23:
Why don’t we get sick of this?
Every year there are articles reciting the litany of Ways To Make Turkey Taste Good (as Adam Gopnick writes in the New Yorker: “The laboriously basted turkey, which was never quite moist, gave way to the long-brined turkey, which was always too salty, and has, in turn, given way to the deep-fried turkey, which is excellent but demands a large, scary vat of boiling oil…”) National news hosts are forced into kitschy baking-oriented features, which usually involve them moaning with pleasure over some pumpkin-oriented pastry. The relative merits of cooking stuffing in or out of the bird are debated. Ritualistic canned vs. fresh cranberry sauce battles are held, and truces drawn. Gravy worshippers the world over rejoice. And some of us, who tend to be this food-focused all year round, simultaneously welcome the rest of the populace to the fold… and wonder at the sameness of it all.
I was thinking about this over the past week, after having admitted to a friend that I was looking forward to last Wednesday’s edition of the New York Times (Wednesdays are Dining Section days, and, embarrassingly, yes, I keep track of these things, and they actually contribute to Wednesdays being Good Days). It being shortly before Thanksgiving, I was expecting that day’s edition to be especially plush. My friend, who is more the sort of person to a inhale a burrito than read about one (with all due respect), was skeptical: “You mean, they’ll have like a dozen new articles about how to roast a turkey? Sounds fascinating.”
Sarcasm aside, it got me thinking about holiday dishes, and how much of their merit lies in their repetition. Yes, every Thanksgiving there is a New York Times Dining Section chock full of ingenuous ways to prepare your sweet potatoes (here’s the submission this year). And, yes, every year I—and tens of thousands of others—look forward to it.
There is a certain comfort to the sameness of this annual turkey-inspired fervor. In a world that so celebrates and embraces change—an inclination further exaggerated by the immediacy of the internet—these dishes are touchstones. They are a socially approved escapism we all take part in… and, I would argue, we all need to take part in. When so many issues demand our attention—job creation! Hydro-fracking! Herman Cain’s sexual proclivities!—it is a relief to think, even briefly, about turkey.
Beyond that, the seeming sameness of this food year in and year out contains stories within it; these dishes are the bearers of memory as much as any photograph. My mother’s braised onions—which will require that I spend this entire evening weeping as I peel dozens of pearl onions—have accumulated years of family history. I remember the first time we made them after my parent’s divorce, in my mother’s new apartment in an old tobacco factory in Richmond, VA, the trains passing by providing us with a near constant soundtrack. Then there was the year my mom had to leave mid-recipe to tend to a dying neighbor who was in her final hours. Holiday meals are a resting place for things we want to remember—and those we’d rather forget (another memory: the near-break-up conversation in my car with an old boyfriend en route to Thanksgiving, turkey thawing in the back seat.).
Then, for those of us who are slightly obsessive compulsive, the repetition of dishes is an annual opportunity to, once again, attempt perfection. This year, perhaps, you decide to heat the milk for the mashed potatoes, or spike your apple pie with ginger. The fixed points of the Thanksgiving meal are an ideal canvas for minor improvisation, for making even better what was good to begin with.
Ultimately, whether it’s in our turkey roasting techniques or just our indulgence in the torrent of cooking-related material that forces its way into our blogs, radios and headlines each November, holiday meals give us a consistency that life does not. And I, for one, am grateful for that.
14:
It probably has something to do with the dire European economic news filling the headlines, but, lately, I’ve had Greece on my mind. Fortunately for those of you more interested in things edible and audible than economic, I have little of use to say on the Greek debt crisis here. Nope, all I can offer is the sound of fish. Or, rather, the sound of the selling of fish (minor! economic! connection! made!)…
Early one morning several years ago, I found myself wandering the streets of Athens with a couple of friends, somewhat aimlessly. We stumbled upon a huge market that was like entering an alternate sonic (and aquatic!) universe… and fortunately, I keep a recorder in purse for such moments. Listen for yourself:
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We left with wet feet. It was a lovely morning.
