Cooking In This Country

Most of my meals in the States came from one of three places.  They were:

 

1. My mother (this is embarrassing to admit, but it is true)

2. A McDonald’s bag (this is embarrassing to admit, but it is true)

3. The microwave (Easy Mac)

But here in Cape Verde I do not own a microwave, my mother is an ocean away, and there is not even a fast food chain in this country (and don’t get me started here.  I have been craving a double cheeseburger like a pregnant woman.  I cannot tell you how many dreams I have had about being back in the States and ordering fast food.  And of course, in these dreams something always goes horribly wrong—the person in front of me orders the last McFlurry, or my Whopper falls ketchup and mayonnaise side down on the floor, or just as I am about to get my tray of food someone pulls out a handgun and decides to rob the place.)

So, I’ve been forced to start cooking.  This has been quite the adventure.  I found that my roommate, Nelson, has done about as much cooking as I have in my life.  We’ve come a long way since we first moved in together in September.  One of our first meals was pasta with tomato sauce and hotdog bits.  It might have been good, but it had no taste.  I mean absolutely no taste.  It was weird, almost concerning.

“Do you taste anything?” I asked Nelson.

 

“No.  Nothing.”

 

“But, I swear, it feels like I’m eating something.” 

 

Then Nelson taught me a dish he had learned in France.  It’s called tunapastamayo.  It has three ingredients.  They are:

 

1. Tuna

2. Pasta

3. Mayonnaise 

 

This quickly became our household staple.  We made plans to one day open a tunapastamayo restaurant in either Iowa City, Iowa, or Columbus, Ohio.  Plates of tunapastamayo will cost 50 cents and be sold, primarily, to drunken college students.  They will have the option to pay $6.00 and receive the never-ending-plate of tunapastamayo. 

 

I also mastered how to fry an egg and claim to be the best American at it on the entire island.  There also may or may not be only six Americans on this island and one of the six may or may not be a vegan.

 

More recently, we’ve been branching out and trying new foods from the cookbook.  If you ever find yourself 375 miles off the coast of Senegal, feel free to stop by our place and request the “Tuna Creole.”  It’s filthy.

 

About two months ago we decided to buy a pressure cooker, mainly to cut down the amount of time it was taking us to cook beans.  When Nelson told me he wanted to buy a pressure cooker, I told him to go for it, envisioning a crock pot in my head.  Let me tell you something I have since learned: a pressure cooker is nothing like a crock pot.  Instead of returning with a handy little contraption that you plug into a wall, he came back with a big metal container that looked like something you could detonate a bomb inside and nothing would happen.    

 

After we bought it, we started to ask around town for tips on using it.  Somewhere in there we heard that a pressure cooker is essentially a bomb.  I grew a little concerned.  One night a friend came over to hang out.  We asked him if he new anything about pressure cookers.

 

“Yeah, we had one,” he said.  “They cook food well.”

 

We asked him what happened to it.

 

“It exploded.”

 

After that Nelson and I decided to look at the manual to see if to see if it had any warnings.  The manual is half written in Arabic, which neither of us read, and the other half is translated into English.  The English is fun to read.

 

The title page reads, “Operation Instruction for The High-quality Gland Flame-proof Cooker.”  Please note, I have made no typos here.

            The list of pressure cooker parts includes:

1. knob                                                                          12. antii blockage nut
2. elastic ridge                                                               13. spacer
3. boit sleeve                                                                 14. ears
4. ball bearing                                                                15. handles
5. guide screw                                                               16. body
6. central spacer                                                             17. rubber sealing ring
7. central lock nut                                                         18. lid
8. pressure—limiting valve (working valve)                 19. big spacer
9. lock spring                                                                 20. top spacer
10. valve base                                                                  21. slice spring
11. washer

As a general rule, I try to avoid cooking inside anything that has ears, but I’ll let that slide.  My personal favorite is #12. 

Then, later on in the manual, we found what appears to be some advertisement points.  “Safe and Reliable,” it claims.  “NO BURSTING!”  “Scientificly Designed, Grace and Beautiful.”  And then we read, “Operational Safety and Pressure Control are both items exempt from Customs Inspection.”

 Wait…WHAT?!?!?

“How can the operational safety be exempt from Customs Inspections?” Nelson asked.

“How can the pressure control on a pressure cooker not be looked at?”

           

I told Nelson I was not stepping near that thing when it was over a flame.  He bought it; he could have his hands blown off using it.  Meanwhile, I would hide under my bed in the fetal position.  Yet, the day we first put it to use I found myself in the kitchen, drawn in by curiosity.  It sounded like a dying freight train.  I swear once it murmured my name.  When Nelson went to turn off the stove burner, he wore a long sleeve track jacket, his swimming goggles, and our Peace Corps prescribed lifejacket.  I stood in the doorway shouting nonsense.  “Remember to release the anti blockage nut!” I screamed.  “NO BURSTING!” 

 

The pressure cooker didn’t explode then, and it hasn’t yet.  We’ve used it dozens of times.  I’ve got more cooking stories to tell, mainly about how we get fresh meat here.  I don’t have time to post it today, but hopefully within the upcoming weeks it will be up.