Simple food is so much better than “easy” food

I never truly believed spinach could be sexy until I ate it in the home of an Afghan family.

I’d spent the day watching in the kitchen of the family’s outer-suburban Melbourne home as they prepared for that evening’s Afghan New Year celebrations: as a freelance journo writing for the sadly now-defunct publication, Feast, this sanctioned culinary spying felt like a supreme privilege.

When we finally sat down later that evening to eat, I was struck dumb by the flavour of this woman’s spinach.

I mean, if this was spinach, then it  was like no spinach that I had ever tasted.

There was no grit, no hint of bitterness. The leaf’s mouthfeel was as if it had been creamed, though its flavour was the opposite – not at all thick, but deeply textured and redolent of that particular whole savoury palate that a food writer might refer to as umami.

Umami has all sorts of scientific descriptions but to me – as a layperson – I always experience it as being when a certain dish or ingredient tastes greater than the sum of its parts.

Now this description beautifully fitted what was going on within that spinach bowl because I had SEEN what had gone in to the pot and, trust me when I say, I couldn’t see any reason at all why it should have tasted so good.

Just to be super clear – two packets of frozen spinach were laid on top of a few glugs of olive oil, two minced onions, a teaspoon of salt and two cups of water.

That was it.

Made for Nowruz (Afghan new year), these lamb meatballs are simple, yet full of flavour

In fact the whole meal was like that: At once staggeringly flavoursome and amazingly simple.

Koftas created from a kilo of lamb mince; TEN minced onions (I know I’m supposed to write 10 numerically, but then I couldn’t capitalise it and if you had seen the pile that 10 minced onions make, then you might understand why such a reference demands highlighting). The rest was salt and turmeric. Paprika to taste.

Five-ingredient chicken kebabs that you’d sell your own children to eat.

That spinach. 

Salt aside, the common ingredient with all of these dishes was the wisdom of knowing how to wield time.

Time is a killer in the kitchen. It’s a killer because – when it counts and it almost always does – time is the one ingredient that can’t be exchanged for something other.

Time is what separates simple from easy.

I had a cookbook on ‘easy’ when I was first married. I made two terrible dishes from it and then never used it again, the book divested alongside a garbage bag of bad op-shop purchases years back.

But simple is something else. Simple is stripping back to allow space for alchemy. And true alchemy in the kitchen can only be brought forth as a direct result of time.

I went back to re-read the notes I made that day, and this quote leaped out at me:

“My Mum says that you must put in time to cooking for it to become tasty. You have to think: how is this water? How is this flavour? You have to watch.”

On Easter Sunday this year I made a feast for friends and all of this learned wisdom barrelled upon me. I made lamb rubbed with spice roasted on medium heat. Eggplant sliced fine scattered with salt and oil. Simply spiced fried cauliflower. A three-ingredient couscous salad.

Oh, and spinach. Of course, spinach. But mine made with oil and butter and nuts and turmeric and sugar and salt.

Each dish was simple – no more than five minutes to prepare. But I gave each dish its due. I gave each dish its time. I watched. I waited. I burned my spices in the one moment I decided to multi-task. It was all the reminder I needed that slow is sexy in all sorts of ways that we might not have previously considered.

It’s difficult to find time, particularly when faced with the seduction of easy. My solution is to work just a little less. That financial gap between what I fail to earn is bridged by the time I regain to run my own kitchen and my own life: I don’t need to pay for exercise classes when time exists to ride the kids to and from school. I don’t need to buy in meals when use of simple, economically viable ingredients and available time make for a far more delicious evening.

I know that this is not an option open to all, nor even a desired remedy. It’s just my way of exemplifying that the wisdom and culinary wonder of simplicity CAN be bought if we’re brave and open about what we’re willing to exchange.

Of course the real sexiness in simplicity is realising it in our kitchens so that we can experience how we might draw this approach in to our day-to-day.

My suggestion? Begin with that bowl of spinach. It might just be good enough to slip you beyond easy and into a whole new simple life.

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