Please Pack Your Knives And Go

Imagine yourself at a bar, chatting up some hottie that not ten minutes ago your friend said was way out of your league. Normally you might heed the warning and hang back, choosing to forgo the imminent rejection in lieu of a few quiet sips of whiskey and a non-threatening staring contest with the television. But tonight you feel confident. You're kicking ass and this gorgeous stranger is attending furiously to your every word. They ask the all important question - "Can you cook?"

"Absolutely," you incorrectly boast.

Up until yesterday evening, whenever I found myself in this situation I proudly claimed the ability to cook like a champion and by gummit I meant it. The wool, however, has been lifted from my eyes and I realize now that I couldn't cook my way out of a paper bag. If my life literally depended on me being able to properly make something as simple as rice, I would say a few hail mary's and text my family that I love them one last time.

It's possible that I'm just a bit rusty though. Thanks to the incredible convenience of New York City and my incredible desire to never do dishes, I don't think I've actually cooked anything since like 2004. Even then, "cooked" is really a generous term for what I was really doing: assembling sandwiches, grilling sausages or microwaving lean cuisines I bought at the 7/11. My kitchen in Sri Lanka was where my good friend Kasparov lived, and he was a rat. I made a deal with my furry flatmate very early on - I don't go into the kitchen, and he doesn't shit in my food. This arrangement worked just fine considering how cheap the food was, so eating out every night was a simple, sustainable affair. Trying to dine in style in my new hometown of Geneva is remarkably more costly, and as a result I've resorted to grocery shopping and a trumpeted return to the kitchen.

I woke up a bit early one morning and hit the local food mart, picking up the basics that I will need to make all my favorite dishes for the coming weeks. This of course included rice, peanut butter and bananas, because everything I plan to eat for the next three months will include one or more of these ingredients. Having suppered on peanut butter and honey sandwiches for four straight days, I decided to face my demons and make some delicious fried rice.

My buddies during my London semester used to lovingly call me "Iron Chef Fried Rice" back in the day and my Asian delicacy was the foodstuff of legends. Imagine if you will a bucket of gelatinously sticky white rice, crudely diced peppers and some chopped up bangers for protein, drowned in soy sauce and shoveled into your face with a wooden cooking spoon. I know what you're thinking and yes, it was heaven in tupperware. Apparently since my "Iron Chef" days in 2001, I have failed to develop any real talents in the economics of the home, and I still manage to screw up even the simplest of recipes.

Artist's rendition

Unwilling to google the directions on how to make rice, I attempted to follow the German instructions on the side of my box of basmati with deadly precision. Clicking on the hot plate, I dumped an unmeasured portion of grains into the pot, guessed roughly as to how much water would be required to make the dry rice into cooked rice and turned the burner on Max. My approach to rice making is a lot like my approach to love making - start out by intensely heating the situation up, get dangerously close to boiling over and then reduce the fire to a dull roar for about 10 or 15 minutes. Everyone wins. Just like in my college days, the rice gooed-up into a thick, paste-like slurry. I added in a slightly burnt fried egg and some almonds for protein, and then, to really put a ribbon on this turd of a meal, folded in some canned peas and carrots.

What was staring at me from the cookery was what I think despair would look like if it were a food. It's taste, on the scale of deliciousness, fell somewhere between pancake batter and gruel served to Russian orphans, and the presentation would've given Padma Lakshmi a heart attack from sheer disappointment. Luckily though I made enough so now I have leftovers and will get to enjoy a cold, three-day old version of the same when I finally get desperate enough to polish it off. I think from here on out I'll be sticking with the peanut butter and bananas.