Using What You Have

I hear a lot of people say things like "I don't have time to cook," and I completely understand that sentiment.  When I used to come home late from a night of service, the last thing I wanted to do was spend time in my kitchen.  The immediacy of my hunger was often either ignored or placated with a quick fix slice. 

Pretty soon I'll be headed back to my late-night life, which means some internal adjustments.  I'm pretty sure that I've found the answer to feeding oneself well and often and it isn't as hard as I'd once believed.  The key?  Keeping lots of food in the apartment.  

I know. It sounds ridiculous.  Actually, I used to avoid buying fresh produce because it often went bad before I had a chance to use it.  Read: I was too lazy to do anything with it, which is why it so often went bad.  Last night, I got home in the evening after a trip into the city.  I was starving and I didn't want to go to the grocery store.  I decided to improvise with whatever I had in my refrigerator.  

I had one frozen chicken breast, which I was able to defrost under hot water. 

I had one bunch of leftover asparagus. 

I had a whole Texas scallion.  

I had a persimmon.  

I had a cucumber. 

I had an open can of black olives. 

I had a shallot and lemon vinaigrette from the night before.  

I put the asparagus, sliced persimmon, Texas scallion, and chicken breast on a baking sheet.  Then I poured the vinaigrette over everything, mixed it with my hands, salted and peppered the mess, made sure nothing overlapped, and threw it in a 400 degree oven.  I chopped the cucumber and black olives and put them in a bowl and ate them with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.  After six or seven minutes, I flipped the chicken, but left the veggies to turn scorched at the edges.  Not too long after that, I pulled the whole roasted mess out of the oven and tossed it into one very large bowl.  Ta da.  Dinner is served. 

If you surround yourself with foods that don't require much thought or preparation, you can make a delicious and fresh meal in less than half an hour.  People think too much about ingredients, or amounts, or the time it takes to chop an onion.  But if you're lazy and hungry, like I often am, you'll take the path of least resistance, chop the onion as coarsely as you can, toss everything with a thin layer of olive oil and leave it to its own devices in a very hot oven.  

Cooking is not brain surgery.  All you have to do to make yourself decent meals is care about ad understand your product, whether it be canned olives or an overripe persimmon.  Keep your fridge stocked and force yourself to use what you have.  Nothing is more satisfying than creating something out of nothing. 

By the way, those Texas scallions char really nicely, almost like the onion bits left at the bottom of a Sunday roast pan.  

Quick Fix

I was running around like a crazy person yesterday, trying to do all the things I hadn't done while out in Arizona.  I didn't have time to do a whole elaborate dinner for myself, so I improvised with things I found at the market.  I had about ten minutes to spare at the vegetable stand, where I bought things that inspired me: a carton of persimmons, a Texas scallion (looks like a cross between an onion and a scallion, with a large white bulb at the end), a few kirby cucumbers, a jalapeno, a red pepper, Boston lettuce, and some cilantro.  Large shrimp at the fish market actually lived up to their name, so I took home a quarter pound, plenty of shrimp for one person to stretch over the course of two days.  

I assembled the framework for my dinner in the afternoon.  It took less than 20 minutes, proof that even the most time-pressed career person can get a home-cooked meal on the table.  I poached the shrimp in boiling water until they turned pink (roughly five minutes).  In the meantime, I chopped my purchased veggies, with the exception of the lettuce and with the addition of some celery I found hanging out in my vegetable compartment. 

Cooked shrimp was drained and cut into thirds.  I added it to the container housing my chopped vegetables.  Next, some canned pineapple--minus the juice--two heaping tablespoons of light sour cream (more than enough, trust me), one tablespoon of sriracha, some kosher salt and, of course, fresh ground pepper.  When I came home from the gym later at night, I picked some lettuce leaves and rolled the creamy mixture up into it, using the lettuce like a wrap.  Actually, iceberg would have worked a little better, but I really hate the watery taste of iceberg lettuce, with one notable exception: as lining for a good old traditional BLT. 

Really, the greatest thing about doing something like this for dinner (apart from the convenience factor) is that it's the easiest possible way to integrate a wide variety of vegetables into one's dinner.  And really, you could sub in or out any fruit or veg.  Grapefruit could have easily replaced the persimmon.  Red cabbage could have provided color instead of red pepper (I grew up surrounded by pepper-haters).  Shredded carrot would have offered a beta-carotene kick.  

So there you have it: dinner for one very busy individual, done quickly and healthily.  And did I mention that the final product was creamy, spicy, crunchy, and completely delicious?  Or maybe that goes without saying.