Cooking Without Thinking

Everyone has their challenging days. During the summer and fall my Tuesdays can be brutal. This is the afternoon of the CSA pickup, which also means doing triage on the vegetables that come into the house, and then figuring out what to put on the table for our nightly family dinner.

Last night I probably could have made better use of the seasonal vegetables, but I was in a rush.

I needed to make some kind of easy dinner, that didn’t require much active time (or thought) so I could bag all the produce and find it a home in our small and crowded fridge. Naturally, my answer was a Thai(ish) yellow curry of tofu and vegetables with brown rice.

Let me tell you how it’s done.

First you boil the water. This is what makes the foolproof brown rice. Not only does this not involve a lot of active time, but it can be done ahead of everything else. With the success of your rice assured, even if everything fails, you can always toss the rice with butter and soy sauce for a filling and tasty (if not particularly nutritious) repast.

While the water is boiling, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and prepare the spices.

Part of what makes this dish super easy is that I’ve made it a bunch before. There used to be a recipe somewhere, but it’s tucked away in a file. Anyhow, I can kind of put together the spices without thinking. This is the benefit of making something time and time again—you become an expert at it. Some might call it falling into a rut; I call it the benefits of having a repertoire. And as a result, I have all the component ingredients on hand around the house.

So I take a large baking dish and a decommissioned cheap coffee grinder that I now use just for spices. One tablespoon of coriander seeds and one tablespoon of cumin seeds go in the grinder and are pulverized to a fine dust. They get dumped in the dish. So does a tablespoon of brown sugar, some ginger powder, a dash of galangal, a dash of cayenne and enough turmeric to make it a few shades more yellow and less brown.

Add one tablespoon of fish sauce to the spices and sugar and make a paste.

When I’ve got tons of time, I’ll usually infuse a can of coconut milk with some dried lemongrass in a saucepan over low-moderate heat. The dried lemongrass gets strained out, and the coconut milk gets mixed into the spices. Last night, I skipped that step. There was no time for lemongrass.

And that’s it. Meet your creamy, delicious yellow curry sauce, made entirely of pantry staples. 

Cube up some firm tofu and put it in the sauce. Then cut up some vegetables. I used fresh carrots and potatoes. Cut them small, if you don’t have a lot of time, larger if you can let the curry bake for over an hour. I also threw some frozen French green beans in for color. If I have Kafir lime leaves in the freezer, they’ll be added to the dish as well.

In retrospect, I realize I should have parboiled the vegetables in the boiling rice water to speed the cooking time. Instead, I threw them in the sauce raw, stirred everything around in the baking pan, covered the thing with foil, and threw it in the oven.

After steaming and releasing the vegetables’ liquids for about thirty minutes, uncover and let the sauce thicken up, while the vegetables continue to cook the rest of the way.

It’s done when the vegetables are tender. Scoop one on top of the other. You could get fancy and garnish with cilantro, crushed peanuts, and lime. Or you could just squeeze Sriracha all over that sweet and creamy mound of food to perk it up a bit.

Dinner may take the better part of an hour, or maybe even a little bit more. But the active time gets really short, especially when you don’t have to think about the dish. Knife skills don’t hurt either. Remember, cooking doesn’t have to mean standing over a hot stove, continually futzing with the food as it cooks. This preparation lets the oven do the work.

And with all that inactive time, I was able to put all the vegetables from the CSA away.

Man, we have a lot of beets. Luckily we all love them braised in the oven, and served cold with good extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon. They just get so sweet that way that even the kids gobble them up.