And Envy's Eyes in the Kitchen

Spring has come and gone with little posting, but in just one week Z and I will be taking five entire nights at the cabin in the woods with two friends of ours, J&S, and cooking will commence again. Here we live in a big house with a tiny kitchen with an awful stove and too many people storing too much food. I do not cook much. We eat nearly daily at our favorite, tiny, inexpensive diner and our favorite local deli and our favorite thai place, and sometimes we eat nothing but ramen and rice. It's all good, but I can't wait for a kitchen and farm stands and the company that lets me spend half the day just figuring out dinner.
And then we romp to our respective family homes, and romp back, and by the beginning of August I shall have a kitchen of my own.
I have seen the kitchen, indeed, the whole apartment, with my own eyes. We saw it just a few days ago, and my thoughts are: the drop ceiling is ugly but we shall live with it. We do have miles and miles of paper that has been fire-proofed up to theater quality from a show Z designed, so maybe we'll just cover the whole thing. The floors are old hard wood, and they could use a bit (a lot) of love, but they'll get it.
The kitchen has the makings of a thing of beauty.
But it ain't there yet.
It has linoleum tiles on the floor, in the classic "elementary school cafeteria" style we all know so well. It has ceramic tiles on the wall... mostly. A few are in a neat stack on one of the counters. The counters themselves are large, move able pieces with cupboards underneath them, topped in Formica in the style referred to as "ugly, gray-scale woodgrain." The current renters have a small, yellow-painted-metal outdoor table and chair set in the room's large open space. The walls are bare but for an ugly spice rack and an uglier wreath made of plastic fruit. The cabinet doors are painted a bright shade of green somewhere between mint and lime, called "Envy's Eyes."
Oddly enough, I think the green cabinets are the thing I'm least likely to change. The paint probably accurately describes my own eyes when I looked in there for the first time. For all the Formica and linoleum and ironic-kistch styling, the room is sunny and comforting. There are two windows, one which leads out onto a little bit of roof that we have been assured is fair game to sit on, one which lets in lots of light right onto the biggish, open section of floor. It will shed its rays onto a large trough or set of pots full of herbs, and the room will smell constantly of rosemary and sage. The small, ugly yellow table will be replaced with a large, comforting wooden one, which will help make the lonely gas stove look less isolated. For, indeed, the stove and oven are both gas powered (one of the quirky charms of the place is that it also has gas heat, from one single, large gas heater in the main room, just on the other side of the wall from the side of the kitchen where stands the stove. It looks like a vast amplifier, but apparently heats the whole place). I will move the counters around, and if I'm luck put a big, thick, food-safe wooden board right on top of the Formica on one of 'em and turn it into a chopping block. I will put beautiful pictures of beautiful food right in the middle of the bright green cabinet doors, and put some cheap, hardwearing rug on the floors. The room is a little too empty, now. It is full of love, but between just two people. I hope to fill it with love for the world. I hope to make people cosy with a mug of tea or cocoa there while I cook them dinner, I hope to linger over my coffee at the table by the window and the herbs, before Z or I does the dishes in the big, old, lovely ceramic sink.
When I think about the place as it will be, instead of as it is, what envy filled me drains away, and I am alive with excitement for laughter and meals and love.

Spring

I have not posted since this summer.
I dunno that I'll ever post often.
I think I'm talking to myself, by this point, but...

It is April. Only just. A few days in.
Weather has been warm, but wet, or bright, but cold. Grass is starting to grow. Flowers are poking their tips out of the ground, and I am suppressing the urge to shout GO BACK! There's more snow coming yet!
I saw forsythia the other day. Little yellow bundles of buds on a bare twig. Forsythia are the first flowers of spring, and they sunny up a room like nothing else. Possibly because if you cut the tall twigs just as the buds are forming and put them in water in a tall vase in the sun, the buds will bloom inside, quickly and brightly.

And I have not written about food here because for almost a year I've been writing about it somewhere else, for work, and it's almost done and I am rejoicing.

I miss the woodscabin and the cooking there, and my mind has raced forward to being there again. In Spring.

What shall I cook? Spring food. Delicate baby vegetables and salads and perhaps young chicken. Light-but-filling pastas. If we wait till June I can do early fruit pies or summer pudding. Perhaps a gratin of little potatoes. I will do as every generation for ever has done, and gather the earth's first bounty to feed to my friends and my loved ones.

