Can clutter clearing your kitchen make you a better cook? Plus, a recipe for a winter seafood stew.
Let’s cook something delicious.
It started with my closet. Opening the door to the jumble inside produced a feeling of overwhelm and hopelessness. I’d just close it and reach for the same old pair of jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. My uniform. Less than inspiring.
At the beginning of every year, the urge to purge is strong. Why?
We want to have hope. We want this year to be better than the last one. In these *fun* times we’re living in, we look for small actions that feel positive. At least we have control over the space we live in. With a gazillion distractions coming at us every day, clearing our outer space is one way to bring in some peace and calm. If we’re lucky that calm extends to our inner space. It can lessen anxiety and raise our spirits.
Inspired by this New York Times article, I decided to finally, finally, FINALLY get around to the closet. So, I did. Everything! Every drawer, every shoe box, every dust-gathering, musty, crusty item in my closet went into three piles: keep, donate, and think-about-it. The think-about-it pile had a one-month expiration date and sat glaring at me in a box placed in an inconvenient spot in the bedroom. It took only a few days to decide what to donate and what to keep. Victory!
For me, clutter-clearing is like eating potato chips. Once you start, you just can’t stop. In my quest for the new, tidy me, I even explored feng shui as I re-imagined my neat new life. An interesting rabbit hole, for sure. Of course, all this desire to simplify led to the kitchen.
So, back to the original question: Can clutter-clearing make you a better cook?
Um, No.
Sorry.
But cooking can make you a better cook!
Just as my new, neat closet improved my mood and gave me fewer choices to agonize over, an appealing space to cook in makes the job—and it is a job when you cook every day—more joyful and less stressful. I spend so much time there, it is obvious that my kitchen needs editing on a regular basis.
I could take a really deep dive into this; it brings out all my OCD tendencies, but even I have my limits. I don’t mind a little mess while I’m cooking, but I need order. I’ll try to break it down for you.
Overarching Mindset: The Plan
•Pretend that you are moving to a space in one week that is half the size of your current kitchen. That is super motivating.
• Break it down into sections such as refrigerator, freezer, dish storage, food storage (pantry), pots and pans, utensils, linens, and whatever other category that is specific to you. Tackle one section at a time and give yourself 20 to 30 minutes. Of course, you can extend that, but don’t wear yourself out and then quit.
Lest I exhaust you before you even start, here are seven things you can do to make your kitchen more inviting:
1) Refrigerator
The night before trash day, toss jars with only two teaspoons of jam or the equivalent (we have a lot of those.) Ditto for any other condiment that has been taking up valuable real estate that you know you won’t use. Banish limp or soggy vegetables and moldy cheese. Then wipe down shelves as needed so you never have to do a major cleanup. I love this eco-friendly ARbour cleaning product (full disclosure, it’s my brilliant niece’s company!)
2) Freezer
The same as above. Rotate older items to the front, and if you have a lot of stuff, take an inventory, and hang it on the fridge to use asap. If your freezer is where leftovers come to die, stop doing that. It should instead be the repository of batch cooking for when you don’t feel like cooking (I’ll come to that in another post.)
3) Utensils
Do you really need 3 fish spatulas? Donate excess and duplicate utensils that you don’t need or have seen better days. (Keep all your peelers, because you never know when you’ll have a helper to peel potatoes along with you.) Sort them in drawers or if, like me, you don’t have many drawers, store them in crocks on the countertop.
4) Dish Towels and Potholders
Throw out those funky potholders and replace them. Same for dishtowels. TJMaxx has a good, inexpensive supply of both, or you can order these dishtowels that can also stand in for potholders.
5) Pantry and/or Cupboards
Toss expired and cans and jars, and bag up extraneous goodies you know you won’t use. Drop them off at your local grocery store food bank. If you want to prettify your pantry, transfer loose bagged rice, beans, etc. to these inexpensive mason jars from Target, your supermarket, or local hardware store.
6) Pots and Pans
Discard old, worn-out non-stick pans and replace them. Donate pots and pans that you don’t want or use. They take up space that feels overwhelming.
7) Storage Containers
Sort and recycle the old ones that don’t have lids, or the lids without matching containers. That feels good!
Buy yourself a bunch of flowers and put them in your kitchen. In one week you have totally transformed your space. Congratulations! Now cook a soul-satisfying meal, like this Seafood Stew.
Winter Seafood Stew (that is good all year round)
Serves 6
This stew draws inspiration from Spanish and Portuguese traditions where pork, seafood and potatoes or beans play important roles. Beans and Spanish dried chorizo in a rich tomato broth with smoky flavors gives the stew a lot of heft. It is easy to put together: Cook garlic, onions, fennel, and chorizo in a soup pot; add canned tomatoes, white beans and stock and finish the stew by briefly cooking the mussels and chunks of fish. You can make the broth ahead, and when you are ready to serve the stew, cook the mussels very briefly before adding the fish. Keep in mind that the fish will continue to cook from residual heat, so err on the side of undercooking it. It will finish cooking in a few minutes off the heat.
The texture of dried chorizo is akin to salami—it is cured and hard. It is also intensely flavored with smoked paprika. Look for it in specialty food shops. If you can’t find it, substitute fresh chorizo sausages and add plenty of smoked paprika. Just slice them and cook them in the soup before adding the vegetables.
Winter is still hanging around here, but this stew will warm body and soul while we wait for spring.
STEW
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 onion, diced
1 fennel bulb, trimmed, cored and diced
6 ounces mild dried chorizo sausage, sliced into thin rounds
1/4 teaspoon Aleppo, Maras, or other crushed red pepper
1 (15-ounce) can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
2 (15-ounce) cans cannellini beans, rinsed and drained (or substitute diced potatoes)
1 cup white wine
3 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
1 pound cleaned mussels (you could substitute clams or shrimp)
1 1/2 pounds cod, halibut, or other mild, white fish, cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks
Salt, to taste
1/4 cup chopped parsley (for garnish)
1. In a large pot over medium heat, heat the oil. Add the garlic, onion, fennel, chorizo, and red pepper. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes, or until the vegetables start to soften. Add the diced tomatoes and simmer for 4 to 5 minutes, or until most of the water from the tomatoes evaporates.
2. Add the beans, wine, stock, and water to the pot. Simmer for 5 minutes. Add salt and more red pepper to taste if you like.
3. Add the mussels to the pot and cover the pot. Cook for 1 minute, or until the mussels just begin to open. Add the fish to the pot and cook, covered, for 2 to 3 minutes longer, or until the fish is cooked through. Discard any mussels that do not open.
4. Ladle the soup into bowls, sprinkle with parsley, and serve with garlic toasts.
GARLIC TOASTS
1 loaf French bread, cut into 6 pieces
1/4 cup olive oil, or more, as needed
1 clove garlic, peeled
1. Set an oven rack 4 inches from the broiler and turn on the broiler. Cut the bread pieces in half lengthwise and place them on a baking sheet with the cut sides up. Brush with oil.
2. Broil the bread for 1 to 2 minutes, or until the edges brown and the centers are light golden. Remove and scrape each piece with the garlic clove. The outsides will be toasty, but the insides should still be soft.
Thanks for joining me on Cooking Lessons. Feel free to comment, ask questions, or tell me more of what you’d like to know. And as always, share this with friends if you’re so moved. Until next time….XXOO
Sally
Ooh this stew looks amazing. I like to use up things in the fridge and Tamar Adler’s new book is brilliant with suggestions for using up items with less than two tablespoons of stuff in them. We moved just about two years ago so I did a MAJOR purge and only kept the best stuff.