Cooking on Auto-Pilot

good enough dinners for your laziest nights

Some days cooking can feel impossible. My usual bloodhound stomach will suddenly have no cravings to follow. I flash images of food, memories of tastes, and ephemeral smells behind my eyes trying to tempt intuition into giving me some direction, some feeling to flesh out in food. But occasionally I’m left alone. No hunger, no ideas, and no desire for delivery. I have to throw together a meal, inspired or not. Dinnertime comes every day.

the human experience is just one long Sisyphean task

There are a few dishes I cook repeatedly when I have absolutely no desire to be in the kitchen. I can throw them together with minimal effort so I save my depleted bandwidth for other shit. Sometimes preparing food, for all its complexity, can feel both draining and painfully dull. The dinner doldrums come for us all, even cookbook authors. My uninspired meals are a rotation of things that always taste good enough, are zero hassle to prepare, and based on ingredients I keep stocked. They’re almost embarrassing to share because they come from such a joyless place. They weren’t made with love. These meals get tossed together with one eye on the clock and my spot on the couch already picked out. I figured that you lovely people here in The Broiler Room might appreciate the commiseration and ideas, so I overcame my shame. But barely. These are my good-enough kitchen cabinet meals. Try to cook these without measuring anything and just eyeball it. The whole point is to do almost nothing while still actually cooking. You’ve got nothing to prove some days and that’s just fine by us.

Good Enough Veggie Garlic Noodles

Makes enough for 4 people or one person for 4 days

16 ounces dry whole wheat spaghetti or another long noodle

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

2-6 cups of whatever green thing you’ve got in your fridge*

2-3 fresh cloves of garlic**

1 cup pasta water

2 tablespoons Bragg Amino Acids or soy sauce

3 tablespoons nutritional yeasts or more if you luv it

2 teaspoons granulated garlic

Juice from 2 lemons

Salt and pepper to taste

Sesame seeds

Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Right before you drain it, fish out one cup of the starchy water and set it aside. You’re about to learn a new cooking skill that you’ll unconsciously do forever. The pasta water will help thicken and stretch the little sauce we put on the pasta that will keep you from drowning the pot in oil.

While the pasta is draining, use the pot you cooked it in to make the rest of the dish. Heat up the first tablespoon of oil in a pot over a medium heat. Add the vegetable you’re using and sauté it around until it’s cooked or wilted enough to eat. Add the garlic and sauté for another minute so it gets cooked through. Add the pasta and the starchy pasta water and drizzle over the Braggs. See how useful that water is? Toss this all together then add the last tablespoon of olive oil, nooch, granulated garlic, and lemon juice. Stir this all together then taste and add whatever the fuck you think it needs. Hot sauce? Toasted sesame oil? Some sad herb you need to use up? At this point just toss whatever sounds good to you and turn off the heat. Top with some sesame seeds and serve it up.

* This can be a handful of fresh spinach, kale, broccoli, or bunches of fresh herbs. Nothing fresh? Use frozen peas, green beans, broccoli, kale, or edamame.

** Just add more granulated garlic if you’re extra lazy and don’t want to dirty a knife.

This here is even less of a recipe but a concept worth burying somewhere in your brain: a decent pot of beans with less than 10 minutes of cooking. I’ll make them to fill out a plate full of leftovers, serve them on the side of roasted veggies, or, most often, use them to make a basic burrito full of whatever lettuce type thing I have and some salsa or hot sauce. They’re decidedly more delicious than they look, hence the lack of photos. They also make a great addition to a camping menu.

a pantry staple, add it to your list and thank us later

Weeknight Beans

Makes enough for 4 people

1 tablespoon olive oil

Half an onion, chopped

2 15-ounce cans of black beans, drained and rinsed*

1 7 ounce can of salsa verde**

Juice from 1 lime or pinch of citric acid

Grab a small pot and warm the olive oil over a medium heat. Add the onion and sauté that around until the pieces get translucent or you get bored, about 5 minutes. Add the beans, salsa verde and lime juice and sauté around until the beans are warm, another 2 minutes. Serve as is, fold in some cilantro or green onion, or puree in the pot using a stick blender. Done and done.

* I prefer black beans here, but pinto would be decent too.

** This should be near the jarred salsa in the store.

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Thanks for joining us for this week’s Broiler Room. We hope you and your lack of desire to cook during these dog days of summer feel seen and appreciated. If you’re looking for some more food and environmental news, here are some stories that caught our eye this week:

• Diana Kennedy passed away, leaving the world to digest her legacy as a woman born in Britain who wrote about her deep love and knowledge Mexico and it’s foods

• The surprising 90s origins of flavored lattes

• Fungi may save us from ourselves

• Author Izumi Suzuki’s masterful sci-fi work Terminal Boredom is finally translated into English

Tomorrow, for our paid subscribers, we have a raspberry mango jam recipe that won over the skeptics in our own homes. Wanna join? It's not too late.

We’ll be back next week with more food and thoughts to help you take the edge off.

Michelle (and Matt)