Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant (10 page)

When the semester was over, I left central California but managed to hold on to that recipe. I have made the soup often; in fact, I just made it last week. Still good. Still reminding me of nights alone in Fresno.

I have also discovered a version of butternut squash soup similar to Trader’s, one with roasted apples and garlic added to the puréed squash.

Charlotte has long since moved back to Louisiana. Her New Orleans house is situated only yards from the 17th Street Canal that overran so many neighborhoods after Hurricane Katrina. But, miraculously, her house did not float away. Her floors and appliances were ruined, and had to be replaced. Now she has a kitchen again.

And I am living in Buffalo, New York, where I never thought I would be. It’s a good city. I make a lot of soup in Buffalo.

F
rom time to time, a friend will drop by my place unannounced. Given that I am Jewish, I am required by Mosaic law to ask if they would like something to eat, and to ignore any utterances that fall short of
I thought you’d never ask
!

It is true that some visitors, after casting a glance around my kitchen—pausing, perhaps, to inspect the stalactites of gunk that have been known to beset the interior of my toaster oven—will issue a declination. But it is equally true that I can be persistent in this matter, as my good mother taught me.

More than a few brave souls have sighed and (sensing the inevitable) asked, “What did you have in mind?”

It is at this point that I strike a casual pose and respond, “I was thinking about a grill-curried shrimp quesarito with avocado raita.”

To which they will respond, “A
what-what-what
with
what?
” allowing me the unrivaled pleasure of repeating myself, this time in italics:
“A grill-curried shrimp quesarito with avocado raita.”
If you have not offered someone a Grill-Curried Shrimp Quesarito with Avocado Raita in an obnoxiously offhand manner, you are really only half alive.

Now: most of my friends are artists of some sort, meaning poor, hungry, aggrieved. They don’t do a lot of parsing. My friend Kirk, for instance, has been known to finish a meal without (technically) inhaling, after which we often play a game called What Did Kirk Just Eat?

And so on. Every now and again, though, some actual working citizen sneaks past the tripwire and they generally want to know what I am feeding them, and how it got to be that color. I am offering this recipe for them, though before doing so I want to make a couple of observations regarding my motives in the kitchen realm.

It is certainly true that cooking is therapeutic, creative, and all those other faintly creepy self-helpish words. I would love to tell you that learning to cook was part of my journey toward actualization. I would love to tell Oprah this. I would love to tell Oprah this while weeping. But I learned to cook for a much simpler reason: in the abject hope that people would spend time with me if I put good things in their mouths. It is, in other words (like practically everything else I do), a function of my desperation for emotional connection and acclaim.

Most writers are driven by the same impolite needs, though it is terribly unfashionable to admit that this is the case. Ironically, the act of writing itself is a terribly inefficient way of gratifying these needs, particularly in this age of joyous illiteracy. Cooking makes a lot more sense.

I could have a jolly old time dating all this back to my lonely childhood, but let’s not and say we did, because I’ve got a recipe to present, and because I also want to say a quick thing about what’s come to be known as the foodie movement.

Here’s what I want to say: while I absolutely love fine food and laud the quality of attention that goes into preparing and consuming same, I worry (quite a lot, actually) that there is something morally queasy about the arrangement. After eating a particularly fabulous meal, I often wonder whether the combined energy spent on the vittles—not just the time and money, but the imaginative passion—might not be better spent on a broader, altruistic effort.

Some of this is your standard Jewish guilt, a way of punishing myself for the unbearable pleasures of the palate. But it’s also true that a certain share of the left-wing zeal in this country has turned away from the looming crises we face as a species, and toward ornate sensual gratifications.

This is a theory I have stolen, nearly verbatim, from my father, who has spent much of his adulthood considering such questions. Then again, he is also capable of preparing a chicken cacciatore that would make Colonel Sanders weep for several weeks straight, so I’m not sure where that leaves us.

My own recipes—fancy-schmancy names notwithstanding—tend to run against foodie doctrine. I’m into simple ingredients and simple preparation, by which I mean (of course) that I’m into impressing people without having to work terribly hard.

