“Sir Bones: is stuffed, / de world, wif feeding girls.”

The lamb roast has come and gone.

Sunday did not begin well. I had worked until the wee hours of morning on an ill-tempered Parisian flan, a thoroughly nasty end to a lovely Saturday of sailboats and swimsuits and bare feet. The dough for the flan’s pastry shell disintegrated in my hands not once but twice, dear reader. I swore like a sailor, slapped the dough shards into a pile and bullied them into a ball, and then I rolled them flat before they had a second to protest. I chucked the crust into the oven with its custard filling and then tossed it onto the counter to cool, along with two miniature versions I’d made with the extra dough and filling. They tried to mollify me by looking exquisite.


I sunk into bed with a sigh a little after two.

Keaton and I arrived at the Knights’ in mid-afternoon, bearing a six-pack of beer and the aforementioned evil flan. I snarled at it through the plastic wrap.

The sun was shining, and so was the lamb. It had been roasting since ten, filling the air with heat and heady smoke. We stood and admired it, chilly beers in hand. It was enormous, more sheep than lamb. Todd described to us the travail of the night before: the drill-work required to get it onto the spit, the stuffing of lemons and herbs and olive oil, the workmanlike stitches of Kate’s surgeon father. We said hello to the chickens in their coop, one sporting a feathery white crown that Kate called a “frizzle.” Keaton was attacked by bees and ran around in the tomato plants. We sniffed the open bottle of ouzo, our eyes watering. Keaton, Kate, and Margot--my Three Shepherdesses--unknowingly posed for a photograph. And we admired the lamb.


And then it was served.
We loaded our plates with hummus and pita, deliciously lemony dolmas, pickled golden beets, a mess of roasted vegetables, and buttery corn pudding. Then, batting my eyelashes as sweetly as possible, I cut in line for the lamb, two thick slices from the haunch.

Keaton and I found a bench under the pear tree and made quick work of our platefuls, despite the carnivorous bee that had me whimpering and flailing my arms every few seconds. I finally caved in and let him tuck into a slice of snowy fat I’d pushed to the side of the plate. He knew a good thing when he saw it: the meat was tender and juicy, earthy and rich.

Dessert was a blur of sugar, the sort of thing that induces sweating upon recollection: a sliver of dark chocolate layer cake with white chocolate frosting and dark chocolate shavings, a spoonful of tart prune-plum compote, wedges of Kate’s almond and walnut baklavas, and my cursed flan. Surprisingly, the crust was flaky and butter-rich, the best I’ve ever made! The custard was sweet and smooth! I blushed with pride and made everyone tell me that they loved it.

Keats was corralled at the dessert table by the woman who made the plum compote and, incidentally, also raises strikingly beautiful poisonous plants. In her thick Swiss accent, she told Keaton, “I’ve been married for fifty years. After a while, you make your own drama.” I first thought she said “trauma,” an interpretation I in some ways preferred. Her husband, who bragged endearingly about her desserts, is a beekeeper. They were wonderful together.

Half-listening contentedly, I slowly scraped my plate clean. I think I wanted to die afterwards, but only for a little while.


[Thank you, John Berryman, for the title.]


Parisian Flan
From Dorie Greenspan's Paris Sweets

This recipe, adapted by Greenspan from the esteemed pâtissier Pierre Hermé, makes a traditional Parisian flan, which (unlike the flan generally familiar to Americans, jiggly or gelatinous or covered in caramel) is a custardy almost-cake in a flaky pastry crust. It is unbearably delicious. Dorie Greenspan, I apologize for my lack of faith.

For the crust:
1 stick plus 5 Tbs (6 ½ ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ tsp salt
½ tsp sugar
½ large egg yolk (lightly beat one yolk, and then spoon out half)
3 ½ Tbs whole milk
2 cups all-purpose flour

For the filling:
1 ½ cups whole milk
1 2/3 cups water
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
½ cup cornstarch, sifted

To make crust:
Put all of the crust ingredients except the flour in the bowl of a food processor and process until the mixture is soft and creamy. Add the flour and pulse in quick spurts until the dough forms a ball—then stop. Turn the dough out onto a smooth work surface, gather it together in a ball, and flatten into a disk. Wrap the disk well in plastic wrap. Chill the dough for at least four hours. [Dough can be kept in the fridge for up to three days.]

