Notes From The Culinary Wasteland

We saw VENUS IN FUR at the matinee on Saturday. It’s great, by the way -don’t miss it. After the play, we looked in vain for a cab on Eighth Avenue and then decided to walk to the bus stop. The 104 was along in a minute.
I love the 104 bus, especially after attending the theater. Everyone on the bus has just seen some play or other and because they’re Upper West Siders, they all have opinions. Riding the bus is like a group therapy session. We ran into an old friend, a wonderful actor, who had seen the same play and the three of us plunged into discussion about it. Jill had by far the most compelling interpretation.
We listened to her in awe, embarrassed at how dumb we had been. Then two women across the aisle who had also seen the play, wanted to hear Jill’s theory and the discussion widened to the whole back section of the bus. Jill is the queen of the 104.
So, in celebration, when we got home I cooked a dish fit for a queen – my vegan queen. I’ve given up trying to make something that works for both of us. Such a recipe does not exist. It’s always a compromise for one or an accommodation for the other. Not that I don’t enjoy the occasional quinoa with green beans and prunes. I totally do. But it isn’t … you know … a lip smacker. And although Jill is always a good sport about picking around the bacon bits, she’s not really in ecstasy about it. So separate dishes is the order of the day.

sautéing the veg

I saw a Mark Bittman piece about vegetable main courses – veg paired with a whole grains and/or beans – like a vegetable stew. He said to improvise, fly without a net, cook without a recipe. I had recently made a carbonara in Italy in a similar frame of mind, assembling the necessary ingredients and the rest – how much? how many? how long? how hot? – was left to instinct and desire. So off to the Fairway I went – yes, the same market I trashed in my last blog. I have no shame.
I found some nice radishes, baby carrots and tiny grape tomatoes in the organic section upstairs. And a nice bulb of fennel. Downstairs was celery, some small potatoes and a couple of handfuls of flat beans, which looked pretty good. Onions and garlic, of course. And some rosemary. Also upstairs, in the organic bin section, I half-filled a plastic bag with some split bulgar wheat and downstairs again, I found a jar of already cooked Italian cannelini beans. I was all set.
Bittman advises dealing with the hard stuff first – like life. So I sautéed chunked up carrots, radishes, potatoes and celery in a little olive oil until they started to soften; I threw in some rosemary and salt and kept stirring; then I added onion and fennel – also chunked – a couple cloves of garlic, chopped fine, and the flat beans cut into thirds. I turned the heat down to medium and continued to stir until I got the feeling everything was getting to just the toothy resistance I like in a vegetable.

Just before the garlic started to brown, I added the jar of cannelini beans that I had drained and a handful of the tomatoes. Both the beans and tomatoes release enough liquid to stop the browning and begin the stewing. Then I added a big handful of the bulgar wheat – maybe ¾ of a cup? — and about a cup and a half of water and stirred the mixture into a stew, scraping any sticky parts off the bottom. The amount of water is to the eye. Keep thinking stew, not soup – the liquid should become like gravy. You may want to add more water as the stew comes into itself. My stew needed more time than Mark Bittman took for his, but I think maybe my chunks were bigger. Everybody’s different.
Jill loved the vegetable stew and agreed it was fit for a queen. I ordered a pizza.