Cookies and Crumble

Food has inspired so many sayings. We take things with a grain of salt, abhor the one bad apple, watch the cookie crumble, but not the pot or it will never boil.

We recently had our third annual street party. It is a chance to celebrate the end of school and be introduced to all the new babies who were miraculously incubated under winter coats. After the bike rally, the soccer game, street hockey tournament, water balloon fights, face and nail painting, it is time to eat.

Last year I erred on the side of novelty, a chicken and rice salad with pistachios. It was rather good, but I wasn’t using my noodle. As Marc, my hairdresser once said of my hair colour, “It’s OK, but it’s not fun.” Oatmeal raisin cookies are fun.

To my mind the oatmeal and indeed the chocolate chip cookie should be crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside. These were a pleasure to make not least because I got to use two of my favourite kitchen toys (the distaff equivalent of the power tool?), the Kitchen Aid and my Salter scale. I get an absurd amount of fun out of weighing ingredients then ensuring my cookies are of uniform size.

It takes a lot of careful little steps to get a great cookie: creaming the butter, but not too much, rotating the baking sheets half way through . . . all so little people will want to grab one in each hand, fuel for the next adventure, which they consume on the run.

I enjoy the mayhem, but after a couple of hours the bitter overwhelms the sweet. I have no children of my own. I retreat back to the kitchen. There’s no use crying over spilt milk, but I do.

The Master and the Mystery

A little catch up here. I finished Susan Hill’s The Various Haunts of Men, densely plotted, not all the threads tied off – just like life – and a surprisingly moving ending.

Of Hadji Murad: it breaks all of the writing class rules, “show don’t tell” particularly. Hey that’s the difference between the apprentice and, well Tolstoy. We know from the outset that Hadji Murad is doomed. The question is not what will happen, but how and why. The overall arc of the book is mirrored in the incidents that make it up. We are told the outcome of a scene, then how it played out and why. It’s a fascinating way to build dramatic tension. Tolstoy is Shakespearian (he’d hate that) in his ability to give us a 360^◦ view of his characters. But in comparison with Hill’s mystery, it left me cold. Because even though it is full of felt life, and even the minor characters are fully fleshed, Tolstoy has no pity for them.

Pavlovian Responses

Change: we crave it and we resist it, often at the same time. My dad was a great believer in change. Choose change he told me as I nervously headed off to university, and if you don't like it, choose again. Of course there is that other species of change that is inescapable, mandated by time and life. Antigua is a memory and my mum is back in hospital.
  

Change can be slow. My walk home from the hospital takes me up a steady incline of what 13,000 years ago was the bottom of the glacial Lake Iroquois. June used to take forever to end so that summer holidays could begin. Change can be fast. The summer holidays, when they finally arrived, I was sure, like love, must last forever.

I asked my friend Lynda what she’d like for her birthday lunch. A devoted anglophile, I was sure she would say roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, and possibly a cheesecake. She surprised me by choosing pasta and “anything with raspberries.” My instinctive response was a chocolate pavlova with the requisite berry. I used Nigella Lawson’s recipe. She often has great ideas – like a salad with watermelon, olives, feta and mint – but she isn’t always reliable, so it’s a good idea to check her website for errata. The cookbook is called Forever Summer. I rest my case.

Podcasts re Food

I’ve suggested a number of book podcasts. Good podcasts on food are far rarer, at least where I’ve ventured in cyberspace. So let me direct you to a podcast so cool it wouldn’t break a sweat on your private island, so hip it hurts, but just smiles and orders another martini: American Public Media: The Dinner Party Download.

Each episode begins with an “ice breaker”, followed by a cocktail inspired by an historic event, then a variety of food news, interviews and music. Where else could you learn that Texas is considering legislation to legalize shooting feral pigs from helicopters, or hear comedian and author Demitri Martin riff on food-isms?

Strange Tastes Indeed

I just finished the weakest in a mystery series that I had enjoyed up until now for its locale. Since I don’t have anything nice to say, etc., I will have to mention instead what I am currently reading. Perhaps you will think my tastes strange or eclectic, if you are feeling kindly.

