At first glance, my kitchen seems normal enough. It has all the basic necessities with the added bonus of two tall windows. On second glance, you may notice something is a little off. It's as if someone shrunk everything - like a wool sweater that went through the wash. The cupboards are a size too small, the sink is petite, and the stove and refrigerator are precious miniature versions of normal appliances. My brand new, sexy, mid-life-crisis-worthy pots and pans dwarf the burners and don't come close to fitting into the Cornish game hen-sized oven. To top it off, the ever-present bottles of Sauvignon Republic look like magnums in the vertically challenged refrigerator.

Since I moved in, I've been working almost every evening, eliminating the necessity to attempt cooking anything more adventurous than oatmeal in my new space. This week I've been off work to do some “nesting”… settling in for my first winter in six years (that'll be another story). Being home from work has given me extra time to catch up with the autumn issues of the food magazines that have been piling up. Autumn is definitely my most inspired time for cooking… the colors, textures, and aromas of the seasonal foods, and the cool crisp weather that graciously permits the prolonged use of the stove and oven after the long, hot, unforgiving summer.

The urge to cook a hearty meal overcame me today along with a craving for the rich earthy flavors of the autumn harvest. A two-block walk to my neighborhood bodega landed me pumpkin-like kabocha squash, sweet-tart New York State apples, crisp braising greens, ruby red pomegranates, and hearty pearl barley. The mere presence of this much food on the counters posed the first challenge.

Years of cooking in crowded restaurant kitchens, fortunately, prepared me for what ensued. The first step: mis en place (a French / restaurant term for getting everything in place). Working quickly and neatly is crucial to working in a small space (or any space for that matter). My grandmothers and every good chef I've worked with will also tell you “clean as you go!” With only one counter for a cutting board, vegetables went right from the sink onto the board and into small bowls; the squash went right into the oven. The barley got started on the back burner while the front burner got most of the action.
This is where the sexy new cookware proved its worth. Since my favorite 12” All-Clad sauté pan dwarfs my stove, I enlisted my newest addition… a Viking 2-quart reduction saucepan. The seductively curved bottom of this hybrid saucepan not only provides an evenly heated surface for reducing the most delicate glace, it also provided just the right slope for sautéing my onions and apples within the confines of the Lilliputian stovetop. With a bit of shuffling of cutting board, knives, colander, hot baking pan, and salad spinner, the meal came together nicely.

As I sat down to the first home-cooked dinner of the rest of my new life, (paired with the bite of a Sauvignon Republic Russian River Sauvignon Blanc and the fairy lights of the Empire State Building), I was satiated and very grateful for a fresh start.

The following recipe yields much more than one person can eat in a sitting. I froze several single serving portions to save me from more-frequent-than-necessary contortionist acts required in preparing multi-process meals in my little kitchen with a big view.

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