San Francisco synopsis with stockpot and soup

A week in the Bay Area has come and gone, and I’m back in my long black Neo-esque wool coat, lugging groceries home in the Seattle rain, fingers numb in my gloves. But no matter. Though it was delicious to have a full seven days with people I adore in what may well be the best part of this enormous country, nothing could match my contentment last night upon returning to my cold little apartment after midnight, cranking up the heat and a gritty old Rolling Stones album, unpacking my suitcase, putting everything in its place, and folding myself into my poofy white bed. This is how vacation should feel.

But as promised, you, dear reader, get the two-dimensional dregs of my San Francisco stay. From Arizmendi Bakery’s eggy brioche knot flecked with cinnamon and golden raisins to Max’s obscenely huge dark-chocolate-dipped macaroons (approximately one pound each and best if bought at the to-go counter and brought home for quartering and sharing), Dungeness crabs, and the Acme pain au levain and olive bread, it was a delicious week indeed.

And the holidays would be nothing without a few little adventures and last-minute errands for crafty present-related odds and ends, such as 9” red zippers at JoAnn Fabrics, where my very petite cousin Katie found the wall of cheap fake flowers very appealing.


And while a snowy white Christmas is appropriate every now and then, I never object to a Christmas Eve walk at Tennessee Valley and out to the beach with the twins, all of us bundled ever-so-lightly in hooded sweatshirts and scarves.



And as for Christmas morning, there was the requisite wearing of gift bows around our heads, and there were the oddly perfect gag gifts, such as my mother’s legwarmers, carefully selected by Sarah and Jim. After all, every Pilates instructor needs pink-and-gray legwarmers to wear with her high-heeled boots (aptly and unabashedly called “fuck-me heels” in this family).

Best of all, my kitchen reeled in quite a load of gifts, such as a long-awaited pair of poultry shears (no more standing on my tip-toes for knife-handling leverage; no more breaking a sweat!); a sparkling white 9- by 13-inch French porcelain baking dish; Katie, Sarah, and Jim’s The Little Family Cookbook; and an instant-read thermometer. There were also gifts for my geeky brain, such as Women Who Eat and Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. And there were gifts that shocked and awed in the best possible way, such as the twelve-quart stainless-steel All-Clad Multipot picked out for me by my half-brother David and his fiancée.


I’d always thought I’d have to wait for a wedding gift registry to get one of these heavy, gleaming beauties, but I apparently underestimated the generosity of my relatives. This may be the most luscious piece of steel I’ve ever seen. I held it and stroked its every curve and ridge. I’ll be with this pot for the rest of my life, and that’s a long time. Between me and this pot, it’s till death do us part.

So it was only appropriate that I get it down and dirty that very night and put it, naturally, to the old trial by fire. Indeed, my new stockpot was perfect for whipping up the evening’s first course, a double batch of apple and butternut squash soup with curry, cardamom, and mace. It’s a recipe my mother has been making for years, and it’s well-traveled, having led off a very raucous, drink- and dancing-filled French-style Thanksgiving dinner in Paris in 1999. Also in its favor is the fact that it’s very, very simple to make, assuming that you’re not averse to a bit of chopping and have some sort of blending apparatus handy. Smooth and warming with an undertone of curry, it’s just the thing for a San Francisco Christmas dinner, or Seattle winter nights with young Mick Jagger.


Apple and Butternut Squash Soup

If possible, make this soup a day or two ahead; its flavors meld and deepen after a day or so of sitting the fridge.


¼ cup olive oil
1 2-lb butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 2-inch pieces (about 4 cups)
2 flavorful apples, preferably Gala, peeled, cored, and cut into 2-inch pieces (about 2 cups)
1 large onion, peeled and coarsely chopped (about 1 cup)
¾ tsp curry powder
¾ tsp ground mace
½ tsp ground cardamom
1 cup good-quality apple cider
1 quart chicken stock (vegetable works fine as well)
½ tsp salt
¼ freshly ground pepper, preferably white

Heat oil in a large stockpot over medium-low heat. Add the squash, apples, and onion, and stir to coat with oil.


Sauté uncovered, stirring occasionally, for ten to fifteen minutes, or until onion is transparent.

Stir in the mace, curry, and cardamom, and continue cooking until the onion begins to brown.

Add the cider. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, and cook for three minutes. Add the stock, lower the heat to medium-low, and simmer the mixture, partially covered, for another 35 minutes, or until squash is tender.

Working in batches, blend mixture in a food processor or blender until smooth (be careful to not overfill, as hot liquid could expand when machine is switched on, making a huge, burning-hot mess). Return soup to the stockpot. Reduce the soup, uncovered, over medium-low heat, to about one-fourth. Stir occasionally. Stir in salt and pepper, and serve hot.

Serves 4-5.

On Christmas, crab, and carousing

Membership in my family comes with a crash course in the local food vernacular. There’s no printed thesaurus (yet), but it all makes sense in context: “strawbuzzy” is synonymous with “strawberry,” “dee-doc-doc” with “chocolate milk,” “cheenies” with “raisins,” and “on-tream” with “ice cream.” And when San Francisco is our holiday meeting place,



“Christmas” means “Dungeness crabs.”

Of course, Christmas also means plenty of other things: feigned suspense as we peek into our stockings, four-hour one-person-at-a-time present-opening marathons, occasional “sad attacks” and stories of those no longer with us, a full afternoon in the kitchen, and the much-loved and much-dreaded Mannheim Steamroller Christmas album (keeping us cringing since 1984). But in San Francisco, crabs come before all else.



Christmas Eve begins with an elaborate table-setting ritual. First comes a layer of plastic garbage bags, finished with a generous topcoat of newspaper. A roll of paper towels is placed at one end, and nutcrackers—pinch-hitting as crabcrackers for the night—are strewn around. A clear plastic bag full of cracked and cleaned crabs makes an impressive centerpiece, candlesticks glowing on either side. We steam bowlfuls of green beans and cut thick slices of Acme bread, and glasses of chilled white wine in hand, we gather.



The carnage begins. Fingers sticky with shell shards and juice, we eat as though there weren’t a second to lose, as though we were afraid the crabs would reassemble themselves and sneak away if we let up the pace. It’s not for the timid, and die-hards have been known to go to great lengths to ready themselves. Witness Katie, in the foreground above, who, nursing a frightening Xacto knife injury this year, Saran-wrapped the finger in question so as not to be handicapped or unduly slowed. The crabmeat is sweet, delicate, falling-apart tender.



Our family being predominantly female, talk tends toward stories of false labor, unseemly gynecologic reactions to tetracycline, and late-night emergency trips to the hospital. [Jim and Andrew, this year’s token men, took refuge in each other and in manly, expansive gestures and grunts about football.] The wine flows freely, and we laugh and sigh and lick our fingers. And when the last shell is wiped clean, we roll up the newspaper, shove it into bags, and carry it out to the garbage. It's as though nothing had happened at all.

But we linger at the table, united by a passion for sugar, surely genetic. This year, inspired by Clotilde, I cobbled together a pear-banana-hazelnut crumble, which we served warm with soft, spoon-coating vanilla ice cream. We laughed and sighed and licked our spoons.

Thus begins Christmas, full-bellied and rosy-cheeked.
And now, as we draw it all to a close twenty-four hours later, there’s no special lingo--just a raised glass and a very hearty and belated “Merry merry!” from this little house in California to yours.
Eat up. There's more to come.


Pear-Banana-Hazelnut Crumble

I’ve always adored the crumbles I’ve eaten in France (where they’re pronounced “crum-bel,” somehow more exotic and suave), and I set out to do my best imitation. Crumble toppings in France, as in England, only rarely contain oats or other rustic grains, unlike the usual American version. This one contains only butter, flour, sugar, and salt. It's rich and buttery—a knobby, crunchy, golden crust over barely sweet, wintery fruit.

For fruit filling:
About 7 large Bartlett pears, peeled, cored, and cut into 1” chunks (about 6-7 cups)
2 or 3 ripe bananas, sliced
3 Tbs sugar
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

For crumble topping:
1 cup plus 2 Tbs unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 (6 ounces) sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks
Two handfuls of hazelnuts, coarsely chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Place pear chunks and banana slices in a 9- by 13-inch baking dish. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl, and sprinkle, along with lemon juice, over fruit.

Mix flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Add butter and toss to coat with flour. Using your hands, rub the butter into the flour mixture, smooshing until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs and butter pieces are between the size of a pea and a dime. There should be no loose flour. Toss in hazelnuts. Spread crumb mixture over fruit.

Bake roughly 40 minutes, or until fruit is bubbling. If the topping is not golden, place the crumble briefly under the broiler, watching closely so that it doesn’t burn. Let cool at least fifteen minutes before serving.

Serves 8 to 10.

2004 Food Blog Awards

Very dear readers of Orangette:



The year draws to a close with good news. My little blog is one of five finalists for the "Best Food Blog—Writing" section of the 2004 Food Blog Awards! To those who nominated me in the first round, a breathless, slobbery "Thank yoooooou!" I owe you kitchenfuls of baked goods filled with expensive chocolate and fancy-pants butter. And to the myriad friends and family who’ve contributed to, appeared in, inspired, and/or put up with this endeavor, know that Orangette would be nothing—or at least very shrimpy and malnourished—without you.