(Photos courtesy of my travel companion Mary Clayton Carpenter, who didn’t know what those plump little pink fish were, either.)
27:
We learn something fundamental about our culinary selves in our junior high cafeteria.
It’s far more than just the staging ground for social interaction (traumatic variety), and certainly is beyond just a room to eat in. The cafeteria was a place where the often-embarrassing realities of our lives at home were revealed, the secrets of our extra-school existence. And the vehicles for those revelations were the contents of our lunch bag– most definitely not “box,” because, at age 12 or 13, these are hideously childish. I remember even rejecting the cloth bag my environmentally conscious mother tried to foster on me, preferring, instead, the anonymity of a brown paper bag. I wanted to be another one of those girls with their sack lunches, their ordinary ham and cheese lives. I was not that girl.
Even obscured by a brown paper bag, my lunch immediately marked me as different. I never had a PB & J. Never the “lunchables” I longed for as a smaller girl, with their sterile little wells of cold cuts and geometrically cut cheeses. No. My mother was a food lover and cook with culinary inclinations that seemed radical in the small Maine town we moved to from California when I was 9. They said I was from “away” far more loudly than my lack of accent. For example: years before the ubiquitousness of Taco Bell, I would bring a quesadilla, filled with refried beans, onions and cheese, folded into a half moon and fried, then wrapped in aluminum foil to wait until lunch. When unwrapped hours later, the trapped heat had turned it into a limp, white slug of a parcel that would draw an unfortunate amount of attention from others at my table. (Nevermind that I loved these, even wrinkled and cold, which was, I’m sure, my mother’s aim. All joy evaporated with the skeptical looks on the faces of my friends.)
When, finally, I brought the humiliation of the cold quesadillas to my mother’s attention, she was surprisingly sympathetic. It turns out this lunchtime embarrassment might be hereditary. Her mother had her own creative interpretations of an appropriate lunch for her children to bring to school, but the oddness of hers rested on an overly broad definition of what could be the protein element of a sandwich. As far as my grandmother was concerned, mayonnaise contained eggs, and therefore it could be the substance of the sandwich. And so my mother would open her lunch bag to discover a hollandaise and green pepper sandwich. Or, horror of all horrors: a lettuce, mayonnaise and… peanut butter sandwich. (If you just had that instinctual “wretch” reaction, you’re not alone.)
don't you wish your cafeteria had been a "Hall of Fun?"
No matter how successful we may be in blending in through choosing just the right pair of jeans or sneakers, a mayo, lettuce & PB sandwich could ruin it all. And my lunches, truly, were not as exotic as some children must weather. The Burmese boy resettled in Utica, NY. The girl with hippie vegetarian parents who has to make due in rural Texas, where a meatless meal is no meal at all. The beauty of a communal eating ground is being able to revel in the diversity of one another’s meals and food traditions—but middle school saps that ritual of all its vicarious pleasure. Different is not good in this realm, for most of us. Different is terrifying.
Fortunately, we do not remain on the junior high school social plane our entire lives (well, most of us don’t…). At some point, bringing unfamiliar foods into the lives of my friends became something I was eager to do, instead of something I was hesitant about. And, actually, I do think some seed of that enjoyment was planted during those cafeteria interludes. Once the first wave of skepticism passed, if I could get a friend to taste my lunch—the seeming grossness could morph into a boon, if it tasted good. And so, every so often—at a certain time of autumn, when the back-to-school sales fill stores with discount lunchboxes—I’m grateful for the realization that, in fact, I do love cold, sloppy quesadillas. Whether that’s socially acceptable or not.
13:
Apparently, this has been a year for fried chicken.
Vegas style
Cleveland style
From a Las Vegas soul food joint with darkened one-way windows to a pink-apholstered Cleveland BBQ spot, I seem to have pictures of myself and SOTRU host Al Letson enjoying fried chicken nearly every place we went.
It’s been a good year.
Another 12 months of making radio and cross-country eating have passed, and in them there were all sorts of treasures:
Floridian “egg fruit”…
… and Mississippi shrimp, fresh off the boat.
And then the buttered popcorn pots de creme in Ohio.
