"fast" food

“Fast” recipes are all the rage now. Every food magazine worth its kosher salt is coming out with new sections/supplements/sister magazines filled with delicious dishes a frenzied cook can whip in 30 minutes. But if you actually buckle down and try to recreate one of those recipes, you will find that half of the ingredients, save salt and pepper, are a little more exotic than what an already frenzied person would have on hand. Pancetta? figs? Unsulphured molasses? petit peas? Any given time I may have one of the 8 things you need to complete one dish (okay, I probably would never have petit peas, don’t even know what that is), but never would I have all 8. (I’m a 20 something New Yorker living in a shoebox disguised as a human dwelling, with unlimited access to delivery and limited access to supermarkets, so I do have an excuse.) By the time I gather all the ingredients required, I could have ordered and digested Village Mingala. The other option is to plan your meals for the week and shop on the weekend. But, I can’t even pick out my shoes for work, let alone think 2 days in advance.

There are a few food basics everyone should have in their fridge and pantry: eggs, some fresh herbs (I’m partial to rosemary or thyme since they don’t rot so quickly and are easy to work with), garlic (again, they don’t go bad). Get a couple of tomatoes, a package of sliced ham, and an onion at the deli on the corner and you got yourself an herb omelet. Me? I like to scramble diced tomatoes with eggs. Get the tomatoes nice and soft so that the juices infuse the scrambled eggs. Add a dash of soy sauce and sesame oil, and voila, homey Taiwanese dish.

Another thing to do in a pinch is fried rice. Take any Chinese stir-fry take-out leftover (garlic pork, broccoli beef, etc), dump it in a wok or pan and heat it up. No oil is necessary since Chinese food is pretty well slicked already. Scoop out your day-old rice from the carton and throw that into the mix. Once the rice starts to brown and harden slightly, crack an egg or two over the wok and mix in. Squirt on some Sriracha and your boyfriend will never know he’s eating leftovers.