The Various Haunts of Men is by Susan Hill, who provides a skein of plot lines and pulls you along to see how they weave together. Ironically, this book is rather long, whereas the other book, Hadji Murad is a novella by Tolstoy. Many people, including Boris Akunin believe it is the best short story ever written. Based on Tolstoy’s military experiences in the Caucasus it is cinematic in its vivid detail and tragically timeless as recent history proves.

Modern Travel, or Where's My Adapter?

Dateline Antigua. How travel has changed. Or perhaps it is me. Or both. My packing was dominated by thoughts of how to rationalize the quantity of electronics I HAD to bring, plus various grooming products. Clothes, who needs clothes when you have more computing power than got man to the moon and your hair looks this good?

Once established in my little cottage surrounded by oleander (it’s like living in a Rousseau painting) I headed out in search of food. The market was a study in contrasts, as interesting for what wasn’t there as what was. No fresh fish, but lots of fresh herbs, tiny pineapples and local yogurt, which is excellent. . . there was a bewildering selection of olive oils, Italian prosciutto, pine nuts and chocolate, Canadian chevre and Ploughman’s Pickle - they get a lot of Brits here. Nelson himself stopped by long enough to get the harbor named after him.

Tired, I opted to keep it simple. I ate my prosciutto and local melon dangling my feet in the pool while the water for the pasta came to a boil. Pesto rhymes with pronto for a reason. All washed down with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand, a quick skinny dip and so to bed. Like I said, who needs clothes?

Since then I’ve played a game with myself, trying to have variety while using up ingredients. I’ve had pasta puttanesca with tuna instead of anchovies. And eggs, eggs are a great friend of the solo chef. I used up the other half of a can of diced tomatoes poaching eggs in a sauce with capers, onion, celery and olives . . . salad nicoise . . . egg salad sandwiches on lovely little onion buns. Tonight is pork curry on rice and a raita hobbled together with yogurt and some terrific avocado salsa I stumbled on. Have to work up an appetite with a swim first I think. . .

Have a Hunch

As a mystery reader I’m in it for atmosphere as much as the puzzle. I love the elasticity of the genre, there are archaeologist detectives, house sitting sleuths, ancient Roman finders, and on and on. I recently spotted a mystery series in which the recurring theme is pizza. I left the pizza crime behind, but I did bring along C.J. Sansom’s Heartstone, Shardlake Goes to War, the fifth in his series set in Tudor England featuring the hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake. 

Heartstone takes place in the shadow of impending war with France towards the end of Henry the VIII’s reign. Intricately plotted, I never saw the ultimate twist coming, and thoroughly enjoyed the period detail - Sansom is a former lawyer and scrupulous historian, however, ever susceptible to the pleasures of pedantry, there is one anachronistic misattributed quote methinks. Let me set you some detective work: should you decide to follow Shardlake from London to Portsmith see if you can spot it. 

And the Crowd Muttered

My friend Naomi’s youngest son has memorized pi to 60 places. I understand this impulse completely and can share in his delight when his math teacher asked him if he knew what pi was. As a child I memorized the Roman emperors in the hopes that one day someone would ask “who came after Vespasian?” It hasn’t happened. Yet.

Don’t underestimate the pleasures of pedantry. For instance, I recently read in a newspaper, whose shame I shall cloak in anonymity, that rhubarb is a fruit. Rhubarb is an herb. Its leaves are poisonous. It is also what actors say on stage to mimic the murmur of a crowd. In England it is forced in large dark barns. Its emerging leaves sound like barnacles clutching at air at low tide. At my old house it was the first thing up in the spring. Brave souls eat it raw.

I am not brave. Rhubarb! It is lovely stewed, in jam and pies, alone or with strawberries. I was so excited to see rhubarb at last that I bought much too much. The result was a pie, rhubarb blackberry jam and I haven’t decided on the third thing. As Mae West said, “too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”

What’s that? Titus, thanks for asking.


