I love buttermilk. Biscuits need buttermilk; so do pancakes. Mashed potatoes taste better (and are lower-fat) with buttermilk. Buttermilk pannacotta can be made in minutes, but with some fruit on top, looks and tastes snazzy. Buttermilk ice cream is the very best thing to put on peach pie.
And then there's buttermilk sherbet.
I make buttermilk sherbet more than any other dessert. I often have buttermilk left over in the fridge, and the sherbet comes together in minutes. I just add enough sugar (sometimes honey) to make the buttermilk sweet-tart, then add a little something, and in the ice cream maker it goes. Ten minutes later I have a nice little dessert, low in fat, not too high in sugar, with a little protein and calcium to keep it from being totally nutritionally reprehensible. This is one of the only desserts I ever make just for myself; usually, dessert is a company phenomenon.
Now, that "little something" I add is fruit-based, but it changes with what I have in the house, from a tiny dash of lemon juice to a mess of pureed fruit. I have successfully made blackberry-buttermilk sherbet, lemon-buttermilk sherbet, lime-buttermilk sherbet, raspberry-buttermilk sherbet, peach-buttermilk sherbet and blueberry-buttermilk sherbet. Last night I made pink grapefruit-buttermilk sherbet, and I just want to share this advice with you: don't. Grapefruit-buttermilk sherbet is bad and weird. Just. Don't.
This has been a public service announcement.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
I love this
Stephen Colbert's very own ice cream! I think Ben and Jerry's should name ice creams after all my big liberal/political crushes: Patrick Fitzgerald's Hunka-Hunka-Burning Justice (Caramel ice cream with chunks of chocolate), Russ FeinGold-en Honey Crunch ( Honey ice cream with graham cracker crunch), and General Clark's "International Respect" Swirl (Nutella swirl in hazelnut ice cream, of course).
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Overheard in Cambridge
I overheard some Harvard students talking about Michael Pollan's article in the NYT Magazine last week.
"It was pretty good. The basic idea was that nutrition is really complex and we don't know as much as we can, so you shouldeat based on humanity's accumulated knowledge about food you find in traditional cuisines, instead of just eating whatever nutritionists say you should this week. So, eat real food, like what your grandparents ate. You know, don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food, like Powerbars or Oreos or yogurt."
Yogurt. Cracked me up.
"It was pretty good. The basic idea was that nutrition is really complex and we don't know as much as we can, so you shouldeat based on humanity's accumulated knowledge about food you find in traditional cuisines, instead of just eating whatever nutritionists say you should this week. So, eat real food, like what your grandparents ate. You know, don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food, like Powerbars or Oreos or yogurt."
Yogurt. Cracked me up.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
A little something
I haven't been writing a lot here, because the website has been tkaing a lot of time, and because I haven't been cooking really exciting things. No big projects, so fancy meals. Just simple, straightforward meals. I made liver this weekend for the first time, but I just cooked it with bacon and onions, nothing unexpected. Who wants to hear about that?
Well, I do. At least, I do when I'm reading other peoples' blogs. I love to hear what people really eat, day to day. What did you have for lunch, for dinner? I want to know. I want to know where you get your groceries, what you splurge on, and where you pinch pennies, what your fall-back meals are and what's in your pantry and what big-brand foods do you still eat all the time even though you're not really a big-brand-eatin' kind of person (Grape-Nuts). But I never feel like I have enough to say unless I can offer up something different. Isn't it always that way? We want greatness from ourselves, but love other people if they just smile at us.
So, here's what I had for lunch: lentil salad. This is a good salad, simple and tasty enough to eat three days in a row. I used to make it all the time, but then I stopped because the boyfriend doesn't like feta, and feta is key to this salad. Then I realized that feta is only key for me - he likes really plain food. So I made a batch and removed his portion before I added the feta.
I don't measure for this. I don't even know how many cupes of lentils I used, because I made the lentils for a side dish on Saturday night, just boiled firm-tender with some mushrooms over. The next day I mixed the leftover lentils with chopped red pepper, parsley and feta cheese, and dressed it all with a combination of lemon juice, olive oil, pepper, salt and a spoonful of tomato paste. Of course, you can skip the red pepper, or use green, or add red onion or chopped sundried tomatoes,or cucumbers or regular tomatoes or scallions. The basic requirements are lentils (not overcooked), parsley (the salad will taste dull without it), feta, and enough salt and pepper in the dressing to really give it some flavor. Though you could substitute vinegar for the lemon juice, I wouldn't recommend it - the bright citrus serves as a good counterpoint to the earthy lentils. But you can skip the tomato paste if you wish, particularly if you do add some tomatoes, dried or not, to the salad.
Well, I do. At least, I do when I'm reading other peoples' blogs. I love to hear what people really eat, day to day. What did you have for lunch, for dinner? I want to know. I want to know where you get your groceries, what you splurge on, and where you pinch pennies, what your fall-back meals are and what's in your pantry and what big-brand foods do you still eat all the time even though you're not really a big-brand-eatin' kind of person (Grape-Nuts). But I never feel like I have enough to say unless I can offer up something different. Isn't it always that way? We want greatness from ourselves, but love other people if they just smile at us.
So, here's what I had for lunch: lentil salad. This is a good salad, simple and tasty enough to eat three days in a row. I used to make it all the time, but then I stopped because the boyfriend doesn't like feta, and feta is key to this salad. Then I realized that feta is only key for me - he likes really plain food. So I made a batch and removed his portion before I added the feta.
I don't measure for this. I don't even know how many cupes of lentils I used, because I made the lentils for a side dish on Saturday night, just boiled firm-tender with some mushrooms over. The next day I mixed the leftover lentils with chopped red pepper, parsley and feta cheese, and dressed it all with a combination of lemon juice, olive oil, pepper, salt and a spoonful of tomato paste. Of course, you can skip the red pepper, or use green, or add red onion or chopped sundried tomatoes,or cucumbers or regular tomatoes or scallions. The basic requirements are lentils (not overcooked), parsley (the salad will taste dull without it), feta, and enough salt and pepper in the dressing to really give it some flavor. Though you could substitute vinegar for the lemon juice, I wouldn't recommend it - the bright citrus serves as a good counterpoint to the earthy lentils. But you can skip the tomato paste if you wish, particularly if you do add some tomatoes, dried or not, to the salad.
Friday, January 26, 2007
BUZZBUZZBUZZ
I used to have a friend who made coffee with caffeinated water. (Do they still make that stuff? Crank2O?) Anyway, now he can use that concoction to wash down a nice, caffeinated donut. Bliss.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
If I knew then what I know now....
A few things I wish someone had told me long ago - or at least that I had listened when someone did ( a list primarily culinary):
1) Throw away ceramic pie plates, no matter how cute they may be or how many you might receive as gifts. They are useless.
2) Oven-roasted potatoes take at least twice as long as it seems like they should. Short of actual burning, it's almost impossible to overcook a roasted potato.
3) You will never, ever use frozen spicy chicken broth. If there's a chicken carcass with lots of spice on it, just pick it bare and toss it out.
4) Always buy two bottles of glass cleaner, two cans of scrubbing cleanser, two rolls of paper towels. Keep one each in the kitchen and the bathroom. See how much cleaner your rooms stay.
5) Put all the bits and pieces for stock in ONE freezer bag, dummy.
6) Don't waste your vote on a third party candidate.
7) Refrigerate your apples.
8) Those weird "produce storage" bags with the tiny holes? They work.
9) Buttermilk freezes perfectly.
10) A small food processor is a waste of space. Buy a big one or skip it.
11) You will not grind meat as often as you thought you would.
12) If you like a cookbook writer, buy everything s/he ever wrote. You'll probably use those books twice as often as any other additions to the library - unless you luck on another favorite. At which point, repeat.
13) On a similar note, you will never regret buying another Tom Waits album.
14) A kitchen drawer needs scissors, binder clips, paper clips, rubber bands, and note paper. Having to run to the desk for these items is annoying.
15) Every home needs a cat.
16) White pepper is freakin' delicious.
17) Celery seed helps out a lot of dishes - anything with mayo, anything with beef.
18) Really good dried pasta (bronze-die) is actually worth the money.
1) Throw away ceramic pie plates, no matter how cute they may be or how many you might receive as gifts. They are useless.
2) Oven-roasted potatoes take at least twice as long as it seems like they should. Short of actual burning, it's almost impossible to overcook a roasted potato.
3) You will never, ever use frozen spicy chicken broth. If there's a chicken carcass with lots of spice on it, just pick it bare and toss it out.
4) Always buy two bottles of glass cleaner, two cans of scrubbing cleanser, two rolls of paper towels. Keep one each in the kitchen and the bathroom. See how much cleaner your rooms stay.
5) Put all the bits and pieces for stock in ONE freezer bag, dummy.
6) Don't waste your vote on a third party candidate.
7) Refrigerate your apples.
8) Those weird "produce storage" bags with the tiny holes? They work.
9) Buttermilk freezes perfectly.
10) A small food processor is a waste of space. Buy a big one or skip it.
11) You will not grind meat as often as you thought you would.
12) If you like a cookbook writer, buy everything s/he ever wrote. You'll probably use those books twice as often as any other additions to the library - unless you luck on another favorite. At which point, repeat.
13) On a similar note, you will never regret buying another Tom Waits album.
14) A kitchen drawer needs scissors, binder clips, paper clips, rubber bands, and note paper. Having to run to the desk for these items is annoying.
15) Every home needs a cat.
16) White pepper is freakin' delicious.
17) Celery seed helps out a lot of dishes - anything with mayo, anything with beef.
18) Really good dried pasta (bronze-die) is actually worth the money.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
New Issue Up
Okay, I know, I haven't really been posting. I have to figure out how I'm going to maintain the new website and post here. It would help if I managed to do a little cooking now and again, but that hasn't happened. Have I mentioned the seasonal depression thing? Because the last few weeks have been a blur of work, sleep and the first four seasons of the Gilmore Girls.
Anyway, the January issue of NewEnglandGrown is up. We're focusing this month on game and exotic meat - deer and bison farming, etc. Check it out.
Bison on a farm in Rutland, MA, during the only snowfall we've had this year.
Anyway, the January issue of NewEnglandGrown is up. We're focusing this month on game and exotic meat - deer and bison farming, etc. Check it out.