Spring is coming. Spring is here.

The Right Thing

New York City is a city full of restaurants. I live near Columbia University, in a neighborhood that is extra rich in restaurants. There are a billion of them, and many of them are very, very good.
But on a particular day, at a particular moment, only a very few of them will be right.
This Saturday Z and I woke up late, after an adventurous Friday night. We had little coffee and no milk in the house, and so were reduced to venturing out for our mornign fix. We walked past Tom's Diner, and past the fancy French-style and Italian-Style restaurants with the numerous sidewalk tables. We crossed the street and walked past super-posh Henry's, and then we saw, back across the street, the Blue Moon Bakery.
The Blue Moon Bakery has perhaps 6 tables outside, all small. It is on the corner so some are on one side of the building and some on the other. I don't know if it has any tables inside: we didn't venture in. The tables were for table service only, so we sat down and waited for service.
Our waitress was thin and smiley, with curly hair. She made us just a little more joyful.
Z had a little sandwhich with cheddar and lettuce and cucumbers and mustard on rye, and I had half a fresh-baked baguette with butter and jam. I had coffee and orange juice, he had a cold mocha thing. All of it was delicious. Sweet butter, good jam, fresh squeezed juice, simple sandwhich, frozen-coffee drink that was more flavor than sugar. Simple and easy, outside and in the shade, at a place that had attitude (joyful, simple, honest) rather than airs.
It was the right thing, and it set the stage for a day of wandering up and down the city, lying around in Riverside Park, visiting with a friend of ours, going down and adventuring to find dim sum in china town. Just a sweet and lovely day, which felt stolen because Z had almost-promised to go down to Brooklyn for all of it.
That was my Saturday, the start of a weekend that recharged me.
Food, of course, was there for every bit of it.

Anchovies

When I first heard of anchovies, they were described to me in with the describing of the most disgusting pizza the teller had ever encountered. "There are these tiny, salty, oily little FISH on the pizza", I was informed.
Horrible.
I don't think I ate an anchovy in my life after that. My mother knew I disliked them, and as the increadibly accomodating lady that she is, she would cook something different or leave them out for me whenever she used them in a dish. So there were no anchovies for me.
Until I came to Al Di La. By the time I interned at the restaurant, I was determined to try whatever crossed my path. We lay whole anchovy filets across the top of the carpaccio, and served grilled escarole in thicky anchovy vinaigrette with an extra spash of sherry vinaigre. That grilled escarole was perhaps my favorite single food Al Di La served. It seldom came my way, since it was a side made to order so there was none leftover at the end of the night, but I was ecstatic the few times it did.
It was the flavor of the anchovies they did it. Blended into a vinaigrette with other ingredients, it was this rich, wonderful salty-sour slightly -- unconsciously -- fishy. On the bitter, barely-charred, silky-wilted escarole it was phenomonal.
From then on I have trusted anchovies, and they have not let me down. There aren't many dishes that know how to use them, and there aren't many cooks who are brave enough to include them, but they're are a few tins in every grocery store for only a few dollars, and a few of them can make a delicious meal.
This one has been served here twice this summer, the first time as an off beat meal for myself, Z, and our beer-swilling, lady-enticing, meat devouring metal head friend, who ate more than his share of it and complimented me on cooking a more or less meatless meal. The second time was tonight, when Z asked me to make it again because he had enjoyed it so much.

Take two heads of broccoli and cut them into small florets. Chop 5 anchovy fillts and three nice cloves of garlic. Make sure you have salt, fresh black pepper and dried red pepper flakes on hand, as well as butter and olive oil. Also parmesan cheese. Boil enough water to cook 1 pound Farfalle. Salt the water plentifully. When it boils, add the pasta. After 5 minutes, add the broccoli florets. Cook about 5 minutes more.
Mean time, heat about half a stik of butter (cut smaller) and 1/4 cup olive oil in a really, really big skillet. Biggest you have. Maybe a wok. Add the anchovy, garlic, and a good pinch red pepper flakes. Cook about five minutes, then add the broccoli, and pasta, and some black pepper. Toss. Add some reserved pasta water (you reserved it, remember) to make a light sauce. Sprinkle generously (like, maybe 1/4 cup generously), with grated parmesan cheese. This is essential.
Serve.

