Hidden Kitchens

Some months ago I subscribed to a podcast out of National Public Radio by the culinary anthropologists/radio producers the Kitchen Sisters entitled Hidden Kitchens. They call the kitchen they profile “secret, unexpected, below the radar.”

For twenty weeks the shows jumped around. One week it would be taco trucks in Los Angeles; the next cooking on coal freighters on the Great Lakes; the next memories of a house restaurant that gave frequent respite to Martin Luther King during the Montgomery bus boycotts. In the end, however, the stories really weren’t about cooking or even food: they were about sustenance. Each hidden kitchen produced food for comfort and fulfillment, autonomy or companionship (lit: with bread), resistance and identity.

Food, cooking, and the intertwined concepts of sustenance and sustainability have been on my mind recently. During my time in Timor-Leste, I have had meals made for me twice a day, a system that I inherited from my predecessor and one that appreciated as I got my bearings. Starting about a week before I left for Darwin, I quietly slid out of the arrangement. I still have to sort this out formally with the woman who cooks, and I worry about how to do this politely and fairly.

Establishing a private life while living at my workplace has been difficult. And that’s why this small change has felt so good. It has made me feel less monitored and passive, more in control, and more connected to the what’s going on outside the compound’s swinging gates.

Back in my room I have been slowly building a hidden kitchen. Old ice cream containers holding flour and yellow cans of sweet lychee are now my bookends. I am accumulating spices, sauces and staples. My fridge is filling out. The Vegetarian left me teas. Goode and L sorted me out with a yogurt maker (which I proudly showed mom via the new webcam). I have now cultures multiplying, garlic pickling, avocados ripening and a pumpkin molding.

I arrived in Timor-Leste with the idea I would be leaving at the end of the year. I had an ascetic’s attitude of just waiting things out - I could find what I wanted once I got back home.

The choice to take another contract has sent me in search of sustainability, comfort and small pleasures. Instead of abstention, how do I cook up what I need? Some needs are social: being able to see friends and stay in touch with loved ones. Some are intellectual. And right now, a lot are corporeal: the rush of Vinyasa yoga or dancing or adding more bird’s eye chilies.


After dutifully eating my little plates of rice and sautéed greens delivered to my clean white room, it feels good to be growing a burbling, tiny kitchen on (and tucked under) what used to be my desk. I like when my bread dough rises and the stickiness of my knife and fingers after mincing garlic; I like that my room smells a little funky when I walk in; I like how food reconnects the brain with the gut and tongue. My hidden kitchen is both lab and experiment – one small, appliance-swooning step toward seeking out what I need to feel nourished, full.*



*Apparently part of the answer is liters and liters of yogurt. Lots to go around. iTunes users can find the free podcasts by searching for "Hidden Kitchens" in the iTunesStore.

Photo: Top – mangos from the courtyard, October 2006. Bottom – a meal delivered to my room.