Bison on a farm in Rutland, MA, during the only snowfall we've had this year.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Ring in the New Year!
In my favorite way, with really depressing news about the effect of climate change on maple syrup production in New England.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Hey there, sugar!
In general, I love Christmas, the trees and the gifts and the food and even some of the music (though not that awful “chestnuts roasting” song, which makes me crazy). Last year, I was feeling down and kind of skipped the holiday, which made sense to me at the time, but left me for a whole year feeling like something was out of whack. This fall, I was feeling some trepidation about the whole holiday season. I lost my best friend this year, and the holidays were just sort of looming there ahead, threatening. From Thanksgiving I hid. But sometime just after Thanksgiving, the Christmas spirit kicked in with a vengeance. M. had always loved Christmas inordinately, going overboard with baking and gifts, and suddenly it seemed like the only way to get through the season was to treat it as she would have. I shopped like I have never shopped before. And this weekend, I made cookies. Lots of cookies.
I sent cookies to my aunt and uncles. I brought packages of cookies to work. I left plates of cookies for the neighbors. I spent the entire weekend baking and singing Christmas carols. I discovered that Christmas cookies have healing powers; I really felt much better after my baking extravaganza than I have in ages.
Okay, I’ll put the personal stuff aside now and talk about cookies.
I’ve noticed that people who improvise wildly when cooking are nervous about making even the slightest adjustments in a baking recipe. They shouldn’t be; there are lots of things you can do to change cookies without the slightest risk.
It’s important to think about flavor and texture separately. Flavor is easy to play around with; texture is more problematic. Texture defines a cookie – shortbread is shortbread whether the flavor is vanilla or ginger or even chocolate, as long as the texture is crumbly. The texture of a cookie depends largely on the following factors: ratios of major ingredients (eggs, flour, sugar, butter), method of combining (is the butter melted, are the eggs separated and whipped, is the flour sifted), temperature of dough (chilled or not), temperature of oven and baking time, and even a little on temperature of the cookies sheets. In some cases, ingredients affect texture if they are structural, intrinsic to the dough – cake flour versus a.p. flour can matter quite a bit, and ingredients like molasses or peanut butter make a big difference.
But flavor is a whole other story. For one thing, you can add things to cookies with abandon; unlike cakes, which can fall under the weight of too many extras, cookies will pretty much bake up just fine as long as there’s enough dough to bind all the bits you’ve added. So you can add nuts, coconut, all kinds of dried or candied fruit, or chocolate chips to almost any cookie. You can also swap out extracts – use a little less lemon, almond, or orange extract than you do vanilla. You can add spices or grated citrus peel. Before baking, you can sprinkle cookies with sanding sugar or pearl sugar or cinnamon sugar. After baking, you can glaze cookies or dip them in chocolate. You can also swap dark brown sugar for light to deepen the molasses flavor or swap light for dark to lighten it. (Don’t swap white and brown sugars, though, unless you want to change the texture).
This year I made a few cookies straight from the recipe: the lime meltaways and chocolate crackles from Martha Stewart’s holiday cookie supplement last year. The chocolate cookies were good, but the lime were a bit dull. Not bad, but I won’t make them again. I made butter cookies from the Cook’s Illustrated Best Recipe Cookbook recipe, with only a minor adjustment. I added a little orange oil, because I like a hint of orange in my sugar cookies. I also decorated them with royal icing. I made the Russian tea cakes from Stars Desserts straight, and they were good, as always.
I used The Best Recipe cookbook for several starter recipes. My chewy walnut cookies are a variation on the chewy chocolate chip cookies. I use dark brown sugar, add natural walnut flavoring, and replace the chips with toasted walnut halves. I made their spice cookie, but replaced their cinnamon-heavy mix of spices with a hearty teaspoon of clove and ¾ teaspoon of allspice, used light brown sugar so the clove flavor would come through, included ½ teaspoon of lemon extract, then glazed the baked cookies with a lemon/powdered sugar glaze and topped each one with a little candied lemon peel. These were winners, tart and spicy and sweet all at once. I turned the anise biscotti recipe into orange-cardamom-fig biscotti with the addition of ½ tsp each dried orange peel and orange oil, 1 teaspoon of cardamom, and chopped figs soaked in Triple Sec (dropped the anise and vanilla). I liked these very much as well.
Less successful were the oatmeal cookies from the Best Recipe. Clearly, not the best recipe after all. I made no changes except substituting dried cherries for the raisins, but these just weren’t very good oatmeal cookies. Oh, well, live and learn.
I don’t like the Best Recipe peanut butter cookie recipe, so I used the one from the Wooden Spoon Dessert Cookbook, another good source for dependable American-style baking recipes. Again, I replaced the light brown sugar with dark to increase the molasses flavor, then I added 2 teaspoons of ginger, and garnished the top with a piece of candied ginger. My favorite saltwater taffy was always the peanut-molasses; I think a lot of people are surprised as how comforting and familiar the peanut-ginger-molasses combination is. And, yes, I used natural peanut butter; the idea that only preservative-laden peanut butters can be used in cookies is a myth, and a silly one at that.
I wanted to make some meringues, but I seem to have lost my big star tip, and Verna’s Cake Supply on Mass Ave has tragically closed its doors. Still, a solid selection of cookies, which made for nice plates. I was wiped out by the end of weekend, though, what with the baking and the glazing and the decorating and the packing and the tying of the bows. I’m all rested up now, so it’s time to start thinking about Christmas dinner.
Here's hoping you make some great cookies this year. Don't be afraid to improvise - oh, and be sure to write down your changes, just in case someone falls in love with your cookie and you have to make the same recipe every Christmas forever and ever.
I sent cookies to my aunt and uncles. I brought packages of cookies to work. I left plates of cookies for the neighbors. I spent the entire weekend baking and singing Christmas carols. I discovered that Christmas cookies have healing powers; I really felt much better after my baking extravaganza than I have in ages.
Okay, I’ll put the personal stuff aside now and talk about cookies.
I’ve noticed that people who improvise wildly when cooking are nervous about making even the slightest adjustments in a baking recipe. They shouldn’t be; there are lots of things you can do to change cookies without the slightest risk.
It’s important to think about flavor and texture separately. Flavor is easy to play around with; texture is more problematic. Texture defines a cookie – shortbread is shortbread whether the flavor is vanilla or ginger or even chocolate, as long as the texture is crumbly. The texture of a cookie depends largely on the following factors: ratios of major ingredients (eggs, flour, sugar, butter), method of combining (is the butter melted, are the eggs separated and whipped, is the flour sifted), temperature of dough (chilled or not), temperature of oven and baking time, and even a little on temperature of the cookies sheets. In some cases, ingredients affect texture if they are structural, intrinsic to the dough – cake flour versus a.p. flour can matter quite a bit, and ingredients like molasses or peanut butter make a big difference.
But flavor is a whole other story. For one thing, you can add things to cookies with abandon; unlike cakes, which can fall under the weight of too many extras, cookies will pretty much bake up just fine as long as there’s enough dough to bind all the bits you’ve added. So you can add nuts, coconut, all kinds of dried or candied fruit, or chocolate chips to almost any cookie. You can also swap out extracts – use a little less lemon, almond, or orange extract than you do vanilla. You can add spices or grated citrus peel. Before baking, you can sprinkle cookies with sanding sugar or pearl sugar or cinnamon sugar. After baking, you can glaze cookies or dip them in chocolate. You can also swap dark brown sugar for light to deepen the molasses flavor or swap light for dark to lighten it. (Don’t swap white and brown sugars, though, unless you want to change the texture).
This year I made a few cookies straight from the recipe: the lime meltaways and chocolate crackles from Martha Stewart’s holiday cookie supplement last year. The chocolate cookies were good, but the lime were a bit dull. Not bad, but I won’t make them again. I made butter cookies from the Cook’s Illustrated Best Recipe Cookbook recipe, with only a minor adjustment. I added a little orange oil, because I like a hint of orange in my sugar cookies. I also decorated them with royal icing. I made the Russian tea cakes from Stars Desserts straight, and they were good, as always.
I used The Best Recipe cookbook for several starter recipes. My chewy walnut cookies are a variation on the chewy chocolate chip cookies. I use dark brown sugar, add natural walnut flavoring, and replace the chips with toasted walnut halves. I made their spice cookie, but replaced their cinnamon-heavy mix of spices with a hearty teaspoon of clove and ¾ teaspoon of allspice, used light brown sugar so the clove flavor would come through, included ½ teaspoon of lemon extract, then glazed the baked cookies with a lemon/powdered sugar glaze and topped each one with a little candied lemon peel. These were winners, tart and spicy and sweet all at once. I turned the anise biscotti recipe into orange-cardamom-fig biscotti with the addition of ½ tsp each dried orange peel and orange oil, 1 teaspoon of cardamom, and chopped figs soaked in Triple Sec (dropped the anise and vanilla). I liked these very much as well.
Less successful were the oatmeal cookies from the Best Recipe. Clearly, not the best recipe after all. I made no changes except substituting dried cherries for the raisins, but these just weren’t very good oatmeal cookies. Oh, well, live and learn.
I don’t like the Best Recipe peanut butter cookie recipe, so I used the one from the Wooden Spoon Dessert Cookbook, another good source for dependable American-style baking recipes. Again, I replaced the light brown sugar with dark to increase the molasses flavor, then I added 2 teaspoons of ginger, and garnished the top with a piece of candied ginger. My favorite saltwater taffy was always the peanut-molasses; I think a lot of people are surprised as how comforting and familiar the peanut-ginger-molasses combination is. And, yes, I used natural peanut butter; the idea that only preservative-laden peanut butters can be used in cookies is a myth, and a silly one at that.
I wanted to make some meringues, but I seem to have lost my big star tip, and Verna’s Cake Supply on Mass Ave has tragically closed its doors. Still, a solid selection of cookies, which made for nice plates. I was wiped out by the end of weekend, though, what with the baking and the glazing and the decorating and the packing and the tying of the bows. I’m all rested up now, so it’s time to start thinking about Christmas dinner.
Here's hoping you make some great cookies this year. Don't be afraid to improvise - oh, and be sure to write down your changes, just in case someone falls in love with your cookie and you have to make the same recipe every Christmas forever and ever.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Announcement
It's the holiday season, and I've noticed a distinct downturn in the number of postings on cooking blogs. This is not surprising: there are cookies and fruitcakes to bake, special candies and liqueurs to shop for. The food-obsessed are damned busy this time of year. And some of us are starting up websites.
