A Clipping from my Ex-Pat Diaries: Cooking

Sauteing red pepper and kiełbasa

As I’ve said here before, I love cooking.  I love the magic in the chemistry of cooking.  I love the fact that egg whites, when whipped long enough, will transform from a gooey, questionable substance into beautiful white meringues.  To me, that transformation, like the transformation of whipping cream from liquid to solid, is nothing short of magical.  I likewise love the magic created within the oven or the refrigerator.  A person can put gelatinous, unappealing goo into the oven, set the timer, and (after being tortured by delicious smells for however long) when the timer dings, amazing, solid deliciousness emerges.  The fridge is even better; a person can put a good meal into the fridge and when she pulls it out the next day, the magic of the fridge has transformed that good meal into a great meal.   It’s amazing and, to be entirely honest, a little bit miraculous.

When I cook at my mother’s house, food is miraculous because the number of ingredients and kitchen supplies she has allow me to easily make a flourless chocolate cake or the red sauce to end all sauces.  Being allowed to cook in my mother’s kitchen is like letting loose the kid in the proverbial candy shop—everything I need is there and at my disposal.  Cooking at my mother’s house is adventurous and fun.  When I cooked at my various apartments in Caldwell and Eugene, the food was miraculous because it was almost always for the first time.  I made Chocolate Gran Marnier cake for the first time in my post-college apartment, using nesting saucepans for my double boiler and a blender to give my egg whites soft peaks (not fun, I don’t recommend this method); I made crab cakes with a lemon burre blanc in my second grad school apartment, along with blackberry cobbler, blackberry buckle, and blackberry pancakes; and I made olive oil rosemary cake in my post-grad school apartment.  Cooking in these apartments was a sort of ongoing experiment, a flexing of my culinary wings as I flirted with techniques and styles.  The food was miraculous because it was new, daring, and done completely on my own.

When I cook while living abroad, the food is miraculous simply because it actually comes together.  When I lived in Mexico, cooking was complicated because we lived with a temperamental, leaky old gas stove and an exploded oven.  The stove leaked gas, making each lighting of the pilot light a flirtation with death (seriously, our kitchen often smelled like burnt hair because someone lit the pilot with a WHOOSH and lost their hand hair).  Once the flame was lit, cooking was another matter entirely; the stove only had two settings, barely on and boiling.  To try to achieve some sort of happy medium was basically impossible, so if a person wanted to avoid burning their food, constant vigilance was mandatory (and even then it wasn’t guaranteed). 

My ingredients with their complicated, often
unpronounceable Polish labels

My issues with equipment aside, however, cooking in Mexico wasn’t too terribly difficult because I could always find the necessary ingredients.  Although the ingredients were packaged in Spanish, either my knowledge of the language or its inherent similarity to English usually made grocery shopping relatively easy.  Also, because Mexico is a part of North America, a large majority of the products sold in stores bore a striking resemblance to their English/American counterparts.  This is not the case in Warsaw, however.  While some foods and ingredients share similar names to their English or Latin equivalents (my personal favorite is that bread for sandwiches and toasting is called “tost”), so many others simply do not.  When buying produce or easily recognizable products, like coffee or milk, the language barrier is easily overcome and actually provides an opportunity to learn.  When buying spices, however, the opportunity to learn is present, but it’s more of an after-the-fact type of experience as I learn that “pieprz ziołowy” does not mean “cumin” but in fact means “herbal pepper” and would appear to be some sort of spice mixture or rub for meats.  As often as possible, I try to rely on the picture on the label, though this isn’t the safest of methods.  When trying to make black bean quesadillas last month, I needed black beans; I scoured the bean shelf, located a can that had convincingly small, dark bean on the label and purchased said can with some confidence.  When I pried it open in my kitchen, I discovered that it wasn’t black beans at all, but red. 

My "Warsaw Edition Chili" simmering away

Cooking in Warsaw is miraculous because it’s something of a miracle that I am able to produce something out of the chaos created by language and circumstance.  To my surprise, the pieprz ziołowy has a pleasant scent like anise mixed with Middle Eastern spices, warm and tasty, and it added to the flavors of my soup quite nicely.  Similarly, when mixed with fresh lemon juice and garlic powder, the red beans worked as a fine substitute for black beans in my quesadillas.  Each time I attempt a familiar recipe, I rename it with the addendum of “the Warsaw edition” because so many of my old recipes call for ingredients I cannot find, like black beans. 

Tonight’s attempt is my Polish spin on my favorite vegetarian chili.  I have to admit here that while the Warsaw Edition Black Bean Quesadillas contain red beans instead of black, and therefore aren’t actually “black bean quesadillas,” they do bear a strong resemblance to the original recipe.  My “vegetarian chili,” however, does not.  To start out with, one of the primary ingredients of my vegetarian chili is tofu, an item I have yet to see in Poland.  So instead of tofu I cooked with kiełbasa, or Polish sausage, so I may have to alter the name more than just adding “the Warsaw edition.” 

At home this chili includes:

• Spices: garlic, cumin, chili powder, paprika, chipotle
• Vegetables: red peppers, mushrooms, avocado
• Tomatoes: two cans of whole, peeled tomatoes and a small can of tomato paste
• Black beans
• Tofu
• Freshly grated Tillamook cheese and a dollop of sour cream

In Warsaw, I couldn’t find cumin, paprika, or chipotle, so I’ve had to settle for garlic, chili powder, and pieprz ziołowy.  The store was sold out of mushrooms and I haven’t seen an avocado here for months, so I put in a red pepper, corn, and a “soup mix” that had onion, mushroom, broccoli, and potato.  At the store, I trusted the can label and bought what I thought were diced tomatoes; turns out it was a thick and chunky tomato sauce, so I put in two cans of thick and chunky tomato sauce with one small can of tomato paste.  This didn’t really hurt the chili, but it now has quite the thick consistency.  And, of course, I have no black beans or tofu, so I settled for red beans and kiełbasa.  While it bears only a passing resemblance to my favorite vegetarian chili, though, my “Warsaw Edition Chili” came out warm and delicious and just what I needed on this chilly night.  Like I said before: something of a miracle.

The finished product: a little thicker in consistency than its Eugene counterpart,
and definitely more carnivore in nature, but I can report most happily that my
"Warsaw Edition Chili" is a recipe to be repeated.