The Tyranny of Deadlines; Dinner

Last week was a hard week. Rather than focusing on all that I could be doing, I regressed and was beating myself up over what I was failing to do. Never a good sign that. You would think, at my age, that I had beaten all those childhood demons into dust, but alas they still extend whisky tendrils into my thoughts. Occasionally they latch on, at which point pulling them out screaming is a chore.

I let myself putter.

I read. I took care of some household tasks in preparation for going away. I knitted. I played bridge. I released myself from obligation. Only by stepping away could I allow myself to let go. And I found myself right where I needed to be.

I came home, took a deep breath, looked in the refrigerator, and made myself dinner. There is nothing like limited resources to spark creativity. It was nothing fancy, and yet it was good.

I had taken a piece of salmon out of the freezer in the morning. The only other perishable items in the fridge were a lemon, a small celeriac, a small zucchini and some milk.

I peeled and cubed the celeriac, covered it with milk, added a bay leaf, and simmered it until tender. Then I pureed it. The idea came from Joshua McFadden in his newest book Six Seasons of Pasta, where he uses the celeriac puree as a component of other dishes. Most of the pasta dishes in this book are not resonating deeply with me, but I find the simplicity of this celeriac puree perfect on its own. It has become a highlight of the winter vegetable season. I imagined that celeriac puree would be delicious as a bed for salmon.

The fennel stems were minced with garlic and some jarred Calabrian chiles and mashed into some butter. I squeezed some lemon juice, salt and pepper over the salmon, topped it with the fennel stem butter, and roasted it.

I originally intended to slice and pan sear the zucchini, but on a whim I picked up Samin Nosrat’s new book, Good Things. I saw that she had several recipes for charred zucchini, including one where she uses pickled red onions, Calabrian chiles, and mint. I closed the book and made my own version of that, using pickled red onions that were already in my fridge, and dill fronds rather than mint. I dressed the salad with the remaining lemon juice and a splash of red wine vinegar.

My pickled onions felt like a hybrid sort of thing to me. They started out as sumac onions, a middle-eastern condiment/salad, a quick “pickle” really, made from red onions, sumac, olive oil and lemon juice. Sumac onions are usually eaten fresh. I made these last fall, when I was testing a new cookbook, and although the recipe used traditional ingredients, it varied somewhat from previous versions of this bright salad I had made. I didn’t like these onions young, as a fresh salad. Luckily I didn’t give up on them but squirreled them away in the back of the fridge and forgot about them. Recently rediscovered, they are now delicate, complex, tart, sweet, and utterly wonderful. Combined with the zucchini, chiles, and fennel fronds, they made a wonderful salad that added brightness to the plate and perfectly offset the richness of the salmon.

This is not an atypical thrown-together meal. It is the kind of meal I tend to call “not cooking” although of course I did cook. Mostly these meals come together and they suit me, my tastes. They don’t always end up this delicious though. Cooking is like that. No matter how good you are, there are day when somethng is off, and it may not be the cook. There are days things don’t work at all, days that are only meh, and days that are wonderful. The wonderful outnumber the meh, but I should not take them for granted.

I also cannot usually reference the source of my ideas, but here I thought it was useful. I love cookbooks, collect them to some extent, but I am not, by nature, a follower of recipes. Recipes, or rules, are not my strong suit, although I do think you need to understand them, understand their purpose, before fudging the lines.

I wanted to record this dinner because it made me happy. I wanted to record this dinner because it cleared out the fog that had been shorting my mental synapses. It is not important in and of itself, but it is a reminder of the power to let go of those imposed ideas of obligation and just go with the flow, to be myself. What I cook, what I eat, is such a reflection of who I am in any given moment.

Why can’t my writing be the same?