What We Eat When We Eat Alone - Deborah Madison [15]
Another man, one in the food-importing business, also turns to toast, only his is covered with tomato sauce. “This is a spiceless recipe,” he declares. “You must not go near a spice rack. I mean no spice. Just toast an English muffin, pour a ton of Prego mushroom ragu over it, grate some cheese over the whole thing, and bake it in a toaster oven.”
This isn’t that far away from tomatoes on toast, a woman’s favorite. The ragu makes for a somewhat lustier topping, or try our version of an English muffin with (spiceless) ragu and sharp cheddar. It happily recalls that nostalgic pairing of canned tomato soup and cheese sandwiches, only it’s better, even without spice.
We’ve known farmers who, exhausted at the end of a long market day, will pick up a pizza for dinner. But Ed May, another farmer we used to know before he gave up farming in New Mexico and moved to Hawaii to tend a macadamia nut orchard, used to grow between twenty and thirty varieties of potatoes. Ed once hosted a potato-tasting party in which boiled potatoes were mindfully tasted, notes dutifully taken, and then washed down with as many varieties of vodka as there were tubers. That was fun and informative, but on more everyday occasions, Ed claimed to satisfy his solo cravings by covering toast not with potatoes, but with ratatouille, or his version of it.
He prefaced his bachelor supper, saying, “I’ve gotten so lazy,” and then went on to describe making his ratatouille from scratch with roasted peppers, onion, garlic, eggplant, zucchini, and, finally, tomatoes. (Remember, not only did Ed start with raw materials in the kitchen, he actually grew them as well.) After making his stew, he pan-toasted bread with butter, oregano, basil, and thyme, then poured the ratatouille over the toast, still in its skillet, and melted some cheese on top of that, covering the whole thing with a lid. Not exactly your classic ratatouille, but good enough by far.
On other days when Ed was no doubt unspeakably lazy, he would dig up some of his fingerling potatoes, sprinkle New Mexican red chile over them, and put them in a pan with butter, garlic, and a bit of onion. “Then I roast the whole thing in the oven and put Parmesan on top when the potatoes are done.”
This is good. Even our simpler version is very good. So good that it’s hard to eat just twenty-five golden roasted potato wedges dusted in smoldering red chile.
In contrast to Ed and his homegrown farmer’s cooking, there’s James Holmes, a Quaker cowboy artist and master of gutsy male cooking with an eye on the fat. Take, for example, his dish for chili con carne, which he makes when his wife is out playing in her country band. He swears it takes thirty minutes from start to finish.
“Buy ground sirloin. It’s low in fat,” he instructs. “Throw it in the pot without any oil, but add a little beer. Brown the meat and add three cans of pinto beans with jalapeños. Or you can substitute one can of Ranch Style black beans. Don’t drain them; use them right out of the can. Throw in cinnamon and brown sugar and get it all cooking for twenty minutes. Put in some masa harina, 6 or 7 cloves of garlic, then add chopped cilantro and cook for one or two more minutes.”
This would be rather garlicky, we imagine, which is fine if it’s just you and your horse. But this isn’t true for James’s potatoes with green chile, a classic combination