at the end of my oatmeals cook time, so that they get reheated.
1 tbs salted butter (or regular butter, or margarine/whatever vegans prefer, but if you use something without salt you must add a pinch of two of salt later)
1 apple (a cheap granny smith is ideal here)
1/4-1/2 tsp apple pie spice (I usually just stick the tip of whatever spoon I have around in the jar
a tiny pour, a few drops, maybe a slightly overflowing 1/4 tsp champagne vinegar (or ACV, probably?)
The apples are also pretty good if you sautee some dried fruit in with them. Adding them while the sautee is going on means they get a bit rehydrated which is good.
Optional: dried fruits of the cranberry/currant variety
Okay: Cut up your apple, however you prefer. I'll usually do slices, and then just like, hack the some of the slices sort of in half, for variety, you know?
Heat your pan up to a nice medium high, add your butter. I like to let mine start to brown a bit, you'll know it's ready when the foaming stops, or it smells nutty. Then, add the apples. Toss to coat in butter. Do they need more butter? Maybe! Add it! If you want dried fruits in here, add them now, this allows them to soften up some, which is nice.
Add your spices. You want the apples to have like, a bit more spice than you would want if you were eating them plain, this way you don't have to bother with putting cinnamon or whatever in your oatmeal.
Cook on high heat until they get a bit browned and start to soften. Turn off the heat, pour in some vinegar.
The vinegar is really important, champagne vinegar, in particular, makes the apples taste juicier and fruitier, it really improves this small and basic thing by a lot.
This is super cheap champagne vinegar. Some other kind of vinegar would work, but the flavor of this sort is good. It's a little sweeter than a white wine vinegar, and a bit more interesting than apple cider vinegar.
This is so easy that I can do it before work, so thoughtless that it just sort of happens.
What do you cook like this? How do you restore your confidence after something that felt natural to you went badly?