How to Cook When You Just Want to Be Fed

It requires some resolve, because no matter where you live there’s probably the option to get tacos or pizza or a hot dog rather than cook dinner yourself. So the first thing you should do is arrange for a snack. Call it an appetizer—some olives or peanuts, a piece of toast to dip in olive oil, an apple, a chunk of cheese—and make sure it’s something that you enjoy eating. This snack needs to provide temporary sustenance but also some sensory pleasure, if not a narrow degree of indulgence. It needs to get your engine revving.

I remember times when I’d come home from work via a late yoga class or after a run and on my way I’d stop at the C-Town in Park Slope to get supplies for dinner. I’d buy lots of ingredients—I was very hungry, which is a well documented, categorically terrible time to do any kind of grocery shopping—intending to turn them into a TBD dinner, if not several TBD dinners: pasta, a bunch of virtuous vegetables like bok choy, canned tomatoes, a block of tofu, a box of vegetable stock, a can of beans. Then I’d also get a few “snacks,” things that beckoned from the other end of the grocery store and down aisles that I didn’t necessarily need to pass through. More than once these snacks included both a bag of honey Dijon flavored Kettle chips and a giant Symphony Bar, the milk chocolate one with toffee and almonds in it. I’d think, how about just a few chips and a nibble of candy bar, and then I’ll cook dinner. What happened, also more than once, is I ravenously ate the whole bag of chips and the whole, giant-sized candy bar, and then I spent the rest of the evening curled up in the fetal position on my bed.

So grant yourself a snack, make an effort to not have it be potato chips and a candy bar, and show a lot of restraint with it. Now start cooking dinner. That’s basically it, that’s my advice. Make yourself an omelet, or a stir-fry with rice, or a tuna sandwich, or defrost a tub of soup from the freezer, or make spaghetti—whatever it is that sounds good. Tonight, another big pot of soup—in spite of the temperature bump—is what sounded good to me.

This is a soup I first made last year, which I adapted from one of Deborah Madison’s recipes, and like most recipes that I’ve stuck with, it fluctuates and evolves depending on my mood and my kitchen inventory. For tonight you need some quinoa, half of a medium kabocha squash, an onion, a carrot, some celery, garlic, ginger, half a bunch of kale, some apple cider—hard or not; mine was fresh-pressed from the farmers market—and about 4 ounces of feta.

Rinse 1 cup of quinoa. I’ve read that this is an unnecessary step, that almost all brands available take care of the rinsing step for us already, but I once cooked quinoa without rinsing it and it tasted bitter enough that the dish was if not ruined, mostly unpalatable. I always rinse it now: Put it in a sieve, set it under running water, file through it with your fingers a few times, drain it, then flip the sieve over into a good-sized soup pot, tapping it against the rim to disloge any of the grains that are stuck. Cover with 8 cups of water, bring to a boil, add 1-1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, turn it down to a simmer, and then cook it uncovered for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, dice a medium carrot, 2 stalks of celery, half of a large onion or a whole smaller one; mince 2 cloves of garlic and grate about 2 teaspoons of ginger. Finally, cut your squash into 1/2-inch cubes. This is not a step to do absent-mindedly. Kabocha is an intimidating gourd. It’s dense, round, hard, and heavy, and I once read in a cookbook that it’s a vegetable that requires a cleaver. I don’t have a cleaver, but I don’t question that advice. Be patient with it. Carefully hack it in half, using a cleaver if you have one, and set aside one of the halves for some other use. Scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Peel the squash—though you don’t necessarily have to, the skin is edible and not particularly thick; just know that it can sometimes be pretty fibrous and, in my opinion, can completely compromise the texture of your soup—by laying it flat on a cutting board and working over it with a vegetable peeler, or by shaving it off with a sharp knife as you would to supreme an orange, or by cutting it into wedges and then slicing the skin of in more manageable doses. The main thing is to try to keep it lying flat on the cutting board whenever you’re going at it with a knife. Otherwise it’s prone to rolling around and landing on your foot, let alone sending your knife off in an unexpected direction, such as at your hand or your wrist. After it’s peeled, cut it into cubes, which is easier and safer than peeling it, but . . . don’t get too comfortable.

Once the quinoa is cooked, drain it over a big bowl or a large liquid measuring cup so that you can collect the cooking water. Like the last soup, where the bean broth doubled as stock, the quinoa cooking liquid is going to moonlight as broth here. Measure out 6 cups of the stock and discard the rest, or if for some reason you don’t get 6 cups cooking liquid, make up what’s missing with tap water. Taste it. It’s kind of good!

Wipe out the soup pot, put it back over medium-high heat and add a few tablespoons of olive oil. Add the carrots, onions, celery, squash, and a big pinch of salt, and cook, covered, for about 5 minutes. The shades of orange should intensify, the vegetables should become fragrant, and everything ought to sizzle and stick to the pot. Turn the heat up a touch. Stir in 2 minced cloves of garlic along with 2 teaspoons of freshly grated ginger, stirring just until you smell them, then pour in 2/3 cup apple cider. Scrape at the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon to get any browned bits off.

This is the point where I become really glad that I decided to cook dinner. Up until now I’ve been busy chopping and measuring and generally tending-to, but now come stronger, more sensory hints of the meal that’s to come. You might have noticed the bright, floral aroma of the squash as you were chopping it, but when it combines with the cider, garlic, and ginger, along with sizzling audio effects, the whole picture really comes into view.

Pour in the reserved quinoa cooking liquid. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, and cook until the squash is tender. This will only take 10 to 15 minutes or so, and while that’s happening, you can wash the half-bunch of kale, remove the stems, and slice it into thin ribbons. Once the squash is tender, and if you like a creamier, more chowder-ey consistency, you can stick an immersion blender into the soup pot and pulse 6 or 7 times. Stir in the quinoa and the kale. After the kale is tender, which should take just a couple minutes, crumble in the 4 ounces of feta. Add many, many grinds of fresh black pepper. Taste.

A lot of times I’ll follow a recipe (or mostly follow a recipe) for something like soup and when it comes to this next-to-last opportunity to taste before serving, it’s just not what I was hoping for. It lacks punch. This soup had so much going for it! All those wonderful aromas and the sweet sizzling action, and now . . . this? Never fear. The two good remedies, which obviously are not my remedies but are just cooking facts, are acid and salt. If it tastes dull, like a grain salad that has no dressing on it, add acid—usually lemon juice or vinegar, and in this soup I’d use lemon juice. Usually only a few drops are all that’s needed. If it tastes flat, like boring vegetable-flavored water, add salt. Salt can make a big difference and do a lot to unite everything that’s happening in the soup before it begins to taste “salty.” And then if  it tastes thin and you want to amp up the richness, add fat: olive oil, yogurt, cream, coconut milk, etc.

So taste the soup, fine tune it however you need to, and serve it. Garnish it with minced parsley, cilantro, or some thinly sliced scallions and a drizzle of olive oil if you’d like, and drink a beer with it. You’ll have 5 or 6 good-sized servings that you can pack away in the fridge or freezer for future meals. Like most soups, this one improves as it sits overnight. Which, I should have mentioned earlier: One way to cook when you just want to be fed is keep your kitchen armed with good leftovers.