The cast iron is hot, boiling the last droplets of water until they disappear in tiny steam clouds above the surface. I flood the pan with olive oil, and immediately it shimmers, gliding easily to coat every inch of the circular base. You can smell the seasoning that’s been baked into the cast iron start to migrate into the oil and bloom out, an odd and delicious cacophony of global flavors that somehow come together as one pleasant scent. Wintery white onions drop into the pan, agitating the oil as they sweat. Salt sprinkles down to encourage more water to escape the onion slices, causing them to become translucent, like icicles greeting the warmth of spring. Fresh chopped garlic and ginger join the mix, accompanied by ground cumin, garam masala, curry powder, cayenne pepper, and paprika, among many others, coating the pan in heaps of warm earthy shades. After a minute or two goes by, tomato paste makes its entry with a plop. Through mixing, it envelops all prior ingredients in its wake, including the olive oil, leaving the pan almost completely bare. With some time, the bright red paste darkens into crimson, bringing a depth of flavor to this burgeoning dish. By this point, the whole household knows by smell alone that I’m making one of my favorite dinner meals: chana masala. I’m far from the first person to say that our soft quarantine has already been stressful. Even though we aren’t as restricted as we could be, the days are still melting together, everyone is pretty uncertain about our future, and for how imperfect our previous "normal" was, it feels like a cakewalk compared to now. I’m a part of the few privileged enough to be able to work from home during this time, but dealing with a splintered social network and the uncertainty of my living situation as the owners of the apartment complex I live in are in the middle of a sale, let’s just say my anxiety has seen better days. My roommates are also on edge, struggling with mixed signals from management of their respective jobs. Even my cat Sophia is acting strange, but that’s more because we’re taking up all the premium couch space that’s usually empty during daylight hours. Luckily, as we have over a decade of friendship propping us up right now, we haven’t started trying to kill each other yet. But the stress still gets to us, and there is usually one thing we can all return to that helps to keep us sane: cooking. Of all the stress relievers, this feels like the most ancient. It’s easy to imagine how so many of the incredibly delicious and creative meals we know today were borne out of times as stressful as the one we live in now, as I finally have the ability to really test the comfort zone of my taste buds in a way that’s been difficult before. We all seem to occupy our free time with sharing recipes and ideas for things to cook. We joke about becoming famous by utilizing this time to learn how to make the best scones ever. But most of our time is spent right there over the stove with recipes as guidelines, willing to explore different flavor combinations and to try creating something new. While we drift more toward comfort foods for now, we find ways to incorporate vegetables and healthier alternatives whenever possible to see if we still like them. I've found out harmony exists in contrasting flavors like bitter and creamy, and how to (finally) make something delicious out of broccoli rabe, which up until now has been very difficult. I’ve been following a ten-week baking challenge with excitement, finally making cookies that aren’t chocolate chip. Our chilis are more robust and colorful than ever with the inclusion of vibrant vegetables like butternut squash. Not all of our dishes turn out perfectly, but we’ve felt more encouragement from our failures to keep going and get to the result we’re looking for. My roommate has been trying to perfect a recipe for savory apple turnovers, and I’m planning to make vegan fish and chips using celery root. It’ll probably take some tweaking, but I have hope that it will turn out just fine. I was hit with the realization the other day that, for me, cooking does something incredibly important aside from providing sustenance and a means for connection. It encourages me to be patient and to find more joy in the process of creating. It joins some of my favorite creative processes that feel the same way, like painting or writing a poem; it’s messy and layered, but with time and effort, it comes together into something beautiful. I find that a lot of my anxiety these days is wrapped up in the hope that things go back to normal quickly, that we hurriedly reach the end result of being able to re-enter society without thinking twice about the immediate safety of our neighbors or kin. That I can enjoy some of the non-essential joys of life, especially as summer approaches. I think back to a couple weeks ago when I was cooking my favorite dish, that chana masala. Admittedly I was pretty hungry by the time I started cooking, so I rushed simmering my chickpeas in the tomato sauce. While they were cooked, the resulting dish was less enjoyable than if I would’ve given it time to cook thoroughly and let the seasoning meld together in a way that only time allows. Focusing on the here and now, taking things day by day and giving ourselves enough time for this to pass is the only way we will get through this. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but I know it’s the only way to move forward. It's my baby sister’s birthday, so on an early morning trip to the grocery store, I gather items to make her some beignets to pick up. I can’t give her a party surrounded by her friends, or a weekend trip to an indoor waterpark like she usually loves for her special day. But in the full day of rising dough, floured hands, stirring custard, and sprinkling powdered sugar, I can give her the feeling that, even the absence of normalcy, everything will be okay. - Jasmine Green, Center for Creativity Assistant Jasmine’s Chana Masala Ingredients ●1/2 cup uncooked jasmine rice (white or brown) for serving (can substitute/pair with garlic naan) ● 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil ● 1/2 medium yellow onion, chopped ● 3 cloves garlic, pressed or minced ● 1/2 tablespoon peeled and minced fresh ginger (about a 1-inch piece) ● 1 teaspoons garam masala ● 3/4 teaspoon ground cumin ● 1/2 teaspoon paprika ● 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric ● 1/2 teaspoon curry powder ● 1/2 teaspoon onion powder ● 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder ● bay leaf (optional) ● 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper (optional) ● half a lemon ● 1 can (14 ounces) fire-roasted crushed tomatoes or whole peeled tomatoes, with their juices ● 1 small can (6 oz) tomato paste ● 1 can (14 ounces) chickpeas (or 1.5 cups cooked chickpeas), rinsed and drained ● 1/4 cup half and half ● 1/8 cup of brown sugar ● 1 tablespoon unsalted butter ● fine sea salt, to taste ● fresh cilantro, for garnish (optional) Tools ● Cast-iron pan (you can use other pans, but a well-seasoned cast iron works best for me) ● Small pot for cooking rice (can be substituted for rice maker) ● Food processor (optional, for quick dicing onions and garlic) ● Slotted wooden spatula Instructions Prior to starting your masala, prepare all of your ingredients. This recipe comes together quick in the first stages, so having everything on hand is key to ensuring nothing burns. To reduce the number of bowls you’re using for ingredients, feel free to combine your grated ginger and garlic and combine all seasonings aside from salt, powdered garlic, and powdered onion. Cook jasmine rice according to package instructions. This will more than likely be done prior to finishing your chana masala, so keep an eye on it as you cook. To start, heat your pan without oil on medium to medium high heat. This will keep your oil from burning as it reduces the time your oil is in the pan. Once the pan is sufficiently hot, add your oil to the pan. The oil should “shimmer” and glide across the pan easily. Immediately add the onions (and optional bay leaf) and sprinkle them with a pinch of salt. For 8 minutes, occasionally stir the onions around the pan to keep them from burning around the edges. Your onions should begin to sweat and become translucent. Once you have translucent onions, add the grated ginger and garlic directly to the pan and stir until fragrant, between 1-2 minutes. Once fragrant, add all seasonings aside from powdered onion and garlic. Stir and let the seasonings toast in the pan for another minute. When your seasonings have toasted, add tomato paste into onion mixture. Stir until onion mixture and tomato paste are well combined. Stir constantly until tomato paste turns from a bright red to a deep crimson color, about 5 minutes. Add diced tomatoes and chickpeas. Fill either tomato or chickpea can about halfway with water, and add that into the pan as well. Add lemon juice, powdered onion, and garlic and stir to combine. Turn heat down to simmer and cover to allow sauce to thicken for about 10 minutes. Uncover pan and stir. Add tablespoon of butter to emulsify the sauce. Add brown sugar, and stir to combine. Add in half-and-half and stir. At this point, your sauce should be a vibrant orange-red. Cover sauce and allow to simmer for another 5-10 minutes, and your dish should be ready. Salt to taste. To serve, scoop rice into the bottom of a decently-sized bowl into an even layer. Ladle masala on top of rice and top with shredded cilantro leaves. For an extra-decadent meal, pair with garlic naan.
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Have you seen The Pitt News feature on our Creative Interventions contest? Submissions are still open! Check out the details on our Creative Interventions page. The idea of being an “amateur” can put you in a headspace that blocks your creativity. You can be frozen with the inability to act, afraid that anything you do will be wrong or that you might look silly. As an educator, I have seen so many people stop themselves from enjoying their work and being in the moment because they are focused on creating in what they see as the “right” or best way, instead of doing what is natural to them and forging their own way. If you let it, being an amateur can be liberating, allowing you to invent your own style and freeing you from only creating in just one way. My entire creative journey has been through the lens of an amateur, learning how to move from being envious of those who have mastered certain techniques to leveraging my own strengths and growing from those. When I was in seventh grade, I remember a peer in art class who could draw any Pokémon from memory. They would look exactly like the game models. Another could draw faces that were somewhat realistic, and yet another could draw and shade anime characters, and it looked so good (from the standpoint of a seventh grader). I was envious because even with a picture of a Pokémon, my ability to draw lacked in comparison. But even then, I wanted nothing more than to be an artist and make drawings that looked like what my peers were producing. Despite not being an “artistic” child like some other students, I stayed with my dream and continued art classes through high school. My senior year, I was president of the art club, but I would still look at the works produced by others and feel discouraged. One friend drew sports cars with high precision. The kid who drew realistic faces in seventh grade was painting portraits and developing her own style. Though I felt discouraged, I persisted with my creative endeavors and set my sights on a becoming an art therapist. After two years of going to school for psychology and getting over feeling discouraged about my art, I transferred to a new university and became a studio art major. Being in a university with art students, I once again felt defeated, seeing students who in an intro to drawing class had already mastered the basic techniques I thought I was barely beginning to grasp. It wasn’t until we did a project that took combining three works of art that I understood the advantage that had carried me this far. I was not afraid of experimentation, while some of my peers played it safe and practiced only what they knew. While most others took pieces from the same movement, I wanted to try and combine three different styles and do it on a four-foot roll of paper. Although my technique was still far from perfect, this was the first time I felt joy in doing a class project. Once I took my first 3D course and moved toward sculpture, I understood that the process and concepts were sometimes as important as the appearance of the finished product. In my 2D classes, I began to use my time to experiment and play around with non-traditional media, painting on metal and stretching canvas with rice paper and throwing heavy globs of paint and sand on the delicate media. Even though most of my class work was in 3D media, I continued to grow in my 2D work because I was willing to take an amateur’s approach. Sometimes, my work would not get me the grades I would have liked to have, but it no longer mattered because I was doing what I loved in art and making. Now, in my work at the Center for Creativity, I try to leverage this ability to help aspiring makers expand their understanding of their ability to create. - Mike Campbell, Center for Creativity Assistant Making Space: |
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