I had spent an entire nine months living in a dorm with an 18-year-old college freshman roommate the year I turned 29, and when I got my first school library job and was finally living in a duplex with a garage (a sure sign of security to my rural Midwestern psyche), I was dying to cook. I had a paperback copy of The French Chef, the book accompanying Julia Child’s first series, and a non-stick omelet pan was my first major cookware purchase for my duplex kitchen. Although I was seven years older than she was and she was just a first year English teacher, Debbie and I made decent whirlwind shopping trip friends, and that’s what we had just done when I decided I would invite her to have a spur-of-the-moment supper with me that weeknight, a school night yet. We had to have omelets, since eggs were the only protein I had in the house, so I whipped up two eggs each and grated on a little cheese, probably Kraft American, while the omelet was setting just so in the pan, and I might even have managed some chopped parsley, because before I left that duplex, I had a cold frame and herbs I could over-winter, even in Kansas City’s nasty freezes and blustering winds. Debbie sighed with pleasure, “Isn’t this great?” She was leaning over the footstool, the closest thing I had to a table, which I had insisted she use because she was the guest while I balanced my plate on my knees. “You’re good at this. The food was already here; we didn’t have to buy anything, and it was ready in less than 15 minutes!”
Countless times I have done that since, although certainly not always within 15 minutes. I’ve branched out from omelets to spaghetti carbonara to my current roast chicken breast, pulled from the freezer and defrosted in the microwave, and I’ve had varying degrees of success. Now that I can call on a $20.00 bottle of Washington red wine regularly, sometimes the failures get nicely covered up! I cater a real family dinner, complete with a braised meat almost every week for my brother’s family, where the sighs of pleasure are infrequent, but there is always that moment when everyone relaxes into the meal and actually spends a little time chewing and enjoying. My niece or nephew might ask a question, and conversation might take off having nothing to do with the food, but they might as well be saying, “Isn’t this great?” just the way Debbie said it all those years ago.
I call that experience of supplying comfort through food Supper Satisfaction. The satisfaction element has little to do with any pleasure derived by the diners; it actually has more to do with my having cooked what I wanted to eat, and everyone I served just happened to enjoy eating that, too, while they connected as family members or supper guests. Score, and I win twice!
I want that for you. Ultimately, I want you to feel freedom from tyranny of recipes and comfort with techniques, so much so that you actually might enjoy the cooking you have to do. You still might hate cooking, but I hope that doesn’t keep you from having one meal you can do without dreading it or resenting the effort it takes to make it for your family, and it shouldn’t dirty every dish in the kitchen or make anyone tired just thinking about producing it.
Here’s how you do it with the menu we just finished:
1- Set the oven to preheat to 350 degrees. Pull out your roast chicken breast baking sheet, as described in #2. Pour on the cashews and prepare them with olive oil as described in #6. When the oven reaches 350, put the cashews in the oven and set a timer so you’ll check them in 7-9 minutes. While you wait, prepare the chicken breasts, as described in #2, and get out the rest of the ingredients for the cashews. This is where you’d cut up the second vegetable you were planning to roast with the chicken, like little potatoes or butternut squash or a couple of bell peppers, but don’t let those cashews burn!
2- When the cashews are toasted, you can either anoint them with the rest of the ingredients right there on the baking sheet or move them quickly to a plate and finish them, so that you don’t have to wash/wipe the baking sheet for the chicken. Finish the cashews without dawdling, and put the prepared chicken (and your second vegetable, if that’s what you decided) on the baking sheet, place it in the oven and, while you pour that glass of wine, set a timer for 30 minutes so you won’t forget the chicken.
3- Now you have time to sip a bit while you bring water to the boil on the stovetop and prepare the broccoli as described in #3. Concentrate on cooking the broccoli carefully and getting it drained to wait till you’re ready to serve. Hopefully, that was completed with about 7 minutes to go till chicken-doneness, and your cashews should be crisp and cooled enough to eat, so you can nibble while you cook broccoli.
4- While the chicken rests for its ten minutes after it’s roasted, you’ll have time to reheat the broccoli with a pepper-garlic garnish, if you want, or you can cut up some carrot sticks, or pull that red cabbage slaw you made last night from the fridge (#7) for your second vegetable, if you didn’t roast something with the chicken breasts.
5- The table is set; the family members are assembled; you’ve appointed someone to wash a piece of fruit, and bring it, with a plate and a sharp knife, to the table,(including that orange you zested over the cashews!) and you can top up your glass of wine, knowing that there are brownies in the freezer which you might share if everyone makes nice at dinner.
There are countless ways to get that meal on the table without your having to bake brownies (#9) or prepare that cabbage slaw (#7 ), but the general outline will always be the same, and the more often you do it, the more efficient the process will become. It’s also my goal that eventually you’ll be able to search this blog using each element of a menu so that you can mix and match at will. Imagine the possibilities! However, this menu, and this one alone, could be your continuous go-to, once a week, with just a little effort on your part.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with hiring someone to cook the rest of the time, and if you can afford that, then choose someone who sets up a menu the same way I do, with colors and complementary tastes and textures and foods that fit together. Lori does that. One look at her website might even inspire your own cooking, because her menus read like those colorful cookbooks we all collect. Link here: http://nourishfoods.net/ and you can link to her Facebook page from her opening webpage if you want to know more. She cooks the way I would if I had the energy to cater, and she makes healthy things, like fish and kale, which I wouldn’t do even if someone paid me bunches of money. Apparently, she LIKES these things! Go figure.
Nothing tops that feeling of knowing you provided what’s sitting there at the table, and if everyone sat down and ate even just a bit of it, that’s true love they’re eating—even if all you were really doing was cooking something you wanted to eat. That’s Supper Satisfaction, and you can have it, too.
Next time: Another menu cycle begins
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