I've not been posting a lot in the last month or two, because I've been involved in a project now ready for unveiling. It's a website called NewEnglandGrown, devoted to New England agriculture and food. Each month, we will be publishing new articles on some theme, some aspect of NE farming, as well as directories of resources related to that theme. We're hoping to build up a useful resource, as well as providing some interesting reading. We intend to focus on some of the less-explored aspects of the food/farm world, not just the apple orchards and the CSAs, but the farm summer camps and the llama breeders and the heirlooom seed growers and the farm inns and the people who sell Maine seaweed and the people who grow and dry herbal teas. We've also got an extensive events listing, because as far as I can tell, there's no one place to go to find information on all the maple festivals, open farm days, country fairs, cheesemaking workshops, and other great stuff going on.
Anyway, the first issue is up, and I would be thrilled if you took a look. Unfortunately, the first issue is a little light on writing - we're hoping to up both the quantity and the depth of the reading content next month. We spent a lot of time getting some of the resource material ready and didn't focus as heavily on the writing as I would like, but that will change. In the meantime, we've got a local food guide and a farmers' internet guide, directories of farm B&Bs, Christmas tree farms, and wineries, a holiday gift guide, some book recommendations, recipes, and the events listing, so there's plenty to check out.
If you have any recommendations about thing you think the site could use, do let me know. I'll read your messages between batches of sugar cookies and research on bison farms in New England for the January issue.
Thanks!
I've not been posting a lot in the last month or two, because I've been involved in a project now ready for unveiling. It's a website called NewEnglandGrown, devoted to New England agriculture and food. Each month, we will be publishing new articles on some theme, some aspect of NE farming, as well as directories of resources related to that theme. We're hoping to build up a useful resource, as well as providing some interesting reading. We intend to focus on some of the less-explored aspects of the food/farm world, not just the apple orchards and the CSAs, but the farm summer camps and the llama breeders and the heirlooom seed growers and the farm inns and the people who sell Maine seaweed and the people who grow and dry herbal teas. We've also got an extensive events listing, because as far as I can tell, there's no one place to go to find information on all the maple festivals, open farm days, country fairs, cheesemaking workshops, and other great stuff going on.
Anyway, the first issue is up, and I would be thrilled if you took a look. Unfortunately, the first issue is a little light on writing - we're hoping to up both the quantity and the depth of the reading content next month. We spent a lot of time getting some of the resource material ready and didn't focus as heavily on the writing as I would like, but that will change. In the meantime, we've got a local food guide and a farmers' internet guide, directories of farm B&Bs, Christmas tree farms, and wineries, a holiday gift guide, some book recommendations, recipes, and the events listing, so there's plenty to check out.
If you have any recommendations about thing you think the site could use, do let me know. I'll read your messages between batches of sugar cookies and research on bison farms in New England for the January issue.
Thanks!
Sunday, November 26, 2006
France, Part II (Or, No One Will Ever Make a Mini-Series About This)
Part II
The cheapest flight we could get went from Logan to JFK, then JFK to Paris. Except we had been waiting at Logan for hours. Snow. We were going to miss our NY flight. We waited. And waited.
When we got to JFK, we found that, yes, indeed, we had missed our flight. We waited some more, for instructions. The airline was going to put us up for the night, and then we were going to take another flight the next afternoon. I called Josh, who was supposed to meet us at the airport.
“What do you mean? I need you here. You shouldn’t have left so little time between flights [As if I and not the airline had determined the length of time between the legs of the journey, which was a generous two hours anyway]. At least if you’re going to be late, you can do me a favor. Buy me some mineral oil.”
It was very, very late at night in the hotel at JFK. Where the hell was I supposed to get mineral oil? Why did he need mineral oil?
I promised to try.
The next day we spent a long, long time waiting around the airport. We looked in every shop for mineral oil. Nothing. We flew to France and arrived exhausted to find no one waiting for us. We tried to call, but no answer. We waited for over an hour. Finally, Josh appeared and the first words out of his mouth were: “Did you find the mineral oil?”
He was angry that we had failed. He seemed to have decided to take his anger out on his vehicle, an early-type SUV that was about five times the size of every other car on the road. He flew, going easily 90 miles an hour, and driving erratically, swerving and jerking the car around the road. Even my ex, who was generally a fast driver, was a bit alarmed. The whole trip out of Paris was a blur of words from Josh on the usual themes – France is beautiful, the French are annoying, can you do the job – with a few new additions. For example, he told us his wife came out on Friday nights and stayed “until we fight, usually on Sunday morning.” In New York he had claimed she came out Thursday and stayed until Monday. He asked if we remembered the sheets, because that’s all we’ll need. He pointed out an open-air market.
“What do you think of that? Americans think it’s quaint! That’s one of your New England words, “quaint!” But, really, it’s filthy! Why would you want to eat food that sits out like that?”
He was practically spitting.
We got to the villa, and from the outside, it was everything he promised. The factory is in one wing, his home in another, our apartment in the third; there’s a courtyard and huge windows with shutters. He took us into the apartment.
It was empty.
He was right about the sheets; there were no sheets on the bed. Also, no blankets. Or pillows. Or any other furniture. Or pans, pots, utensils. No fridge. No anything really, just a bare bed, and a few coathangers in the closet. The closet which, by the way, had those folding mirrored doors. To match the gold wall-to-wall carpet. He had a 15th century French villa, and he was remodeling it to look like a Holiday Inn in Jersey.
He made me go to work that afternoon, making brownies. He informed me that he wanted chewy brownies. Then he informed me that there was no mechanism for melting the butter. Also, the butter couldn’t be warmed in any way. The factory was in a stone building with limited heat; I would say the room temperature was about 55 degrees.
As anyone with the slightest knowledge of baking will understand, this was a problem.
I was told to work with the French head baker, who doesn’t speak any English. We muddled through and made a few batches of brownies. It was clear the cook thought that Josh was crazy. It was also clear he was a little afraid of Josh. Meanwhile, Josh was cooking lamb in a pit in the courtyard, occasionally throwing his arm to the sky and yelling, “We’re the only people from Spain to Belgium barbecuing!”
After the brownies were baked, Josh invited me and my husband to have dinner with him and his wife. The kitchen was vast, like a storybook kitchen, with an old hearth. Dinner was the lamb, plus a strange fish soup made from a powder; that was all. The room was freezing cold; his wife, still silent, wore a hat, coat and mittens indoors. Josh explained some of his business decisions. For example, instead of buying cloths for cleaning the factory, he stole towels from expensive hotels. Then, he offered these towels to his employees in exchange for their old home towels. That way, he got both free rags and improved employee relations. He had become disenchanted with this method, however, because the employees’ towels weren’t, to his mind, of high enough quality.
I got the next day off to settle in. We needed food, badly – the lamb and broth were all we had eaten since New York, except of course for some brownies. We decided to go into the neighboring village, since my husband had taken a walk around our tiny village the day before while I baked and found only a drugstore and a sausage shop. Josh warned us that it was too far to walk, and offered to let us borrow his car. We declined. At this point, all we want is to be away from him. He insisted that we couldn’t walk. Unfortunately, a car appeared in the road at this point. Josh ran into the road, waving his arms madly. The car stopped, and Josh told the terrified driver that he had to take us to the next town, opening the back doors and pushing us in as he did so.
The driver took off with panic in his eyes, and once he was safely out of view, I used my limited French to end his misery. “Arretez, s’il vous plait! Ici, c’est bien! Merci, merci!” He let us out, and we started walking.
Josh was right, it was too far. We walked and walked and walked. Finally, a car pulled over to pick us up – one of the workman who was rebuilding the wall in front of Josh’s property. We spent the afternoon in a nice little French town, and that was the high point of our trip to France. We had to take a taxi back. It was very, very expensive.
The rest of the week is a bit of a blur. Among the things I remember:
Finding out that the local children throw rocks at Josh’s windows – and at my ex-husband, presumably because he was Josh’s guest
Finding out that the American electricians left in the dead of night after wrecking the apartment
Josh mentioning how he likes to go to Amsterdam to get cocaine (that made some things make lots more sense)
Josh mentioning how nice it will be for him to be able to go away now that we’re going to be there to protect the house from the angry neighbors
Josh setting us up with furniture: dirty old pillows from some lost couch and a small exercise trampoline as a “table”
Josh admitting his wife rarely stayed even one night at the villa (forget that Paris apartment)
Eating sausage and brownies and wondering how we would ever find real food
Catching Josh looking in our windows first thing in the morning (no shades, of course, and he complained if we closed the shutters, which we did anyway)
And, most of all, trying to make brownie batter that didn’t break with cold butter in a cold factory while Josh stood right behind me saying over and over, “but what I want to know is, can you do the job?”
I broke after one week. I don’t get angry with people very often, and I rarely lose my temper. But, my god, did I lose my temper.
The French baker was back, the first time in a week. I had tried every chance I could to explain to Josh that we needed to at least warm the butter, or the batter would keep breaking. The brownies came out just fine, but there was a crusty top that didn’t cut cleanly, and that was the inevitable result of the cold butter. Needless to say, I never got that many words out at a time. He never seemed to notice that I was talking, let alone what I was saying. But now, with the French baker standing next to me as I mixed the batter, he suddenly noticed the broken batter.
“What is this crap? I’ve never seen batter look like that, have you?” He turned to the French baker, pulling him into his disgust with me.
That did it. I remember literally throwing in ths towel – flinging the rag I was holding across the room and turning on Josh with fury. I remember saying something like this: “Everyone hates you! Your employees hate you, the neighbors hate you, the village children hate you, even your wife hates you, and I certainly hate you!” I know it’s not nice, I know. But that’s what I said.
I told my husband we were leaving. He was happy. As I repacked my bags, Josh offered to drive us to Paris, an offer we unfortunately had to accept. A taxi, the train, would have been too complicated and expensive, and he was going there anyway. Something to do with his wife.
The ride back to Paris was very unpleasant, to say the least. Josh tried to convince me to stay, tried to convince my husband to make me stay, and still kept asking (you know what’s coming) “but what I want to know is, can you do the job?” and I will confess, part of me thought that if perhaps I just had a night or two away, I could go back with a clear head, draw some necessary boundaries=, and get to stay in France.
