Recipes new and old

Today I’m reading cookbooks. I’m inspired by having just spent the last two weeks working my way through a fine book of food writing: The Reporter’s Kitchen: Essays by Jane Kramer. It doesn’t usually take me two weeks to read a book, but one of the hallmarks of good food writing is that I savor it rather than gobble it up voraciously.

I nibbled The Reporter’s Kitchen a chapter at a time, pausing often to menu plan, cook, bake, and borrow and read cookbooks. I have three borrowed cookbooks on Hoopla as a result, along with a list of dishes from Kramer’s own repertoire that I’m planning to find recipes for and try. Among these:

  • Parsnip and pear puree
  • Indian cornbread
  • Braised red cabbage

Those are all fall/winter foods, so it will be some time before I give them a try. In the meantime, I’ve been finding and experimenting with other new recipes, while also pulling out some of my standby favorites. My husband and I have feasted on all manner of simple delights in the last couple of weeks, including sautéed spinach both with and without pine nuts; pasta in many varieties, most often including grape and cherry tomatoes sautéed just long enough to start to wilt; pub burgers with mushrooms and black olives; fish with whatever seasonings seemed right; sesame noodles; a lovely salad of green beans, cucumbers and basil with lemon vinaigrette; slaws both new and old; apple cake; derby chocolate chip cookies; and no-bake peanut butter cookies.

Mom’s kitchen

Those no-bake peanut butter cookies

I’m working on (as in eating) some of those peanut butter cookies now, which means I’m thinking about my mother. This was one of her recipes, and I suspect it came from a peanut butter jar because I’ve come across at least one other person who was raised on exactly this same cookie but didn’t have the recipe from his mother and asked for mine. It’s dead simple with just six ingredients, and it’s the only cookie I make all summer long because…no baking. As I associate this with my mother, I suspect that my son and probably his friends will associate it with me.

Food traditions are a comfort to me. My mother’s and grandmother’s recipes call them to my mind, and recipes handed to me by friends never cease to summon memories of those friends when I make them. Holidays for me are interchangeable with the food I eat to celebrate them, and I think I would sooner skip Christmas entirely than celebrate it without my family’s traditional Swedish-based meal.

In general, my tastes in food differ vastly from my mother’s. I was raised on a diet of meat, potatoes, and vegetables cooked well beyond an inch of their lives. Aside from the vegetables, my mother was an excellent cook. But my adult tastes lean more toward pastas, rice, lighter (or no) meats, and steamed or grilled vegetables. I’ve inherited or retained my mother’s taste for fish, though, along with memories of standing next to her fishing along a riverbed. I’ve also inherited those recipes, some of which—her lentil soup, for example—I will enjoy till my dying day.

Hungry reading

I just started reading a book of food writing, and all I can think about is food. I’ve only an introduction and one essay into The Reporter’s Kitchen, by Jane Kramer, and already I’ve made chicken salad, am planning dinner, and have borrowed two cookbooks from my library (thank you, Hoopla!).

Kramer is The New Yorker‘s European correspondent, but what’s important here is that she also has written about food over the years. The Reporter’s Kitchen is a compilation of those essays. I read The New Yorker only irregularly and wasn’t familiar with Kramer’s writing before this book caught my eye at the library (you know, back in the day when libraries were buildings you could walk into). So far I’m a fan. Even Kramer’s introductory essay had me starting to think about ingredients in my kitchen, and that might be the best response possible to food writing.

Tonight’s menu will take shape around some sort of pasta with tomatoes, kalamata olives, and probably green beans. I’m thinking about sautéed spinach on the side, and I also have an urge to bake. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.

Ground to table

I’m looking forward to a summer and fall filled with great cooking made possible by garden-fresh ingredients from the brand-spankin-new raised bed my husband just built for me. It’s 16 feet long and will hold everything from tomatoes and beans to cabbage and kalettes (aka kale sprouts). We took delivery of 4 cubic feet of soil this week and have spent the last three days moving it wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow into its new wood-framed home. I’m tired and a bit sore, but oh so happy I could write a poem.