Line a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper and keep close at hand. Working on a generously floured work surface, roll the dough out to a thickness of between 1/8 and ¼ inch. Cut out a 12-inch circle of dough and transfer it to the lined baking sheet. Cover and chill dough for at least thirty minutes.

Butter a 9-inch springform pan and put it on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Fit the dough into the pan, pressing it evenly along the bottom and up the sides. Don’t worry if the dough tears, as it did for me—just patch it back together and carry on! Trim the dough so that it comes 1 ¼ inches up the sides of the pan. Chill the dough for at least two hours and up to overnight.

Center a rack in the oven, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Line the crust with parchment paper and fill it with beans, rice, or pie weights. Bake the crust for 18 to 20 minutes, until it is set but not browned. Pull it from the oven, remove the paper and beans, and cool to room temperature.

To make filling:
Bring the milk and water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Meanwhile, in another medium saucepan, preferably one with a heavy bottom, whisk the eggs, sugar, and cornstarch together.

Whisking without stop, drizzle ¼ of the hot liquid over the egg mixture. When the eggs are warmed, add the rest of the liquid in a steady stream. Put the saucepan over medium heat and, whisking constantly and energetically, heat the filling just until it thickens and a couple of bubbles pop to the surface. Immediately remove from the heat, and push the filling through a sieve into a bowl. Let the filling cool for about 30 minutes.

Center a rack in the oven, and preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Put the pan with the crust on a parchment-lined baking sheet (if it isn’t still on one), and scrape the filling into the crust. Smooth the top. Slide the baking sheet into the oven and bake the flan for one hour, or until the filling is puffed and golden and just jiggles in the center when you tap the pan. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack, and let the flan cool to room temperature; then chill the flan for at least six hours, preferably overnight.

According to Mr. Hermé, the flan should be served cold.

Prelude to a lamb roast, or why it is good to know the Knights

My leisure sports need work. My pool game is almost as bad as my bowling, which is bad. But, on the upside, I am uncannily good at rolling around on the pool table like Tawny Kitaen on the hood of the Jaguar in that old Whitesnake video. I also know all the lyrics to Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five” and Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler,” which scored me big Brownie points last night with Keaton’s boyfriend Mark. Keaton said I never cease to amaze her. She thinks I should ride a mechanical bull on my birthday. I think I should ride a real bull. In honor of Oklahoma and all those kids from other states who used to ask me if I rode a cow to school, which I didn't.

Speaking of barnyard animals, tomorrow is the long-awaited Knight family lamb roast extravaganza for sixty! Kate’s friend Nicho has provided an organically-raised lamb from his family’s farm, slaughtered just today, and it is likely being prepped in the Knights’ garage as I type this. There are many meats to love, but lamb, I love none so much as thee.

This afternoon I trekked out to the wooded Knight abode to help with the preparations. When no one answered the front door, I let myself in and walked through the house until I found the back door open and Bing, Todd, and Bing’s friend Steve down by the water, gearing up the little sailboat for a jaunt out on Phantom Lake. Margot whisked me away to the house, where she offered me the family selection of swimsuits and a story for each. After a few tries and much mumbling to myself, I wound up in a red string bikini top and a blindingly heinous pair of green and yellow flowered hot pants. I felt like one of the family. It was a gorgeous afternoon. I went out on the boat with Margot and Todd and didn’t even hit my head on the boom.

Early evening found me and Kate picking supple grape leaves for dolmas, while across the garden her father tended a bed of long-necked flowers, his boom box crooning Al Green.


Kate was nearly swallowed alive by the grapevines, but they yielded such lovely leaves.


I stirred a heavy skillet of onions for the rice filling while Margot and Todd bustled, blanched, and chopped, and shortly thereafter I demonstrated my newly discovered and frighteningly impressive skill at rolling and folding dolmas. Kate set a pound of butter on the stove to melt and settled into a relaxed rhythm with her four pans of baklava. Steve and his girlfriend Amy busied themselves with a cheesecake to prop up the just-picked blackberries and raspberries from the garden.