But then he was interrupted by a phone call on his cell. He said hello, then okay, I’ll be there soon, then he hung up. Then he said to us, in the exasperated tone of voice a man might use to say that his wife says she has nothing to wear, and with that closet of hers!: “My wife just had a miscarriage.” He actually rolled his eyes.
That was the point at which I actually thought I was going to throw up. The exhaustion, the madhouse ride at 90 miles/hour, the diet of sausage and brownies, and more than anything the utter disgust at this strange and horrible life I had just spent a week looking in on. I remember thinking that all I had to do was get to Paris without throwing up, and then everything would be fine.
Everything was fine, of course, and yet not fine at the same time. We went home to the worst Christmas I can remember. I was demoralized on my return; I felt like I carried the stench of bad luck and bad decisions. I knew I should have trusted my instincts and stayed home. But I was afraid of my instincts – my instincts were also saying: don’t become a cook, despite all the time and money you just dropped on your education. My instincts were saying: leave your husband.
It took time to pay off the costs of the tickets, of course. I did get a job in a bakery and worked there for a while, but ultimately I left the culinary world. I also left my husband. And life has been better since. I have not often looked back at that week in France, which wasn’t even the bottoming-out point, which came two years later, in another questionable job I should have known better than to take - one that lacked even an entertaining story. But there’s only one real regret I have.
I wish I still had that brownie recipe. By the end of the week, it was really good. So, yeah, I think I could have done the job.
The cheapest flight we could get went from Logan to JFK, then JFK to Paris. Except we had been waiting at Logan for hours. Snow. We were going to miss our NY flight. We waited. And waited.
When we got to JFK, we found that, yes, indeed, we had missed our flight. We waited some more, for instructions. The airline was going to put us up for the night, and then we were going to take another flight the next afternoon. I called Josh, who was supposed to meet us at the airport.
“What do you mean? I need you here. You shouldn’t have left so little time between flights [As if I and not the airline had determined the length of time between the legs of the journey, which was a generous two hours anyway]. At least if you’re going to be late, you can do me a favor. Buy me some mineral oil.”
It was very, very late at night in the hotel at JFK. Where the hell was I supposed to get mineral oil? Why did he need mineral oil?
I promised to try.
The next day we spent a long, long time waiting around the airport. We looked in every shop for mineral oil. Nothing. We flew to France and arrived exhausted to find no one waiting for us. We tried to call, but no answer. We waited for over an hour. Finally, Josh appeared and the first words out of his mouth were: “Did you find the mineral oil?”
He was angry that we had failed. He seemed to have decided to take his anger out on his vehicle, an early-type SUV that was about five times the size of every other car on the road. He flew, going easily 90 miles an hour, and driving erratically, swerving and jerking the car around the road. Even my ex, who was generally a fast driver, was a bit alarmed. The whole trip out of Paris was a blur of words from Josh on the usual themes – France is beautiful, the French are annoying, can you do the job – with a few new additions. For example, he told us his wife came out on Friday nights and stayed “until we fight, usually on Sunday morning.” In New York he had claimed she came out Thursday and stayed until Monday. He asked if we remembered the sheets, because that’s all we’ll need. He pointed out an open-air market.
“What do you think of that? Americans think it’s quaint! That’s one of your New England words, “quaint!” But, really, it’s filthy! Why would you want to eat food that sits out like that?”
He was practically spitting.
We got to the villa, and from the outside, it was everything he promised. The factory is in one wing, his home in another, our apartment in the third; there’s a courtyard and huge windows with shutters. He took us into the apartment.
It was empty.
He was right about the sheets; there were no sheets on the bed. Also, no blankets. Or pillows. Or any other furniture. Or pans, pots, utensils. No fridge. No anything really, just a bare bed, and a few coathangers in the closet. The closet which, by the way, had those folding mirrored doors. To match the gold wall-to-wall carpet. He had a 15th century French villa, and he was remodeling it to look like a Holiday Inn in Jersey.
He made me go to work that afternoon, making brownies. He informed me that he wanted chewy brownies. Then he informed me that there was no mechanism for melting the butter. Also, the butter couldn’t be warmed in any way. The factory was in a stone building with limited heat; I would say the room temperature was about 55 degrees.
As anyone with the slightest knowledge of baking will understand, this was a problem.
I was told to work with the French head baker, who doesn’t speak any English. We muddled through and made a few batches of brownies. It was clear the cook thought that Josh was crazy. It was also clear he was a little afraid of Josh. Meanwhile, Josh was cooking lamb in a pit in the courtyard, occasionally throwing his arm to the sky and yelling, “We’re the only people from Spain to Belgium barbecuing!”
After the brownies were baked, Josh invited me and my husband to have dinner with him and his wife. The kitchen was vast, like a storybook kitchen, with an old hearth. Dinner was the lamb, plus a strange fish soup made from a powder; that was all. The room was freezing cold; his wife, still silent, wore a hat, coat and mittens indoors. Josh explained some of his business decisions. For example, instead of buying cloths for cleaning the factory, he stole towels from expensive hotels. Then, he offered these towels to his employees in exchange for their old home towels. That way, he got both free rags and improved employee relations. He had become disenchanted with this method, however, because the employees’ towels weren’t, to his mind, of high enough quality.
I got the next day off to settle in. We needed food, badly – the lamb and broth were all we had eaten since New York, except of course for some brownies. We decided to go into the neighboring village, since my husband had taken a walk around our tiny village the day before while I baked and found only a drugstore and a sausage shop. Josh warned us that it was too far to walk, and offered to let us borrow his car. We declined. At this point, all we want is to be away from him. He insisted that we couldn’t walk. Unfortunately, a car appeared in the road at this point. Josh ran into the road, waving his arms madly. The car stopped, and Josh told the terrified driver that he had to take us to the next town, opening the back doors and pushing us in as he did so.
The driver took off with panic in his eyes, and once he was safely out of view, I used my limited French to end his misery. “Arretez, s’il vous plait! Ici, c’est bien! Merci, merci!” He let us out, and we started walking.
Josh was right, it was too far. We walked and walked and walked. Finally, a car pulled over to pick us up – one of the workman who was rebuilding the wall in front of Josh’s property. We spent the afternoon in a nice little French town, and that was the high point of our trip to France. We had to take a taxi back. It was very, very expensive.
The rest of the week is a bit of a blur. Among the things I remember:
Finding out that the local children throw rocks at Josh’s windows – and at my ex-husband, presumably because he was Josh’s guest
Finding out that the American electricians left in the dead of night after wrecking the apartment
Josh mentioning how he likes to go to Amsterdam to get cocaine (that made some things make lots more sense)
Josh mentioning how nice it will be for him to be able to go away now that we’re going to be there to protect the house from the angry neighbors
Josh setting us up with furniture: dirty old pillows from some lost couch and a small exercise trampoline as a “table”
Josh admitting his wife rarely stayed even one night at the villa (forget that Paris apartment)
Eating sausage and brownies and wondering how we would ever find real food
Catching Josh looking in our windows first thing in the morning (no shades, of course, and he complained if we closed the shutters, which we did anyway)
And, most of all, trying to make brownie batter that didn’t break with cold butter in a cold factory while Josh stood right behind me saying over and over, “but what I want to know is, can you do the job?”
I broke after one week. I don’t get angry with people very often, and I rarely lose my temper. But, my god, did I lose my temper.
The French baker was back, the first time in a week. I had tried every chance I could to explain to Josh that we needed to at least warm the butter, or the batter would keep breaking. The brownies came out just fine, but there was a crusty top that didn’t cut cleanly, and that was the inevitable result of the cold butter. Needless to say, I never got that many words out at a time. He never seemed to notice that I was talking, let alone what I was saying. But now, with the French baker standing next to me as I mixed the batter, he suddenly noticed the broken batter.
“What is this crap? I’ve never seen batter look like that, have you?” He turned to the French baker, pulling him into his disgust with me.
That did it. I remember literally throwing in ths towel – flinging the rag I was holding across the room and turning on Josh with fury. I remember saying something like this: “Everyone hates you! Your employees hate you, the neighbors hate you, the village children hate you, even your wife hates you, and I certainly hate you!” I know it’s not nice, I know. But that’s what I said.
I told my husband we were leaving. He was happy. As I repacked my bags, Josh offered to drive us to Paris, an offer we unfortunately had to accept. A taxi, the train, would have been too complicated and expensive, and he was going there anyway. Something to do with his wife.
The ride back to Paris was very unpleasant, to say the least. Josh tried to convince me to stay, tried to convince my husband to make me stay, and still kept asking (you know what’s coming) “but what I want to know is, can you do the job?” and I will confess, part of me thought that if perhaps I just had a night or two away, I could go back with a clear head, draw some necessary boundaries=, and get to stay in France.
But then he was interrupted by a phone call on his cell. He said hello, then okay, I’ll be there soon, then he hung up. Then he said to us, in the exasperated tone of voice a man might use to say that his wife says she has nothing to wear, and with that closet of hers!: “My wife just had a miscarriage.” He actually rolled his eyes.
That was the point at which I actually thought I was going to throw up. The exhaustion, the madhouse ride at 90 miles/hour, the diet of sausage and brownies, and more than anything the utter disgust at this strange and horrible life I had just spent a week looking in on. I remember thinking that all I had to do was get to Paris without throwing up, and then everything would be fine.
Everything was fine, of course, and yet not fine at the same time. We went home to the worst Christmas I can remember. I was demoralized on my return; I felt like I carried the stench of bad luck and bad decisions. I knew I should have trusted my instincts and stayed home. But I was afraid of my instincts – my instincts were also saying: don’t become a cook, despite all the time and money you just dropped on your education. My instincts were saying: leave your husband.
It took time to pay off the costs of the tickets, of course. I did get a job in a bakery and worked there for a while, but ultimately I left the culinary world. I also left my husband. And life has been better since. I have not often looked back at that week in France, which wasn’t even the bottoming-out point, which came two years later, in another questionable job I should have known better than to take - one that lacked even an entertaining story. But there’s only one real regret I have.
I wish I still had that brownie recipe. By the end of the week, it was really good. So, yeah, I think I could have done the job.
