How macafouchette bonded me with my new kitchen: A love story for home cooks

When I started looking at new places to live I had few deal breakers and must-have requirements for the space. A definite necessity was a gas stove. I must cook on fire. The food tastes so much better. You can control the heat much more easily and they work with all pot types. As life would have it, I ended up with an electric stove. And the kitchen and I have been off to a rough start. Today though, an unexpected quick lunch was the unspoken peace made between us.

I had grown used to putting down some serious food last year when the pandemic started. I was on the banana bread train. I was making naan and falafels from scratch. Whisking teriyaki sauces, folding and frying wontons. I got a Le Creuset skillet as a birthday present, and put that baby to work on cornbread and fried chicken. Every morning there was soft scrambled eggs, and not so less frequently were there shakshouka and larges quiches. In one day I made curried chicken and channa and aloo, after just washing up from the bake and shark and fish cakes that were made an hour before. Pelau, stew chicken, macaroni pie and plenty lentils. Lasagne, alfredo and green thai curries with shrimp and zucchini. Stuffed peppers, baked whole snapper. A vanilla cake with guava yogurt frosting. Charcuterie boards and homemade hummus. Morroccan inspired plates and perfected Caribbean bowls. A storm? I was cooking up an entirely new climate. I was stirring clouds and winds daily, on a wonderful gas stove.

I returned to Trinidad for several months, adapting to a new kitchen over there, outfitted with not just an electric stove but a glass top one! Pots would spin and slip off the hot circular spaces. One burner stopped working, but who could even tell? The stove would get too hot too fast, burning butter and blackening garlic, then sometimes it would be so slow that any stir-fry became a steamed dish. I hated it. This is why I insisted that an electric stove would have no place in my new apartment when I eventually got back to NY. But here we are. Me and these heating coils.

The first few weeks back, I stocked up on ready meals from Trader Joe’s and Amazon Fresh. The Amazon meals were terrible. The Trader Joe’s ones were less so, but I couldn’t keep that up. I tried my special soft scramble recipe. Awful. I fumbled over the tiny space, re-learning the rhythm of miniscule NYC kitchens. A small cutting board. Virtually no counter space. The oven wouldn’t broil and brown, so the jerk chicken had squishy skin. I tried pastas and other basic things, but for a while even my appetite rebeled. I missed the fire. Earlier this week I took my time, seduced the stove. Played music, slowly cooked the diced eggplant on a low heat in olive oil. A gorgeous virtually seedless baigan, softly melting over thirty minutes or more. I thought this was it! I boiled spaghetti on a back burner and even set up a strainer. No short cuts like I would normally do. I was easing myself into this like I was cooking for the first time. No rushing, not corners cut. The eggplant became a ragout and I tossed the perfectly al dente pasta in. It was goregous to look at. And so, so salty.

The next day it tasted much better, but I was so disappointed. I put my heart into that pasta, man. Where did this ghost saltiness come from? I was close to thinking maybe I had just lost my touch. My sweet hand. Maybe it’s not the stove or the tiny spce. Maybe it is me. Maybe I don’t cook as well when cooking for one. Maybe I am too far out of practice. But today when I spotted my cruciferous salad bag wilting, I went into auto-pilot mode. I’m a macafouchette priestess, if there was ever a thing. I am known to turn anything into something. I hate tossing food into the bin, so while it’s on its last breath, I transform it into something new. It is most often a fried rice concoction, or a soup or a thai inspired curry. Today was the rice.

I fried an egg in hefty spoonful of coconut oil. Watched the edges fluff up before scrambling it. Threw in the veggies; shredded cabbage and kale. Some fresh sliced garlic and grated ginger. Cold, old jasmine rice. Soy sauce and some powdered fried rice seasoning I got as a back-up for a lazy day. The wild card was some left over curried tofu chunks. Madness, yes. But I wasn’t planning to make any new rice to finish it another day, and taste was no longer a priority in this failed space. I was on the phone during this whole witchcraft, caring very little about the outcome and just instinctively moving through the folding and frying. I spooned the finished contraption into a bowl, and scooped the better part of a blackened avocado over it. I sat at the table, while still on the phonecall, and blew the first forkful cool. It was fucking delicious.

I heard this bit of life advice recently: “imagine there is no outcome. Imagine the outcome is the action. There is nothing down the line, only is there right now.” And as I type this, those words come back to me. I wasn’t trying too hard to do anything today in the kitchen. I had no expectations really. I just went along with how I am naturally inclined to cook, not thinking about the limitations. And there it was, the first meal that made me feel like I am my old self again. My fridge-cleaning, macafouchette-making, could-make-anything-out-of-anything self again.

Looking forward to more meals together.

Macafouchette – left over food [from Fr. ma ca fourchette – food stuck between the fork]