Recipe: Orange You Glad You Like Veggies

The sizzle and the simmers

Tell everyone to just shut up for a moment so you can hear the sizzle of the pan. This recipe doesn’t have all that much in the way of sizzling, truth be told, but you have the right to listen to it all the same.

Also, we haven’t started yet, so nothing should be sizzling. Maybe your brain, because while you were looking up the recipe you got distracted by all the voices around. Your work Slack and your kid’s daycare’s Slack and all the social media you combed through to get to this recipe. That, especially, makes your brain sizzle, and you know it does, and you wade through that particular bog anyway. Even though, also clattering in your brain are the newsletters and thinkpieces and reels that tell you to ignore its sizzle. That tell you you should be keeping digital voices away. Telling you you are being invaded and that you should opt out.

That’s not important right now. What’s important right now is you’re going to pre-heat the oven to 415. Peel a butternut squash and cut it into “steaks”, then poke an eggplant with a fork a few times and rub it down with olive oil, and as you do, try to forget that post an algorithm put in front of you that said an economic downturn so severe is coming that we’ll all be foraging for mushrooms soon. Rub olive oil on the squash too, salt and pepper, and if you’re feeling a little wild, add some berbere, why not.

If you have a gas stove (no, no, no, we’re not going there right now—you rent this kitchen and this stove and you’re not even sure if the studies that raised the alarm on them were actually that alarming or if it was just the alarming nature of headlines on articles about the stuides), place an orange bell pepper on the open flame and let the quiet sizzle and the pleasant aroma fill the room (and sure, the whirr of the vent to clear out the fumes, just in case).

You know what, grab another orange bell pepper and roast that sucker too. If you don’t have a gas stove, congratulations on outliving us all. Rub olive oil on your your bell peppers and place them on the same sheet pan with your eggplant. I think. I have a gas stove and am doomed to an early grave, but my peppers are always charred to a beautiful (cancerous?) crisp and then set aside to sweat in a ziploc bag. If the oven sang its sing-song “I’m ready” song already, slide the tray(s?) with the squash and the eggplant and the peppers into the oven.

Rinse some greens. If they’re mustard greens, great. Collard or any other hearty green will do, though kale is not ideal (at the risk of recalling the many, many takes circulating (still!) about whether or not kale is fantastic or the devil or a punchline or a superfood). In a medium stock pan, heat a dab of butter, then cook a minced shallot until softened. Add garlic for another minute, then add half a cup of mirin letting the alcohol burn away for five minutes or so, before adding a cup of homemade vegetable stock. Ignore the voices in your head telling you that the store-bought stock intended to taste homemade is not homemade at all. It is high in sodium and adding waste to the world that cannot handle another ounce of it. And it’s not as tasty. Add it anyway. Let simmer, just because you like the sound of the bubbling. Because it makes you feel skilled and happy to have multiple burners going on at once.

Maybe turn the vent function on the microwave to “high” just to be safe.

Shit, the tomato. What did you mean to do with this big beautiful orange heirloom tomato? You could roast it. If it’s been fifteen minutes since the squash went in the oven, flip it over. Make a little room for the tomato.

Now, this is important: put on a children’s musician on while you cook, a pretty song that in a video concert you found online, a theater full of children in the 80s close their eyes to and sway quietly for the full two minutes, listening to nothing but the gentle guitar and the words of gratitude. And yes, you know you just wrote about this children’s musician a week ago and double-dipping like this feels like cheating, but what kind of person doesn’t hold the same thought for more than a week? So you tell your (imagined) detractors to shut right up and grab the food processor.

You hate to clean it, are always slightly afraid of the blade, always slightly resentful of the way olive oil clings to it. But hell, you actually like doing the dishes, as long as it’s not all day every day. You’re sure there’s an argument to be made for using the blender instead. Or for placing the processor in the more water-efficient dishwasher. No, no, don’t you dare google whether it’s machine-washable. You will get sucked in by all those voices, those algorithms, all the essays we write about how we should all stop reading so many essays online. And you will miss the song! Everyone shut up for one damn second and just close your eyes like you’re a child in the eighties with a bowl cut and denim overalls and listen to this song about gratitude.

Alright, you were present for a moment. You breathed. You emptied your mind. Now, the food processor. Right. Olive oil, garlic (cut more garlic than you think you need, is a great rule of thumb. And maybe you shouldn’t have listened to Anthony Bourdain all those years ago in his assertion that garlic presses are evil, cause boy oh boy would you have saved a millenia mincing), a healthy fistful of rinsed fresh dill, and some sherry vinegar. Salt, of course, and a baby spoonful of sugar. Blast it until it looks like something you can call “dill oil.” Strain if necessary, but who’s watching? Well, maybe your family group chat if you decide to send them documentation. Or your online followers, if you haven’t been shamed into stopping that. Yes, of course, there’s a case to be made for never again documenting a single thing anyone alive eats, and an even stronger one for not sharing the documentation. But there are harmless pleasures we all take for ourselves. They literally harm no one, and so why not take them? Why, why, why, because someone you’ve never met said they hate that aspect of humanity, and there was an echoing chorus of assent? Echoing so long that it resounds still, as if we all haven’t been shamed out of the act (mostly). And so you (we) stuffed these harmless pleasures down, suffocated them without so much as a tearful goodbye, pretended our joy was shameful.

Alright, take out the squash steaks, those should be good and ready. The tomato too. Maybe the peppers? Again, unless you’ve got a gas stove, I have no idea what you should expect. I’m mostly assuming peppers roast in the oven too. Set aside about a quarter of the stock, then toss the greens in it.

Give the food processor a rinse and a wipe, or, hell, just use the blender for this one. Add half the peppers (making sure to rinse the charred—or not?—skin off) and the tomato, some salt, and a big ol’ scoop of the stock that’s been so pleasantly simmering away. Blend and strain into a medium sauce pan (even if it’s just enough liquid for a small one—who cares, who’s watching?), then keep on the stove at a simmer. Let the simmers become an orchestra.

Let’s say the eggplant’s done. Keep the skin on, remembering that you read in every damn recipe that you’re supposed to “drain” an eggplant before roasting it, and how you’ve never once been able to tell the difference. Cut it into strips, and do the same with the other half of the bell peppers. Toss with olive oil, garlic (see?), chilli flakes, lemon, and parsley. A little dill too, since you’ll likely have leftover.

You might have to again remind your brain to shut up about that article you read with the whole mushroom-foraging thing. All these thoughts we’re constantly absorbing from the world. The all-so accessible world, with all its thoughts.

Here’s the thing.

We don’t have to listen. Not to all of them. Not all of the time.

Not now. With the sizzle and the simmers and the food processor and the microwave vent you had almost forgotten is still going on. There are so, so many thoughts out there invading our brains. So many we are sending out to invade others. But now it is time to plate.

Steaks first. Eggplant and peppers on top. The pepper-tomato broth follows. Then the greens, drained. Add a drizzle of your pretentious-ass “dill oil.” Think what you’d like to call this dish, and then keep that goddamned thought to yourself.