That said, there's this final-round business to attend to.

If you feel so moved—and I hope you will—please go to the Accidental Hedonist website and cast your vote. And rally your friends and neighbors to do the same! I'm honored to be up against stiff competition and winning isn't really so important, but the exposure is very, very valuable to this aspiring food writer.



A few specifics: the voting ballot appears in the right-hand column of the AH homepage, and my category will be the seventh or eighth of a sequence of sixteen to appear. Or, for convenience, click here to go directly to the "Best Writing" ballot. If you want to get a glimpse of other finalist blogs, they are listed—along with a link to each—in the center column of the AH homepage. Voting closes at midnight PST on December 31, 2004.



Thanks so much for your tireless support. This blog has been—and continues to be—an absolute blast. I’m blushing wildly, plotting my next food-centric adventure, and rearing to go.



Happy holidays, everyone.

Mussels, wine, and an excuse to eat whipped cream

Everything I said about her is true, and more. Kate is dreamy, and so are her mussels—so tender! So sweet! So cheap! So full of crabs!

It was a crisp Sunday late afternoon, and my grumpiness was no match for the sun, shining persistently even as it set. I arrived chez Kate just in time to savor the spectacular view of Elliott Bay from her eighteenth-floor sublet before we rushed down to the market, slipping in just fifteen minutes before closing time. Strolling the wet brick streets under the Christmas lights, we collected our wares: big cans of whole stewed Italian tomatoes from DeLaurenti’s, a half-pint of cream and a shiny glass bottle of milk from the Pike Place Creamery, a baguette from Le Panier, and Italian parsley from the helpful guys at Frank’s Produce. At City Fish, the fishmongers—bundled in hooded sweatshirts and thick rubber aprons and knee-high boots—enthusiastically greeted Kate, a loyal customer, and we got “V.I.P.” treatment, paying only $3.00 for a generous bagful of clean, shiny Penn Cove mussels.

Back at home, we found a bottle of Chardonnay in the bottom of her fridge door, and I poured us each a glass as Kate began sautéing onions and garlic, making a broth with the dregs of a huge bottle of cheap white she’d been saving for just such occasions. To this she added most of a can of tomatoes and a touch of cream, and the mussels were put in to steam. They peeked open nearly instantly, and Kate ladled out big servings for each of us, scattering them with Italian parsley. The feasting began.



The empty shells clattered cheerily as we tossed them into the bowl in the center of the table, and we talked with our mouths full, alternating bites of meaty mussel with drippy chunks of broth-soaked bread. I’d tried to talk Kate out of buying bread at Le Panier, preferring a baguette with more chew and a thicker, more rustic crust, but she was right—this soft, fine-crumbed version was perfect for salty Plugra and for sopping up the winy, tomatoey juice. Best of all, lucky Kate found an unexpected bonus in one of her mussels: a very tiny but very scary baby crab, which she, shrieking in excitement and horror, proceeded to plunk onto her bread plate and who quickly became the evening’s third (albeit very still, very unresponsive, very cooked) participant.



But mussels and mini crabs are no match for my sweet tooth. Fortunately, earlier in the day, Kate had been given a very beautiful loaf of chocolate ginger banana bread. Under the watchful eye of the crab, we whipped a bowlful of cream with her wooden-handled whisk—in Kate’s family, everything is an excuse to eat whipped cream—and spooned it atop slices of the moist, cake-like bread.



Being generous, she didn’t say a word when I ate three slices, although I think she nearly matched me at two and a half and may have outdone me in cream consumption.

Ships floated by on the dark water, and we were very full.



Glenn’s Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips and Candied Ginger

Kate’s friend Glenn has been experimenting with candied ginger, and he had the wisdom to fold a handful of the stuff—along with chocolate chips—into a loaf of banana bread. The result is nearly impossible to stop eating, its dense richness cut by piquant studs of translucent golden ginger. He recommends using Trader Joe’s candied organic baby ginger, and he also makes a vegan version of this bread, for which the necessary substitutions appear below in parentheses.

1 cup granulated sugar (for vegan version, use raw sugar)
1 large egg (or 1 ½ tsp Ener-G Egg Replacer plus 2 Tbs warm water, says Glenn)
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter (or ½ c non-hydrogenated margarine), at room temperature
2 ripe medium-size bananas
3 Tbs milk (or soy milk)
2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 cup chocolate chips
Small chunks of candied ginger, to taste
½ cup chopped walnuts, optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a 9- by 5-inch loaf pan with butter or cooking spray, and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, cream sugar, egg, and butter.
In a separate bowl, mash bananas; then mix with milk.
In another separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Add flour mixture to butter mixture in three parts, alternating with banana-milk mixture in two parts, stirring by hand until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips, ginger, and optional nuts.

Turn batter into loaf pan, smoothing top with the back of a spoon, and bake for one hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool for a few minutes; then remove bread from pan and cool on a wire rack.

Cubic zirconia

Oh, the tenacious grumpiness that is mine!

Everything is a muted gray, inside and out; nothing bad—just subdued, monochromatic. And it's not just the rain. As someone I used to know once said, “Some days are diamonds, and others are cubic zirconia.” In my case, substitute “weeks” for “days,” et voilà.

But:



1. My apartment is so clean that I actually did eat something off the floor, just to be able to say that I had.



2. Kale is unspeakably beautiful, especially when barely wilted with olive oil and lemon. A sunny winter day on a plate. And it makes me feel so virtuous. Seattlites, go visit Willie Green's stand at the extended U-District farmers' (mini-)market, open every Saturday (except Christmas Day) through January 22, 10am to noon. What a nice guy, and what pretty potatoes and soulful leafy greens.







3. Happy birthday, Keaton! Last night, in the smoky sultry candle-lit Alibi Room, I was momentarily entertaining and engaging and non-grumpy, and that instant was recorded for posterity:







4. Tonight Kate is cooking a Pike Place Market dinner for me.







In exchange, and because I adore her, I’m reading her application essays for business school. She’s brilliant, an inspiration, a go-getter. And she’s steaming mussels. Bread will be dipped, juices slurped. I love being cooked for.



5. I’m boarding a plane bound for San Francisco on Tuesday night, armed with a bag of Hoppin’ John’s stone-ground grits (manna from the South, courtesy of my freezer), a jar of sourdough starter for Mom (who thinks she wants to bake her own bread but will likely be too busy; I indulge her nonetheless), a dozen jars of apple butter, and a handful of recipes. You, dear reader, will of course reap the benefits, albeit in a two-dimensional format. The family menu-planner is on her way, in more ways than one.



Soon.

[Sigh.]

With my own two hands

Some nights were made for Jeff Buckley and my stove—many nights, in fact, and especially when the city is draped in a misty, blue-gray cloak of fog. Tonight I’m exhausted, but it only makes my singing voice more dramatic.

It’s the time of year when we all do lots of giving and receiving, and I’ve decided to do what I should have been doing for ages: make Christmas presents with my own two hands—in my kitchen, of course. My wallet is chronically malnourished, and anyway, my kitchen offers real benefits over the mall: no aggressive, blindingly sparkly decorations; no plastic figurines blaring carols; no tearing-out of hair over parking spaces; no sad, picked-over stacks of turtlenecks; no need to put on real clothing; and, best of all, easy access to nourishment and appropriately raucous or melancholy music. Sixteen pounds of apples, twenty-two Kerr jars, four cups of walnuts, two candy thermometers, several late nights, and more than a pound of butter later, I feel like a regular sugar-plum fairy. Unfortunately, because I’ve needed culinary advice and people to entertain me while I work, nearly everyone on my list knows what they’re getting for Christmas. But they’re not complaining, and wisely so.

And aside from all the other perks, I’ve learned an important lesson from all this Christmas craft-making: nothing (but nothing) is more satisfying that canning. Add this to the list of reasons why I’d make a good Depression wife. Thanks to Heidi from 101 Cookbooks, I’ve been able to transform apples, cider, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves into something lasting, a little jar that could—if you’re very careful and disciplined—sustain you through winter.


There’s something magical about a pot of fruit simmering on the stove, slowly darkening and thickening, growing shiny and smooth, becoming apple butter. Then there comes the ladle and the tongs, a cauldron of boiling water, and the gentle pop of the lid as it seals. If you repeat this process four times, as I did, you’ll have twenty golden-amber jars to line up on the counter and admire. It’s tempting to keep them all, like a squirrel hoarding nuts, but the stuff is so delicious—spicy, sweet, and with a zing of lemon—that you might want to give it away, if only for the compliments you'll get in return.

Speaking of compliments, my mother has long been legendary for her toffee, and with her blessing, I hope I'll soon be too.