The France Story, or, Why My Life Isn't Like Peter Mayle's, Part I
I don’t know why I suddenly feel like telling this tale. Frankly, this episode was part of my life I would rather forget. It’s been almost ten years, and I still have a hard time finding it funny. I still feel hot embarrassment at my own foolishness, anger at myself and the other people involved. I still tend to tell the story only after a nice, fortifying martini. Or two.
But it was funny, really. And vaguely culinary. And it took place around Thanksgiving.
I was in my last month of culinary school, the 1 year baking and pastry arts program at the CIA. I had figured out one thing after about the second month – I didn’t like professional kitchens. I had done an internship at a bakery, which was supposed to prepare me for the world of professional cooking, but the bakery was tiny. It was just the owner, the baker, two ever-changing Guatalmalan teenagers, and myself. The whole feel was pretty easygoing.
At the CIA, I learned what real kitchens were like – fast-paced, a little macho. (I later found out that bakeries and restaurants have a very different feel, and I spent most of my brief professional cooking life at bakeries as a result). I was older than my classmates by several years. I was interested in aspects of food they couldn’t care less about – I was just starting to learn about heirlooms and sustainable ag and all that stuff and I was excited, but I couldn’t find anyone else who cared, even among the instructors. I liked learning how to do new things, but I hated the performance aspect, the sense of having to do things perfectly on the first try, not being able, essentially, to write drafts.
So I was trying to figure out what to do with this new degree I was about to get, that qualified me to do something I had no interest in doing. Who was going to want an English major with a pastry certificate? I sent a few resumes to some cooking magazines, but no bites. I was starting to panic.
At the same time, my marriage had hit the rocks. My (now ex-) husband was suffering terribly from a depression he refused to treat with medication. Depressives make bad workers. He had left one job to avoid being fired, then was fired from the job that followed. He had found a new one, and then, just a few weeks before my program ended, he was fired again. It was a bad, dark time.
So, there I was, in the career office of the CIA looking at notices for something that would read, “Wanted: English major with culinary degree to write interesting food articles, maybe do a little research. High pay, no experience necessary.” Not surprisingly, there were no such notices. But there was a notice that ran something like this:
Well. Huh. Recipe developer? I liked the sound of that. Careful, slow work, testing and retesting, applying scientific principles. Sure, I had never done anything like that, but I thought I probably could. How hard could it be? Of course, there was no chance I would be hired, but it can’t hurt to fax over a resume, right?
I did. The next day, I get a call from, well, we’ll call him Josh. This call seemed to be my job interview, but it was hard to tell. Josh was pure New York, with a heavy accent, a loud voice and an aggressive manner. He alternatively wanted to sell me on the wonder of this job and to ask if I thought I would be good at it.
“So, let me tell you, the place is beautiful! I mean, you’ve never seen a place like this. It’s a 15th century villa. Of course, the French people who owned the place never did anything with it. They think it’s charming to have outdated plumbing. But I’m fixing it up. My wife has an apartment in Paris, and you could use that on the weekends. We have this great machine that bakes bars in boxes, and cuts ‘em and wraps ‘em, but these French bakers don’t understand American cookies, you know? They wanted to bake chocolate chip cookies in rings! So I need an American baker. But what I need to know is, can you do the job?”
“Well, I have never done any recipe development, but I am just finish-“
“You would have your own apartment, in a villa! And you could go to Paris on weekends – there’s no way for you to work over here for a French company, you know. They’ve got all the jobs protected. If you stay the whole six months, I’ll pay for your airfare. But not if you leave before then! I had these electricians...but you’ll want to stay, it’s beautiful! Do you speak French?”
“I’m afraid not really – I took French in high school, and I of course can recognize most culinary terms, but I-“
“The French workers will work overnight anyway, to save money on electricity. You’ll be all alone. But it’s beautiful, you’ll love it. You won’t need to bring anything, just sheets for the bed. I don’t have extra sheets. But what I need to know is, can you do the job?”
“Well, I think-”
“The apartment in Paris is …”
You get the idea. It was like standing in oncoming traffic. I tried to be honest with him, tried to make him understand that I was just out of school, I would love to try, but I could give no guarantees. It was a little subtle for him.
“So, when can you be here? Can you be here by Saturday?”
It was Tuesday. I thought, he’s offering me and my husband a place to live in France on the basis of a twenty minute phone conversation in which I spoke less than one hundred words? Is he insane? Well, obviously, he’s clearly insane. But he’s offering me a job in France!
“I don’t think I could be there on Saturday. Classes finish next week, and I would have to pack all my things, put them in storage, get a flight. I could probably do it all in two weeks, at the earliest.”
He was annoyed. Really, he wanted me there on Saturday. Or maybe not, because do I really think I can do the job? Maybe we should meet first. He’ll be in New York for Thanksgiving (one week away). Could me and my husband meet him and his wife for brunch and talk things over? But he would really want me there in two weeks. From now. Which would be one week after the meeting at which he is going to, apparently, determine if I have the job.
I hang up the phone confused. Am I moving to France? Why not – I’ve got nothing here, neither does my husband. We also have no money. How will we get to France? Books. The ex-husband worked in publishing; we had tons of books. We sold enough to pay for one flight, the other we put on a credit card. I pack all our stuff in boxes. My husband went through the notes for the novel he thought he would have time to write. We put everything we own in our parents’ basements. We told everyone we were moving to France. Maybe.
The day before Thanksgiving, we were in New York, meeting Josh and his wife at a small breakfast place. The conversation was exactly the same one we had one the phone. I said almost nothing; Josh talked incessantly – the villa is beautiful, the French are awful, bring sheets, can you do the job? I was beginning to hate him. He noticed a woman sitting at another booth with unusually long fingernails. He told us to look, we all looked, and then he called out to her, “We’re admiring your fingernails!” She smirked. I was afraid she was going to come over and scrape his eyes out with the nails. I wished she would.
His wife was French and almost completely silent. I wondered how she liked his constant put-downs of France. I wondered how she could stand being married to him.
I should have stood up from the table, thanked him very much, and moved back home immediately. But when your life is falling apart, you’ll grasp at anything. Even if you’re grasping at a maniacal American businessman with a sketchy job offer.
So, we went home, celebrated Thanksgiving, and got ready to move to France.
But it was funny, really. And vaguely culinary. And it took place around Thanksgiving.
I was in my last month of culinary school, the 1 year baking and pastry arts program at the CIA. I had figured out one thing after about the second month – I didn’t like professional kitchens. I had done an internship at a bakery, which was supposed to prepare me for the world of professional cooking, but the bakery was tiny. It was just the owner, the baker, two ever-changing Guatalmalan teenagers, and myself. The whole feel was pretty easygoing.
At the CIA, I learned what real kitchens were like – fast-paced, a little macho. (I later found out that bakeries and restaurants have a very different feel, and I spent most of my brief professional cooking life at bakeries as a result). I was older than my classmates by several years. I was interested in aspects of food they couldn’t care less about – I was just starting to learn about heirlooms and sustainable ag and all that stuff and I was excited, but I couldn’t find anyone else who cared, even among the instructors. I liked learning how to do new things, but I hated the performance aspect, the sense of having to do things perfectly on the first try, not being able, essentially, to write drafts.
So I was trying to figure out what to do with this new degree I was about to get, that qualified me to do something I had no interest in doing. Who was going to want an English major with a pastry certificate? I sent a few resumes to some cooking magazines, but no bites. I was starting to panic.
At the same time, my marriage had hit the rocks. My (now ex-) husband was suffering terribly from a depression he refused to treat with medication. Depressives make bad workers. He had left one job to avoid being fired, then was fired from the job that followed. He had found a new one, and then, just a few weeks before my program ended, he was fired again. It was a bad, dark time.
So, there I was, in the career office of the CIA looking at notices for something that would read, “Wanted: English major with culinary degree to write interesting food articles, maybe do a little research. High pay, no experience necessary.” Not surprisingly, there were no such notices. But there was a notice that ran something like this:
American baked goods company in France looking for recipe developer to improve recipes for cookies, brownies, etc. Room, board and small stipend. Factory located in villa 1.5 hours outside Paris.
Well. Huh. Recipe developer? I liked the sound of that. Careful, slow work, testing and retesting, applying scientific principles. Sure, I had never done anything like that, but I thought I probably could. How hard could it be? Of course, there was no chance I would be hired, but it can’t hurt to fax over a resume, right?
I did. The next day, I get a call from, well, we’ll call him Josh. This call seemed to be my job interview, but it was hard to tell. Josh was pure New York, with a heavy accent, a loud voice and an aggressive manner. He alternatively wanted to sell me on the wonder of this job and to ask if I thought I would be good at it.
“So, let me tell you, the place is beautiful! I mean, you’ve never seen a place like this. It’s a 15th century villa. Of course, the French people who owned the place never did anything with it. They think it’s charming to have outdated plumbing. But I’m fixing it up. My wife has an apartment in Paris, and you could use that on the weekends. We have this great machine that bakes bars in boxes, and cuts ‘em and wraps ‘em, but these French bakers don’t understand American cookies, you know? They wanted to bake chocolate chip cookies in rings! So I need an American baker. But what I need to know is, can you do the job?”
“Well, I have never done any recipe development, but I am just finish-“
“You would have your own apartment, in a villa! And you could go to Paris on weekends – there’s no way for you to work over here for a French company, you know. They’ve got all the jobs protected. If you stay the whole six months, I’ll pay for your airfare. But not if you leave before then! I had these electricians...but you’ll want to stay, it’s beautiful! Do you speak French?”
“I’m afraid not really – I took French in high school, and I of course can recognize most culinary terms, but I-“
“The French workers will work overnight anyway, to save money on electricity. You’ll be all alone. But it’s beautiful, you’ll love it. You won’t need to bring anything, just sheets for the bed. I don’t have extra sheets. But what I need to know is, can you do the job?”
“Well, I think-”
“The apartment in Paris is …”
You get the idea. It was like standing in oncoming traffic. I tried to be honest with him, tried to make him understand that I was just out of school, I would love to try, but I could give no guarantees. It was a little subtle for him.
“So, when can you be here? Can you be here by Saturday?”
It was Tuesday. I thought, he’s offering me and my husband a place to live in France on the basis of a twenty minute phone conversation in which I spoke less than one hundred words? Is he insane? Well, obviously, he’s clearly insane. But he’s offering me a job in France!
