Fat Girl Gone Thin

I find myself in the midst of a sassy, if not wildly sarcastic, book at the moment. Alone In The Kitchen With An Eggplant … also known as: confessions of sad single people who don’t know how to cook and are too scared to eat alone in a restaurant.

This is the kind of book which I: (a) enjoy reading if for no other reason than the time it allots me to commiserate with my twenty-something cooking homeys, and (b) pretend I don’t enjoy reading so that others continue to believe that I spend my off-hours indulging in Thoreau and writings by dead philosophers.

Irregardless, I found the sumptuous photo of an eggplant on the cover drawing me to the hearty veggie. The one-eyed, one-horned, giant purple people eater of the grocery store. But what to cook with it?

Having already fully embraced the hackneyed reality of being an X-generation gal with both a blog and an obsessive interest in food, I decided it was best to fully embrace the beast and go the extra mile. And what better way to do so than cook Ratatouille … while watching Ratatouille.

And let me say, I think this might be why the French hate us. The fact that Disney can systematically reduce hundreds of years of French culinary innovation into a 90-minute rat-themed film, in which the country’s best chef turns out to be under the control of hair-pulling kitchen vermin.

But it’s a cute film and I’m out of dinner ideas, so there you go. Besides, why be young and single if you can’t decide to just swing into the store and drop $25 on imported anchovies and herbs in order to make a meal based on a kid’s film? My only hope is that the cashier didn’t make the connection between the ingredients in my cart and the 99 cent rental from the movie department.

Thirty minutes later I was in my kitchen, knife in hand, ladybug slippers on my feet – gracefully chopping one eggplant, three zucchinis, an onion, garlic, an armload of cherry tomatoes and some very teeny-tiny fish.

Now, I don’t believe I have ever followed a recipe straight off the page. I’m more of a “dash of this, splash of that” kind of girl – or more appropriately, a “do you think I could use protein powder instead of eggs in this, because I forgot to buy those” kind of girl.

That being said, I highly recommend you follow this one to the T. Doing otherwise will cause an irreversible tear in the space time continuum. Ok, not really -  but it will taste like a plate of inappropriately mixed poo from the community college cafeteria if you don’t. Ok, that won’t really happen either.

Whatever. Bad stuff will happen.

The instructions say to remove the pan from the heat, add a splash of balsamic vinegar and let it cool to room temperature. Which is impossible to do, especially if you missed lunch. I mean, literally, it’s impossible to wait that long. The smell is…..

So you’ll drive in fork first, devour the first few bites and think – meh, not bad.

And then you’ll saunter away, watch some bad Thursday night cable, then come back an hour or so later to make a cup of tea or what have you. And while you’re waiting for the water to heat, your fingers will find themselves picking up a bite from the pan.

And God help you if children are present when this happens because inexplicably and with no warning the words, “Oh shit, that’s good” will fall from your mouth. Honestly. Verbatim, you will say this. So keep the kiddos in the other room for this one.

It’s been a long while since I’ve licked a plate … and the pan, but I must be honest and admit defeat on this particular account.  Just another reason it’s good to be a single gal that loves to cook.

The recipe.

Utter exhaustion is the only thing I can think of to describe how I felt this morning. I haven’t felt that way since finals week my junior year of college when my Japanese final got moved up three days.

I got a call last night from one of my vendors for a last minute holiday order of my soaps – in a scent I was entirely out of – which meant many many hours of unplanned melting,stirring, mixing, drying, cutting …rather than running to the closet to grab some of my pre-made stuff.

It wouldn’t have been as bad if I hadn’t stayed up till the wee hours the night before (and I do mean wee, like 3 a.m. wee) and if this order hadn’t been needed by 9 a.m. the next day. Days like today are why I could never be one of those oh-so-healthy folks who refuse to drink coffee. I heart coffee. I heart it very very much. And I heart Starbucks for opening at 5 a.m. even on the weekends.

I tinkered with the idea of taking 15-minute naps while each batch set but I thought better of it in the end. The only thing worse than being tired is then sleeping just long enough to remind your body how great sleep is. Anything under 2 hours is usually always a dangerous proposition for me.

By 8:30 I’d packaged the last of the bars and loaded them in the car when, in one of my most brilliant moves ever, I ran back to the house to turn on my electric blanket. I was so tired that when I got to the store it was still 5 minutes till opening and I didn’t even wait to hand the product over in person. I just wrote a quick note, said I would give a call later, and tucked them in the front door alcove.

Pulling back into my driveway I actually toyed with the idea of just turning off the car and sleeping in the driver’s seat for a few minutes instead of running in the rain all the way to my front door and then my bedroom. Those 50 feet felt like 5 miles!

But I am oh so glad I decided to muster my strength and go inside because I cannot possibly describe what a beautiful thing it was to kick off my shoes and crawl into the warmth of my buttery-soft flannel sheets. Nothing, and I mean nothing, feels quite as good as being tired and knowing you have nothing to stop you from sleeping for as long as you want.

I think it was somewhere around 1 p.m. when I final emerged from my cave. The day already sufficiently shot, I decided to stay in my pajamas and make myself an exquisite dinner to make up for my calorie-free coffee breakfast and lunch. I perused my cookbook collection but the only thing that seemed right for the occasion was my new copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking  – my latest must-have purchase after watching Julie and Julia.

I decided on the beef bourguignon from the recipe that was so predominately featured in the film. All in all, the recipe is not that bad as far as guilty eating goes in the world of french cooking. A tablespoon of butter here and there, a couple slices of bacon, but the dish serves 6, so it didn’t seem all that bad.

What really caught my eye was the part that called for a 3 cups of wine. A whole bottle when you count the glass I poured for myself. A whole bottle! How could this recipe go wrong?

In all it took 5 hours to make. There was boiling of bacon (have you ever heard of such a thing?), then frying of bacon, followed by browning of beef in said bacon fat. Then browning of vegetables in – you guessed it – the bacon fat. But after that things straightened up and it was time to add the wine! A little of this, a little of that, and the whole thing went into the oven for 3 hours.

I thought I could use that long reprieve to wrap presents or do something productive, but a closer look at the recipe had me browning onions for an hour and sauteing mushrooms for 40 minutes and by the time I had done that and washed a few dishes the beef was ready to come out.

The smell in my kitchen was indescribable. It was the smell of developed flavor that only comes from an evening of laboriously preparing a meal. There were about 8 more steps to finish off the dish after it came out of the oven, but I will save you the trouble of reading through all that. Suffice it to say that the dish turned out like perfection, just like Julia Child said it would.

I served it up with some Le Sueur peas. Peas because that’s what Julia recommended and Le Sueur because that’s the brand Samantha describes in Sex In The City, season 4 as “the best” – so naturally, I’ve been curious since. All I can say is, they tasted like peas.

Dessert was a deliciously sweet and fresh pomegranate. The perfect ending to a perfect evening.