It's only slightly less addictive than crack, and infinitely tastier. Toffee lovers on coasts east and west, as well as in that skillet-shaped state called Oklahoma, have gushed over its deep caramel-coffeeness and toothsome crunch. It’s pretty too, its topcoat generously marbled with white and dark chocolates. And if you’re very lucky, it could snag you a choice gift at your holiday party at work, as it did for me:


So tonight I’ll stay in, out of the fog and away from the carols sung in electronic voices. I’ll open a bottle of wine, steal another taste of toffee, and perhaps do a little song-and-dance number on the linoleum in the kitchen, sticky though it is with apple butter splatters. Lady Frankenstein, however, will stay securely sealed in her plastic wrapping.

[Special thanks and many squeezes to Mom for the brand-new digital camera(!) and to Nicho for the beautiful handmade cherry cutting board, which makes a very sophisticated backdrop for the toffee above, no? I do love giving, but sometimes receiving is even better.]



Coffee-Walnut Toffee
Adapted ever-so-slightly from Bon Appétit Christmas (1994)

It may just be me, but anything that requires a candy thermometer seems daunting—and that’s even before taking into consideration the boiling, roiling, burbling sugar, something between molten lava and a swamp in a horror movie. But surprisingly, this toffee is remarkably easy and non-threatening to make, especially if you have your mise en place (your ingredients, prepped and measured) ready and waiting. If you’re like me, you’ll feel a goofy, giddy shiver as you happily dump into the pot little pre-measured bowlfuls of this and that, just like Julia or Martha would do. And remember, the candy thermometer is your friend. Trust it, and you’ll have a long, happy, toffee-filled holiday season.

2 cups walnuts
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed golden brown sugar
2 tsp instant espresso powder
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
1/3 cup water
1 Tbs dark unsulfured molasses
4 ½ ounces fine-quality bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (I used Valhrona 64%)
4 ½ ounces fine-quality white chocolate, finely chopped (I used Callebaut)
1 ¼ cups (2 ½ sticks) unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spread walnuts on a cookie sheet and toast in the oven until fragrant, about 5-10 minutes, making sure they don’t burn. Allow to cool for ten minutes; then coarsely chop. Remove 1 ½ cups to a bowl. Finely chop remaining ½ cup; then place in a separate bowl.

Prepare your mise en place: in a medium bowl, combine sugars, espresso powder, cinnamon, and salt. In a small bowl or measuring cup, combine water and molasses. Place chopped chocolates in their own separate bowls.

Butter a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan. Melt butter in a heavy 2 ½-quart saucepan over low heat. Add sugars, espresso powder, cinnamon, salt, water, and molasses; stir until sugar dissolves. Attach a clip-on candy thermometer to side of pan. Increase heat to medium; cook until thermometer registers 290 degrees (and no less!), stirring slowly but constantly and scraping bottom of pan with a wooden spatula, about 20 minutes.

Remove pan from heat, and quickly stir in 1 ½ cups coarsely chopped nuts. Immediately pour mixture onto prepared pan; do not scrape saucepan. Tilt sheet so that toffee spreads to ¼-inch thickness. Sprinkle chocolates by generous tablespoonfuls atop toffee, alternating bittersweet and white chocolates. Let stand one minute. Using back of spoon, spread chocolates slightly. Using the tip of a knife or the tongs of a fork, swirl chocolates to create a marble pattern. Sprinkle with ½ cup finely chopped nuts. Refrigerate until toffee is firm, about one hour. Break toffee into pieces.

Makes about two pounds. Can be made two weeks ahead and stored in the refrigerator in an airtight container. Serve cold or at room temperature.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin

“Pangloss disait quelquefois à Candide: ‘Tous les événements sont enchaînés dans le meilleur des mondes possibles; car enfin, si vous n’aviez pas été chassé d’un beau château à grands coups de pied dans le derrière pour l’amour de Mlle Cunégonde, si vous n’aviez pas été mis à l’Inquisition, si vous n’aviez pas couru l’Amérique à pied, si vous n’aviez pas donné un bon coup d’épée au baron, si vous n’aviez pas perdu tous vos moutons du bon pays d’Eldorado, vous ne mangeriez pas ici des cédrats confits et des pistaches.’

‘Cela est bien dit,’ répondit Candide, ‘mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.’”
—Voltaire, Candide

Like Voltaire’s Candide—who slogged his way to the good life through a haphazard and mind-boggling maze of hardships, mistakes, traps, and lost loves—I often wonder at the strange, seemingly slapdash chain of events that delivers us into each second of our lives. Take, for instance, the following: if I hadn’t gone to my dear Northern California college, I might not have gone to Paris in 1999; if I hadn’t gone to Paris, I wouldn’t have befriended Keaton; if I hadn’t befriended Keaton, I wouldn’t have felt so happily inclined to come to Seattle in 2002; if I hadn’t befriended Keaton and come to Seattle, I wouldn’t have met Kate; if I hadn’t met Kate, I wouldn’t have met Nicho; if I hadn’t met Nicho, I wouldn’t have been given bags and coolers full of his homegrown vegetables; and if I hadn’t been given those homegrown vegetables, I might not be here today, typing these words. I might well have starved to death, martyring myself in the name of rent payments and meager monthly contributions to NPR.

But as fate would have it, all but the last did miraculously occur. And today, I feel infinitely lucky to cultivate this Seattle garden, both human and vegetable. After all, we know it could have turned out otherwise.

As befits the season, I’ve recently been showered with Swiss chard and pumpkins, the garden's bounty. For Halloween, Nicho bestowed upon me a generous-sized pumpkin with a picture-perfect curly stem, cut from his yard that very afternoon. Then, a week or so ago, he called to ask if he could bring over "raw materials" and cook dinner with me. This, dear reader, ranks among the greatest questions in the history of mankind. You can well imagine my answer.

Nicho arrived twenty-four hours later with a bagful of Swiss chard, stubby dirt-flecked carrots, two enormous acorn squashes, and a bunch of mystery greens (which his mother claims is spinach, but it looked more like leafy geranium stems, minus the flowers). He also selected three varieties of sausage at Whole Foods, as well as a couple Belgian beers in tall glass bottles. He knows how I feel about sausage, and he delivers. That is friendship.

I need not tell you how delicious it was; that much is clear. But even better, later in the evening, after I saw him to the door, I discovered that the bag of Swiss chard remained, nearly full.

I slept very, very well.

The next evening, I cut the Swiss chard into a rough chiffonade and sautéed it with thinly sliced onion, stirred it into eggs beaten with salty grated cheese, and cooked it gently on the stovetop, a Swiss chard version of a zucchini-and-Pecorino frittata. It was barely golden, full of sweet onions and bitter greens. Delicious that night, it was even better as room-temperature leftovers, eaten on a couch in the art school café while talking applied anthropology and local scandal with Robert.

But Nicho’s pumpkin remained. It was aging well, although it took up acres of counter-space in my small kitchen. I knew it was a sugar pumpkin and thus ideal for baking, but I was indecisive: cheesecake? Pie? Bread? Then, one night shortly before Thanksgiving, Keaton arrived for cocktails with a pumpkin in her shirt, pregnancy-style; now there were two. The situation was dire. Not being a huge proponent of pumpkin pies and mousses, I set my sights on pumpkin bread, which offered the added benefit of perfuming my apartment with spice and toasted nuts.




A dusty orange color, spotted with crunchy hazelnuts and translucent golden raisins, the bread was tender and moist with a very delicate crumb. It’s sweet and spicy, with an earthy pumpkin flavor and a warm note of ginger. And it would make a lovely gift.

Go cultivate that garden.


Pumpkin Bread with Hazelnuts and Golden Raisins
Adapted from The New Joy of Cooking

1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp baking powder
1/3 cup water
½ tsp pure vanilla extract
6 Tbs unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/3 cups sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup pumpkin purée (or cooked, puréed—until very smooth—winter squash, yams, or sweet potatoes), at room temperature
½ cup coarsely chopped hazelnuts
1/3 cup golden raisins

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease (with butter or cooking spray) a 9- by 5-inch loaf pan.

Whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and baking powder until thoroughly blended. In another bowl, mix water and vanilla extract. In a large bowl, beat butter until creamy, about 30 seconds. Gradually add sugar, and beat on medium speed until lightened in color and texture, about 3 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add pumpkin purée, and beat on low speed until just blended. Add the flour mixture in three parts, alternating with the water-vanilla mixture in two parts, beating on low until smooth and just combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as necessary. Fold in hazelnuts and raisins. Pour batter into pan and spread evenly across the top.

Bake about one hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan on a rack for five or ten minutes before unmolding to cool completely on the rack.

Note: You’re not obligated to use a loaf pan, of course. You could make muffins, for example; for a standard-sized muffin, bake 18-20 minutes. And this bread freezes beautifully.

Granola: when darkness looms, or anytime

Winter in the Pacific Northwest means dusk at 3:30 in the afternoon, with sunset around 4:15. Six in the evening might as well be midnight. When I look out my rain-streaked window at 5pm, I’m met with the luminous glow of wet asphalt under the streetlamps in the grocery-store parking lot. So picturesque you are, Seattle.

These long, cold nights and short, dark days call for rousing breakfasts. We’ve all got to stoke the proverbial fire, but in winter such small rituals feel truly fortifying, somehow more deeply nourishing than during summer’s more carefree months.