“I don’t think I could be there on Saturday. Classes finish next week, and I would have to pack all my things, put them in storage, get a flight. I could probably do it all in two weeks, at the earliest.”
He was annoyed. Really, he wanted me there on Saturday. Or maybe not, because do I really think I can do the job? Maybe we should meet first. He’ll be in New York for Thanksgiving (one week away). Could me and my husband meet him and his wife for brunch and talk things over? But he would really want me there in two weeks. From now. Which would be one week after the meeting at which he is going to, apparently, determine if I have the job.
I hang up the phone confused. Am I moving to France? Why not – I’ve got nothing here, neither does my husband. We also have no money. How will we get to France? Books. The ex-husband worked in publishing; we had tons of books. We sold enough to pay for one flight, the other we put on a credit card. I pack all our stuff in boxes. My husband went through the notes for the novel he thought he would have time to write. We put everything we own in our parents’ basements. We told everyone we were moving to France. Maybe.
The day before Thanksgiving, we were in New York, meeting Josh and his wife at a small breakfast place. The conversation was exactly the same one we had one the phone. I said almost nothing; Josh talked incessantly – the villa is beautiful, the French are awful, bring sheets, can you do the job? I was beginning to hate him. He noticed a woman sitting at another booth with unusually long fingernails. He told us to look, we all looked, and then he called out to her, “We’re admiring your fingernails!” She smirked. I was afraid she was going to come over and scrape his eyes out with the nails. I wished she would.
His wife was French and almost completely silent. I wondered how she liked his constant put-downs of France. I wondered how she could stand being married to him.
I should have stood up from the table, thanked him very much, and moved back home immediately. But when your life is falling apart, you’ll grasp at anything. Even if you’re grasping at a maniacal American businessman with a sketchy job offer.
So, we went home, celebrated Thanksgiving, and got ready to move to France.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Thankful
I am thankful for the farmers that provided the good food on my table. I am thankful that the Democrats won majorities in the House and Senate. I am thankful for my friends and my family. I am thankful for Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Richard Thompson. I'm grateful that I live after the invention of ibuprofen. I'm grateful that I live in the good Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where my gay friends can marry. I give thanks for the Siamese cats that cuddle with me while I sleep, for the bus that takes me to work each day so I don't need to drive, for the woman at the local cafe who remembers not just my order, but my name. I am thankful for the books that line my walls and my Constitutional right to read them. I am deeply thankful that I am healthy and that I am loved. I am thankful, believe it or not, for my job, complain though I might, because it keeps me in pork chops, red wine and kitty kibble. And I am thankful for all of you, my imaginary internet friends, for taking the time to read my ramblings and for adding your intelligent comments and for giving me access to your own wonderful writings on your blogs. I feel like I have found a community of people who care deeply about food and where it comes from, about farms and communities, about the environment and about tradition - and for that, I am profoundly thankful.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Taking Stock
I've been sick this week and not really up for posting, despite having made a really nice Polish hunter's stew this weekendwith a walnut-date-rum strudel for dessert, and having drunk several interesting local wines with it and tasted some amazing cheeses my friends brought over. All that should have made for decent posting fodder, but I was too sick to think about it, and now I have nothing to say.
Except this: two chicken backs from free-range chickens (saved from cutting apart whole chickens for parts), plus the leftover picked carcasses of two chickens and one duck (from the stew) with the necks from all, will make the best poultry stock you've ever tasted. I've never been so pleased with a stock. The flavor was intense AND it was well and truly gelled. Too often, I end up with one or the other, a good gel or a good flavor. This was perfect, and I've got two quarts of it. There is simply nothing more satisfying than getting something for nothing, and stock made from trimmings and carcasses is the best example of that.
Also, good when you're sick. A-choo.
Except this: two chicken backs from free-range chickens (saved from cutting apart whole chickens for parts), plus the leftover picked carcasses of two chickens and one duck (from the stew) with the necks from all, will make the best poultry stock you've ever tasted. I've never been so pleased with a stock. The flavor was intense AND it was well and truly gelled. Too often, I end up with one or the other, a good gel or a good flavor. This was perfect, and I've got two quarts of it. There is simply nothing more satisfying than getting something for nothing, and stock made from trimmings and carcasses is the best example of that.
Also, good when you're sick. A-choo.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Make soup
Here’s my advice, and I speak from experience. If your soul is weary; if your Friday night and Saturday have flown and your boss is expecting you back at the office on Monday; if you’ve eaten nothing all week but pizza, toast, grilled cheese and eggs; if you’re desperate for your life to change, but nothing seems to be changing; if you’re facing a birthday that will place you exactly at the midpoint of your Biblical threescore and ten – under these conditions, do not decide that you are going to improvise a wonderful dinner, damnit, particularly if you aren’t getting started until 6:30 on Saturday night. The lamb will lack savor. The sauce, even if it includes mint and pomegranate molasses, won’t taste exotic. The kale will overcook. The potatoes might work, because even you can’t mess up roasted potatoes, no matter what mood you may be in. But the whole exercise is misguided and should not be undertaken.
If you ignore my advice, here is the cure: On Sunday, you must make something simple and savory and foolproof, something that will soothe your soul. I recommend onion soup. The process itself is satisfying; the slow, patient stirring of the onions will calm your nerves. Using the nice homemade beef stock from your freezer will make you feel organized and dependable and frugal. The smell of the soup simmering will scent the house. You’ll remember that next weekend is a long one. You’ll look forward to taking a walk around the neighborhood in the lovely November evening, with the full moon rising. You’ll feel better, really. Make some soup.
If you ignore my advice, here is the cure: On Sunday, you must make something simple and savory and foolproof, something that will soothe your soul. I recommend onion soup. The process itself is satisfying; the slow, patient stirring of the onions will calm your nerves. Using the nice homemade beef stock from your freezer will make you feel organized and dependable and frugal. The smell of the soup simmering will scent the house. You’ll remember that next weekend is a long one. You’ll look forward to taking a walk around the neighborhood in the lovely November evening, with the full moon rising. You’ll feel better, really. Make some soup.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Kitchens (a post that has been properly aged)
I found this unposted post sitting in my files...
I have lived, by my estimate, in at least fifteen different places in my life, including all my college apartments. That means I’ve had over fifteen kitchens. But here I am, fast approaching my 35 birthday, and I still don’t feel like I’ve found my kitchen.
The important thing to realize is that I still feel like my kitchen is out there to be found, or at least to be built, which speaks to the importance of the kitchen as a symbol of home. I have no sense that someday I will find my bathroom or bedroom or hallway, but my kitchen exists in my imagination like my garden, my studio.
My first home, in which my family lived until I was eight, had a tiny kitchen. We usually ate in the dining room, because to eat in the kitchen required pulling the table away from the wall and carefully easing ourselves into the chairs that just barely fit around it. Once all six of us were seated, there was no space for anyone to get up. If you needed the ketchup, the person seated next to the fridge had to perform contortions to get it for you.
One of my strongest memories is of my mother, not a woman prone to ebullience, spinning around in her brand-new and much larger kitchen the day of our move, like Julie Andrews in the opening of Sound of Music.
That was the kitchen I leaned to cook in, and it was serviceable, but unattractive. There was plenty of counter and cabinet space, and a pantry with its own lightbulb, which I found very intriguing at the age of eight, and two lazy Susans, which were more exciting still. But the walls were covered in a particularly hideous seventies wallpaper of green and brown plaid, and the cabinets were a dark wood, the floors an ugly beige linoleum.
That kitchen was never the sort of warm and pleasant place my grandmother’s kitchen was. Her kitchen was wallpapered with the same paper that had been in my mother’s old kitchen, a pattern of sepia butter churns and spinning wheels I found very comforting. She also had one of those tall steel stools with the stepstool beneath, which was my particular place in her kitchen. I think the woodwork was white, which I suspect is the source of my fondness for white paint in kitchens, though elsewhere I dislike it.
My kitchens in college were for the most part small and utilitarian, until my senior year, when I shared a large apartment in an old house with three friends. That kitchen was big and warm in a very “children of hippies” way, and, given the excess of time college students have, usually filled with cooking projects, rising bread or sprouting beans. My post-college years in New York were characterized by kitchens so small two people couldn’t stand in them at once, and my cooking suffered a long lapse as a result. Since I moved back to Massachusetts, I have lived exclusively in apartments in the older double- and triple-decker houses that provide the cheapest apartments in this overpriced housing market. (I have not lived in a house built more recently than 1875 since I was an undergraduate.) These kitchens have generally had a few things in common:
1) Old appliances. Landlords don’t replace stoves and refrigerators until they absolutely have to. Exhibit 1: my rusting stove.
2) But those old stoves are, thank ye gods, always gas. I had no idea until very recently that gas is considered upscale in some markets, and that the majority of Americans suffer through electric stoves.
3) No dishwasher, though. I have no idea how to use a dishwasher.
4) The nicest of my apartments had a disposal, very lux. The rest haven’t.
5) Landlord linoleum. The advantage – it never looks really dirty. The disadvantage – it never looks really clean. Oh, and it’s ugly.
6) Lack of cabinet space.
7) But a decent amount of overall footage. I haven’t really had a small kitchen since NYC.
I have deep ambivalence about my current kitchen, which is typical of these kitchens. I hate the ugliness of the dark, faux-wood-panelling walls, the mismatched backsplash, the stove that’s too old to ever really get clean. But I love the fact that I have enough space for both a deep-freeze and a wine fridge, that I have a pantry, that the stove and fridge and sink are arranged in a reasonable order to facilitate actual cooking. It’s not lovely, but it’s a very functional space, and for that I am deeply grateful.
And it has no granite countertops, which is good.
Not that there’s anything wrong with granite countertops. But those triple-deckers that have served as reasonably priced housing for working-class families, new immigrants, and young people for all these years have been bought in huge numbers in the last few years by people who want not homes, but profits. The first thing they do to raise the value of the apartments they want to turn into condos is gut the kitchens and install islands, granite countertops, and stainless steel appliances. These things are all fine as they go, but they serve to artificially increase the value of the space. It’s the same size apartment in the same neighborhood with the same lack of yard, but now it costs three times the price, because it’s been given a veneer of luxury materials. Now everyone making less than six figures is locked out of the housing market, which pisses me off.
