Sometimes an Improvised Sauce Is the Best Sauce

He Calm sometimes wonders if I’m an alien in disguise, sent to Earth to gaze human life. When we first lived together, we argued around buying flowers for the apartment. I saw them as a luxury, even though you could get a bouquet at the bodega for only $4. But to him, they were essential: a way to bring beauty to our lives. And so my life is more beautiful now.

I’ve learned to navigate the kitchen over the ages, but maybe because I’m late to the game, my cooking has a any studious air. My husband’s a natural, free to wing it, when I go by the book. We are cooks as we are musicians. Each of us trained at the piano as children, but where I dutifully read the notes, he composes, the music pouring out like a language he was born to. I need a recipe, a shopping list, a mise en place; he glances in the larder and, voilà, dinner.

As often happens in marriage, when one person is spectacularly better at something, the new cedes the field.

The reward is surprise. One night, he’s planning to cook halibut when he realizes we’re out of fish sauce, fresh chiles and makrut lime leaves, all key ingredients in the sauce he usually whisks together to accompany a white, butter-fleshed, reliably flaky fish. He thinks, How can he recreate the balance of hot-sour-salty-sweet that creates Southeast Asian cooking so vivid?

Also Read: How to Make Indian Butter Chicken