Who would have thought?
The stories have been amazing, too…
Every place State of the Re:Union goes, there are surprises in store.
From people living in the tunnels beneath Las Vegas…
wall scrawlings in the Las Vegas underground
… to an indoor mountain bike park built in an old Cleveland factory…
Ray's MTB, Cleveland, OH
… not to mention Haitian earthquake survivors making a new life in Miami… oil spill clean-up workers in Mississippi… and Bosnian imams in Utica, New York.
(Oh, and Utica has a pretty awesome beer heritage, too.)
If you were me, and you had this incredible job that gave you license to wander all over the U.S. with your microphone,
where would you go next?
14:
If you’re like me—and some of you must be—there is always a slightly sad moment when you’re chopping fennel. Or shucking corn. Or slicing leeks. Why is this? Because, once through the crisp fennel bulb– or when your corn is husk free, or leeks have become pale golden and white ringlets– you are left with this pile of seemingly gorgeous vegetable matter that much of society has deemed inedible. Do I really have to throw away my fennel fronds? My wispy corn silk? The answer, of course, is no—though it has taken some of us time to realize this. For the compulsively efficient, the eco-minded, or the culinarily creative, there is a whole lot of joy in store when pondering what to do with things we often toss out (or, yes, compost).
Scraps can be delicious, as anyone who’s had cracklings can tell you (if your scraps are pig skin, you are one lucky human). But they do require a little ingenuity. (Side note: there is the catchall use for vegetable scraps: stock. Some folks I know keep a bag for cleaned veg scraps in their freezer—constant collecting for future stock. But I was ready for more adventurous scrap-usage…) And so I was thrilled to discover this article about making more of your corn on Gilt Taste. Now you, too, can stop thinking about corn husks as simply the all-natural packaging for the good stuff. The husks have their own flavor—a green grassiness that can be infused in melted butter (so that you can literally spread a little corn on your corn). After shucking your corn, julienne the more tender inner leaves of the husk. Cook them in butter (they suggest about 2 ears worth of husk per ¼ pound of butter) on a medium low heat until lightly caramelized. Strain out the husks and pour the melted butter over your corn. Or a slice of bread. Or directly into your mouth. I’m a husk butter convert.
As for those leek tops, as long as they’re not tough, they make a wonderful addition to quiche, thinly sliced. Or have them serve as an aromatic bed for baking fish. And the fennel: you can actually chop up the stems as you would the bulb, but my favorite extraneous fennel parts are the feathery fronds. Use them as you would an herb, to impart a lovely, anisey flavor to a vegetable sauté, say, or over a poached chicken breast, perhaps mixed with some dill. I even had the thought—as yet unexecuted—of making fennel frond pesto (see: earlier blog post on pesto obsession), but that would require assembling the frondage of a half dozen or more bulbs, which would require a lot of shaved fennel salads and fennel-infused ratatouille to make justifiable. And this was supposed to be about scraps, right?
The thing about eating scraps is you get the bonus pleasure of feeling like you got a little extra for free, that you turned waste into wonder, a la water into wine. Not a bad trick, eh?
28:
Every summer of my childhood involved a kind of ritual, on as close to a daily basis as we could achieve. We’d drive the five minutes from our home in a coastal Maine town to a small gravel parking lot, wedged between car dealerships on a busy county highway. In the middle of that lot, lit up like a beacon after dark, was Dorman’s Dairy Dream.
photo courtesy of www.guideofmaine.com
Dorman’s is a drive-up ice cream stand, owned by the same family for decades, which could be relied upon for its unchanging catalog of homemade flavors (Grapenut! Coconut chip! Black Raspberry!), and its closure every Sunday without fail, so the owners and staff could go to church. It was so popular, the line would spill out practically into the highway, with people swatting mosquitoes as they waited, little kids running around, kicking up gravel. It’s a miracle no ice cream devotee was ever wiped out by a driver who didn’t know to slow up when the Dorman’s sign came into view. But maybe every car just stopped to join the throngs.
photo courtesy of www.guideofmaine.com
I would always use the wait to reach the ordering window (which the teenagers scooping ice cream would close between orders to preserve any lingering AC inside, a losing battle) in a fierce internal debate. The question was this: mint chocolate chip, with its pale green communicating a coolness I longed for, or… soft serve.