The Prof, The Cook and an Aussie
If you are interested in the craft and art of writing can I suggest Unless It Moves the Human Heart by Roger Rosenblatt. He is also the author of the best seller Making Toast and a playwright. This may explain why the dialogue feels stagy. The first six chapters are classes in which Rosenblatt and his students discuss their work. It is the book’s seventh chapter that makes it worth reading, his summing up of all he meant to say to his students.

The Sharper the Knife the Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn is another in a new genre, “How I Found Redemption Through Food” or HIFRTF, as I like to call it. Flinn picked herself up after being dusted from her job and took herself to the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. The writing’s clichéd at times, there is no challenge without a corresponding triumph, giving it a Disney-ish feel. Think of it as a series of postcards from Paris with recipes and you won’t be disappointed.

Finally we come to the first volume of Clive James’ autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs. His father enlisted in the Australian army at the outbreak of war, survived combat and internment in a Japanese POW camp only to perish when the plane returning him home was downed by a monsoon. Watching James grow up in the shadow of this absurdly tragic event is like watching a tree nurtured by Terry Gilliam take shape, funny, macabre and unpredictable.

La, la, la lemons

I am self-medicating with lemons in the absence of over due rhubarb and trilliums. Walking the dog hunkered into hat, coat and gloves, eyes fastened on flower beds covered in brown leaves, skeletal trees on every side I feel confused. Is it spring or is it autumn? When I’m planting bulbs in the fall, perhaps morbidly, I often think how it is like burying little skulls – though is there a more hopeful activity than planting flowers in the anticipation of spring?

When life hands you lemons, runs the ironically saccharine saw, make lemonade. Ever the contrarian, I make risotto. Lemon risotto is a nice starter or accompaniment to pan fried sole or schnitzel. Most recently I made a main dish of it, topping it with chunks of chicken which I lightly floured, sautéed in butter and oil, then deglazed the pan with lemon juice and tossed the chicken with the reduced juice. This took place while the risotto rested prior to serving. I garnished it all with sage leaves I’d fried in the butter and oil before the cooking the chicken.

Doing the chicken this way was a great way to finish up the lemons I’d shorn of their zest for muffins and the risotto. You make this risotto by cooking the Arborio rice in butter and olive oil with a finely chopped shallot or two. Now comes the stirring. It takes about five cups of warmed chicken stock to a cup and a half of rice added a ladle full at a time. Stir, stir, stir, and once your stock is incorporated take the risotto off the heat and add about a teaspoon of finely grated lemon zest, finely chopped sage and mint – surprise – a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, parmesan to taste, a little knob of butter, cover and let it rest for five minute during which you can salivate, prepare the chicken as described above, pour a glass of wine . . . look out the window in the hopes of crocus.


Lost in Shadow
Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind is a labyrinth of book. At first glance it seems to be an off shoot of magic realism with a nod to Edgar Allan Poe. But things are not quite what they seem. In an interview with Eleanor Wachtel, Zafon explained that the inspiration for his Cemetery of Forgotten Books was a bookstore outside Los Angeles housed in an old hangar without electricity. Patrons are encouraged to bring their own flashlight.

Longing and loss unite the characters along a shared thread, Julian Carax, the author of the book within the book, The Shadow of the Wind. In picking it Daniel is committing to keeping it alive for future generations, as his father, a second hand book dealer explains. Soon afterwards Daniel finds himself living events in his chosen tome, including being pursued by a disfigured man who smells of burnt paper, Lain Coubert, who may be the devil himself.

The first two thirds are delightful, but I began to weary in the home stretch. One of the hardest things to convey in writing and in life is why one person loves another. Not only was I dizzy from repeated pirouettes of plot, I became credulous about the “why” I was to believe that eventually virtually everyone, except his arch enemy, were prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the illusive Julian Carax.

Making a Mess of Lasagne

Lasagne can be problematic. There was a time when a potluck supper was invariably a fugue on layered noodles. I remember a quintessentially Canadian experience, when I planned an elaborate dinner starting with a vegetable lasagne appetizer, which I prepared in advance – including homemade noodles – and froze. Having baked and served it up to my six guests, I sat down to join them and discovered it was STILL frozen in the middle, none of my hyper polite guests had said a word.

