Dec 19 2008
Livecooking with me.
In an effort to make myself more adventurous (or at least, less reticent) in the kitchen I’ve lately been throwing myself at cooking with abandon. Often I have no idea what I want to eat when I pour the oil in the bottom of the pan. It just comes together as I work out what I’ve got.
This evening I started off with a large frying pan liberally coated in garlic oil, half a green bell pepper cut into strips and a couple of coarsely chunked spring onions. I fried them at some heat until they didn’t need it any more, by which point I had realised I need some protein and found smoky bacon in the fridge. I dropped the onion/pepper mix on a plate, keeping as much of the juice in the pan as possible and fried a couple of rashers of bacon, coarsely cut with a pair of scissors.
I think at this point I realised that I’d need some carbohydrate and bulk, so started boiling the kettle to make pasta. There wasn’t much water in the kettle but I was only cooking enough fusilli for myself, and I’m a light eater. The water went in fairly quickly and was hot enough to throw the pasta in within thirty seconds I think. At the same time I turned off the bacon, while I approached my next problem.
I started to think about sauce. I should really have something to coat my pasta — what I had at the moment wasn’t really crisp enough for a stir-fry, but it wasn’t wet either. I found a jar of stiff Thai paste for making soups, on the top shelf of the fridge door. I threw in a teaspoon of that and tried to get it to dissolve in the bacony garlic oil. After a few minutes I realised it would help if I added heat, which I did.
The peppers and onions went back in while I hunted around for a slosh of red wine to add to the liquid. Couldn’t find any. Oh well, gave up, started clearing up some of the mess. Checked on the baguettes that are proving on the table. Go to put more music on. Find a nearly-finished bottle of red wine hiding amongst the shopping bags on the table. Victory! A bit of that goes in, gently cooking away.
By the time the past is completed, the red wine has formed a slightly sticky, caramel-looking juice around the peppers and bacon. I throw the whole lot into the drained pasta and slosh it around in the pan to coat everything.
This is the disastrous cooking that I do. Honestly, it tastes quite good: spicy but also sweet. There’s probably a million things I could have done better. But it was quite tasty, so I’m satisfied.