The Careless Cook VI

Last night I served Bess Feigenbaum’s Cabbage Soup for a dinner with friends. I haven’t the slightest idea who Bess Feigenbaum might be, but the recipe from the New York Times was entitled “Bess Feigenbaum’s Cabbage Soup” and so that is how I will continue to refer to it. I am certain I had once before for a Shabbat dinner prepared this soup and I recalled that it was very favorably received. And except for the cabbage I already had all of the ingredients. I didn’t have to purchase anything additional, except as I said, the cabbage. I would serve it with homemade sourdough bread.

            Now, the recipe called for three pounds of cabbage (minus the hard outer leaves and the solid core) and for some reason I followed the directions fully and exactly. But, the recipe said that the soup would serve eight and we were only going to be four that turned into just three. I started to cook the soup in a La Creuset pot but three pounds of ribboned cabbage would not squeeze into the crock and so I very messily transferred the all of the now wet ingredients into a very large stock pot I had purchased forty years ago at Zabar’s in New York City for a soup I was preparing then for a large contingent of high school students who were visiting the city from an alternative school in Denver, Colorado. I’ll clean the stove later, I sighed. 

This stock pot contained better my three pounds of ribboned cabbage, sauteed onion and garlic, tomato paste, ketchup, crushed tomatoes, bay leaf, and six to nine (!) cups of water. But, I now ended up with too much soup even after I hoped each of us would elect to have second helpings. I froze a container even before company arrived, and after dinner I packed a large Tupperware container of soup to be taken home by them and to be eaten at their leisure. I have for myself a considerable number of servings in my refrigerator/freezer for days to come. I realize that I should have halved the recipe!

The problem is that though I do consume them, I do not like leftovers, and I try to avoid having them about and being constrained to eat them. Having said that, I acknowledge that there are several longstanding containers of past meals sitting patiently in my freezer awaiting consumption. I consider here why I am so averse to them. I mean, when first I prepared the served the meal the food was then well received . . . why now do I not enjoy it again? Some dishes, I read in the New York Times recipe site are improved as leftovers! But for me, only macaroni and cheese taste better the second day.

I believe that a good part of my disaffection with leftovers might stem from the lack of necessary preparation that they require. My leftovers (when I choose to eat them) are simply pulled from the freezer in their ceramic or glass or BFP free containers and simply reheated—there is no preparation. But preparation for dinner is exactly the point—it is the process of chopping, slicing, pureeing, seasoning, drinking liquors, all in the service of delivering a cooked repast to the table that I now enjoy and have enjoyed during my adult life and in my delighted role as father and that seems to me essential to the essence and meaning of the meal. The engaged and engaging effort offers an intimacy that is lacking when I simply pull a dish from the freezer put it in the oven or, heaven forbid, the microwave, and then plop it on the table sometimes even in the original container, and too rapidly and carelessly shovel the food in. Sometimes reheating the leftovers is accomplished in the container in which it had been stored—I wonder, why should I dirty another dish that I would just have to later wash clean. In the kitchen I want to offer more care for my self (and others). 

I suppose I will sooner not later eat the soup stored now in my refrigerator. And eventually I will defrost the container of the frozen soup nestled in my freezer. But I believe that I will do better to learn to cook smaller quantities that would leave no leftovers.