That said, I should admit that — regardless of the season, gentle reader — each day I wake expressly for the purpose of eating the exact same breakfast.* Never mind the bus I’ve got to catch or the work to be done. Nothing can keep me from my crimson glass breakfast bowl.

Behold, the routine:
1. Get out of bed;
2. Put on fleecy black bathrobe;
3. Wash face and put in contact lenses;
4. Turn on NPR;
5. Enter kitchen;
6. Pour glass of water, preferably cool to cold;
7. Take down aforementioned bowl from shelf;
8. Deposit in bowl two handfuls of Heritage O’s cereal, a few spoonfuls of granola and a few of raisins, and big scoops of Brown Cow plain yogurt;
9. Thoroughly mix contents of bowl with spoon; and
10. Eat.

As mystic G. I. Gurdjieff said about something, “everything else is nothing.”

Now, maybe you're raising your eyebrows. Granted, this breakfast won’t win any awards for aesthetic value, and it certainly wasn’t crafted with what one typically thinks of as a gourmande’s spirit. But honey, it certainly fills the void within. And regardless of your stance on plain yogurt or health-foody cereals, this homemade granola is mighty toothsome: amber-brown, hearty but delicate, fragrant with cinnamon and orange zest, toasty with almonds.

Morning is not to be missed, even when it’s still dark outside.


*Sometimes there’s Irish oatmeal, but not often. There’s also the occasional homemade scone. But honestly, variety in breakfast food is overrated.


Rancho La Puerta Granola
Adapted from The Rancho La Puerta Cookbook: 175 Bold Vegetarian Recipes from America’s Premier Fitness Spa, with thanks to jolly Bill Wavrin



3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
½ cup chopped raw almonds
½ cup sunflower seeds
¼ cup whole-wheat flour
¼ cup oat or wheat bran
1 Tbs ground cinnamon
¾ tsp ground ginger
¾ tsp ground cardamom
¾ cup honey
½ cup unsweetened, unfiltered apple juice
1 Tbs vanilla extract
2 tsp canola oil
2 tsp grated orange zest
2 Tbs fresh orange juice

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Lightly coat a baking sheet with vegetable oil spray.

In a large mixing bowl, combine rolled oats, almonds, sunflower seeds, flour, bran, cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom.

In another bowl, whisk together honey, apple juice, vanilla, and oil until the honey is thoroughly incorporated. Add the orange zest and orange juice.

Pour wet ingredients over dry ingredients and mix well. Spread the granola evenly over the baking sheet and bake for 1 ½ to 2 hours, checking every 15 or so minutes. When the granola begins to brown, stir and turn over gently with a spatula. Take care that the outside edges do not burn. Your house or apartment should, by this point, smell spectacular. When golden and dry, scrape onto a cool baking sheet and set aside to cool. Granola will crisp as it cools. Store in an airtight container, preferably in the refrigerator.

Two years

You may have heard me speak of my dad: the man I called “Burg,” the one who took me to Paris for the first time when I was only ten, introduced me to caviar long before puberty, revealed to me at sixteen the homely pleasure of rice pudding, and gave me a Cuisinart—carefully selected from his favorite shopping spot, eBay—for my 24th birthday. He loved to spoil me.

Today marks the two-year anniversary of Burg’s death to advanced-stage cancer of the kidney. He lived only ten weeks after his diagnosis. The disease had already spread to his spine and pelvis, skull, and legs. As a radiation oncologist who’d spent nearly fifty years treating and curing patients, his most poignant remark was, “What a kick in the ass.”

I miss him. Mostly I miss cooking with him, and for him. He was a man of many passions - from fly fishing to France, Gene Krupa to majolica, crossword puzzles, Dixieland jazz, dirty jokes, Dylan Thomas, and an old Alfa Romeo junker that sat in the driveway - but among the things he most adored were the kitchen and the eating, drinking, and laughter so vitally connected to it.

Some of my strongest memories of his illness - and of my last days with him - involve food, cooking for him and feeding him as he lay in a rented hospital bed in a room just off our kitchen. Though our family came together seamlessly to care for him, I often guarded for myself the task of preparing his meals: buttered rye toast, scrambled eggs with chevre, or reheated stew from the neighbors. I’d wake every morning to stir lumps of butter into his Cream of Wheat or half-and-half into his oatmeal, spooning it into his mouth in frantic disbelief as his belly - the target of many years of nagging - slowly melted away. As his pain worsened and the level of his medications increased, his eating grew more creative. One day, over a plate of eggs, he told me excitedly that we were in Italy having a picnic, and that when we finished eating, we’d go for a swim in the grotto. His hallucination blurring into reality, he called my scrambled eggs “Italian grotto eggs” from then on. I loved that. Somehow his brain, through the food on his plate, could bridge the gap between his blurry, transient dream-world and the very real present. I guess it was his way of leaving that bed, of escaping winter-locked Oklahoma, of fleeing the body that had carried him for 73 years and suddenly dropped him without warning.

Lying there, he traveled. We spoke French sometimes, his shaky command of the language better than it had ever been when he was well. One day, while searching for a phone number in his organizer, I happened to glance at the schedule pages from the previous spring, when he’d come to visit me in Paris, where I was living at the time. He’d written down the details of everything we’d done and nearly every meal we’d eaten: rhubarb clafoutis here, marinated fresh sardines there. I am no doubt my father’s daughter.

Some days his absence feels heavy, almost tangible. But most often I think of him in quiet celebration, with a sort of gratitude, a lightness. Burg loved words and puns and poetry; he’d be thrilled to see me writing. Or rather, I think he is thrilled. He’s around somewhere, watching - even when I wish he weren’t. In many respects, I write for him, for all the times at the dinner table when he’d lift his head, fork in hand, and exclaim, “You know, we eat better at home than most people do in restaurants!” My brother David and I used to tease him for it. I thought he was bragging. But I’d be lying if I said that Burg’s exclamation doesn’t ring true today, when I sit down to my own table. I know now what he was getting at. His silly old saying was - and is - a testament to the profoundly human joy of making and sharing food with the people you love. It’s a celebration.

Today I’d like to share a poem by James Wright, an American poet who died in 1980 after a very short but intense battle with cancer, like Burg. The year before his death, Wright spent nine months traveling in Europe with his wife, waking early to write poems. This poem is from a collection written during Wright’s final travels in Europe and published posthumously. My siblings and I all spoke or read at Burg’s memorial service, and this is what I chose. He would have loved the fact that this poem allowed me to say “making love” - while wearing fishnets, I should add, an edgy touch he would have also applauded - before a priest, a bishop, a rabbi, and an overflow crowd of 550 people in an Episcopal church in Bible-belted Oklahoma City. I am so my father’s daughter. I can almost hear him laughing now.


Yes, But

Even if it were true
Even if I were dead and buried in Verona
I believe I would come out and wash my face
In the chill spring.
I believe I would appear
Between noon and four, when nearly
Everybody else is asleep or making love,
And all the Germans turned down, the motorcycles
Muffled, chained, still.

Then the plump lizards along the Adige by San Giorgio
Come out and gaze,
Unpestered by temptation, across the water.
I would sit among them and join them in leaving
The golden mosquitos alone.
Why should we sit by the Adige and destroy
Anything, even our enemies, even the prey
God caused to glitter for us
Defenseless in the sun?
We are not exhausted. We are not angry, or lonely,
Or sick at heart.
We are in love lightly, lightly. We know we are shining,
Though we cannot see one another.
The wind doesn’t scatter us,
Because our very lungs have fallen and drifted
Away like leaves down the Adige,
Long ago.

We breathe light.

Another excuse to talk biscuits

This Thanksgiving, the focus wasn't on the ritual turkey and stuffing; it was on a wedding engagement. After all, my (half-)brother David has certainly made us wait.

David was fifteen when I was born. A mid-seventies transplant from Baltimore, he took Oklahoma City by storm with his stylish and shiny Farrah Fawcettesque hair, striped knee socks, and devilish ways. Although he kept himself busy scandalizing various cities and defying death and teachers, he also took care to do the requisite brotherly things: asking me (à la Telly Savalas), “Who loves ya, baby?” and training me to say, “You do!”; sitting on me and tickling me until I couldn’t breathe; harassing me about boys; and giving me a beer-derived nickname, Molson. The Kojak game is now long over, though it was only around age fourteen that I was able to convince David that tickling is not okay. And as for the harassment, it has today happily morphed into a lively banter, at times risqué enough to make him flinch. He pauses, gives me a high-five, and then returns the off-color punch. And of course, I’m still Molson.

But we’ve been waiting. He’s not getting any younger, and Carée is a fantastic catch, to say the least: strong, smart (a professor of health and human sexuality, complete with tabletop condom trees and penis light-switches), pretty, sophisticated, willing to tolerate David’s goofiness, able to put him in his place, and well-versed in dirty martinis. So finally, one blustery weekend last winter, he got down on literal and proverbial bended knee and offered up a very impressive diamond. Carée, caught straight out of the shower in a bathrobe and towel-turban, bravely accepted.

And this past weekend, we celebrated.

