For Better or Worse (But Never for Lunch)

It’s been snowing almost constantly since December 26th.

In my small Connecticut hamlet, we’re buried under fifty-five inches, and have had at least one storm every week. We’ve paid bill after bill for shoveling, and over the weekend had to have a team of roof shovelers come out to get rid of the heavy snow that was threatening to destroy my office ceiling. Today we woke up and found the trees covered with ice. The cars were covered, the roads were covered, and once we took the dogs out, they were covered. Susan has been either really sick with bronchitis and home, or unable to get to work, and home. And today, it was yet another work-from-home day for my beloved, my dearest, the love of my life who married me two years ago this past Monday.

“Do you want some tea?” she asked, after she called her office.

“What do you think? Don’t I always want tea in the morning?” I was puttering around behind her, wondering what had compelled her to slice bread for toast, but not hang the bread knife back up on the magnetic strip that lines one wall of the kitchen.

“Green or purreh?”

“Purreh. Why would I have anything else? I’ve been having purreh for breakfast every day now for two weeks.”

“I just asked—”

“I know. I just don’t know why—”

She began rummaging through our cabinet, looking for loose tea. A small red Asian tea cup clattered to the floor.

“For god’s sake—!”

“Why are you so testy?”

“Why are you so scattered?”

“I can’t find my glasses,” she mumbled.

I rolled my eyes. “I put two pairs of them on the entry way table, where they’re sitting next to absolutely everything else we own in the world.”

“Well, they’re not there,” she said.

“You must have moved them—”

“I did not,” she replied.

“I’m sure you did,” I answered.

“Did not—” she said.

“Did too,” I answered.

And that pretty much about sums up where we’re at in this house, after nearly a week inside. At first, it was fun in that warm, snuggly, slightly libidinous way that everyone sort of assumes when you say you’re stuck inside with no where to go and nothing to do. You defrost everything from the bowels of your freezer, and make soups and daubes and all sorts of cozy, heavy, rib-sticking, diet-busting stuff. When the power goes out (which it does, if you live in my neighborhood), you light a fire, gather the animals, and read until around 5 pm, when it gets too dark to do anything. Then you pile on the blankets, go to bed looking like John Candy and Steve Martin in that scene from Trains, Planes, and Automobiles, and fall asleep praying that the pipes don’t burst.

The next day, when and if the power comes back on, you hope that the plow comes by before it gets dark, and you try to stay pleasant. Because really, let’s be honest here—a week inside with anyone, even if you love them to bits—can make you want to tear your face off. And I’m saying this about myself, too. I’m sure I can be as annoying as a middle-of-the-night car alarm when you’ve got a migraine. The smallest things start to get really aggravating, like the habit that I have of humming while brushing my teeth or leaving half-used sugar packets on the counter, or the way Susan always tends to precariously pile books up on our kitchen island small one first, so they’re guaranteed to topple over onto some unsuspecting cat, or toe. It drives me nuts. It’s like LOST, only in suburbia.

So what’s the answer to this? What have we been doing lo these many snow-bound days and nights? How have we managed to keep ourselves sane and not feeling like Jack Nicholson in The Shining?

We’ve cooked. Constantly. And not the easy, simple cooking about which I tend to go on ad nauseum; we’ve been cooking mightily complicated stuff that calls for mincing and dicing and chopping, steaming and blanching and poaching, and long, exhausting lists of obscure ingredients that we happen to have, like the galangal I had to put into the Tom Yum Goong that Susan wanted me to make for her on Monday, when her bronchitis was at its worst. We’ve made cottage cheese and dill bread, and tofu salad from The Greens Cookbook. We’ve been on a vegetarian tear lately, so we also made big-flavored Hyderabadi-spiced, pan-roasted cauliflower; smokey, charred eggplant; braised kale and chard with flageolet and a ton of garlic; we’ve made the green olive and Meyer lemon salad from Viana LaPlace’s wonderful The Unplugged Kitchen; we’ve made coddled, curried eggs that we’ve cooked in a bain marie; and when the roof shovelers were here, we made a dozen grilled cheese sandwiches for them. Simultaneously. Susan only told me that I was incorrectly assembling them once, for which I thanked her.

What’s next? We have locally-made merguez in the freezer and wild salmon in the refrigerator. We have a dozen different kinds of whole wheat pasta in the pantry, and today might be a good day to squirrel myself away and figure out what to do with the two bags of Urad dal I have taking up room in my spice cabinet. I can sit in my office, at my computer, and call it work.

After breakfast today—after we had tea and toast and called our respective mothers to check in and make sure they weren’t going out for any joyrides—I went through a teetering pile of mail on the kitchen island. Underneath it was one pair of Susan’s glasses—her favorite bright blue ones that make her look like a younger, slightly hipper Lina Wurtmuller. I handed them over, moving another pile of books from the island into my office. They were suspiciously damp.

“Um, honey,” I said sweetly, “Why are the books wet?”

“Because they slid into the dog’s water bowl during the night. Remember that crash we heard?”

“And how do we think that happened,” I asked, imperiously.

I wanted her to really think long and hard about it.

Smoked Spiced Eggplant

(Adapted from Suvir Saran’s Indian Home Cooking)

I should say off the bat that I’ve never been a particular fan of eggplant: it absorbs oil like a sponge unless you salt it, and then you have to rinse it, and that makes it slimy. If you undercook it, it takes on a texture not unlike packing peanuts. But lately, I’ve been eating a lot of vegetables—possibly more than ever before—and preparing all manner of things that I’ve suddenly developed a craving for, like this smokey eggplant puree that can be eaten cold or hot or at room temperature, making it ideal for snowdrift-bound midday nibblers who may or may not lose power. You can make it super-spicy or mild, and if you roast the eggplant over a charcoal grill, you’ll wind up with an incomparably smokey essence that gives the dish a whole other dimension.

Serves 4

1 large eggplant (about 1 pound)

2 tablespoons canola or grapeseed oil

2 tablespoons fresh minced ginger

1 large red onion, finely chopped

salt, to taste

2 garlic cloves, ground to a paste in a mortar and pestle

1 tablespoon unsweetened shredded coconut

1 tablespoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon garam masala

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3 canned tomatoes, chopped (or 2 ripe medium tomatoes, chopped)

1/2 jalapeno, chopped

2 tablespoons fresh chopped cilantro

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F. Jab the eggplant a few times on each side with a fork, place on a heavy duty cookie sheet, and roast in the oven until completely blackened, and the flesh is soft, about 30-4o minutes. Let cool, pull off the skin and the stem, and place the eggplant flesh in a bowl and mash it with a potato masher.

Heat the oil in a large wok over medium-high heat. Add the ginger and cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. Add the onion and salt and cook, stirring until the onion begins to brown around the edges, about 10 minutes.

Add the garlic and cook, stirring, about 30 seconds. Add the coconut, the coriander, cumin, garam masala, and cayenne, and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add about a tablespoon of water, stirring, until the onion begins to stick to the pan, about 1 more minute.

Add the tomatoes and the eggplant, stir well and often, and continue to cook, about 5 minutes. Stir in the jalapeno, 1 tablespoon of the cilantro, and the lemon juice. Taste for salt, spoon into a serving bowl, and garnish with the balance of the cilantro.