This dish is really yummy and feels nice and light, yet filling, on a summer day. The anchovies give it alot of flavor, but for the life of me I can't really describe it. Anchovies are like that.

Don't Try This At Home

Once upon a time there was a boy. He was technically proficient and resourceful, and he liked to make things. He especially liked to make things from other things, putting his creations together in unexpected ways. They were often quite beautiful, and sometimes even technical. He had an eye for the absurd.
Which is probably what got him involved with the girl. She was strange, more or less a study in contradictions. She loved food and cooking, and writing, and reading, and stories. She tended to play it safe, and safely did things that no sane person would have done.
They loved each other and lived together in an apartment with a tiny kitchen, and the girl took great pains to put together a batterie de cuisine that would serve their every need.
They had an ice-cream maker and a whisk and they had pots and pans and an immersion blender and sharp knives and plates of all different sizes.
On Fourth of July, to prove that they were very patriotic and loyal to Asia in general and Korea in specific, the girl bought two steaks and froze them. When they were frozen through, she and the boy took turns cutting them paper thin with a very sharp knife. The boy was better at this part, so the girl busied herself making a marinade. For 1.5 pounds of sirloin, she used:
1/4 cup Safflower Oil
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 tsp. cayenne pepper (this made it VERY spicy, use less if you don't look food hot)
1 tsp. ground black pepper
1/4 cup granulated sugar
To this she added 1 packed tablespoon of fresh grated ginger and 1 bunch of finely chopped scallions, and all of the shaved beef.
She let it sit in the fridge for 1 hour, and busied herself with the rest of the meal. First for an apetizer she boiled soba noodles and ran them under cold water until chilled. She served them with a dipping sauce made of soy sauce, rice vinegar, some scallions and grated ginger. After it was all eaten, she had her guest wash and stem a 1 lb. bunch of spinach, and then she placed the leaves in a pot of boiling water until they were just wilted, and then she fished them out and let them cool off and drain. She placed them on a plate and dressed them with the remains of the dipping sauce, plus about a tablespoon and a half of sesame oil and another two tablespoons or so of rice vinegar. She snipped some scallions over this and placed it in the fridge to cool off a bit.
She had the Boy turn on the rice-maker, with rice.
When the meat had been an hour marinating, she took big flat frying pan and heated it up, without oil (because there was so much oil in the marinade). She cooked the meat in small batches (about 4 of them) for about two minutes per batch, flipping/stirring once.
She put it on a big plate and they ate with the rice and with the cold tart spinach salad. It was very good. The dish is called Bulgogi, and is Korean marinated-barbecued beef. It is traditionally served wrapped in romain lettuce with kimchee and pickled sprouts and other little dishes, but I like it like this: the rice helps tone down the spicy beef, and the cold salad is a perfect bright, clear foil for it.
After this there was apple pie. This is the part where the boy's love of making things and the girl's lack of sanity come in. You see, the girl was going to make ice-cream. She really was. But she just didn't feel like putting in the effort to make a custard base, the care it takes to be sure the eggs don't cook and base does not curdle. But something had to be served with the pie, because the guest had brought it with her so the girl had not put any effort into dessert at all.
Why not whip the cream, the girl asked?
And realized she did not have an electric beater, nor even something as boring and simple as an eggbeater. All she has was whisk.
The boy looked across the room at his toolbag, where an electric drill peaked out.
No? YES.
Yes, dear readers, we were that stupid. Zac attached my whisk to his electrid drill, and we used it as an electric beater. It did not explode or even merely fall apart: it whipped the cream up beautifully. I wish I had a picture of myself standing over the bowl of cream with a drill attached to a whisk in my hand. Maybe next time, though.
But don't try it at home, unless you are A) very technically profficient and B) utterly insane.

Heh. It worked.
I have whipped cream in my fridge for dessert tonight, probably with a hotted up piece of leftover apple pie.
Crazy has its benefits.