Tomorrow will be delicious. For the lamb, I will say:

Northern Pike
by James Wright, from Above the River: The Complete Poems

All right. Try this,
Then. Every body
I know and care for,
And every body
Else is going
To die in a loneliness
I can't imagine and a pain
I don't know. We had
To go on living. We
Untangled the net, we slit
The body of this fish
Open from the hinge of the tail
To a place beneath the chin
I wish I could sing of.
I would just as soon we let
The living go on living.
An old poet whom we believe in
Said the same thing, and so
We paused among the dark cattails and prayed
For the muskrats,
For the ripples below their tails,
For the little movements that we knew the crawdads were making
under water,
For the right-hand wrist of my cousin who is a policeman.
We prayed for the game warden's blindness.
We prayed for the road home.
We ate the fish.
There must be something very beautiful in my body,
I am so happy.

I took deep breaths

Heavens to Betsy! The carnage was unprecedented! I made strawberry scones!


A couple of months back, I went strawberry picking in Carnation with Kate, her sister Margot, and Margot’s boyfriend Todd. A mere hour or so of backbreaking labor yielded 16 gorgeous pounds of loot and made me almost dizzy with glee—until, that is, I realized that each and every berry had to be washed and dried. To make a long, messy, juice-stained story short, I cooked up three batches of jam from a recipe given to Margot in Italy, and I now have a freezer full of red-to-the-core strawberries. And I can’t stand seeing them just sit there unused, unattended, unloved. These sorts of dilemmas keep me up at night. If you know me, this is no joke. I need my sleep.

But as luck would have it, this past Saturday I chanced upon my sister Lisa’s recipe for Scottish scones. Lisa makes at least a half-dozen varieties of these scones—from plain to lemon, currant, dried apricot, candied ginger, raspberry, and strawberry—each year before Christmas, stashes them safely in the freezer, and then totes them to wherever it is that we’ve all gathered for the holidays. Lisa’s scones are neat and pretty, with a fine crumb and just a hint of sugar and butter. She has the touch, evidently, and on previous attempts with lemon zest and currants, I’ve come close.

But my strawberry scones are something else entirely. They are lumpy. Floppy. Disheveled. They resisted my efforts to knead them neatly, even forcing me to sling a sticky blob of dough onto a nearby wine bottle. Once in the oven, they oozed pools of strawberry juice and then stubbornly braised themselves in it. I’ve never seen a Silpat so dirty. I took deep breaths and fought the urge to reach for the trash can.

But! They taste absolutely divine. Hideously ugly but wonderfully delicate, they barely hold themselves intact around pockets of soft, jammy strawberry. Those berries! That light, tender, almost biscuit-like crumb! It must have been that minimal kneading I was forced into.


Scottish Scones

This recipe was given to my sister by a good friend of hers who, appropriately, is Scottish. I pass it on to you only on the condition that you try making it first with something neat and non-wet, such as raisins, currants, dried apricots, citrus zest, or candied ginger. Wetter things, such as frozen berries, will send you into murky territory, and it’s best to learn the lay of the land first.

½ c milk (I’ve used skim with no adverse effects, although it might be best to use one with more fat and body)
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ stick (2 ounces) unsalted butter, cubed and chilled
3 Tbs sugar (I often choose the finely milled raw cane sugar—hippie sugar, as I call it)
Flavorful additions of your choice, to taste (see above for ideas; if you use berries, make sure they are frozen)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

Beat together the milk and the egg and then set aside. In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Rub the butter into the flour mixture, working until you have no lumps bigger than a pea. Add the sugar and whatever additions you choose, and stir or toss to mix. Pour the wet ingredients into the dries, reserving just a tad of the milk-egg mixture to use as a glaze. Bring dough together gently with a wooden spoon.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured counter and knead it no more than 12 times. [Apparently, twelve is the magic number here; surpass it at your own risk.] Pat dough into a round approximately ½-inch thick, and cut into 8 or 12 wedges. Place on an ungreased baking sheet or a Silpat, if you have one. Using a pastry brush, glaze wedges.

Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until golden. Cool on a rack.

A flurry of fingers and cupped lettuce leaves

I love driving home alone at night. I race west across the lake, Seattle blinking silently before me, its streets wide and burnished-looking under the lights. I know my way without thinking, and it feels so solid here on my own, coming home to myself. A noteworthy day all around. My belly hurts from laughing too much.

The rains have returned, and this evening Keaton quite literally blew off the downtown street and into my car. We came home for gin and tonics, which, after a busy couple of days at work, Keats admirably threw back like a pro. She then quickly got to work making herself a second one, not without a near-catastrophic misjudgment of lime juice quantity and a splash of Plymouth gin on the formica counter.

