Hi all,
Thanks for reading and responding to last week’s newsletter on chicken and people who process them and their connection to food waste. A few of you responded with points that I will go into further in a future newsletter (guilt associated with food waste + how that relates to the language of individual responsibility when talking about climate change; wage-stealing at poultry plants as “rehab” (and not just chicken plants); the fact that chicken raised well tastes i n f i n i t e l y better than Big Chicken.)
But today I’m focusing on cooking: after sending you three straight newsletters that only contained recipes for liquids, I must offer proof that we do more than drink.
When I have zero inspiration but lots of vegetables that are probably going to spoil soon, my solution is to chop them all up and cook them forever.
And it’s really effing* good.
The first time I encountered mushy vegetables cooked to death (but in a very good, very flavorful, not at all sad way) was, I think, in Russia, with a store-bought baklazhannaya ikra (meaning “eggplant caviar” in Russian) that my host mom enhanced by cooking a zucchini-type squash and mashing it in. I’m pretty sure this type of treatment — cooking eggplant plus other seasonal vegetables until the mixture collapses, flavoring it with an onion and maybe a tomato and other spices or briny things — exists in every culture that eats eggplant. (See: baba ganoush, ratatouille, caponata, and all the other renditions I’m not mentioning.)
I’m also sure I’m not the first to suggest that you employ this treatment with all your other vegetables, so let me be another voice suggesting you do it.
The process is simple: chop an onion and get it cooking in a big lidded skillet with plenty of oil, then chop up all the other vegetables you need to use and add to the skillet as you chop. (Fun trick: grate summer squash instead of chopping; they’ll turn silky.) Cook it covered (medium-ish heat) for a while (20 mins, 30 mins), stir every so often, spice it however you want. Uncover and keep cooking a while longer (20 mins or so), stirring more if you don’t want things to brown, stirring less if you want browned crispy bits. Stop cooking once the mix is so soft that you can mash it with a spoon or once you’re worried you’re going to burn it (whichever comes first). The more you have in your skillet, the longer it’ll take. Mash it up if you’d like, or leave it chunky.
Let cool, then store in your refrigerator for about a week. Eat it straight, spread it on toast, serve with crackers and cheese, slather on sandwiches or pizza, scramble into eggs, stir into noodles (with pasta cooking liquid to help make it saucy), use it as a dip or stir in some yogurt or sour cream to make it creamy. Sky’s the limit, as they say.
This week’s batch had one onion, four or so summer squash, a green bell pepper, a few banana peppers, several bruised tomatoes, and five random string beans that found their way into my bag. (That probably sounds like a euphemism for stealing, but we work at a farmers market and sometimes things literally just fall into the bags.) I seasoned it very neutrally — salt, pepper, Mexican oregano — so that it’d be super versatile later on in the week, but truthfully when it’s this time of year and your tomatoes and other produce are good, you don’t need a lot of seasoning.
And that’s it! Hope your week was alright, and if it wasn’t, at least it’s Friday. Catch ya next time.
*How do we feel about swearing here? My parents get this so I feel kiiiinda weird dropping the swear words I would in normal, casual, friendly conversation. (Sorry parents :))