Despite my fondness for mint, soft serve was usually the winner. It had such pretty twists of vanilla and chocolate, graceful perfection for mere seconds before the melt began. Then it would become a more abstract beauty, as the two colors smeared together with each lick. It seemed, somehow, that soft serve delivered the richness of the choc/van duo with double the normal punch of flavor. And, recently, I learned that it didn’t just seem that way… It IS that way.
Now, this gets into the science of ice cream, and a bit of the history. Turns out the colder something is, the harder it is for us to detect its taste. We’re literally numbing our tastebuds with hard ice cream—or at least that was the theory that J.F. McCullough (better known as “Grandpa McCullough”) and his son, Alex, had back in 1938. They decided to try to create an ice cream that was a little less cold, so it would retain some of the hit of flavor that made their pre-frozen mix so much tastier. They came up with a machine that would make elegant curls of just barely solid ice cream. A few years later, Grandpa McCullough opened a shop to sell his invention, and called it Dairy Queen. Ever heard of one of those?
So, there’s a scientific reason for soft serve’s deliciousness: it’s warmer. It gives our taste buds a gentle tingle, rather than a hard freeze. And, on a steamy summer afternoon, that is exactly what’s needed.
04:
Well… not really. But it does seem counterintuitive—even foolhardy—to ingest something that’s painful just to brush up against in a field. And a name like “Stinging Nettle” does little to reassure you that you’re not about to trigger a dire esophageal reaction by eating some. However, for a nation of eaters newly enthralled with the abundance of food to be found growing wild in the woods, parks and lawns around us, Stinging Nettle seems like some trophy prize. It can take a little pain to acquire (at least for those of us who don’t wander the hills with a spare pair of rubber gloves), but the reward is a spring green with an earthiness, a vegetal richness that’s very satisfying. Plus, apparently herbalists go nuts for it, lauding it for working all sorts of health wonders, from making your hair shine to boosting energy. And the good news is that all a nettle’s sting disappears with cooking. You just have to figure out how to pick and wash the stuff without turning your fingers into throbbing digits of pain…
Now, I wish I could say I’d learned to identify and harvest nettles in the wild from my rangy Italian great-grandmother who led me through the woods munching on various weeds as we went, but, if she did such things, she died without ever doing them with me. (She was more inclined towards opera on the radio and bursting into dramatic sobs when my father refused to eat her risotto, or so I’m told.) No, I avoided the bulk of the stings and the wild entirely this week by buying a little parcel of fresh nettles at my local farmer’s market. And I managed to clear the washing process with only a stung thumb. My inspiration? The idea of nettle pesto.
I am a girl who believes in pesto for all seasons. Pesto whenever possible. And pesto built of whatever herbs and nuts you happen to have on hand. Of course, there is the classic summer basil and pine nut combo, but why not arugula-almond? Or a wintertime pairing of sage and walnut (which, really, is what roasted butternut squash is asking to have drizzled over it…)? The basics are the same, and made simple by one’s trusty food processor. Throw a handful of nuts in, add your herb-of-choice, a raw garlic clove or two, a good grind of pepper and salt, then enough olive oil to keep the whole thing moist and processing smoothly (read: a LOT of olive oil. Pesto is an excuse to eat a ridiculous quantity of olive oil.) Add cheese if you like, maybe a squeeze of lemon for a little acidic bite to the nuts-and-oil smoothness. The result is good enough to eat directly from the Cuisinart with a spoon.
But back to nettles. As soon as I saw them, bunched up against the first scallions of the season, they were drawn into one of these (worryingly frequent?) pesto fantasies I have. So I took them home, and the scallions too.
