One of the benefits of going back to a regular schedule is that I get to pay more attention to cooking instead of simply throwing something together in a rush and then jumping back in the barrel.
Martha Rose Shulman has offered a couple of interesting dishes recently in her “Recipes for Health” column in The New York Times. I whipped up her stir-fried tofu and peppers night before last, and it was a hit; it’s an easy bit of cookery, based on a Chinese dish called rainbow beef, and reminds me slightly of an old favorite, kung pao beef, from (of all things) a tattered Betty Crocker cookbook I bought on impulse at some grocery checkout years ago.
Tonight I’m going to tackle her stir-fried pork and greens with noodles, which is just a little more elaborate but packs more punch, including as it does a half-pound of swine instead of soybean curd (Shulman says the vegetarians among you may substitute tofu for the pork).
While we’re discussing mindful cookery, you might enjoy this article from Tricycle, the Buddhist quarterly. Author Laura Fraser rattles the pots and pans with Dale and Melissa Kent, who spent seven years at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California’s Ventana Wilderness. Dale did a two-year stint as tenzo, head of the kitchen; Melissa was ino, or head of the meditation hall.
Zen priest and cook Edward Brown tells Fraser that mindfulness in cooking “is much more about receiving your experience than dictating it. Most people’s habits of mind and activity, when it comes to cooking, are about making it come out the way it’s supposed to, rather than receiving and appreciating it the way it is.”
With that in mind (pun intended), I set about making breakfast this morning. It’s a meal that has been haphazard here lately, generally a fruit smoothie, some oatmeal, occasionally just a container of yogurt and some juice. Herself had mentioned a hankering for scrambled eggs with green chile, but was otherwise unspecific, so I winged it. Improvisation. A couple bars of jazz in the kitchen.
Locating some roasted Hatch mild chile in the bottom of the ’fridge, I peeled and diced a large one, then sautéed it in butter and olive oil for a few minutes, adding a small minced glove of garlic about 20 seconds before pouring the eggs — whipped with sea salt, freshly ground pepper and a dash of green chile powder from the Santa Fe School of Cooking — into the skillet.
Then, with one eye on the cooking eggs I assembled two basic side salads — just a few leaves of lettuce and some sliced tomatoes drizzled with olive oil — and toasted some fresh bread from a local bakery. Then I shoveled the eggs onto the plates and served ’em up.
Simple stuff, I know. But it sure did taste good.