Also, I don’t care for the aesthetic. All these remodeled kitchens look the same to me, the industrial edge hinting at the underlying message of status and power, so far from the warmth and security I want from a kitchen. My favorite kitchens, in my homes and others, have all fallen into two categories – hippie kitchens with lots of wood and plants and old-fashioned kitchens with gingham curtains and white paint. Stainless steel anything would look out of place in either (though I have a friend whose stainless steel stove looks charmingly bright and shiny in her red, casual kitchen). But, beyond knowing that, I am not entirely sure what my eventual kitchen will look like. As far as purchasing kitchen items goes – a table and chairs, a hutch, and so forth – I suffer from a not-unusual form of paralysis. Since I don’t really believe that my current apartment counts as my HOME (that’s someplace in the future, with a garden and walls I can paint), I don’t dare buy anything permanent for fear that the real place will require a different choice. Until I see the kitchen of my heart, I am not sure how I am going to reconcile the warm wood of the hippie kitchen with the bright white and red of grandmother kitchen. So I don’t invest in anything, though my current kitchen chairs have all been salvaged from street trash, and my sideboard is a salvaged desk with a piece of granite on top (a gift from an old housemate) and a skirt around the bottom to hide the pots and pans beneath. Someday I want a real kitchen, but I also worry about living in somedays, as if my real life is something I’m preparing for, not living.
I have been moving beyond that feeling in the last few years and have actually invested in some things for my kitchen – a few really good pots and pans (my wedding gift pots came from just before the kitchenware market exploded, when Revereware was still the standard), the deep-freeze. But my kitchen is still not my kitchen, and I don’t know that it can be until it’s mine, until I can paint the walls, replace the cabinets, pull up the linoleum. Maybe the next one…
I have lived, by my estimate, in at least fifteen different places in my life, including all my college apartments. That means I’ve had over fifteen kitchens. But here I am, fast approaching my 35 birthday, and I still don’t feel like I’ve found my kitchen.
The important thing to realize is that I still feel like my kitchen is out there to be found, or at least to be built, which speaks to the importance of the kitchen as a symbol of home. I have no sense that someday I will find my bathroom or bedroom or hallway, but my kitchen exists in my imagination like my garden, my studio.
My first home, in which my family lived until I was eight, had a tiny kitchen. We usually ate in the dining room, because to eat in the kitchen required pulling the table away from the wall and carefully easing ourselves into the chairs that just barely fit around it. Once all six of us were seated, there was no space for anyone to get up. If you needed the ketchup, the person seated next to the fridge had to perform contortions to get it for you.
One of my strongest memories is of my mother, not a woman prone to ebullience, spinning around in her brand-new and much larger kitchen the day of our move, like Julie Andrews in the opening of Sound of Music.
That was the kitchen I leaned to cook in, and it was serviceable, but unattractive. There was plenty of counter and cabinet space, and a pantry with its own lightbulb, which I found very intriguing at the age of eight, and two lazy Susans, which were more exciting still. But the walls were covered in a particularly hideous seventies wallpaper of green and brown plaid, and the cabinets were a dark wood, the floors an ugly beige linoleum.
That kitchen was never the sort of warm and pleasant place my grandmother’s kitchen was. Her kitchen was wallpapered with the same paper that had been in my mother’s old kitchen, a pattern of sepia butter churns and spinning wheels I found very comforting. She also had one of those tall steel stools with the stepstool beneath, which was my particular place in her kitchen. I think the woodwork was white, which I suspect is the source of my fondness for white paint in kitchens, though elsewhere I dislike it.
My kitchens in college were for the most part small and utilitarian, until my senior year, when I shared a large apartment in an old house with three friends. That kitchen was big and warm in a very “children of hippies” way, and, given the excess of time college students have, usually filled with cooking projects, rising bread or sprouting beans. My post-college years in New York were characterized by kitchens so small two people couldn’t stand in them at once, and my cooking suffered a long lapse as a result. Since I moved back to Massachusetts, I have lived exclusively in apartments in the older double- and triple-decker houses that provide the cheapest apartments in this overpriced housing market. (I have not lived in a house built more recently than 1875 since I was an undergraduate.) These kitchens have generally had a few things in common:
1) Old appliances. Landlords don’t replace stoves and refrigerators until they absolutely have to. Exhibit 1: my rusting stove.
2) But those old stoves are, thank ye gods, always gas. I had no idea until very recently that gas is considered upscale in some markets, and that the majority of Americans suffer through electric stoves.
3) No dishwasher, though. I have no idea how to use a dishwasher.
4) The nicest of my apartments had a disposal, very lux. The rest haven’t.
5) Landlord linoleum. The advantage – it never looks really dirty. The disadvantage – it never looks really clean. Oh, and it’s ugly.
6) Lack of cabinet space.
7) But a decent amount of overall footage. I haven’t really had a small kitchen since NYC.
I have deep ambivalence about my current kitchen, which is typical of these kitchens. I hate the ugliness of the dark, faux-wood-panelling walls, the mismatched backsplash, the stove that’s too old to ever really get clean. But I love the fact that I have enough space for both a deep-freeze and a wine fridge, that I have a pantry, that the stove and fridge and sink are arranged in a reasonable order to facilitate actual cooking. It’s not lovely, but it’s a very functional space, and for that I am deeply grateful.
And it has no granite countertops, which is good.
Not that there’s anything wrong with granite countertops. But those triple-deckers that have served as reasonably priced housing for working-class families, new immigrants, and young people for all these years have been bought in huge numbers in the last few years by people who want not homes, but profits. The first thing they do to raise the value of the apartments they want to turn into condos is gut the kitchens and install islands, granite countertops, and stainless steel appliances. These things are all fine as they go, but they serve to artificially increase the value of the space. It’s the same size apartment in the same neighborhood with the same lack of yard, but now it costs three times the price, because it’s been given a veneer of luxury materials. Now everyone making less than six figures is locked out of the housing market, which pisses me off.
Also, I don’t care for the aesthetic. All these remodeled kitchens look the same to me, the industrial edge hinting at the underlying message of status and power, so far from the warmth and security I want from a kitchen. My favorite kitchens, in my homes and others, have all fallen into two categories – hippie kitchens with lots of wood and plants and old-fashioned kitchens with gingham curtains and white paint. Stainless steel anything would look out of place in either (though I have a friend whose stainless steel stove looks charmingly bright and shiny in her red, casual kitchen). But, beyond knowing that, I am not entirely sure what my eventual kitchen will look like. As far as purchasing kitchen items goes – a table and chairs, a hutch, and so forth – I suffer from a not-unusual form of paralysis. Since I don’t really believe that my current apartment counts as my HOME (that’s someplace in the future, with a garden and walls I can paint), I don’t dare buy anything permanent for fear that the real place will require a different choice. Until I see the kitchen of my heart, I am not sure how I am going to reconcile the warm wood of the hippie kitchen with the bright white and red of grandmother kitchen. So I don’t invest in anything, though my current kitchen chairs have all been salvaged from street trash, and my sideboard is a salvaged desk with a piece of granite on top (a gift from an old housemate) and a skirt around the bottom to hide the pots and pans beneath. Someday I want a real kitchen, but I also worry about living in somedays, as if my real life is something I’m preparing for, not living.
I have been moving beyond that feeling in the last few years and have actually invested in some things for my kitchen – a few really good pots and pans (my wedding gift pots came from just before the kitchenware market exploded, when Revereware was still the standard), the deep-freeze. But my kitchen is still not my kitchen, and I don’t know that it can be until it’s mine, until I can paint the walls, replace the cabinets, pull up the linoleum. Maybe the next one…
What do you do with gorgonzola and red wine ravioli?
I mean, it sounds great, right? but then what? What can hold up to all that flavor - hold its own without making the whole too complicated? I decided on roasted red peppers for a little sweetness with a hint of smoke. The red peppers were to be dominant, but I don't have the skill of making things taste perfect with just two or three ingredients. I have to fiddle. So first I put the peppers through the food processor with few spoonsful of chicken stock for a bit of depth and a handful of almonds for a bit of nubbly bite. I cooked a little minced shallot in a bit of olive oil, then added the pepper mixture and cooked it down, spiced with a little sweet paprika, a tiny touch of tomato paste, and of course salt. In another pot I cooked down some nice local heavy cream (a real waste of non-ultrapasteurized cream, cooking it like that, but what can you do) until it was thick and syrupy. Both sauces were poured over the ravioli, like so:
Now, I was pretty damned proud of this dish, because it came out just as I had imagined it. The ravioli stayed front and center, but the sauce didn't get lost, and the two sauces gave each bite a different balance, which kept it interesting. Also, I felt like the almonds made all the difference, adding some necessary texture to what could have been too soft a dish. But J. thought that it wasn't "restaurant-worthy" because he thought people would be put off but what seemed like a disconnect between the extremely refined, smooth ravioli and the slight rough, peasant feel of the pepper sauce. Hmm..... Nope, still not buying it. In my imaginary restaurant, we serve this.
Now, I was pretty damned proud of this dish, because it came out just as I had imagined it. The ravioli stayed front and center, but the sauce didn't get lost, and the two sauces gave each bite a different balance, which kept it interesting. Also, I felt like the almonds made all the difference, adding some necessary texture to what could have been too soft a dish. But J. thought that it wasn't "restaurant-worthy" because he thought people would be put off but what seemed like a disconnect between the extremely refined, smooth ravioli and the slight rough, peasant feel of the pepper sauce. Hmm..... Nope, still not buying it. In my imaginary restaurant, we serve this.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Table for one
In The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (the follow-up to the Moosewood Cookbook and one of the first cookbooks I ever owned), Molly Katzen encourages single eaters to treat themselves as they would company, offering this example:
Well.
I can't say that I've achieved anything like that woman's elegance in living alone, though on some level I do admire it. But when I eat alone, and I often eat alone, I tend to eat odd, disjointed meals, often spread out over an hour or two, particularly when it comes to dinner, a meal I'm never hungry for when I should be. Workday night dinner might be a pile of greens, steamed, then toast. A little later, an apple. A bowl of Grapenuts, a pear, two handful of walnuts, a piece of chocolate. Sometimes the meals are terribly imbalanced: toast and crackers and a roll; or cheese and ham and a yogurt. I figure it doesn't matter much, since my diet overall is fine. But I would never serve another person a meal like that.