To Market

Today Z and I went down to the Union Square Green Market. I almost feel as though that should be the post in itself, because there's no really good way to describe it. We wandered past stalls with corkscrew-curly garlic tops, and saw broccolinni it a leafier form called Chinese Broccoli. We saw fresh eggs and fresh pheasant sausage. We wandered past stalls with herbs carefully labeled and stalls full of herbs with no labels at all, where the knowing got what they wanted. We saw stalls with fresh flowers and flowers in pots and herbs in pots and pots. Z munched on a chocolate chip muffin and we bought glasses of mint ice tea sweetened with maple syrup that was so good we had to go back for seconds. There was one stall selling dirt -- just rich, amazing, organic, composty dirt by the pound. There was one stall with nothing but lettuce in something like 10 or 15 different varieties. It was three times the size of most of the stalls. There was a stall selling nothing but little pots of growing wheatgrass, with information explaining that everything that walks or flies eats wheatgrass (including pictures of birds and dogs and cats and hamsters and guinea pigs all happily munching the stuff).

I bought a pound of assorted wild mushrooms from the mushroom lady. She was far too cool to punch her mushrooms together into "assorted wild". I achieved it by buying 1/4 of oyster mushrooms, 1/4 of shitakes, and half a pound of creminis. I am unsure I have spelled any of these mushroom varieties right, but they are lovely. I will cook them tomorrow into a creamy pasta sauce with gorgonzola cheese and little sweet peas (which are, sadly, best bought frozen).

I also bought a new potted mint plant, because the one I had wasn't lovin' me. It was too small to be happy in a pot, it needed to be replanted and allowed to spread. I also set it in the sun, forgetting that mint is shade loving. That and I killed it from too much iced tea. This is beautiful spearmint, with that sweet smell that only spearmint has. It is also bushier, with lots of stems from which to pick. I think it will do well.

And I bought a big old chicken, fresh and organic, which I will roast later on this week and turn into delicious leftovers, and I bought two tiny little Persian cucumbers which I will slice thin and serve as a salad before the creamy mushroom pasta, light and cool to foil the richness of the dish. And I bought two pints of blueberries, one for snacking and one to turn into a blueberry tart. I want to pre-bake a tart crust, then fill it with pastry cream and top with the blueberries and glaze with red-currant glaze. I made this once before, when I was no sort of cook but happened across Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. It came out fine, which is a minor miracle. I'm hoping I can make it any better this time. It is to finish off tomorrows dinner -- you may have guessed I'm cooking for company tomorrow. I cook for company almost every week, because I love an excuse to make something fancy or even just more complicated, and I love feeding people, and we need a reason to make sure the apartment gets clean.

What else? Ah, yes, tonight's dinner. For tonight's dinner I bought fresh beautiful cherry tomatoes. I am going to quarter or halve them and toss them with linguine and torn basil from the terrace and some beautiful olive oil Z's mother gave us. That will be the main course.
And before that? Fried zucchini blossoms.

My favorite food writer, Laurie Colwin, writes of theses in a chapter in her book Home Cooking. There is basically nothing in this book I don't want to make. And Z has had these before, though I haven't, and loves them, and they have such as short season so I thought, why not? It will be a grand and relatively safe adventure: I many ever have cooked or eaten them, but everybody seems to love them, and I have a recipe from one of my favorite cooks of all.

I will eat them on the terrace, and tell you what they're like.

The World

I am at work. I am supposed to be making sure a recipe by Ina Garte is correctly reproduced for another publication. Instead I got lost in a picture at the beginning of her book of a table set at the very edge of an apple orchard in the late afternoon in summer, with golden light and vasses of grasses and herbs set out, and the dedication: 'My home is whever Jeffrey is'.
At table set up and someone to love.
I love Zachary. We do not have a perfect relationship, but instead of worrying me, that fills me with hope. We have our entire lives to figure out how best to make eachother happy. We've come so far in that in the past three years (we used to make eachother miserable), and I am confident we'll make it there. We'll make eachother happier than anybody else in the world, because the happiness one is experiencing is always the greatest of all.
And! I want to feed the world. The whole world. I want to set up tables in fields and cover them in dishes. I want to cook everything for everybody. I want people to stop conversing because of food, and I want peope to converse because of food.
That's how it's going to be, for my life.
I will love Zachary. My home will be with him, and my heart will be full of love, and I will feed the world.