Meanwhile, I made my first larb. Sweet, sweet larb! Good larb! Oh, larb have mercy. From now on, I’m going to larb everything in sight. Henceforth, no meat will be safe. Tonight it was ground pork, cooked in my big heavy skillet with a bit of chicken broth and then exuberantly doused with an aromatic rust-colored mixture of lime juice, fish sauce, minced shallots, slivered scallions, finely chopped lemongrass, ground red chilis, powdered galangal (which takes second place in the Favorite New Words category, coming in right on the heels of “larb” itself), and a chiffonade of kaffir lime leaves. I set out a pot of hot sticky rice, and Keaton artfully arranged some sturdy red-leaf lettuce in our bowls. Then we attacked, chopsticks clicking madly, and the larb soon disappeared in a flurry of fingers and cupped lettuce leaves. I got a splinter from overly aggressive chopstick use. We feasted.
And so,

Larb
[Slightly adapted from recipeGullet, with all credit to snowangel and her Thai nanny]



3 Tbs chicken stock
8 oz ground pork
3 Tbs fresh lime juice
3 Tbs nam pla, or Thai fish sauce (I used Three Crabs brand)
4-6 tsp ground red chili (dried, not fresh, and not to be confused with cayenne; or try using 3-4 fresh red bird chilis, thinly sliced)
4 small shallots, minced
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1 stalk lemongrass, bottom 3” minced
3 small kaffir lime leaves, sliced into a chiffonade
1 tsp powdered galangal (apparently a close relative of ginger, commonly used in Thai cooking; you can buy it fresh, but for this recipe, look for it in the spice section of your local Asian grocer. Sometimes I go to the Asian grocery store just to feel tall for a while. Not that I’m short, but only average. I like to feel above average now and then. Don’t you?)
1 Tbs toasted rice powder (you can purchase this, or make your own by toasting raw sticky rice in a heavy skillet and then grinding it in a spice grinder)
Lettuce leaves and sticky rice for serving

Poach ground pork in broth in a wok or large skillet. Add remaining ingredients and heat through. Serve warm with lettuce leaves for scooping and cooked sticky rice.

Prose poem for Paris, inspired by an ugly tart

Oh Paris, your pastry is perfect. I’ll eat you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Paris, you kept me up until 3am and made me shy on the phone. You laid a blanket in the park and spread it with saucisson sec and fromages qui puent and we drank Champagne at two in the afternoon on your big day. Paris, I watched the eight o’clock news alone in your apartment and ate chaussons aux pommes in line at the movies, and I bought your small modern packages delivered by the small trucks that block your ancient streets.

Oh Paris, you gave me skirts with rabbit-fur trim and danger-sexy designer bags on sale. You told me I looked like Cleopatra. You said j’ai envie de te faire l'amour and you brought me croissants in the morning, and oh Paris, you looked away when I walked your streets red-eyed, holding a wad of Kleenex. You made me say stupid things and stay too long and we were so lonely together, you and I.

Paris, now you’re making me write like Allen Ginsberg in "America."
Oh Paris, Sundays in Seattle aren’t the same.

Les mots et les choses

Words hold such promise.



Yesterday morning I received a spam e-mail from someone named Napoleon Mayo. I deleted it right away, of course, but what a name! Napoleon Mayo. It reminds me of Colonel Mustard. Condiments with military prowess.



Sometimes anthropology is so exciting. Yesterday, while doing some editorial work for the department website, I was faced with a document called “What is Luminescence Dating?” Now, this stuff is entirely beyond me—dealing as it does with natural radioactivity and artifacts and other things that concern archaeologists and not people like myself—but what a term! I’d like to appropriate it and twist it a bit. What is luminescence dating, you ask? Why, it’s a date so fantastic that by the end of the evening, both parties are actually emitting light—luminescent, if you will. What a lovely idea.



And a phrase I shall never tire of saying: “Picard: les Surgelés.” It’s the name of a French chain store that sells high-quality frozen foods. Go ahead, say it. Now say it quietly, almost a whisper. Now smile while whispering. French frozen foods are so sexy.

Oh, Seattle

Seattle, the Ave makes me sad, and you’d better do something about it. It’s the strung-out street kids and their skinny dogs. I suppose the Ave is good for those days when I enjoy being ogled and harassed, but for the most part, it just makes me sad. Seattle, are you listening?

