Seasonal Pantry: My pot-of-water experiment

While friends and colleagues were hanging out at beaches, barbecuing and getting ready for fireworks on Independence Day, I was at home, cooking for the simple pleasure of it and because I was eager to explore what I could do with a single pot of water.

A bounty of vegetables had piled up in the refrigerator and my countertops were full of fruit. Everything needed attention or it would, all too soon, be compost.

So I filled a pot with water, added a bit of salt and set it over a high flame. I trimmed some green beans, cut them in half and, when the water reached a boil, I tossed them in. Four minutes later, I used a flat slotted spoon to transfer them to a wide shallow bowl. Next, I put in some sliced small white potatoes I’d gotten from Ma & Pa’s Garden, simmered them until they were tender and used the slotted spoon to add them to the bowl with the beans.

Ten minutes later, I lifted out spaghettini, perfectly al dente, that went into a bowl with some hand-made pesto: Lunch.

Before eating, I put four pullet eggs into the still hot water, covered the pan and let it sit for about 20 minutes before lifting out the eggs. After I peeled them, I added them to the bowl with the beans and potatoes.

Next, I set a colander in the pot, added zucchini that I’d cut into chunks and steamed it until it was very tender, about 10 minutes. It went into a second wide shallow bowl and I filled the colander with peeled and sliced yellow carrots from Red H Farm. When they were done, they went alongside the zucchini and broccoli spears went into the colander for a quick steaming, about 3 minutes.

By the time all the boiling and steaming was done, there was about 4 inches of water left in the pot. After I tasted it and deemed it delicious, I sliced some new red potatoes, put them into the water and pulled a pork shoulder I’d roasted earlier in the week out of the refrigerator. I strained the cooking juices into the pot with the potatoes and set 3 plump poblano peppers over a burner. By the time the potatoes were tender, I’d seared, peeled and seeded the poblanos, put them into the smaller bowl of the processor, added onions from the pork and whirled it all into a smooth puree, which I stirred into the potatoes. After they cooled down a bit, I pureed it all with an immersion blender.

The pot-of-water experiment was over, though there was still more to be done, of course.

As the vegetables cooked, I had pulled out my food processor and sliced cabbage, red onion and radishes for cole slaw and two kinds of cucumbers, Armenian to go with the beans, eggs and potatoes for salad and pickling for making shrubs, or drinking vinegars. I peeled a large fresh ginger root, switched to the grating blade and grated it and then grated a dozen large yellow beets that I had just peeled.

The beets, most of the ginger and apple cider vinegar went into a large jar. I packed pickling cucumbers into a smaller jar and covered them with chive vinegar. They will be shrubs by the time you read this column.

I dressed the potato salad with a quick lemon vinaigrette and lots of chopped parsley and made a grapefruit-ginger vinaigrette for the cole slaw, using grapefruit I picked from a tree in Santa Rosa. Carrots and zucchini were dressed, separately, with garlic, cumin, lemon juice and olive oil.

I was pleased with what I had accomplished with that single pot of water. It’s so easy to grab one pot for pasta, another for boiling a vegetable, a third for steaming, another for making soup, with fresh water in each vessel. But is it necessary? And is it even the best way to cook?

At the end of my adventure, I had one pot to wash instead of four or five. I’d used very little water. And my reward for my efforts, other than a fairly clean kitchen, was good food that would last for several days. Should the heat spike again, I wouldn’t need to turn on the oven or the stove. Plus, there was the bonus of all the nutrients the vegetables had given up to the water; they were now part of the soup, which I enjoyed chilled for dinner, with a swirl of creme fraiche, a splash of Hawaiian chile water and little nuggets of the pork, fried crisp.

It was a perfect way to spend the holiday: A day of leisurely cooking, by instinct and intuition, with no particular deadline to meet is definitely my idea of freedom. And it is the kind of cooking anyone can do when you’ve grown comfortable in the kitchen, comfortable with seasonal foods and have a reasonably well-stocked pantry.

And at the end of the day, you can be pleased that even if saving a few pots of water won’t make a dent in the drought, at least you haven’t made it worse by being a water spendthrift.

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Droughts are bad enough but when you have to factor in a heatwave, too, the misery index rises rapidly. Because I didn’t see the last one coming, I had a pork roast that needed to be cook. Sure, I could freeze it, but I didn’t want to go that route. Instead, I seasoned it as I describe in this recipe, cooked it overnight and awoke to a cool house perfumed by evocative aromas. Feel free to use your favorite spice blends instead of mine if you like; it is the technique here that is the most important.

Overnight Heat Wave Pork Roast

Serves 6

1 large onion, peeled and cut into ¼-inch thick rounds

2 bay leaves

1 pork shoulder or Boston butt roast, about 4 pounds

6-8 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon chipotle powder

1 teaspoon piment d’Espelette

½ teaspoon ground coriander

- Black pepper in a mill

- Juice of 3 lemons

Put the onion into an oven-proof pan or pot, spreading it over the surface, and tuck in the bay leaves.

Set the pork on a clean work surface and use the tip of a knife to pierce the meat in several places. Push a piece of garlic clove into each slit.

Put the salt, chipotle powder, piment d’Espelette and coriander into a small bowl, add several very generous turns of black pepper and mix well. Rub the mixture all over the pork and set it, fat side up, on top of the onions. Pour the lemon juice into the pan and add enough water that liquid fills the pot by about ½ inch. Add the lid or seal with aluminum foil.

Set the pot in the oven, turn the heat to 225 degrees and cook overnight.

Remove the pot from the oven, cool to room temperature and refrigerate until ready to use. Reheat as needed.

Serving suggestions

Serve with soft corn tortillas, shredded cabbage, sliced radishes and fresh tomato salsa.

Use to make posole verde or posole rojo.

Serve with Mexican rice and Mexican-style cole slaw.

Michele Anna Jordan has written 21 books to date, including the new “Good Cook’s” series. Email Jordan at michele@saladdresser.com. You’ll find her blog, “Eat This Now,” at pantry.blogs.pressdemocrat.com.