Improv Cuisine For Single Men

My favorite style of cooking is improvisational. It suits both my budget and my general inability to follow simple instructions such as those found in recipes.

This is almost all the food I had in my kitchen on Sunday. I was hungry as hell, but a long, sleepless night of playing records and tying cables had left me a little too shaky to drive- and the tranquilizers and sedatives I took 24 hours ago were finally starting to kick in, so I was pretty much stuck with:

A) Some prefab curry paste. Never stay home without it.
B) A can of beans.
C) Garlic. Fresh is better, but I was pretty wasted so this was all I had.
D) Hot Pepper Relish. Never run out. Life sucks without this.
E) Rice.
F) Frozen ground turkey, thawed.
G&H) Onion and Carrots.

In the background are two cans of gluten-free cat food. These are optional and not used in this example.

Chop up a few carrots and put some rice on the stove:

To cook rice: Put some rice in a pot. Put twice as much water as rice into the same pot, bring to a boil, set heat to low, cover with a snug lid and cook until fluffy. If it turns brown/black and smells scorched, you have overcooked it. Steam is to be expected, smoke is not.

Put the carrots in a skillet and saute them for a few minutes. While they simmer, dice the onion. Onions cook faster than carrots, so we are adding them later:


Once the carrots are a bit tender and the onions have started to become translucent, it's time to add the turkey and spices. If you are using ground beef, cook the beef first and drain off some of the fat before adding any spices, otherwise just add the bird, a few small spoons of curry, a few more of hot peppers and some garlic.
Mix it all together and let simmer until the turkey is cooked through.



The rice is done now. Take it and dump it into a larger pot. Add the skillet's contents and the (drained) can of beans. Cover and simmer for an hour or so.


What you will have resembles a scattering of rabbit droppings on a bed of poached maggots, but it tastes pretty good, is reasonably healthy -omitting the meat and adding more beans and veggies is an option- and best of all, it's under five bucks to prepare and it will feed one person for two days.

Cooking for guests is an entirely different affair. Perhaps we'll cover that in a later post .