Mollie Katzen would no doubt tell me that I don't value myself enough. She was a hippie, after all. But I don't think that's it. Generally, I like living alone, like spending time alone. I disliked being married in part because I never had any time to spend alone. I imagine being that old woman who has lived alone for many years without fear or sadness. But dining, versus eating, still does seem to me a social act. You can eat alone, and there can be great pleasure in that. John Thorne opens his great book Outlaw Cook with a description of the secretive pleasures of food consumed alone, out of sight, in bed at night or in the kitchen while the rest of the family remains at the dining room table. Regular meals, when you live alone, can have a touch of that transgressive appeal. You can eat your pasta from the pot. You can eat a whole pickle with your fingers. No one is watching! But go too far down this road, and things become depressing. You're left standing in your bathrobe, eating ice cream from the tub. So you try to maintain a degree of decency, sit at the table, eat from a plate.
But pulling out the crystal relish dish for solo pickles has its own pathos. To serve oneself as company feels like playacting. We cook ultimately for each other, as a way of nurturing each other, giving our loved ones pleasure in what is after all a bare necessity. Our need to cook is bound deeply to our need to nurture, to take care of those we love. I am not what one would call nurturing - I haven't a scrap of maternal instinct - but even I feel that.
****************************************************
All of this is by way of saying my boyfriend has been out of town, and I haven't cooked a proper meal in a week. I've made beef stock; I took a nice trip out to the great Armenian markets of Watertown; I cleaned out the fridge; I've eaten many excellent honeycrisp and mutsu apples, the first good pears, and some lovely market Brussel sprouts. But no real cooking, no meals to report.
I once knew an old woman who had lived alone for many years and had really mastered the fine art of eating alone.She would never eat while standing half-way into her refrigerator, poking her fork into random jars. She always set a place for herself, sat down, and dined elegantly, if simply. She wouldn't even munch on pickles without first arranging them on an attractive little serving plate.
Well.
I can't say that I've achieved anything like that woman's elegance in living alone, though on some level I do admire it. But when I eat alone, and I often eat alone, I tend to eat odd, disjointed meals, often spread out over an hour or two, particularly when it comes to dinner, a meal I'm never hungry for when I should be. Workday night dinner might be a pile of greens, steamed, then toast. A little later, an apple. A bowl of Grapenuts, a pear, two handful of walnuts, a piece of chocolate. Sometimes the meals are terribly imbalanced: toast and crackers and a roll; or cheese and ham and a yogurt. I figure it doesn't matter much, since my diet overall is fine. But I would never serve another person a meal like that.
Mollie Katzen would no doubt tell me that I don't value myself enough. She was a hippie, after all. But I don't think that's it. Generally, I like living alone, like spending time alone. I disliked being married in part because I never had any time to spend alone. I imagine being that old woman who has lived alone for many years without fear or sadness. But dining, versus eating, still does seem to me a social act. You can eat alone, and there can be great pleasure in that. John Thorne opens his great book Outlaw Cook with a description of the secretive pleasures of food consumed alone, out of sight, in bed at night or in the kitchen while the rest of the family remains at the dining room table. Regular meals, when you live alone, can have a touch of that transgressive appeal. You can eat your pasta from the pot. You can eat a whole pickle with your fingers. No one is watching! But go too far down this road, and things become depressing. You're left standing in your bathrobe, eating ice cream from the tub. So you try to maintain a degree of decency, sit at the table, eat from a plate.
But pulling out the crystal relish dish for solo pickles has its own pathos. To serve oneself as company feels like playacting. We cook ultimately for each other, as a way of nurturing each other, giving our loved ones pleasure in what is after all a bare necessity. Our need to cook is bound deeply to our need to nurture, to take care of those we love. I am not what one would call nurturing - I haven't a scrap of maternal instinct - but even I feel that.
****************************************************
All of this is by way of saying my boyfriend has been out of town, and I haven't cooked a proper meal in a week. I've made beef stock; I took a nice trip out to the great Armenian markets of Watertown; I cleaned out the fridge; I've eaten many excellent honeycrisp and mutsu apples, the first good pears, and some lovely market Brussel sprouts. But no real cooking, no meals to report.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Pumpkin lasagne, evolution of a dish
AKA, Recipes? I don't need no stinkin recipes?
So, about two years ago, I had an experience I think other cooks will understand. I starting craving a dish I had never tasted. Nothing outlandish or even unusual, just something I had never happened to make or eat. I wanted pumpkin lasagne.
I knew just what it should be. Pureed pumpkin, mixed with egg and milk to enrich and improve the texture. Browned Italian sausage, with fennel. A little bechamel. Mozz and Parm. And pasta, of course. And, lo, I made it, and it was good.
The next time I made it, I skipped the mozz and really piled on the sauce. I also spiced the pumpkin with lots of nutmeg and a little cinnamon. That version worked, too.
This weekend, I wanted to make it again. But I wanted the flavor of sage, not fennel, because I had had a nice sage-butter sauce over squash ravioli in recent weeks and the sage had lingered in my mind. No problem, sage and plain ground pork. But when I went to buy the cans of pumpkin,* I hit a snag. The masses must have been out in force, making the curried pumpkin soup every magazine features in their October issue. No pumpkin in the store. Okay, I'll use squash. And no mozz this time. A little Parm on top will do. Then I hunted through my freezer to find I had used the last of my ground pork. Ground lamb? Ground beef? The Afghan restaurant down the street makes a nice pumpkin dish with a ground beef and yogurt sauce. Ground beef it was. But sage and beef and squash is a lot less sweet than fennel and pork and pumpkin. I wanted a little touch of autumnal sweetness. Caramelized onions. There we go. And it was good.
So, do I have a recipe for pumpkin lasagne? If I have a knife, and I replace the blade every odd year and replace the handle every even year, what is...
Well, here's the recipe that's working right now:
Caramelize two large onions in 2 T of butter. (You can cheat and do this overnight in the crockpot. I wouldn't for something really highlighting caramelized onions, because the liquid doesn't evaporate, so you don't get the same depth of flavor you can achieve with the hard-working method. But the onions play a supporting role in this dish. The crockpot is good enough for government work.) Mix 2 cans squash with one egg and 1/2 cup milk, season with salt and nutmeg and set aside. Brown 1 pound ground beef and season with black pepper (be generous) and salt and set aside. Mince sage (I used most of a package, two large sprigs, maybe 1/4 cup?). Mix together onions, sage and meat. Make a simple white sauce by cooking together 2T of butter and 2 T of flour, then whisking in 2 cups of milk and cooking until thick. Cook lasagne noodles. Layer, starting and ending with sauce, alternating between squash and meat with sauce layers. Sprinkle some Parm on top, and bake about 50 minutes on 350. Makes on big dish of nice-looking lasagne, and one of those messy "lasagne leftover" trays as well, about 1/3 as large. I suppose you could make the odds and ends tray look beautiful, if you don't mind messing with tradition. It's your call.
*Yes, canned pumpkin. As far as I'm concerned, there are only a handful of canned products worth buying. Canned tomatoes for sauce, coconut milk, chipotle chilies in adobe, Goya chickpeas and beans, and One Pie pumpkin. Real pumpkin is lovely for stuffing and whatnot, but for pumpkin puree, ease wins out every time.
So, about two years ago, I had an experience I think other cooks will understand. I starting craving a dish I had never tasted. Nothing outlandish or even unusual, just something I had never happened to make or eat. I wanted pumpkin lasagne.
I knew just what it should be. Pureed pumpkin, mixed with egg and milk to enrich and improve the texture. Browned Italian sausage, with fennel. A little bechamel. Mozz and Parm. And pasta, of course. And, lo, I made it, and it was good.
The next time I made it, I skipped the mozz and really piled on the sauce. I also spiced the pumpkin with lots of nutmeg and a little cinnamon. That version worked, too.
This weekend, I wanted to make it again. But I wanted the flavor of sage, not fennel, because I had had a nice sage-butter sauce over squash ravioli in recent weeks and the sage had lingered in my mind. No problem, sage and plain ground pork. But when I went to buy the cans of pumpkin,* I hit a snag. The masses must have been out in force, making the curried pumpkin soup every magazine features in their October issue. No pumpkin in the store. Okay, I'll use squash. And no mozz this time. A little Parm on top will do. Then I hunted through my freezer to find I had used the last of my ground pork. Ground lamb? Ground beef? The Afghan restaurant down the street makes a nice pumpkin dish with a ground beef and yogurt sauce. Ground beef it was. But sage and beef and squash is a lot less sweet than fennel and pork and pumpkin. I wanted a little touch of autumnal sweetness. Caramelized onions. There we go. And it was good.
So, do I have a recipe for pumpkin lasagne? If I have a knife, and I replace the blade every odd year and replace the handle every even year, what is...
Well, here's the recipe that's working right now:
Caramelize two large onions in 2 T of butter. (You can cheat and do this overnight in the crockpot. I wouldn't for something really highlighting caramelized onions, because the liquid doesn't evaporate, so you don't get the same depth of flavor you can achieve with the hard-working method. But the onions play a supporting role in this dish. The crockpot is good enough for government work.) Mix 2 cans squash with one egg and 1/2 cup milk, season with salt and nutmeg and set aside. Brown 1 pound ground beef and season with black pepper (be generous) and salt and set aside. Mince sage (I used most of a package, two large sprigs, maybe 1/4 cup?). Mix together onions, sage and meat. Make a simple white sauce by cooking together 2T of butter and 2 T of flour, then whisking in 2 cups of milk and cooking until thick. Cook lasagne noodles. Layer, starting and ending with sauce, alternating between squash and meat with sauce layers. Sprinkle some Parm on top, and bake about 50 minutes on 350. Makes on big dish of nice-looking lasagne, and one of those messy "lasagne leftover" trays as well, about 1/3 as large. I suppose you could make the odds and ends tray look beautiful, if you don't mind messing with tradition. It's your call.
*Yes, canned pumpkin. As far as I'm concerned, there are only a handful of canned products worth buying. Canned tomatoes for sauce, coconut milk, chipotle chilies in adobe, Goya chickpeas and beans, and One Pie pumpkin. Real pumpkin is lovely for stuffing and whatnot, but for pumpkin puree, ease wins out every time.
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