David and Carée arrived in Oklahoma City on Thanksgiving Day with a cooler full of Malpecq oysters, which David shucked using our father’s tried-and-true oyster knife. We gathered around the butcher-block island in the kitchen, Champagne flutes in hand, everyone but (scaredy-cat) me loudly slurping oysters. Watching David and Carée together, I was struck by how solid he seems with her, how confident, playful, happy he is. My mother tells me that he wants to have speakers installed in the kitchen of the house he and Carée have just bought: he wants to be able to kitchen-dance. It's so beautiful.

But all this was only a prelude: the true celebration came Saturday night, when forty or so of my parents’ friends joined us to fête David and Carée’s engagement. David cleaned up—even taking off the backwards baseball cap, his daring gang-member look—to resemble the suave businessman he is, and Carée looked gorgeous in a sleeveless, cowl-neck dress. I got to play hostess (a talent I prize but use far too infrequently) and managed to work the crowd for over two hours without getting a face ache from too much smiling. But best of all, there were biscuits—sweet-potato biscuits.



For as long as I can remember, we’ve had sweet-potato biscuits with ham and Honeycup mustard (“Uniquely sharp!” the label warns) on the party rotation. For this particular occasion, Mom did a bit of research and found, via David Rosengarten, what is purported to be the finest ham in all of America: Murcer’s bone-in ham from Enid, Oklahoma. It was indeed a lovely, honey-tinged, and luminously rosy specimen, redolent of smoke, its aroma wafting up from the kitchen into my father’s bathroom, where I was prettifying for the evening’s festivities. Paired with a generous slathering of Honeycup mustard on a buttery sweet-potato biscuit, it was intoxicating. The bartender also kept my wine glass very full.

Faithful readers may have noticed that I’ve been talking biscuits a lot lately, but with winter’s cold closing in and many dark months ahead, consider all this buttery richness a pre-emptive strike against hypothermia. As my French host-father used to say, “C’est nourrissant!” So allez, mangez: come spring, you’ll thank me. Carée, with wedding-dress fittings no doubt menacing, will not.

Congratulations, you two.


Sweet-Potato Biscuits
(Adapted slightly from Martha Stewart)

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbs light-brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
6 Tbs chilled unsalted butter
3/4 cup chilled sweet potato puree (read: peeled, boiled, and pureed sweet potatoes)
1/3 cup buttermilk

To make the dough:
In a large bowl, whisk together 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, 2 Tbs light-brown sugar, 2 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp baking soda. With a pastry blender or two knives (or not-too-warm fingers), cut in 6 Tbs chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces, until mixture resembles coarse meal, with some pea-size lumps of butter remaining. In a small bowl, whisk together 3/4 cup chilled sweet potato purée and 1/3 cup buttermilk; stir quickly into flour mixture until combined (do not overmix).

To shape the biscuits:
Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface, and knead very gently until dough comes together but is still slightly lumpy, five or six times. (If dough is too sticky, work in up to 1/4 cup additional flour.) Shape into a disk, and pat to an even 1-inch thickness. With a floured 2-inch biscuit cutter, cut out biscuits as close together as possible. Gather together scraps, and repeat to cut out more biscuits (do not reuse scraps more than once).

Baking the biscuits:
Preheat oven to 425°, with rack on lower shelf. Butter or spray an 8-inch cake pan. Arrange biscuits snugly in pan. Brush with 1/2 Tbs melted butter. Bake until golden, rotating once, 20 to 24 minutes.

Yield: 8 biscuits.

Oklahoma: the twins and their shad roe

My entrance was less grand than I’d hoped, but the birthday cake and I made it home intact. It is virtually impossible to fly directly to Oklahoma from any West or East Coast city, and I had the grave misfortune of passing through Dallas-Fort Worth on Tuesday afternoon and finding my one-hour layover stretched out into seven as a riot of nasty weather cavorted around the Great Plains. But I passed the time with a very chatty 83-year-old Manhattanite named Edith who sat down next to me and, among other things, told me where to find the best steaks and the wealthiest men in the Big Apple. Edith had beautiful deep-set blue eyes, red lipsticked lips, and shiny crimson nails, and I nearly squeezed her when she told me, "I’m a walker. For a short girl, I’ve got a long stride." Oh Edith, me too. I want to be Edith when I grow up.

Speaking of growing up, there are few things more awe-inspiring than a pair of adult identical twins—specifically, a vivacious pair of 58-year-old identical twins named Tina and Toni, the latter being my mother. I was lucky enough to have dinner with this pair last night, along with their vivacious mother, my grandmother. Together we were (of course) vivacious, three generations of Mack women. What better cause for a toast?

It was a belated birthday celebration for the twins, a feast of shad roe. The American shad is a member of the herring family and one of the boniest fish around, but we don’t waste time with the flesh: we go straight for the roe. Shad are usually caught in the springtime, when they are migrating from the sea to freshwater to spawn. Their roe is highly prized in the Chesapeake Bay region, where spring is essentially synonymous with shad roe. When the twins were growing up in Maryland, my grandmother (whom I call Nan, Nanny, or Nanzer) would occasionally treat her family of nine to this sautéed delicacy during the brief months of its annual season. They’ve been hooked from early on.

This spring, an "inside source" of Mom’s had a hefty package of shad roe shipped to her, direct from the fishermen in Maryland, as a surprise. She generously shared some with this inside source, and then she tucked the rest away in the freezer for safekeeping. So last night, with a pan of bacon snapping and popping in the background, Tina, Nanny, and I watched eagerly as Mom carefully washed and dried the slender, slightly wrinkled, and horrifyingly ugly egg sacs. "It’s like caviar in spring," Tina told me. "Like saltwater," Mom chimed in. She cooked the roe in bacon fat and foamy butter, then served it with a hearty squeeze of lemon and a strip of crisp bacon. We ate it with roasted asparagus and warmish Yukon Gold potatoes, boiled and tossed with apple cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, and fresh dill. Alongside, we guzzled a very tasty Chehalem Chardonnay from Oregon. The twins moaned. And then, after candles and song, we dug into the far-from-disaster cake, imported from Seattle and only slightly misshapen. There was more moaning all around, punctuated by the high-pitched scream of forks scraping ceramic plates. Even Nanny, whose appetite has waned over the years, managed to finish her slice. For the occasion, I wore dirty hair and an oversized Act Up "SILENCE=DEATH" sweatshirt I found in a drawer in my old bedroom, a remnant of my early teens grunge-and-politics wardrobe.

Happy birthday, twins.

To a cherry-pit spitter on her 58th

Dear reader, today we celebrate the strongest woman I know, a truly swanky dancer, the epitome of poise and slightly goofy sophistication.

Happy 58th birthday, Mom.

It couldn’t have been easy all those years, fending off my pre-teen pleas for Vienna sausages, Cheetos, Bubblicious bubble gum, and Hawaiian Punch. While pining away for these forbidden “junk food” items, I was also deathly picky: no condiments on anything, no lumps in the tomato soup, no bananas, nothing spicy, nothing jiggly, nothing remotely gristly, no mushrooms, no asparagus, no nuts in the cookie, no jam on the PB & J. But with patience and a steady diet of bologna roll-ups,* she brought me around. What a woman.

Throughout my childhood, I spent every afternoon in late November and December watching Mom and family friend Barbara Fretwell make dozens and dozens of Christmas cookies, from linzers dusted in powdered sugar to chocolate-dipped pecan bars, Aunt Bill’s burnt-sugar candy, and coffee-walnut toffee. Though the cookie tradition petered out a few years ago, Mom and I quickly picked up the slack, tag-teaming on Martha Stewart’s pâte brisée and rich cranberry tartes with fragile shells and eating the last crumbs of fresh ginger cake with caramelized pears at midnight, after the last guest went home. I was happily doomed to be a baker, cheeks red from puffs of the oven’s hot, perfumed air.

Together we’ve eaten much fallafel, chocolate, cheese, and salami, and there have been a few riverside sandwiches with green beans on the side. There’s been wine on the grass in the Place des Vosges, and on road trips, there are hard-boiled eggs and Sportea. Many cherry pits have been spit out the window.

And of course, this story isn't entirely about food:

It is from this woman that I got my talent for listening, crying at the drop of a hat, and finding parking spaces; my love of a long walk; my happy independence; my taste for well-made (and unfortunately expensive) items; my tendency to intimidate without intending to; and my love for playing hostess. Oh Mommy Mommy.

Here’s to many more. I’ll see you tomorrow, with cake. I love you.



*For the uninitiated, a bologna roll-up is a round flabby sheet of Oscar Meyer beef bologna smeared with mayonnaise and rolled. I’m unsure of how this escaped “junk food” categorization, but it did. Mom?

Self-sufficient and not too sour

Dear reader, I am a true pioneer woman.



Round three of the sourdough experiment—the second go-round with Jack Lang’s method—was pretty damn fine. Poilâne has nothing to fear from me, but then again, I’m just looking to keep the breadbox full on long, windy trips in the covered wagon. Somewhere, my sweaty man is grunting with pleasure.

