Moments of inspiration. They happen at really odd times. Maybe you’re struck with an idea for a salad while you’re checking the mail. While stuck in traffic, perhaps you think of the perfect addition to something you’ve made for years. Those moments are fun. Those moments are exciting. You want to go straight to the grocery store and grab what you need. This roasted carrot, squash, and potato soup is not the result of one of those moments.
There are some compliments that stick with you. Recently one of my wife’s cousins made a point of coming up to me after dinner at a family potluck and said, “those carrots you made were on point. What did you do to them?” I told him that my carrots tasted good because carrots are good. I just got out of the way and let them do their thing. That got me wondering. Why is “getting out of the way” so difficult? Why is it so tempting to over complicate food? Maybe we feel a need to put our “stamp” on a particular dish. Perhaps we start cooking without a clear direction in mind. Whatever the reason, it got me thinking. It got me thinking, oddly enough, about 1987.
This is the kind of project I enjoy. There was a bit of a time crunch, I was home alone with our two year old, and had only the ingredients already in the house at my disposal. Sometimes “limitations” are the driving force behind creativity. That was certainly the case with this hearty three bean & quinoa chili.
This black bean and corn salad began in a small garden in Woodburn, Oregon. On Wednesdays I drop Benjamin off at his Grandma & Papa’s house. We execute a trade. They get Benjamin for the day, I get a box full of fresh vegetables from their garden. Ok, it’s not really a trade. Benjamin loves going there and would get to with or without a box a vegetables returning home with me. It just sounds more dramatic that way. In the box is usually some combination of corn, bell peppers, zucchini, squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers. My drive home is largely spent thinking about the donuts I am going to buy on the way and what I’m going to do with the amazing produce sitting in the backseat of the car.
For a long, long time my roasted potatoes were okay, but nothing to write home about. I wanted a crispy exterior and an creamy interior but it seems I was always sacrificing one to obtain the other. If the outsides were crispy the insides were undercooked. When the insides were just how I wanted them the outsides had moved from crispy to crunchy–a world of difference when you’re talking about potatoes. My world was crashing in around me. Then everything changed.
Potatoes are such a staple of our diet that improving the quality of the potato dishes we cook means greatly increasing the quality of our meals in general. Think about the weight of a brick. Every year the average American eats the weight of 17 bricks worth of potatoes. That’s 110 pounds of potatoes per person, per year. It’s easy to see how it happens. Hash browns at breakfast, chips with our sandwich at lunch, and roasted potatoes with dinner. The next day it’s home fries, a bowl of potato salad, and mashed potatoes. I could easily create a menu for a week without repeating a potato dish once. Maybe it’s because we eat them so frequently and in such quantity that potatoes are so easily taken for granted. Whatever the reason, it’s time we start paying more attention to the potato.
Try as I might, I am unable to create an apple. It’s probably a good time to come completely clean rather than letting the truth come out one slow drip at a time. I can’t create a carrot either. Or a cow. Or a tree. What does it mean to create? What does it mean to be creative or to show creativity? While I can’t make any of those things out of thin air, what I can do is arrange them in certain ways. I can manipulate them with heat or cold. I can cut them. Combine them. I can control quantity and portion sizes. Granted, I can’t create an apple. But I can create an apple pie. That’s what it means to be creative in the kitchen.