I’m also big on adaptability. A good recipe is not Church doctrine. It should allow for improvisation based on personal taste. Cooking as obedience bores me. So everything that follows should be taken with a grain of salt—and not the gourmet fleur de sel stuff, just plain salt.

To begin: buy yourself some raw tiger-tail shrimp, medium size, two pounds at least. Why tiger-tail? Because they are the coolest to order. Other customers will look at you and think,
Well, how do you like that? Tiger-tail shrimp. Here is a man who knows what he wants!

I get the kind with the shell still on, because it is slightly cheaper and because I enjoy the act of shucking them, and most especially using the verb
shuck
in conversation. The classic example being “I’d love to escort you to the Oscars, Paris, but I’ve got a lot of shucking to do.”

Marinate the suckers in teriyaki, brown sugar, and toasted sesame oil, and give them a healthy dusting of curry powder. Refrigerate for an hour while you get your coals going, and soak some wood chips. (Note: If you’re going to go to the trouble of grilling, you are legally required to smoke.)

Shrimp cook
really fast
and they get all rubbery if you over-grill them, so you have to set them down quick and flip them
as soon as they start to pink.
You want a bite that’s juicy and pliant. Do a test run of one if you’re not sure. And remember that the shrimp continue to cook off the grill.

If you’ve done this right, the shrimp should have a nice yellow tint from the curry, and some brown around the edges where the sugar caramelized. Nice. Store all the shrimp in the same container. This is crucial because the shrimp are going to release smoky juices that are basically, by weight, more precious than flu vaccine.

Next, the lettuce. I generally go with finely chopped iceberg, because I like the crunch, and it’s cheap and easy to locate. If you’re feeling flush, you can try Boston lettuce, which has an earthier flavor.

Tomatoes. If you are buying from the store, there is absolutely no reason you should be using any tomato other than the roma. They have the best flavor, by far. Chop them fine.

As to the cheese…there are many people (such as my girlfriend) who favor what I call “death cheese.” This, simply put, is any cheese that tastes like death. Or like the inside of someone’s mouth who has been dead for several weeks. That is neither here nor there, really, but it’s worth noting that if you’re one of these folks who loves death cheese, you should be eating that stuff straight, not putting it in recipes that call for some modicum of balance. For the quesarito, I recommend Monterey Jack, a mild cheese that complements smoked meats.

The only basic left is the avocado raita. It is almost embarrassingly easy to make. Pit two ripe avocados and chop. Add your favorite guacamole mix (mine happens to be Concord, though I use only half the recommended dose). If you want to keep it all from scratch, ditch the mix and add four cloves of roasted garlic, salt, minced onions, and cayenne pepper to taste. Mix with half a cup of plain lowfat yogurt. Done.

Important: you should have all of these ingredients set out in cool little ceramic bowls, like on the cooking shows. This will make you feel incredibly competent and inspire in your guests an unreasonable sense of awe.

We are now ready for the tortilla. I use the burrito-style flour ones. They allow for a larger playing surface and are more supple than corn. Plunk one down on the skillet (or nonstick pan) and let one side get slightly browned. Now flip it and sprinkle cheese over the entire thing. Put a lid over the tortilla, as if you were cooking an egg sunny-side up. The reason you do this is to melt the cheese quicker. It is also one of those moves that make you look like a real pro.

Take the tortilla off the heat and scatter the shrimp. If you have done this right, the shrimp will stick to the melted cheese. Now slide the tortilla onto a plate with a subtle but discernible flourish. Slather on the avocado raita and layer the tomatoes and lettuce.

Now you are ready for your pièce de résistance: pick up the container of shrimp and drizzle some of the smoky liquid that has gathered at the bottom across the quesarito. Don’t play to the balconies here, but don’t undersell the moment, either. Remember: for the lonely, cooking is not just self-maintenance. It is a powerful form of sexual marketing.