The good, the very good, and the wonderful

Inspired by Kate—who was inspired by someone else I can’t remember—I present the good, the very good, and the wonderful of the past week, all lumped together and in no particular order, which sort of defeats the purpose:



1. Veteran’s Day afternoon with Kate: being unstylish, unshowered, and happy on a sunny day and walking arm in arm along the piers and down to Myrtle Edwards Park, after which we split a spectacularly buttery brioche (her very first!) from Le Panier, bought some deep green crinkly dinosaur kale from flirtatious vendors at the market, and talked chamois creme.



2. Meeting a real, live (ex-)break dancer. Bonus points for recent thumb injuries incurred while break dancing at parties. Yeow.



3. A twenty-dollar seven-course “Chef’s Experience” menu at Mistral, thank you very much. Armed with a fortuitous inside connection, four of us enjoyed a très haute-cuisine dinner free of charge—save for the tip, which, after all, is only civilized.



Tucked away next to an alley in Seattle’s Belltown district, Mistral is unassuming to the eye: a long, narrow, simply decorated space with pale walls and a tall ceiling. The restaurant was opened in January 2000 by chef William Belickis, who turns out decadent, largely French-influenced fare with an emphasis on local ingredients.



We began with a Champagne whose name I—falling down on the job—neglected to note, and then the feast proceeded as follows:



- Kusshi oyster with grapefruit slices and celery foam for the other three—and for oyster-fearing me, a square filet of Arctic char on shaved white asparagus with some sort of green-colored and green-tasting purée splattered around, crunchy salt and crispy skin on top





- An enormous diver sea scallop (beautifully seared to a burnished brown, again with crunchy nuggets of salt; very meaty and sweet) in a smooth brown-butter and parsnip soup with drizzle of basil oil and spoonful of carrot foam (minerally, earthy, but I’m indifferent to this foam thing)

2002 Mason Sauvignon Blanc





- Wild Atlantic skate (a bit too salty, unfortunately) on a bed of silky cubed eggplant, thinly sliced turnips, and pearl onions, with a translucent green lettuce-and-Madras-curry sauce, drizzle of basil oil

2003 Forman Napa Valley Chardonnay





- Seared Sonoma artisanal foie gras* (crowned with ubiquitous crunchy salt; the whole melting instantly on the tongue) on a comice pear purée with a passionfruit and Tahitian vanilla bean reduction, with Granny Smith apple chips.

1988 Tokaji (from Hungary, amber brown, sweet but clean, not cloying, raisin-y)





- Moulard duck or Oregon lamb chop (two of each for the table, both beautifully rare) on fingerling potato purée (too sweet; very odd) with Swiss chard, “Thumbelina” carrots, chive oil, red wine reduction, and zatar-infused olive oil

2000 Arcadian Monterey Pinot Noir





- Slivers of five cheeses: Pavé de Jadis (creamy, mild goat), semi-soft Pecorino, Agour (Spanish sheep’s milk), Persil de Beaujolais (cow’s milk blue), Brillat Savarin (triple-crème cow)

Red wine I neglected to write down, being in mid-story (Cabernet?)





- Two of each for the table: a round of genoise-ish cake topped with a quenelle of crème fraîche ice cream, with tapioca and pomegranate seeds scattered all around; and a small pot of ice cream (vanilla and something unidentifiable), a shot of hot chocolate, and two vanilla sugar cookies





Very inventive and absolutely exemplary all around, minus the few quibbles as noted. Thank you, L.L., for a very glamorous and delicious evening. I’m a more than willing partner anytime. Another scallop, please!



But I have to admit (and not without some shame) that I don't think I'm cut out for "fine dining." I put my elbows on the table; I feel silly swirling my wine glass; and I'm worthless if you're looking to suss out the herbs and spices in a dish. This does not bode well for a career in food writing. I need more educating, or maybe more audacity. Then again, while there is much to be said for the expert balancing of flavors that a four-star chef can achieve, satisfaction is a fine roasted chicken and a slab of ridiculously rich chocolate cake, honey.



*Although I hesitated when the head waiter asked if we were all willing to eat foie gras, I decided to nod my agreement, choosing on this occasion to overlook my ethical concerns for the sake of my palate’s education. Forgive me; it was delicious, so smooth and so warm.

On self-sufficiency and sourdough

Forget the Ann Demeulemeester sex bag and all that snooty France stuff; give me a bull-scrotum bag and the open prairie, land of my birth. Forget the joys of a shower with excellent water pressure; all I need is the Red River and some pumice. Cast off the lacy lingerie and other things requiring delicate hand-washing; give me leather, rags, and a splintery washboard. And down with Mr. Pete, my trusty four-wheeled steed; I want Cinnabar, that wild-maned, dead-legged beast we fought over at summer camp.

Dear reader, I’m trying my hand at being a self-sufficient pioneer woman, able to sustain herself, sweaty man, and grubby kids on nothing more than flour, salt, and water. How convenient that some flours are fortified with vitamin C; that way, we won’t get scurvy. Modern pioneer life is something indeed.

This tale begins October 29, 2004 with Margot’s sourdough starter, which for weeks I’d been lovingly stirring, feeding, sniffing, and stroking. Being of the “anything with wheat must be tastier and is of course infinitely more nutritious” school, I chose as my first project a simple whole wheat bread from Sourdough Jack’s Cookery. For brevity’s sake, I summarize: all went well until I moved the three loaves from their nice warm rising spot into the oven, whereupon they collapsed and withered. I'd asked my sourdough to work harder than it was prepared to. The resulting loaves, while a lovely shade of gold, were rather diminutive, measuring between two and three inches tall. This disappointing fact, however, did not stop me from consuming a third of one loaf immediately. The rest was quite passable when toasted, especially when lacquered with a bit of this summer’s strawberry jam. I made do. After years on the frontier, I’m used to disappointment.

Undaunted by the previous weekend’s mediocre showing, I set out on November 6 with Jack Lang’s excellent tutorial on sourdough. Starter is nothing short of magic: it bubbles and fizzes, weaving elastic strands of gluten that look not unlike Halloween’s leftover decorative cobwebs. I was uncertain of how much flour to add during the final shaping stages, and the dough was sticky and stretchy and belligerent. But my banneton (a fortuitous purchase at BHV) coddled it gently through the night, and aside from a bit of sticking upon transfer from “peel” (a.k.a. cookie sheet) to “baking stone” (a.k.a. aluminum half-sheet), the process went reasonably well.

Being an exacting sort of pioneer woman, I was of course expecting Poilâne quality on the first try. Opening the oven, however, I was met with a fairly flat, amoeba-shaped loaf. I dismissively chucked it onto a cooling rack and slunk off to the river for a good cleansing. But, dear, patient reader, when it was thoroughly cooled, I cut off a good chunk and found it shot through with beautiful little air holes and pockets, off-white, giving off a slight sheen under the light.



The crust was thin but crispy, the crumb delicate, chewy, and almost sweet. It might not be perfect, but it will make a quite satisfactory lunchtime vehicle for a swipe of peanut butter. It takes little to please a pioneer woman.

This tale of self-sufficiency has only just begun. The starter lives on, and plans are in the works for another go with Mr. Lang’s method next weekend. Perhaps the holidays will bring Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery. That, and a KitchenAid mixer with a dough hook. I’m desperate for a dough hook; it’s so rough-and-tumble, so pointy and untamed. This guy is much funnier than I am, and he’s got pretty bread; I attribute it to the dough hook and gobs of large Tupperware. All that stands between me and a KitchenAid mixer is my mother, who keeps hers—a second-hand find of my father’s that she’s never used; oh, the waste!—on the pantry floor, surrounded by mouse traps, old dog bowls, and rolls of paper towels. Look out, Oklahoma: come Thanksgiving, your mixer is mine. If it's from Oklahoma, it must be authentically pioneer-esque, like me.

Gloom, doom, and biscuits

It has been a very dark week in this land. Much doom, much to be gloomy about. Times like these make me wish my father had kept his Canadian citizenship. But then I remind myself of the thirteen holy reasons to love America despite its shady leaders, twisted foreign and domestic policy, and general unholiness.

1. History
2. The idiosyncrasies of American English
3. Blue states (and Oklahoma, because of a few shreds of irrational hometown loyalty)
4. The Star-Spangled Banner (okay, okay, it’s pretty)
5. Bruce Springsteen
6. Thanksgiving
7. S'mores
8. Peanut butter
9. Filibusters
10. Dischord Records
11. McSweeneys
12. American mice, which are bold yet mind-blowingly stupid and thus make for a great story. For purposes of comparison, French mice are bold, but they have the sophistication to know when to make themselves scarce. They thus make for stories that are only very good, not great. To illustrate, dear reader, we have an uplifting tale of the great American mouse, lovingly contributed by Doron, today's guest writer:

“P. and I have been having a mouse problem recently. One night we saw one run across our apartment into the coat closet. Naturally, I flipped out, screaming and already packing up my stuff in preparation for the move. I will not live with rodents.

...The next day we discovered two small holes at the base of the wall in the kitchen—aha, we were at the source! The management company came by and "closed them up." ...[But] lo and behold, one of the holes that was "closed up" was soon penetrated. See, unlike the meek French mice that run away and never return once you've had a confrontation, American mice have balls. They have the audacity and the tenacity to dig through your walls, eat your food, and shit all over your kitchen. No fear, I tell you.

