Cooking with Context: easy recipies for single guys who are cooking in strange kitchens

Scene: My sister’s place in Vancouver, accompanied by two cats and a runt dog. Though, realistically, it could be fucking anywhere.

To start, you need an idea. This I have: salmon, with roast potatoes and salad- it is so shit-ass simple.

Ingredients

1 fresh Salmon Fillet- a bitching piece of Sockeye will do.
1 Potato- Yukon Gold are great. They’re tasty little fuckers.
1 Head of Lettuce- Red Leaf is my favourite. Some sexy looking greenery there!
1 Tomato- Get the Hothouse! They’re so soft and lush you’ll just wanna smash em up.
1 bunch of Green Onions- subtle in taste, but can take a salad to the next fucking level.
1 Lemon- sour little shits they are but they’re the real driving force of this meal.
1 Avocado- do the squish test: not too squishy, not too firm. You’ll know the right one when you come to it. Pretend it’s a boob or something.
Salt and Pepper
Dried Dill
Olive Oil
Tinfoil

Next, you need to figure out what you have available to you, namely, what you are allowed to use. I ask my sister while she is brushing her teeth:
“Do you have lemons?”
“Wemons?, aah, ahuh, on four in wag.”
“On floor in bag?”
“Yuh-huh.”
“Do you have Salt and Pepper and Olive Oil and Dried Dill?”
“Yuh, sink tho”
“Can I use this shit?”
“Yes you can” –she’d finished brushing her teeth by this point, and shortly after she left for work.

The rest I figure out myself. I route through the cupboards and find the shit I need, like a pot, a baking dish, a bowl and a razor sharp knife.

After I’ve poked around and stirred shit up, I make a list of the other crap I need from the store: salmon, potato, lettuce, green onion, tomato, avocado and tinfoil.
***
[I go to Choices, an organic grocery store a good eight minutes hike up the urine-drenched street. Choices smells like petulia and the stiff plastic of new credit cards. There are hippie looking dudes with tattered clothes, and urban guys with special cloth grocery bags that say shit like, “We only have one Earth!” and “Be Green stay Clean!” These urban lifestyle models also smell like expensive cologne and push children in large, maniacal buggies that block most of the aisles.]
***

Directions
Find the oven and crank that fucker up to 350. You’re gonna want to let it preheat for ten minutes.
Fill that fat-ass pot up with some water and flip on one of those stovetop element things to max fucking power.
Cut the potatoes into quarters, or eighths, depends how big those little bastards are. It’s a Game Time decision. Put the strainer in the pot. When the water gets all bubbly and crazy and shit, put the potatoes in. And then put the lid on. Steam the little bastards for five minutes and then remove. Make sure to turn the element off when you’re done.
Flop that sexy bitch of a fillet onto some of that smooth, shiny tinfoil. Apply salt to the fillet. Be careful here. You don’t wanna put too much salt on. It’ll make the fucker taste like shit. Then grind some pepper over it. Next, sprinkle some Dill over top –Dill-icious! Cut up that fucking lemon into slices and lay about four or five of those little sour peckers over the fillet. Fold the tinfoil around your fish. Make firm creases. It keeps the heat in.
Drag out that baking dish. Put those smoking hot little bastards you call potatoes in the dish and smother with salt and pepper. You can really spread that shit on thick here because they’re potatoes and they need help. Grab that Olive Oil and just drizzle the fucking shit out of them. Roll them around with a spoon. Get full fucking coverage.
Put the tinfoil package and the baking dish in the oven for 35 minutes.
Make the salad. Chop the vegetable shit up and combine it in the bowl. You’re pretty much done at this point -tear the fridge apart at mealtime and find some salad dressing. In my case, I found a fucking lovely Raspberry Vinaigrette.
Bonus Step for good measure: do the dishes. You got thirty-five minutes to kill. Do the hosts a favour and just do’em. Man-up!

After thirty-five minutes take the shit out of the oven. Make sure to use a cloth or dish-towel when you do or else you’ll burn the living fuck out of your hands and most likely drop your hard earn prizes.

Place the cooked shit next to the vegetable shit on a plate. It should look like something you might get in a restaurant or something your mom made for your birthday when you were a little fuck.

Sit down and the eat fuck out of it.