Speaking of the Ave, I met my dear friend Kate for an early-evening drink yesterday before her GMAT class in the U District. We sat next to the window, where there was a cool-ish breeze coming in from the door, and we Ave-watched and drank Bohemia with big wedges of lime. Kate had brought me a groaning basket of treats from her family’s garden: dozens of dusty purple prune plums, ten or so little Japanese pears, and big handfuls of Romano beans.



Opening my refrigerator gets more and more satisfying every day. Summer’s bounty, you are mine all mine. I think a plum-and-honey tart is in the works for this weekend.

It strikes me that I must sound like a broken record, going on and on about Romano beans and ricotta and plums and tomatoes and and and and, but it’s a delicious monotony. One of my childhood babysitters used to tell me that I’d turn into chocolate milk if I drank too much of it. Dear Virginia Hamilton, rest in peace. If your reasoning is correct, I suppose I’m now going to turn into heirloom tomato-bread salad. Delicious monotony, indeed.

But when I’m not reveling in garlicky bread and tomatoes, I often find myself bothered by the fact that I’m not fearless, food-wise. I do love liver, preferably chopped chicken liver with caramelized onions, eaten off the side of a knife or spread on hunks of boule from Au Levain du Marais. Actually, liver in any form will do. But on the other hand, take snails: I fear them alive; I fear them dead. Or witness tripe, which has been described as tasting like a hot-water bottle. I hear kidneys can taste like urine, although I do wonder how many of us have tasted urine. I worry about the gelatinous quality of oxtails. And a friend told me today about a Korean dish that conjures up what may be the most horrific mental image I’ve had in quite some time. A block of tofu is boiled in a pot. Live baby eels are added. The eels, seeking the coolest place left to them, burrow madly into the tofu. They die there. The block of tofu is then sliced and eaten. This aforementioned friend also told me about a dish involving little octopi that are hacked up alive and then eaten with a dipping sauce, their body-bits still squirming and twitching on the plate. He said that you have to chew them very thoroughly so that the tentacles don’t cling to your gums and tongue and throat. The mere thought of this makes me feel itchy.

But on a brighter note, dear reader, today ends well. We drank Champagne after evening mat class at Pilates Powerhouse NW. Rebecca Leone, my former employer and owner of Pilates Powerhouse NW, is a genius. A force of nature, nothing less. Alarmingly strong. I try to stay out of her way. She wears enormous diamonds. She downs coffee mugs full of Hershey’s kisses and orders the biggest steak on the menu. Today I watched her eat an entire tub of cottage cheese and drink three glasses of pink Champagne.

"Sing into my mouth..."

David Byrne, I may never recover. The muscles of my face ache. The moment you took the stage, I settled into an alternately dreamy-giddy-ecstatic-awestruck-giddy-dreamy smile that lasted for two hours. Oh David Byrne, I love you till my heart stops, love you till I’m dead. Oh David Byrne, you’ve got a face with a view.



Thanks be to Keaton, who turned to me in the third song and said “Let’s go down and dance!” And so we climbed toward the stage, where big thick bouncers were glaring at anyone who tried to get any closer than the wings, but then all of a sudden the people around us rushed forward and Keats grabbed my arm and we ran in front of the stage, right up against it and right in front of David, who was wearing a train conductor’s striped overalls and a white shirt, his white hair turning red and then green and then yellow and white again under the lights. He loves dancing backwards and he shakes his hips with a fair amount of awkwardness and he does that odd neck-dancing thing he’s been doing for years and he makes funny rhythmic movements with his arms floating out from his sides and his eyes get big as globes when he wiggles in his overalls and when he sings loudly and strongly and opera-like his face spreads into an otherworldly grin and it’s almost as though he’s left and gone somewhere else, and there we are together. My halter top and I danced ourselves damp and Keats’ blond ponytail was bouncing and her big boots thumping, and I kept looking over to see if she was as irrationally caught up in it all as I was, and at one point we turned to each other, dancing, and smiled so wide we thought our faces might split and she made a motion with her hands like invisible tears were rolling down her aching cheeks, and David looked so happy and so genuinely moved by all of us down below him, adoring. Oh, it is good to be so silly and adoring at a David Byrne show. I almost cried again when he played “The Great Intoxication,” and you would have too. It's so beautiful. I would say I’m ridiculous, but I’m not.



But, dear reader, I am going to try my hardest not to write any more about Major Genius Mr. Byrne. I don't want to bore you.