...Late last night, I'm sending a couple of emails from the living room. P. is already sleeping, and the apartment is almost totally dark. All of a sudden, I hear some noises coming from the kitchen. The little mouse was apparently trying to get back "home." I quietly walk to the kitchen, squat, and observe in silence: looks like he has nowhere to go. This is my chance. I grab a plastic bag and put it over my hand. I grab a dustpan in the other hand. I pray that I don't scream and wake up my entire building. I'm sitting there, outside the kitchen, waiting quietly. I see him peek his little head and then proceed to come out of the kitchen and run in my direction. My speedy reflexes reacted, and I snatched the little fucker with the plastic-bagged hand. I'm holding a live mouse in my hand. I immediately invert the bag and tie it. Victory!

I took the bag downstairs at one in the morning and released him into the D.C. jungle. He's on his own now, and whether he makes it is not my concern. Retribution in all its glory. And a successful, more humane way of trapping a mouse.”

Amen. Long live Doron and American mice.

And last but not least,

13. Soft Southern flour, which makes for the very best buttermilk biscuits



There simply are not enough superlatives in this world to adequately describe these biscuits. They delicately straddle a line between flaky and creamy, and they're rich enough to make the addition of butter laughable. Most moan-inducing while piping hot, they are also miraculous when eaten cold with leftover roasted chicken while standing over the kitchen counter and watching the wind blow outside. As my friend Keaton exclaimed through her anti-tooth-grinding mouthguard one sleepy night in college: “I love bizzzzcuiths!”

Blessed be the biscuitmakers. America, you will be redeemed someday, and these biscuits may well have something to do with it.

Touch-of-Grace Biscuits
Adapted from Cookwise, by Super Food Scientist Shirley Corriher

Nonstick cooking spray
2 c Southern self-rising flour, such as White Lily
½ tsp salt
¼ c sugar
4 Tbs shortening, preferably the no-trans-fats Spectrum brand
2/3 c heavy cream
1 c buttermilk
1 c all-purpose flour, for shaping biscuits (do not use self-rising for this)
2 Tbs unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 475 and spray an 8” round cake pan with cooking spray.

Combine self-rising flour, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl. With your fingers, work the shortening into the flour mixture until there are no lumps bigger than a large pea.

Stir in the heavy cream and buttermilk, taking care not to overmix. Let stand for 2-3 minutes. The dough will be alarmingly wet, resembling large-curd cottage cheese. Have no fear.

Pour the cup of all-purpose flour onto a plate or pie tin. Flour hands well. Using a ¼-cup measuring scoop, spoon a biscuit-sized lump of dough into the flour and sprinkle flour gently over it. Pick up biscuit and shape it roughly into a soft round, cradling it in the cupped palm of one hand and gently shaking off excess flour. It will feel not unlike a water balloon. Place biscuit in pan and repeat, pushing biscuits tightly against one another so that they will rise up and not spread out.

Brush biscuits with melted butter and bake until lightly browned, 15-20 minutes. Cool for a minute or two, then dump out and break apart into individual biscuits. Serve immediately.


Oh yes, America, you will be redeemed.

On being hungry and (un)adventurous

I do not take well to being hungry, especially when the source of my next meal is unknown. Consider yourself warned. And woe betide those, such as Nicho, who choose to test me.

This story takes place on a crisp, sunny Halloween morning. The evening before had been spent at the home of lovely Kate, whooping it up at her second annual “catastrophic success” cocktail party. I’d gone over early to provide costume consultation and get a head start on the (yes, post-season) gin and tonic. Kate, eager to wear a 1970s getup she’d found at a thrift shop, successfully morphed into a
(half-)Chinese cowgirl with the addition of a hat and boots.



I transformed into my alter ego, a poofy-skirted French maid, and got to work with my feather duster.



Together we set a very festive table with cheese, grapes, and bloody rubber hands, and Kate hung her traditional “mistletoe” (a plastic severed foot with holly branches and red ribbon) over the bedroom doorway. The guests arrived in full regalia, among them a few nuns, a priest with lipstick marks on his cheeks, a hideously fake-sunburned tourist, a one-night stand, a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, a meat market, and even Uncle Sam. Todd came as lean, mean boxing champ “T-Bone,” and Margot played his manager, complete with cigar, driving cap, and hairy chest. Nicho stayed closer to home as an arborist, lugging a very heavy chainsaw and smelling of pine. I dusted; I drank; I fortified myself with cheese. We schmoozed; we reveled.

All this to say that the next morning I was rather hungry, as is only fitting. We decided to grab a bite to eat and then go for a walk in Discovery Park to soak up the picture-perfect fall day. I steered Nicho toward Fremont and the Longshoreman’s Daughter, home of dark and nutty blueberry-buckwheat pancakes. But there were massive crowds outside, and Nicho suggested that we “just drive around and find someplace” to eat. He pointed the car haphazardly in the direction of Ballard and told me to "be adventurous." We quickly sped away from Fremont and into industrial no man's land. I was ravenous, and I quietly fumed as we drove by more brunch spots with hordes outside. I tried to protest, grew hungrier, and fumed more aggressively, but he wouldn't take any of my suggestions. Now, I know what I'm talking about when I make a dining proposal; one should not, under any circumstances, drive around aimlessly and wave off advice while my stomach loudly grumbles from the passenger seat.

I finally succeeded in steering him to Café Besalu, but he didn't want to wait in line and, by this point, was feeling lunch-ish. We wound up crossing the street to QFC for picnic supplies. Admittedly, a picnic should have sounded like fun, but I was far beyond feeling easygoing and adventurous and instead moped silently next to the refrigerator case of deli salads. Bravely taking charge of the situation, Nicho chose an Essential Baking Company seeded baguette and picked out some highly questionable day-glo orange smoked cheese. Armed with these and some fruit (including the first of winter’s citruses, a box of Satsuma mandarins), we headed out to Discovery Park.

It was absolutely gorgeous, and we picnicked under a cloudless blue sky. I stealthily avoided the calamity cheese, but he didn't seem to notice, and anyway, there’s no need for loud mean-spiritedness, especially given that I'd been too grumpy at QFC to be of any cheese-choosing help. The air was cold and smelled like fall, a delicious contrast to the warm sun on my face, and we walked down to the beach and let Index romp illegally on the sand. I calmed down and even felt cheerful and appreciative. I was secretly proud of myself. But Nicho learned his lesson: no one—but no one—escapes the wrath of my hunger.

Halloween drew to a close with a very satisfying reconciliation dinner of lamb sausages and cold beer. [Oh lamb sausage, I'd eat sleep breathe nothing but you, but I'm afraid I'd ooze grease and outgrow my fishnets. Maybe this blog should have been called "Sausagette"?] By way of accompaniment, we roasted acorn squash and red peppers, sautéed red onions, and made a big salad of farmers’ market lettuces and shaved fennel. We then watched The Shining, which Nicho had never seen before. He was terrified and tense and spent the majority of the movie clinging to my side, reminding me that he’s “not a horror-movie person.” I patted his hand reassuringly. Adventurous indeed.

Humble, nutty, and chez moi: un gateau aux noix

Les Eyzies-de-Tayac is a village nestled under a cliff alongside the Vézère River in the beautiful Dordogne region of southwestern France. The self-proclaimed “capitale mondiale de la préhistoire,” it boasts a supremely boring (but, I understand, newly revamped) museum of prehistory and a nameless café where I bought some Orangina and used the bathroom. Most importantly, however, it was in Les Eyzies that I had my first taste of a gâteau aux noix, a French walnut cake.

It was October 1999, and I was a month into my two-quarter stay in France as a student in the Stanford-in-Paris program. Thanks to Helen Bing, a truly worship-worthy Stanford donor, we students hopped a train down to Brive-la-Gaillarde and spent a weekend Dordogne-ing with luxury accommodations for a grand total of roughly $40 each. My friend Clare and I were assigned a ridiculously extravagant suite à la française and spent each evening marveling at our good fortune and happily yelling goodnight to each other from our bedrooms at opposite ends of a long, marble-lined hallway.

Other highlights of the trip included:
-a chilly late-night tour of the town of Sarlat, followed by much dancing in a tight, smoky bar to shameful hits such as “Mambo Number Five” and “Tomber la Chemise;”
-befriending Gui, my dear, gorgeous, long-lost Brazilian and one of the flakiest people I’ve ever adored;
-befriending my dear Keaton;
-watching Gui run frantically around the very old Château de Beynac, trying to stay warm on a nippy morning;
-the decadent multi-course feasts of this region known for its truffles, cèpes, and foie gras (the last of which I’m undecided on but strive to avoid);
-and a dinner of pain de son (bran bread) and Peanut M&Ms on the train-ride back to Paris.

But five years later, it’s the walnut cake that haunts me. It had been baked at our hotel and plastic-wrapped in individual wedges for us to take on our day’s sightseeing, and I ate it perched atop a large, sunny rock in a park in Les Eyzies. Nothing fancy, it was a dense-crumbed white cake flecked with brown, humble, nutty, and only faintly sweet. Nothing fancy, it was delicious.