Mineral-black soil,
Fertile, dark promise rich with
possibility

Or something like that. I’m reading a lot of poetry while sheltering in place, particularly after treating myself to a birthday purchase of books delivered direct to my door not by Amazon but by the distributor(s) for my local independent bookstore, which is able to continue bringing in income with this service while not able to open its doors. My order included three books of poetry, and I’m making my way through them slowly, savoring and re-reading.

My current obsession is The Madness Vase, by Andrea Gibson, one of my favorite poets. These poems are powerfully strong, anthems of survival shot through with vulnerability. They celebrate life without ever pulling punches, and I can’t get enough of them. That has been pretty much the case for me with every book of Gibson’s poetry I’ve ever picked up, and if you’ve never read any … well, I think you’re missing out.

I’ve seen Gibson in performance as well, and they’re equally powerful on stage. Here’s a collection of videos of their performances—don’t miss.

Non-fiction for the birds

Also included in my bookstore purchase was an enormous hardcover book, What It’s Like to Be a Bird, by David Allen Sibley. This one, too, is a joy, not meant to be read cover to cover but intended rather for wanderlust reading, choosing your own topic and following it wherever it takes you.

One place It took me was to my drawing pad, after reading about wings inspired to draw feathers of all varieties. I sense years of enjoyment ahead of me from this book, reading and re-reading, learning about different aspects of birds’ lives, reminding myself how and why they fascinate me.

Spring is a good time for reading about birds, when I also can sit on my front porch or back deck and watch them in the trees and at the feeders. That’s where I’m headed now, probably with a book.

Cooking in the pandemic

Creativity comes in many forms. My primary—and professional—medium is words. But food is a close second that brings me a lot of pleasure.

I haven’t had much time to cook while sheltering at home, mostly because I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home and my job is one whose demands have ramped up significantly in the pandemic. But occasionally I get a cooking urge when I actually have time to explore it.

Yesterday was one of those days. So I looked in the freezer, found some ground turkey that needed to be used, and went recipe hunting. The result: turkey meatballs seasoned with cardamom and orange, served over a bed of cabbage and brown rice, with grape tomatoes on the side.

My first pie ever with a butter crust

I started with this recipe and played with the seasonings a bit, substituting a smaller quantity of mace for the nutmeg in the meatballs and adding turmeric and ancho peppers. I also added turmeric and ancho to the sauce, along with a lemon-garlic seasoning that gets a lot of use in my kitchen. I didn’t alter the cabbage at all, except to skip the salt and use a slightly citrusy pepper blend instead of plain pepper.

It was tasty, and the cabbage is an absolute keeper, especially mixed with rice as in this recipe.

Dessert was peach pie I made the night before, and the weather cooperated so we could eat outside. Heaven.

Chocolate angel food

I’ve never tried that chocolate angel food recipe
but each time I see it in my cookbook
I think of you

trailing Grandma Fay around her kitchen
writing down her every move
forcing her to measure ingredients
she could gauge by sight or feel
getting in her way
so you could replicate her result
transform the mediocrity of your own first effort
(
the mediocrity of her written recipe)
into the mouthmelt you knew this cake to be. Continue reading

Holiday foods: There’s sharing, and then there’s sharing

If you know me well, you probably know that holidays are food rituals for me. Thanksgiving is turkey and stuffing and pie; Easter is bunny bread (bunny refers to the shape, not the ingredients); St. Patrick’s Day is corned beef; New Year’s Day is lentil soup. Then there’s the mother of all food rituals: Christmas. Continue reading

Pecan pie – and a lesson in making pie crust

pecan-pieThis post is for my friend Al, who asked me months ago for my pecan pie recipe and has waited ever so patiently even though it’s now less than a week before Thanksgiving. Not only have you earned the pie recipe; you’ve also earned the pie crust recipe and secret. In the spirit of the upcoming holiday, this also is for all my friends who think pie crust is hard to make and are amazed that I make mine from scratch.

Continue reading