Spite Cooking

A few days ago, I took leftovers to work.  I ate them early because I was particularly hungry, having had a small dinner the night before (AND WHO’S FAULT IS THAT, READER?  CERTAINLY NOT MINE.).  It would have been better heated up, but I did not heat it up (NOR WOULD I, NOR SHOULD I, NOR SHOULD ANYONE).  I looked at it through slitted eyes and shoveled it cold into my mouth, punish-chewing it even though it is quite tasty (YOU’RE GD RIGHT IT IS).  I was angry.  I was spite eating, a natural progression and the inevitable outcome of spite cooking.

Let me walk you through the night before.

Look at those lil' dumplins!

I have, as previously discussed, too much eggplant.  I grew these adorable tiny eggplants called Baby Patios, and they are precious and cute and yummy, but I am prepared to admit maybe not the most convenient for all cooking.  I’m not spiteful about them, Reader, they’re not at fault here.  They’re just less efficient than a Japanese eggplant or a regular old schlong-emoji eggplant when it comes to most ways of preparation. They’re perfect for the Korean banchan recipe I have, but I have made that dish three times now and was looking for some variety in my life.

Recently I took a load of eggplants over to my sister’s house

when I was dogsitting, and pulled ground beef out of her freezer to thaw, thinking there's gotta be something I can do with those ingredients.  Instead, I was lazy and just left them all there for her to come home to (Sorry, Sis! But I vacuumed tho!).  Anyway, when looking up recipes to send her to use her unasked for but now needing to be used ingredients, I found moussaka.

Today's geography lesson

Moussaka is a traditional dish from the Levant/ Middle East/ Balkans part of the world and it was like the only thing that came up when I googled eggplant and ground beef recipes, so it has been tickling around in the back of my head as I have been trying to consider what to do with all these eggplants that, btw, are still producing.  So when I was at Aldi the other day and I saw a pound of ground lamb for a reasonable price, my brain went “ding ding ding!!” and I thought, oh yeah, I can make moussaka!

(When I was on Forever Farm we raised sheep, which means in the spring we had lambs.  They are sooo cute, playful like a dog, making little leaps and headbutting their moms in the teats like fluffy, tiny jerks, and I loved them.  Then around their 7 month birthday we rounded them up and sent them off to slaughter, and I ate them.  I’m not saying I’m a nice person, I am saying lamb is delicious and I love it.)

So I actually look at the recipe, at a bunch of recipes in fact, and find one that, after you get through what appears to be every picture from their Greek vacation, seems to be a good fit.  We have either all of the ingredients or at least acceptable substitutes and it says it takes 40 minutes of prep time and then and hour and a half to cook, so I’m like, cool, let’s do this!

This, it turns out, is a lie.  Now, Reader, if you are a moussaka fan and have yourself climbed this mountain in the past, the lie might be obvious.  I, full of spite still, do not need your “Oh, yeah, that’s actually really complicated to prepare” feedback. I know.  I definitely now know.

Look, I’ve made my cavalier nature towards recipes clear, but I am a literate, intelligent human being and an experienced cook, so I expect things like “do this and set it aside for 30 minutes while you get started doing that.”  I understand that 40 minutes of prep means 40 minutes total, busy the whole time doing things.  That’s fine, I expected that, and I am good at multi-tasking (for example: while writing this on our back patio, I am simultaneously singing the National Anthem up through the window at “Andy,” who is in his office singing the National Anthem).

What I did not expect was for the actual recipe instructions to be organized in not-my-favorite-manner and also by someone who either has timelord powers or just lies.  I love a good project, but that is not what I was signing up for.  The project I wanted to spend my night doing was binging tv and inspecting my bellybutton.  I think I’m not alone when I say unexpectedly complicated activities are way, way more exhausting than fun-because-I-feel-like-it complicated activities.  This ish came at me on a work night, people.

