I was able to spend a good part of my weekend with K and her husband (and my adorable godson of course), and once again they so generously invited me to stay for a meal. Saturday was pulled pork tacos (the pork was made by K, and very well done I might add) on homemade corn tortillas (a la Z), and Sunday was Bachelor Surprise. K doesn't like to cook much, even though she can and does make good food like awesome red velvet cake; most of the tasty food in the household can be attributed to her husband Z. Z is very much a do-it-yourselfer in the kitchen; he comes from the same school of thought that homemade from scratch is best. He even roasts his own coffee (something Scooter hopes to try after we move); it's because of Z that I discovered and have come to love the "city roast," a roast of coffee that I can't find in the store since it has a much shorter shelf life than the whole bean or ground coffee you can buy. I wish I could accomplish some of what he's able to do, but alas with a shoebox-sized kitchen (that is to say a "galley") cooking everything from scratch is not always possible because I don't have enough workspace or can't fit the appliances into my (microscopic) kitchen. I love eating over there because even if I don't recognize the dish, I know it will be good.
On Sunday when we were eating his latest batch of Bachelor Surprise, he explained what it was and how he made it. He started making it years ago to use up leftover food. It's an amalgamation of the leftovers in the fridge--whatever they might be--seasoned with complementary spices. Because leftovers inevitably change (and the spices he then chooses do too), the dish is different every time he makes it, and sadly there's no real recipe for it. K fondly remembers him meeting her at the airport with a bowl of Bachelor Surprise many a time before they got married.
When she was alive, my grandmother would do something similar with soup. In her house, soup was a staple every day for lunch, except on Sundays when she would make brunch. Every few days, Gramma would make Refrigerator Soup. She would start with a soup starter (a brand that you can no longer find around here) and add leftovers from the fridge: sauteed zucchini and squash, giblets she saved from a chicken she pan-fried, leftover chicken, cut-up cooked string beans, sometimes even pasta, anything that needed to be used before it got too old was fair game. Despite the hodge-podge of ingredients, the end result was always a thick, hearty soup that she was well-known for among family and friends. Her Refrigerator Soup was relished any time of the year regardless of the weather, usually with a small sandwich or two on the side.
Both Z and Gramma didn't work from a recipe--the mixing of ingredients and spices is done by inclination, by feel. And even though no version of Bachelor Surprise or Refrigerator Soup is ever the same, it's still really good. It is the measure of a true cook to be able to create something delicious by just throwing things together sans recipe. Z and my grandmother have/had the idea down, and I would like to think that Scooter and I are coming along with that kind of cooking too. We'll get in a lot more practice once we have a bigger kitchen to work in.
Do you have something you make that you just "throw together?" Feel free to post about it in the comments.
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