By all rights, your guest should by this time be in a state of minor bedazzlement, despite the fact that you have done little more than the average Taco Bell worker. This is one of the beauties of Mexican cuisine: Nothing is julienned. Nothing is blanched. All you do is grate, chop, and plop. And yet the resulting meal
appears complex.
In fact, it is the humility of the cooking process that lends the use of gourmet ingredients this robust irony.

As to what to do next…that’s a tricky question. Some people like to fold the quesarito and eat it like a taco. Others fold it like a burrito. Others just try to eat it as is, pizza style. I generally leave my guests to figure out what they want, though I strongly discourage the use of fork and knife. I do so not merely to embarrass them (though that can never be entirely discounted in my case) but because food should be directly addressed by the mouth, particularly if it has been freshly prepared for you.

That said, if you are cooking for a guest the emphasis should be on their desires, not your virtuosity. Having served this meal several thousand times over the years, I now customize my quesaritos. If someone wants a nice, crispy wallop of fat, I add some peanut oil to the pan and pan-fry the tortilla. Or you can throw respectability out the window (as I so incessantly do) and flick down a pat of butter. Likewise, if they want the decadent version of the raita, use sour cream rather than yogurt. For the digestively fearless, try mascarpone cheese.

And by no means are you limited to the ingredients I’ve set out. They are merely the baseline. Feel free to grill up some Vidalia onion or portabellos when the shrimp are done. Whatever.

I realize this sounds like a lot of hassle, but the trick here is that you’re not preparing a single meal. All the ingredients cited above can and should be stored in your fridge. In the restaurant biz, this is known—somewhat ominously—as preassembly. All you have to do is pull out the Tupperware, pour the ingredients into those cool little bowls, and heat the tortilla with cheese. Total prep time: five minutes. You can make six of these suckers in half an hour.

This brings us to another important issue: marijuana use.

In short, I condone it.

Obviously, the quesarito is going to taste better if you go fresh every time out. But let’s be realistic: as a writer, you only have so many hours each day, and most of them will be swallowed by procrastination and the ensuing guilt. Try to remember, also, that your friends (though you are duty bound to feed them) are ungrateful freeloaders.

Which leads me to my final point: the dangers of ulteriority in the creative process. As I’ve indicated, preparing food for someone else is a tremendous rush. The thing you created gets eaten right before your eyes. You are paid many fine compliments. You are asked admiring questions about your raita prowess. People burp heartily, at least in the Russian countryside.

Such overt forms of recognition are rare for writers. You are forced to work alone. Most of the bad prose out there is, in fact, the result of insecurity about anticipated audience reaction. Gaudy metaphors, wasteful adverbs, hollow emotional assertions, implausible plot twists—all arise from the same essential neurosis. And yet the less you worry about the reader, the freer you are to focus on the people who actually matter: your characters.

The same thing applies to cooking. The well-executed quesarito will certainly lure some company to the table. But in the best cases, we cook to honor the process and the ingredients, the human capacity for edible invention—and to make nourishing the delicious ache of solitude.

Which is my roundabout way of confessing that, while I may prepare my quesaritos in the devout hope a friend will drop by, on most evenings a friend does not drop by, and I am left to eat alone. This depresses me. Eating alone depresses me. It makes me feel the terrible loneliness of the world, all those men on barstools, with their hungry eyes and eager stories, all those women languishing before the soaps. And it embarrasses me. It makes me feel like a failure: the needy guy who eats alone. The needy guy who went to all this trouble, made everything just so, and waits by the door in his special quesarito tux with matching quesarito cummerbund. And (of course): it makes me feel guilty. To lavish such tender energies on a meal
implies
that it be served to others. Did I learn nothing from my good mother, who spent so many years returning from work exhausted, only to prepare delicious meals for her grabby, ingrate sons—baked chicken and rice, meatloaf, enchiladas—always serving herself last, almost reluctantly, scraping the sticky left-behinds onto her plate?

But okay, let’s assume I get past all this. I still face a final, cold truth: eating alone isn’t natural. Life’s greatest sensual pleasure (or at least its most consistently attainable) should be shared. I happen to believe that humans were born to feed one another. The meal is our celebration of nurturance, our secular communion.