Let me give you some examples.  First you

Note related to this gods cursed recipe.  In the process of
preparing this blog post I have gone back to the
original recipe.  There is an option, Reader,
to "jump to the recipe" at the top, which I'm sure you know
because you have definitely clicked through to see if
there was some user error on my part that made
what was otherwise a perfectly lovely recipe
into such a nightmarish hellscape for me. 
I, upon originally finding the recipe, scrolled through
the first bits about their stupid vacay and pictures of urns,
then went back to the top and jumped to the recipe.

Upon closer reading, it is clear that the intro,
which def includes pictures of the effing Parthenon or some crap,
 (don't come at me, Historical Readers,  my spite still lives
and is not prepared to deal with your corrections)
also includes instructions like "start with the meat sauce
so you can use your time more economically, and do
blanching and salting while it is simmering."



This is not included, or even referenced, in the actual recipe.



It is still unclear how this different ordering of events
would make the prep time fit into 40 minutes. 

But I bet it would help.




I have...so many...feelings about this.

 peel potatoes and eggplants, and slice them.  Then you blanch potatoes while laying out and salting your eggplants. This draws the water out or something, and then things aren’t soggy in the final product, which came up like 150 million times in this recipe so is apparently a Very Big Deal.  So, fine, the eggplants sit for 30 minutes (of the total 40 minutes?  When you had to peel and slice them and their potato brethren first and also afterwards have to fry and layer them?  ANYONE ELSE SEE THE MATH FLAWS HERE???), in the meantime move on to the meat stuff.  And you go on in that vein, doing all these multi-step things to the meat, but at some point you realize the eggplant step, which is like 100 years ago and is never referenced again in the recipe, also told you to fry these (hundreds of tiny medallions because I grow the worlds tiniest) eggplant on each side.  But you’re in the middle of meat stuff when the 30 minute eggplant-salting timer goes off, so I hope they’re cool with extra salting time cuz they just have to wait.  You get the meat and tomatoes and spices and stuff to simmering and you sigh, and begin to recognize the spite in your heart.  Then you swallow your frustration and fry those suckers because by this time you’re in it so you might as well do it for real.  Plus you bought lamb for this.  Then the meat sauce is simmered enough and you turn the heat up because again, excess moisture seems to be the enemy in this long slog of a campaign.  Then you look at the clock and realize how effing late it has become, and you haven’t even made the bechamel sauce yet.  Your eyes tear up, you are hungry and tired and yet strapped into this rollercoaster of a recipe.  This is the moment where you realize for sure you are spite cooking.  

Then you start the bechamel sauce.

Bechamel sauce is so yummy it should be illegal, but also it is not something you can walk away from.  All whisking, all the time, for about 15 minutes, followed by a 15 min cooling period, followed by more steps. 

The title of this work is
Death, and the inevitable
passage of time.

It is now like 8:00 and I’m just beginning to layer all my (stupid, dumb, no good) potatoes and eggplants etc, after carefully sprinkling breadcrumbs in the bottom of the dish to absorb evil, sinful moisture.  I started at like 6, expecting a 40 minute prep time, and here we are just past 8 looking at an hour and a half of cooking time.

Except, we’re not, because you only actually cook it for an hour, despite the recipe saying 1 hour and 30 minutes cook time.  Leaving me wondering who the eff wrote this god forsaken recipe and why all the reviews are like Oh my goooooood I love it so muuuuuch but none are like CAN I SUGGEST SOME SIMPLE EDITS THAT MAKE THIS RECIPE NOT A TRICK AND A LIE.  I mean, YES, other things cooked for WAY WAY OVER 30 ADDITIONAL MINUTES.  If we’re talking about total time that something was over a fire and being cooked, the total cook time is like an hour before anything went in the oven.  So we’re NOT talking about other cooking time.  But the actual time you can (walk away, take a deep breath, have a well-earned whiskey sour and) relax is one hour.

We ate at 9:15, and it was too late and I was too full of spite (and maybe a spoonful or two of bechamel sauce) to eat much.  It was delicious.  It’s in the fridge.  I hope it hates the cold.  I hope it sits and thinks about its life and its choices.  I hope it regrets.

I know it does not regret.