This kitchen is a stranger to me
It’s the first time I’ve cooked dinner in over a week and I’m easing myself back in with a familiar dish. One I don’t need a recipe for. We don’t have any fennel seeds so we improvise. There are coriander seeds instead. Chilli flakes, yes. The seasoning and spices are laid out on smooth wooden curves, ready for me to pinch and crush.
I use a sharp knife to cut the waxy yellow skin away from a lemon. I chop a few cloves of garlic and that’s it. Oil in a pan. Not my pan, but a bigger one I’m used to. Proportions have gone out of the window. I burn the garlic. Spices go in, then the orzo. That gets toasted until I pour a swollen can of diced tomatoes, add a couple of stock cubes and top it up with water. The heat goes up. I stir a lot.
I’ve never done this before but I reach for some miso and add a loaded spoonful into the pan. I wanted some sweetness behind the salt. There’s a basil plant on the counter and I think the dish could use something loose to add, so I make roughly chopped pesto. Basil. Walnuts. Avocado oil. Nutritional yeast. Chilli flakes. Salt. We work with what we’ve got. Eventually the orzo is ready and we drizzle the pesto and add the chilli-flaked feta and the first bite offers warmth. The crunch of a coriander seed is unexpected but welcome (no mortar and pestle so these went in whole – they’re aromatic and, strangely, it works).
My friend Kyla tells me it’s different to when I’ve made it before. It’s true. I feel different to the person who made it for her before. The last time we ate this meal together was on her penultimate night in London in September 2020. I have changed since then.
Being in a new kitchen often makes me feel displaced. You can’t use the pans that you’ve spent years seasoning; you don’t know how strong someone else’s cooker is (hence the burnt garlic); the things you’d intuitively reach for – oil, salt, pepper – aren’t in the places that muscle memory dictates. This kitchen is a stranger to you.
Outside, there are mountains. Black and heavy mountains dusted with snow. Since arriving in Vancouver three days ago, I have been walking down cherry blossom lined streets and observing the mountains as if they were a compass. I’ve been eating food without really thinking about it. Fish tacos. Peanut noodles. Salads. Smoothies. I have an appetite (as in, I’m hungry), but it’s a confused appetite. I’m not sure what I want. I’m not sure what I like. I feel like a foreigner in my own body, as if I’m sleepwalking a little and yes, I’m sure the 8 hour time difference and jet lag has something to do with that.
This kitchen is a stranger to me, in a similar way that I feel like a stranger to myself right now. I’m sure this sounds very dramatic and I don’t mean it to. Perhaps it’s entirely necessary to feel a little bewildered. Shaken up. Unsure. In that liminal space between past and present. Perhaps I shouldn’t run away from the kitchen, but allow its strangeness to envelop me and guide what happens next: a new way of cooking or a new perspective.
What isn’t a stranger to me is the person whose kitchen I’m in. The one I cry with and also occasionally fight with. The one who orders us wine to the park where the sun is shining but the wind is cold, and who I lay underneath blankets with eating dill crisps and drinking warm rosé and listening to old songs and crying about past loves.
We decide not to cook that evening, instead taking it in turns to sit in the bath and drink hard kombucha and find ways to watch our favourite tv show. We order noodles, me copying her order but adding crispy chicken. Her laughing at me spooning every condiment I could find in her fridge (black bean paste and Valentina hot sauce) onto my bowl.
In time, this kitchen won’t feel like a stranger to me. And perhaps with each meal I cook in it, I won’t feel like a stranger to myself, either.
As you might have gathered, there’s not been much room for recipes in my life, so instead, please enjoy the Ottolenghi orzo recipe I mentioned above (feel free to add miso, it’s a winner IMHO). And also this photo of our breakfast: avocado on toast with scrambled turmeric tofu (we’re not in London anymore). Catch Leftovers #3 on Wednesday which will, hopefully, have a slightly more cheerful tone!