my tiny kitchen

When I moved from Sydney to New York, to live in a flat that’s an eighth of the size of our house back home, my one rule was to have a proper kitchen.  Five floor walk-ups, sporadic hot water, and very dodgy plumbing were nothing compared to the idea of a kitchenette with its pathetic single burner and bar fridge.  In the middle of the bustling sex-shop district on the West/Greenwich village divide, I found my oasis.  A teeny, tiny kitchen with a real oven (that works at least 80% of the time), three working burners, and enough bench space for some very efficient preparation. I think it’s fair to say that I enjoy cooking more than I prefer eating.  And I love it when people enjoy my cooking.  There’s something very calming about the methodology of cooking, and once you’ve learned enough of the rules, you can calculate your experiments in a way that they’re generally bound to be edible.  I love being able to meditate over my day while chopping, mixing, and stirring. Because I treat my kitchen as an escape from my arduous anxiety-filled middleclass white well-bred world, I’m not very good at letting people into it, so this is the closest I can come to sharing my kitchen therapy with you all.