Beside a large wok of curried vegetables and tofu, submerged beets slowly bubble and stew. On a chopping board nearby, a salad is, piecemeal, taking shape: apples, first, then arcs of celery, the cheese cubes kept separate in a bowl. Between dangling wire baskets of ginger and white onions, soy sauce can be seen poured into a leafy, Chinese-style soup; elsewhere, dollops of beaten egg whites are arranged in even lines on a baking tray. As an eclectic pop soundtrack plays in the background, the cooks drift from sink to shelf and stove, chatting about their days, singing and tapping their feet in time with the music.
While this may sound like the elaborate and sensuous orchestration occurring behind closed doors at one of SoHo's more exotic eateries, the scene actually comes from an ordinary weekday evening in the kitchen of the house at 2 Dickinson Street, or '2D' as Princeton's only vegetarian coop is affectionately known.
Groups of three or four students begin dinner preparations at half past four every evening. Thursday, the night I'm there, has been assigned to Julia Ressler '05, Geza Szigethy '04, Tal Zamir '05, and Frankie Ng '04 (although, in typically flexible 2D style, Frankie has prepared his tofu-vegetable curry early because he has another commitment this evening).
Within minutes, the kitchen bustles with activity, the salad growing promisingly in its bowl. Suddenly, Zamir, who has been flipping through the pasta section of a cookbook, realizes that she is missing the particular variety of cheese her lasagna recipe requires. The others help rummage through the refrigerator, but there is little anxiety in the kitchen. "You could use — cream cheese?" one of the others suggested. "Over Intersession we were making a spinach and ricotta cheese pasta, but we didn't have ricotta, so we used cream. It worked okay."
Despite the constraints on the students' time, this sense of adventurousness — and, occasionally, lack of ingredients — give coop cooking a delightful, all-pervading sense of freedom. There certainly are no hard-and-fast Martha Stewart rules here.
"The meals here can sometimes be somewhat — providential," Ressler agreed. "Some people are very careful about reserving the ingredients they need, but sometimes you just have to learn to work with what's there."
Almost as soon as she says it, the lasagna idea is deemed unfeasible, and the group must decide on an alternative carbohydrate. In an instant, Ressler produces flour and eggs and proposes making egg noodles. There isn't a noodle-maker on hand, but instead she and Zamir form the dough into nuggets the size of ping-pong balls.
"It may look a little funny," Ressler admitted, "but they should taste fine."
Has the ethos of free-flowing experimentation ever backfired? "Well, for some reason we have really strong cayenne pepper, and people have experimented with it — you know, using about a quarter-cup of the stuff when a teaspoon will do," Szigethy remembered ruefully. "Pretty much everyone makes that mistake once." Minor mishaps aside, ask any 2D members about their unconventional dining choice, and the response is resounding approval. Each member has a small weekly chore: There are orders for the industrial-sized tubs of white rice, sunflower seeds and mung beans lining the kitchen walls to be placed with wholesale suppliers, deliveries to be picked up and put away, bills to be paid. There is kitchen waste to be separated and removed. And fresh bread to be baked.
But far from being tiresome, most members agree that the responsibilities, shared between 30 members, are more than manageable — and fun.
"I never realized before what an incredibly aesthetic experience cooking was," Ressler said. "You know those wonderfully vivid images of food from [the French film] "Amelie?" That's how I feel here sometimes!"
There is also a evident respect for fellow members' dietary needs: A sheet of paper pasted to one of the overhead cupboards turns out to be "Ye Olde List of Food Allergies," and, looking again at the meal taking shape before me, I notice each dish has been carefully prepared in different forms — vegan and non-vegan, with and without garlic, onion-free and onion-filled — out of respect for specific dietary restrictions. One member recalls how the coop even broke its primary no-meat-in-the-house rule a few years ago in order to accommodate a member with an extremely restricted diet.
As night falls on the porch outside, the rest of the members begin flowing in. Plates are produced, as well as incongruous cutlery and a variety of cups, mugs and even jam jars for water and juice. For a while, we stand around in the kitchen, plates in hand, keeping those putting the last-minute touches to their dishes company, but before long everyone gathers around the large, heavy wooden table in the dining room. The numbers each night is variable. 2D overflows with extras one night and is virtually empty the next.
"We don't have restrictions on how many guests we can bring," Ressler said. "And it's definitely a place we're proud to invite our friends to."
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