My present kitchen (II)
I miss the rice dishes I used to make in my 46 cm enamelled steel paella pan, over a burner with two concentric rings of blue flame. All that was very much mine, in every sense of the word.
I had taken it for granted that it would be impossible to reclaim in the places where I have lived over these past few years, but today I felt like taking some measurements and reconsidered the situation. It would just about fit in the minuscule living room, which opens directly off the entrance, though I would have to buy a stand and move the chairs to another space, which simply does not exist here. But there is an option in the kitchen: putting the microwave on top of the fridge, the frying pans on top of the microwave, and the gas cylinder underneath the worktop. The cylinder would have to be brought from where it is now, then taken to the petrol station when the gas ran out so that I could buy a replacement, and the new one brought home: this would be the awkward part of the plan, as it would depend on someone bringing a car and accompanying me on these trips with the gas cylinder.
Otherwise, the burner’s smaller ring would be very useful even apart from the paella, as it would allow me to cook perfectly well with pots and pans whose bases were not completely flat (as the induction hob requires for proper cooking). It would also free me from having to rely on the induction hob as my only available source of heat: I could cook on two burners at once, and would not be left without a hob if the induction one broke down (which has already happened when liquid from a pot spilled onto it). I could even use the gas burner as my main cooking appliance, and it would probably work out cheaper than the electricity consumed by the induction hob.
For all its advantages, nevertheless, I’m afraid that this one small drawback — having to depend on someone else’s car — will prove decisive, and that the plan will ultimately come to nothing.
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Speaking of someone else’s elements, one thing that does work well in my current alien kitchen is the alien fridge.
It is small, old, sad and suspicious. It is not mine, and somehow its mere presence makes that abundantly clear in itself. It is part of the countless things that are alien to me and populate my life, to which my life has been almost entirely reduced: I couldn’t be less in my element. This isn’t the first time I’ve said that I couldn’t identify more closely with what in our day and age is called dysphoria: only that, in my case, the dysphoria applies to everything except precisely matters of gender. There is no doubt that I am a man, and that is as it should be, unlike everything else. Everything else is wrong, irrational, a disorder of nature. Nothing in my life corresponds to what I am, except my masculine and purely heterosexual condition. I am a man, and I am one to such an extent that — as I have often said — I am a man before I am a human being. In fact, for some time now I can no longer be considered a human being at all, so that all I have left ahead of me is to be a man.
The fridge, I repeat, belongs to that disordered and hostile universe which does not belong to me, and to which I do not belong by right and reason, but which has determined my life in fact. Every now and then this alien fridge makes noises whose causes and consequences I do not want to know about. Its freezer has stalactites that are impossible to remove. Its supposedly white exterior is covered in equally ineradicable stains — like those on the kitchen tiles and the microwave, which, incidentally, is made by the same brand as the fridge: perhaps this brand sells its appliances with the streaks already built in…
But in contrast to this succession of visible material sorrows and threats, and perhaps through the intervention of some supernatural agency, the fridge inexplicably performs its function of cooling and preserving food with an efficiency that is even more unsettling than the negative evidence just described. Foods such as lettuce, basil and parsley, which usually go off after a couple of days, last a week and a half in this fridge, perfectly green, crisp, fragrant and radiant. The containers in the freezer get so cold that they hurt to handle; they actually burn because of the tremendous cold they acquire in there, and the canonical twenty-four hours in the ordinary fridge compartment are not usually enough to defrost them.
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I have also been thinking about another positive feature of my current kitchen, this one also old and efficient, but mine, neither dysphoric nor alien nor disordered, and free from the sadness and the feeling that it is about to break down spectacularly, causing inconvenient collateral damage, like the fridge inspires.
We are talking about my 6-litre Fagor Rapid Express pressure cooker, made of 18/10 stainless steel, which I bought around 2007, back when this brand was still manufacturing in the Basque Country. Since then, the only thing I have had to replace is the lid gasket. I have used it quite a lot, but I ought to use it even more, not merely because it saves time and electricity, but because of its strictly technical and culinary properties. I have read many glowing accounts, for instance, of roast chicken cooked in a pressure cooker, which I have never tried. I must investigate and experiment further with the possibilities of my pressure cooker. It has accompanied me through all the changes of time and place, each more alien to me than the last, and it is time we got to know each other better.