Last July, I found a recipe for it in Gâteaux de Mamie, but an eager trial run resulted in an oddly rubbery, leaden cake that made it no further than the trashcan. After a sufficient hiatus, this week I tried again, turning instead to a Saveur recipe dug up online in a moment of reprieve from a tedious editing task. Calling for walnut oil and white wine, it intrigued me, but I was a bit unsure of the potent, fruity aroma of fermented grapes and toasted nuts that wafted from the oven.



I needn’t have worried.



It was nothing fancy; it was delicious; and I ate a quarter of it on the spot, thinking of Gui and Clare and Keaton and the autumnal colors of a river valley thousands of miles away.



Gâteau aux Noix, or French-Style Walnut Cake
Adapted slightly from Saveur Cooks Authentic French

½ cup chopped walnuts, or a touch more
3 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup walnut oil
1/3 cup dry white wine
1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350. Place walnuts in a small dry saucepan and toast over medium heat, shaking pan, until nuts are fragrant, 5-10 minutes. Set aside.

Beat eggs in a medium bowl with an electric mixer. Gradually add sugar and beat until mixture is pale yellow, light, and fluffy. Add walnut oil and wine and mix well.

Generously grease a 9” cake pan (I used an 8-inch with no problem, by the way; your cake will just be a bit thicker). Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together into a large bowl. Add egg mixture to flour mixture and mix with a wooden spoon until just combined. Gently fold in walnuts, and then pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake cake until a toothpick can be inserted and pulled out clean, about 40 minutes (mine took only 35, however, and required a bit of tenting with foil for the last five). Remove from oven, cool for ten minutes, and then turn out onto a cooling rack. Allow to cool completely and serve in wedges. Loosely whipped cream would be a nice accompaniment, if possible.

Still life with giant sloth and loaf of bread

Every week should begin this way: watching the sun rise over the Cascades from a warm bed next to an enormous window, the wind whistling outside, a flock of tiny birds circling and swooping above the spruce. This is a bluegrass song.

Late Sunday morning took us down idyllic two-lane roads, past pastures full of cows and trees shaking with turning leaves, to Nicho’s family’s farm in Sultan. Along the road, the dahlias stood out bright under a sky blanketed with clouds, ripped and streaked with blue. A slow fog rolled between two hills, and in the distance, the Cascades foretold winter with their jagged white caps.

We arrived just before noon with empty stomachs, and Nicho threw together a delicious omelette-scramble of sorts—sautéed onions and garlic with fresh chard from the garden, a splash of his “secret sauce,” fork-scrambled eggs, slivers of tomato, and generous slices of cheddar and mozzarella cheeses. Nicho’s mother Martha joined us, and we sat and ate and talked. Then, while Nicho sunk into a food coma on the couch, his very gracious mother showed me how to bake her sweet, dense, and addictive wheat bread.



She, remarkable woman that she is, grinds her own red winter wheat and makes the nutty dough from memory and with a minimum of measuring, adding shakes of triticale, wheat germ, wheat bran, and oats entirely by eye and by feel. We tasted the raw dough and nodded our appreciation, kneaded and folded and pinched and tucked it into pans.

While the loaves rose, we roused Nicho, pulled on big rubber boots, and went outside to trim hooves. Not being a strapping man with a helmet, I stood back and watched as Nicho and his father Hans wrestled the quarrelsome sheep (whose names include Kerry and Dubya; I adore these people) and quieted the skittish llamas.

Late afternoon brought thick slices of fresh, steaming bread; a bit of kitchen-dancing with Nicho in his work overalls (who kindly put up with my bumbling and giggling); a walk down to the river and stick-throwing for Index; the piercing brightness of a receding sun; and a red nose for me. Returning to the house, we found Martha preparing a warming dinner of lentil soup with shavings of white cheddar, roasted acorn squash with sliced apples, and aforementioned bread. Nicho and I collaborated on some sautéed rainbow chard and broccoli with onion, garlic, and a squeeze of lemon. Dark had come early, as is fitting of this late-October date, and I realized happily that I’d hardly looked at my watch all day, content to let the hours come and go as they pleased.

This morning’s sunrise was slow and tentative, as was I. Nicho half-jokingly read to me from a book on the last ice age as rust-colored leaves swirled past outside. We learned the difference between mastodons and mammoths and admired their sturdy columnar legs, but given our languor, we resembled nothing so much as the giant sloth. It was delicious. Around midday, loaf of bread under my arm, I climbed reluctantly into my car and pointed it southwest, back to Seattle and concrete and anthropology and e-mail and Monday.

Friday night: frittata with assorted dances

It’s a bit after eleven. My apartment smells of frittata; the bed is pristine and pale green with fresh sheets; and my social calendar is recently ridiculous. A late Friday night home alone is fine indeed. This being-single thing is quite time-consuming: people to see, spontaneous things to do, loss of sleep to angst and scandal. It’s fantastic. I think I’ll do it for a while.

Tonight Keaton and I had dinner chez moi, a cozy plan for a chilly, off-and-on rainy evening. We broke open a bottle of Red Truck California Red Table Wine (not the most promising name, but perfectly drinkable) and settled into an evening of catching up. Dinner began with last winter’s favorite broccoli soup, courtesy of Chocolate and Zucchini’s Clotilde, sopped up with slices of the Essential Baking Company’s Columbia Bread. Meanwhile, a zucchini-and-Pecorino frittata was browning slowly on the stovetop,



to be later sliced into wedges and served alongside halves of roasted delicata squash with olive oil and fancy-schmancy fleur de sel. And although Keaton complained of a tentative stomach, she put away a decent share of the last of the defrosted chocolate gâteau fondant de Nathalie. Along the way, the stereo provided accompaniment with a bit of Richard Buckner and then “What a Day That Was” from the Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense, for which I did an odd but appropriate running-in-place dance. Keaton did her part by gallivanting and gyrating with the poofy, cupcake-y, petal-pink dress I’ll be wearing in my brother’s wedding next May. I adore that girl, and not only for her dancing and eating abilities.

After all, it was Keaton who introduced me to the Old 97s one fateful day long ago in our nasty Mirrielees apartment with brown shag carpet. This past Tuesday brought them in all their indie country-rock glory to Seattle’s Showbox, which meant that I got in a couple hours of my odd but appropriate “shovel dancing” and wistful gazing at lead singer Rhett Miller. Sadly, Keaton had begged off on this particular opportunity, having gotten mysteriously ill on recent outings to the Showbox, but Kate proved a willing recruit.

As pre-show fuel, Kate and I attempted to make a dinner of tilapia, a plan we reconsidered after shrieking and convulsing and threatening to go into the fetal position upon peeking inside its body cavity and glimpsing its weird white worm-like innards. Damn that man at the Asian market who didn’t clean the thing thoroughly, damn him. Plan B was garlicky sautéed shrimp, garlicky sautéed escarole, and brown rice, along with some cheap and tasty Smoking Loon Pinot Noir.

And dessert was, of course, Rhett Miller. He's so pretty that he should be kept under lock and key. Short of that, he should at least be barred from looking at his audience so flirtatiously; as a married man with a child, he’s being downright unfair. I’d be shocked if there were a single person in the audience—male or female, gay or straight—who wasn’t pining for him by the end of the evening. Yours truly woke up Wednesday morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on only five hours of sleep, invigorated solely by the previous night’s eyefuls of Mr. Miller. I tore through the day’s editorial projects with unusual passion. Old 97s for Men of the Year!

So tonight, in a spirit of generosity, I regaled Keaton with recreations of my shovel dance—picture lots of grinding hip action and dirt-heaving arm movements—and vivid descriptions of Rhett Miller’s red lips and sweaty girly hair. I sent her home with a leftover-frittata care package, and she generously bestowed upon me the rest of the wine. Now a bath and my bed await, and the promise of restorative sleep. Tomorrow I’ve got to buckle down with a cold frittata sandwich, volume five of A History of Private Life, and purposeful thesis-oriented thinking about solidarity and social security. I’ve been making merry entirely too much, but well, I think I'll do it for a while.


Zucchini-and-Pecorino Frittata
Adapted slightly from Torakris’ recipe on eGullet

3 Tbs olive oil
1 red onion, halved and thinly sliced
1-1 ½ lb zucchini, thinly sliced into half-circles
2 Tbs fresh basil, chopped
6 large eggs (preferably free-range, please)
S & P
½ cup good-quality Pecorino Romano, grated

In a 12-inch nonstick skillet, heat 2 Tbs olive oil over medium heat. Sauté onions until wilted, about 5 minutes. Add zucchini and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 10 minutes. Add basil and remove from heat. Drain in colander.

Crack eggs into a medium bowl and whisk with a fork. Add salt and pepper and cheese, stirring to mix. Add zucchini and onion and stir to mix evenly.

Heat remaining Tbs oil over medium heat. Add egg mixture, using fork to distribute evenly over pan. Reduce heat to low and cook until set, 12 to 15 minutes or so. Remove from heat and slide frittata onto a large plate. Place skillet over plate, and invert frittata back into skillet. Cook a few minutes more. Invert frittata onto plate to serve. Eat at room temperature or cold. Serves 6-8 as a first course or 4 as a main dish.