Sauteed lightly with those scallions, the nettles lost their sting, but seemed a bit uninteresting on their own. However, blended with walnuts, a little pecorino, lemon juice, a handful of sundried tomatoes and copious amounts of olive oil, they became something simultaneously hearty and spring-like, a deep green transition to the vegetable bounty of the season ahead. And, when tossed with fresh fettucine and served with fiddleheads (speaking of wild spring wonderfulness), they were good enough to make you forget any past stings.
06:
Ordinary things.
They provide us with a comfort both sustaining and barely noticeable. Their gift is that they are mundane until we pause to consider them. And then, sometimes, it is as if a whole other world is loosened within.
Such is the way with macaroni and cheese, for me.
In winter, I’m a believer in the importance of foods that are like the edible equivalent of hibernation. As soon as it started snowing this past week, I began thinking about mac & cheese, as if thoughts alone might ward off the cold and the wet. Yes, this is a dish that has become hyper fashionable recently, and can be found gussied up with truffle oil or weighed down with 7 + varieties of cheese on many a menu. But, at its heart, it is the most ordinary of meals. A starch. A fat. An oven. Simplicity, though, can give birth to all kinds of complexity.
Because dishes like mac & cheese, stripped of their restaurant hipness, are all about home, and, therefore, usually about memory. The taste—be it the brilliant orange of Kraft on the stovetop or a corningware 8×8 pan fresh from the oven—references childhood. That version. The best.
Here’s the story of mine.
When I was a kid, my parents often worked nights. A dad who’s a musician (regular evening rehearsals) and a mom who’s a priest (regular evening meetings) meant that we tried all sorts of configurations for dinnertime. The most successful one ended up involving a whole second family, a single mom and her two daughters, one of whom was my sister’s best friend. We would trade off being the family to cook the meal. But we all looked forward to the nights it was Nancy’s turn. Nancy was the kind of single mom who managed all sorts of heroics to juggle the different parts of her life. She was a physician’s assistant who’d gone back to school as an adult to become one, raising her kids as she studied. Before that, she’d been the cook on sailboats off the coast of Maine and in the Caribbean, whipping up meals in a galley kitchen the size of a closet. One of her signature dishes—one we begged for so many of those joint meals—was mac & cheese. Hers wasn’t a complicated rendition: a roux spiked with browned onions, a generous amount of cheddar cheese, the requisite noodles, all thrown in the oven until the top achieved a crust and the interior was molten. But, damn, on a sloppy winter night, it was supreme.
Nancy made it for us for years, even doing so on my visits back from college, once I’d moved away from home. It might have been at one of those dinners that she told us she had cancer. She was not the kind of person to make such announcements sentimental; she was matter of fact on nearly all fronts. She could have said it as casually as you’d say “I went to the movies yesterday.” She went into chemo, did less cooking. My father picked dishes up from a local catering company instead. She fought her disease with a seeming calm that hid the fierceness of her will, the determination that she would, under no circumstances, surrender. The cancer went into remission, for a while anyway. When it came back, it spread to her liver. She continued to live her life, even weakened, wearing a wig to cover her hair loss.
Nancy sang in my father’s community chorus, and went on a concert tour to California, even after her doctors had pretty much given up hope for her survival. I went too, as I was between jobs, searching for something meaningful to do. I made a little radio story about the music we were singing, and interviewed Nancy for it along with other singers. What she said has remained with me, ever since. She told me that singing with a chorus was what kept her going. That it took her outside the body that was failing her, into a realm unencumbered by a cancer, a place of pure, musical joy. She died less than a year after that concert tour, at home, her girls with her. The chorus sang at her memorial.
Quite a tangent from macaroni and cheese, huh? But this is exactly what ordinary dishes can hold within them, these stories we discover, when we pause to remember them. Stirring the noodles into the creamy roux of Nancy’s mac & cheese, I gain all the warmth of those many nights in her kitchen, the strength of her persistence in the face of illness, and, above all, her joy—in music, and in a hearty meal. Those are the sorts of things any winter evening could do well to have.
02:
cranberry-apple, thanksgiving 2010
I have dueling loves, if that is not already apparent from the previous post:
Radio and food.
