Improv Cooking

Normal Cooking requires planning, precision, calculation, and patience. It's a talent. It's an art form. It's a chemistry experiment you get to eat.

Cooking in my 2x3' kitchen, luxuriously complete with two burners, a clogged sink, and minimal utensils, requires a whole other skill set. First and foremost one needs an open mind, followed by creativity, preserverance, determination, and insensitive taste buds in order of importance. It's kinda like a Mensa Puzzle in which there is no right answer.

Yet, despite my spatial and economic disadvantages, I have managed to makes some pretty good meals for my friends.

In my last post about my neighbor I mentioned that on my first night she has cooked me a traditional Italian meal, so last Wednesday it was my turn to cook un plat Americaine for her. As I don't eat meat, hamburgers and hot dogs were out of the questions, so in honor of the upcoming American National Holiday, Super Bowl Sunday (even though I can count the number of football games I've watched on one hand) I decided to make Black Bean Chili, with Rice and Sour Cream. Which, upon arrival at the marche, quickly turned into Just a Vegetable Soup with Rice and Creme Fraiche, as there were no black beans, or any beans for that matter, to be found.

Actually that's a lie, there were dehydrated chickpeas, which I bought not realizing they require a 12 hour soak in order to be palatable.

Without the luxury of an iPhone to double check whether I had indeed purchased ingredients that even remotely resembled a complete recipe on Allrecipes.com, I got home with a hodge podge of vegetables and ingredients that looked like they might be willing to lend them lives and nutrients to a soup.

Yet once I made it back home, climbed my 9 flights of stairs I couldn't find a single recipe that would consider my bags of ingredients a proper meal. And since going back down to street level was not an option.. I improvised...

The recipe went something like this:

Ingredients:

1 eggplant (cubed)
1 Zucchini (cubed)
1 Green Pepper
3 small onions (diced)
1/2 cup cheap red wine
1/3 cup olive oil
3 stalks of chives/ scallions (sliced)
1 clove of garlic
3 cans of skinned whole tomatoes
a couple dashes of dried chili peppers
2 cups of Basmati Rice
A tub of Creme Fraiche


1. Glaze the onions in olive oil. Once they are light brown add the eggplant cubes. When it feels right add red wine and continue cooking until wine is absorbed.

2. Cook Zucchini and green pepper in another pan. Add minced garlic.
3. Once Zucchini and Green pepper look cooked add them to the eggplant.

4. Add whole tomatoes.
5. Stir in Chive slices.
6. Add a few dashes of dried chili peppers into the mix
7. Add some hot sauce for extra spice
8. Continue to cook on low heat for as long as you want, or until dinner needs to be served.

9. Serve with a dollop of Creme Fraiche and Grated Cheddar ( but if you can find that, Parm will do)
10. Open both windows to give the impression that your room can hold more than 2 people at a time.
Enjoy!



Hindsight's Lessons...

-It would have been nice to actually have had beans to add
-A jalepeno pepper would have added flavor
- My room is too small to ever cook onions in again.. even though I left my windows open to air it out it smelled for the next three days. And for some reason my shower towel also absorbed the smell from hanging in such close quarters ( on the other side of the room) so I, too, smelled like one big onion for the whole week... great way to find love in paris.. smell like an onion.