I purchased a stainless-steel kitchen prep desk in 2016 as a result of I as soon as learn that you may throw scorching pots and pans immediately on it. This tall, sturdy desk has since develop into a middle of gravity for me. I do the whole lot on it, from studying the paper with my espresso within the morning to growing recipes for work through the day. At evening, I clear it for dinner. It’s the place I chop onions, whisk vinaigrettes and knead dough for fresh-baked milk bread on the weekend. I've solely two stools, one for all sides of the desk, and I prefer it that means. It’s the place my companion and I sit for our meals.
I may purchase extra stools, however over time I’ve discovered that I choose one-on-one dinners to bigger gatherings or solo meals. It’s not that I don’t love an excellent feast. I’m at my strongest the second I pull an ideal roast hen out of the oven, and little makes me happier than sending my pals dwelling full. And after I’m alone, meals is usually a transcendent technique to deal with myself. A cool sliver of Taleggio cheese or a caramel-edged slab of black cod will latch onto my thoughts till I’ve eaten large portions of it or written it out of my system right into a recipe.
But after I’m cooking for my boyfriend, the pleasures are totally different. I get out of my very own head and go into caretaker mode, contemplating issues past simply taste: consolation, diet, this different human’s well-being. Will he prefer it? Will this preserve him full? There’s additionally that unparalleled quiet when it’s simply the 2 of us sharing a meal, and the day begins to dim. Food is on the desk, nevertheless it’s not an event: It’s simply dinner. We can chat and compensate for gossip. This hum of the strange grounds me and jogs my memory that I’m alive. And when he has lapped up what I’ve cooked, abandoning little greater than crumbs on the plate? There’s no higher feeling.
I are likely to have the reminiscence of a goldfish, which is why I wish to take footage of the dinners I cook dinner for us earlier than we dive into them. Later, as I flip via the pictures on my telephone, I expertise these meals once more as in the event that they’re songs in a playlist of our relationship: The kimchi-and-mayo sandwiches I packed for our first date within the park, the kimchi juice dripping down his arms. The life-giving juk I made for us one morning, sprinkled with furikake, egg yolks and oven-blistered cherry tomatoes, juicy with promise. The big inexperienced salad we shared for lunch in between work conferences, bejeweled with thinly sliced watermelon radishes. The pavlova we made in the future after a whole afternoon in Brooklyn looking for rhubarb. The fire-bright shrimp stew that lit up our senses earlier than an evening of dancing via the road like youngsters.
I keep in mind the primary time I made that shrimp stew: It was nonetheless burbling in its scorching pot after I transferred it from the range to the desk. It’s an excellent desk, nevertheless it’s additionally an excellent stew. A type of cousin of bouillabaisse, cioppino and maeuntang, it feeds two comfortably, with a spicy, fragrant broth that’s tinged purple with gochugaru, a Korean red-pepper powder. Bitter greens and candy radishes present vegetal heft in addition to complexity to the broth, which it's best to undoubtedly sop up with bread or rice. You can use jumbo shrimp or prawns; simply be sure you get them with their shells on (and ideally heads on too), as they’re important to flavoring this straightforward dish.
The heads are non-compulsory as a result of I don’t know whom you’re cooking for. But I extremely suggest utilizing head-on crustaceans, if you'll find them, and in case your diner is somebody with whom you're intimate. That’s as a result of that is an intimate stew, the sort you’ll wish to eat with somebody you’re shut with, as sucking the flavour out of the heads is probably the most pleasurable half of what's already a really pleasurable expertise. You can take my boyfriend’s phrase for it. When he took a chew out of that first shrimp head, he leaned over the desk and mentioned, “This is what makes life worth living.”
Recipe: Shrimp Stew for Two