(Occasionally, they do make friends, like in this piece about daikon radishes for NPR a couple of years ago, or, more recently, this detour on a SOTRU reporting trip to discover the Jucy Lucy.) But there are certain moments when one love obviously wins out over the other, in terms of the amount of extraneous time with it on my brain. The holidays (winter + an abundance of social gatherings) are built for baking daydreams. In New England, especially, there are side benefits to a hot oven on a cold afternoon. And what, really, would any good holiday dinner party be without pie?
I admit it: I tend to privilege pie above all other desserts. It’s the indulgence of pastry that can be paired with the humble goodness (and quasi-healthfulness?) of fruit, or the smooth comfort of pudding. For those of us with dessert A-D-D—chocolate cake, while delicious, is just… so… chocolate! —it can combine enough flavors and textures to distract us, or occupy us with the enjoyable task of constructing the perfect bite. And the opportunity for reinvention is endless. Apple pie, that American classic? Add cranberries, and you’ve got something with an occasional tangy flare, not to mention a gorgeous deep, red color. Or mix in some pears for an autumnal variety show, or a dash of Calvados for a pie with an adult complexity… I believe a piecrust to be a canvas, and apples are just the primary color to get started with.
But, outside of that, there’s another pleasure to pie baking that I’d nearly forgotten about, and was just reacquainted with this Thanksgiving. I’d gotten into the (reasonable) habit of using my food processor to whip up pie dough quickly. I’m not down on this method, by any means; it makes what can be laborious super fast. But, this November, I found myself in my father’s kitchen, with no cuisinart nearby, and no pastry blender handy, either. Only option: working the fat (butter, in my case) into the flour by hand. And what came to my mind was an essay I’d read years ago by Jeffrey Steingarten, called “Pies from Paradise,” in which he observes the veritable pie authority Marion Cunningham, author of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, making dough:
“…She began a hand motion that has become the basis of my own pie making. Reaching to the bottom of the bowl with both hands, Marion scooped up the flour and fat above the rim of the bowl and ran her thumbs over it, against her little finger and index finger…” She continues this until the fat and flour ranges “in size from very coarse meal to grains of rice to peas to small olives.”
The sensuousness of this method of pie making appealed to me immediately. It was the tactile joy of working directly with your food, the same variety of pleasure as kneading dough, but a far more delicate process. And, running my hands through the butter and flour this Thanksgiving, it reminded me of one of the reasons I love to cook: it offers an almost meditative immersion in one task. I was only fingers, butter and flour, for a stretch of time. I love this.
And what other meditation provides you with the bonus of an extra-delicious dessert?
May the pies of your holiday season be bountiful, and meditatively made.
10:
It’s been a full year.
In Greensburg, Kansas, by the "Big Well," the town's claim to fame... or it was, before the giant tornado of May 2007 came through.
Travel with with NPR’s State of the Re:Union has taken me spinning around this fine country of ours, to corners I’d never imagined going (small town Kansas), and those I’d always longed to explore (New Orleans!). The adventures have been abundant… both the radio-oriented ones (more on that below)… and, me being me, the culinary:
Crawfish joy in New Orleans
From “sucking the heads” (yes! sucking! the! heads!) of NOLA crawfish… to the surprisingly inventive cuisine of the Twin Cities, Minnesota:
that's right: "Duck in a Can" at Haute Dish, Minneapolis, MN
And of course there was queso in Austin, Texas, cornbread in West Virginia, steak in Kansas… But really, this was supposed to be about radio. Right?
Second Lining with furry microphone in New Orleans
A lot of radio has come out of these journeys, stories of a town lost in a storm and regained in a rural McDonald’s, of Hmong hip hop, of Cathedrals of Junk, of mountaintops blown off, of transgender rappers, of love breaking through prison walls via the airwaves… You can listen to all of them at the links below.
Go to Greensburg, Kansas… or maybe New Orleans, Louisiana? How about Austin, Texas? You could choose the Twin Cities, Minnesota… or perhaps rural Appalachia.
And more are ahead, as SOTRU heads into its next year… Las Vegas, anyone?
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