Considerations

JERUSALEM — When I moved into a new apart­ment, I struck a deal with my new room­mate: I would do all the cook­ing, and he would do all the clean­ing. I think it’s work­ing out quite nicely.

Back in Boston, I had the oppo­site arrange­ment with a room­mate for the few years that we lived together. At the time, I knew noth­ing about cook­ing — I had never really both­ered to learn the skill when I was a teenager. But, after I moved to Israel, I decided to start exper­i­ment­ing since Jew­ish and other Middle-Eastern food is so deli­cious. The com­ments from peo­ple rang­ing from friends to var­i­ous girl­friends have always been pos­i­tive, so per­haps I’ve got a bit of tal­ent for it.

Now, I might take a look at this new book (pic­tured above):

In her recent mem­oir “The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food” (2008), Judith Jones, the edi­tor of Julia Child’s “Mas­ter­ing the Art of French Cook­ing,” urges sin­gles to get in the kitchen and cook. In her new book “The Plea­sures of Cook­ing for One,” Jones shows read­ers just how easy, adven­tur­ous, and reward­ing it is to do so…

Jones is ready with tips on order­ing your kitchen, which tools are essen­tial, and what short­cuts to take if you have lit­tle counter space. For instance, instead of set­ting out numer­ous mix­ing bowls, sim­ply mix dry ingre­di­ents on a piece of wax paper, and then fun­nel them into the larger mix­ing bowl as the recipe pro­ceeds. She offers wis­dom about por­tion size and what to keep stocked in your refrig­er­a­tor. And always, she sug­gests ways to trans­form any left­overs you have into some­thing else inter­est­ing and new.

I assume that the book is not for kosher food, but it’s usu­ally not hard to make the nec­es­sary adap­ta­tions. Just to inspire more young peo­ple to cook for them­selves — after all, it is far cheaper in these eco­nomic times and health­ier than most take-out or deliv­ery — here are a few pic­tures of my Amer­i­can and Middle-Eastern dishes.

Chicken soup with Osem soup mix, pota­toes, car­rots, cel­ery, salt, pep­per, gar­lic, and pars­ley. The chicken breasts are cut into small pieces and cooked halfway in olive oil. The soup sim­mers for two hours, mak­ing the chicken extremely ten­der so that it falls apart through­out the soup.

Chicken wings baked in my oven. Not too com­pli­cated. Add a bit of herbs on top before cooking.

Israeli cous­cous with peas, lemon juice, mint, and chicken broth.

A clas­sic Israeli salad. Cucum­bers, toma­toes, onions, red bell pep­per are diced into extremely-small pieces and then mixed together with olive oil, pep­per, and lemon juice. Chilled in the refrig­er­a­tor for an hour before serv­ing so it has a nice crunch.

Latkes — also known as potato pan­cakes that resem­ble hash browns — are a clas­sic Chanukah recipe. But this time, I made them filled with a beef mix­ture. Shred pota­toes and onions, add flour, bak­ing soda, salt, and pep­per, and then fry. As one side is fry­ing, add a scoop of ground beef on top and then spread it around. Put another part of the latke mix on top to resem­ble a sand­wich. When one side is fin­ished fry­ing, flip it over.

Spaghetti and meat­balls — or, as they say in Israel — “spaghetti meat­ball.” I add diced onions, salt, pep­per, gar­lic, paprika (for a kick), and pars­ley to the ground-beef mix­ture. The meat­balls are cooked in the oven, and then the spaghetti is cooked start­ing ten min­utes before the meat­balls are fin­ished. When both are cooked, empty the water from the pot of spaghetti. Put the meat­balls on top. Then add a can of tomato sauce and some oregano on top. Mix it all together in the pot, and sim­mer for another ten minutes.

Cook­ing for one — or for a fam­ily — is not too hard. Most recipes are not to dif­fi­cult to fol­low. The only hard part is know­ing which spices to use when one is being cre­ative and mak­ing some­thing new. Give it a shot! And be sure to demand hon­est opin­ions from your guests. The bet­ter feed­back you receive, the bet­ter cook you will become.

In just a lit­tle longer than it takes for a pizza to be deliv­ered, you can have some­thing much more deli­cious for a frac­tion of the cost. If you are cook­ing for one, you can also make a cou­ple large dishes and stick them in the refrig­er­a­tor. One evening of cook­ing — and make it fun! — can pro­vide enough food for a week’s worth of lunches and din­ners. There are many free recipes online.

Now Avail­able: E-Book down­load: “Let­ters from Israel: An Amer­i­can journalist’s adven­tures in the Holy Land.”

Related posts:

1. Amer­i­can and Israeli Cook­ing Recipes
2. Mov­ing to Israel
3. Civil and Jew­ish Law
4. Life Under Rocket Fire
5. My Favorite Song of the Moment