I have also made a wonderful chicken lasagne from a Lidia Bastianich recipe from an ancient Food & Wine magazine. It was great and as my Italian ex-mother-in-law would have said, "lotsa work."

And yet, what is more satisfying than lasagne? I’ll tell you, skillet lasagne. Why bother with all that careful layering when it’s all going to end up, jumbled up, in the same place? I have Cook’s Illustrated to thank for this one, and I recommend their The Best 30-Minute Recipe cookbook heartily. I have given it to several people and heard only good things about the results.

Because I had a hard time getting vegetables into my houseguest, my mother, I had to get a little sneaky. I scaled back the meat and stirred in a bag of baby spinach, which wilted down to discrete perfection. An excellent dinner, full stop – should I say colon?


Ghostly parallels

Susan Hill’s novella The Woman in Black is for many the gold standard in contemporary ghost stories. It is a thoroughly convincing period piece set in a remote house with a secret and terrible past. If I were a minor character within it I’d tell you it’s a “ripping good yarn.”

Hill, who also writes detective novels, which I haven’t yet sampled, has a second haunting novella The Man in the Picture, but I’m not sure I can judge it fairly. This one is set in Cambridge and like its companion it has an interesting, amiable and intelligent narrator, and the parallels continue to the point where I felt I was reading a variation on a theme. Now if I’d never laid eyes on The Woman in Black, something tells me I would have thoroughly enjoyed it.

Jagged Little Cookies

I don’t like to complain. Given a choice, I prefer to vent, punctuate that with sobbing, and finish it off with a fine whine. But that’s just me. Shortly before Christmas my mother fell and broke both her wrists. Since then my time has been almost entirely occupied with hospital visits, doctors’ appointments and channelling my inner Martha Stewart as I give her condo a needed makeover.

My mother is an enthusiastic consumer of sweets as I think I’ve mentioned. When she emerged from her post-operative haze I asked her what cookie she’d like me to make her, even though I already knew. Sure enough, she said “those little ones where you put the jam in the middle."

Thimble cookies, these are labour intensive little gems. You make basic cookie dough into tablespoon balls, roll those in beaten egg white, then in finely chopped nuts and make small impression in each – with a thimble if you are a stickler for tradition, your thumb or the end of wooden spoon. After baking, while still warm, you deepen the indent and fill it with the jam of your choice. The ones pictured here are apricot and raspberry.

My mum’s convalescence has included these, flourless peanut butter cookie chocolate sandwiches and banana raisin muffins. The shared features are they are all sweet, portable and safely stowed in a bedside drawer.

Like Dolittle’s Push-Me-Pull-You, my mother and I are bound together and straining against each other. She craved daily visits to be sure I hadn’t been carried off by a serial killer. A glimpse was enough, after that I could, as she so succinctly put it, “sling my hook” – translation for non-Anglos and the not nautical, b----r off or set sail. Jolly good.

Once upon a time she read me books like Three Men in A Boat and Wind in the Willows and we laughed ‘til our sides hurt. She wrapped Christmas presents with the care of an artist –I remember one box made to look like a house, complete with chimney, cotton wool snow and reindeer foot prints on the roof. Last week she’d been feeling particularly bad and was eager to see me off. On our way to the elevator another patient asked her if she was better? She said, yes, now that she had seen her daughter, because I’m her aspirin (and a pill?). People change, cookies crumble, I’ll take my compliments where I can get them.


Reading as refuge
I can’t believe I’m already within one slim volume of latest of Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano series. They have been a perfect refuge over the last months. Not that they offer a world vision where justice is done; often the best Montalbano can do is create a stopgap against the remorseless working out of things and "crush melancholy's grape" behind clenched teeth. Perhaps strangely, I find solace in Camilleri’s complex and unflinching view from Montalbano’s veranda overlooking the sea.