It occurs to me that we aspire to mountain tops but when we attain them—if we attain them at all, we only get to stay a short while. Life is lived in the valleys. One of the reasons I take care with food is that, while I rarely reach a summit, I can have good meals daily, which brings me to pie.
Any time is a good time for pie, but especially fall. Ode poor Keats! Victim of every writer’s dream: to write something that becomes so widely familiar it’s a cliché: thanks to him autumn is notoriously a “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. We don’t get much mist in autumn in southern Ontario, except the lovely grey bloom on plums. You get plums as early as June, but my favourite are the little Italian plums that arrive about now. Every fall, usually more than once, I make Rose Levy Beranbaum’s flame tart, (see the smaller illustration).
This year I have also made plum pear jam and was so surprised and pleased with combination, I decided to try it as a pie filling. I pitted and chopped about four cups of plums, and peeled, cored and chopped three or four pears. I tossed them in a colander with a bit more than half a cup of sugar, some cinnamon and nutmeg. I left the colander over a bowl and tossed the fruit occasionally over about two hours. I transferred the juices from the fruit to a small saucepan and reduced them by half, then blended in a couple teaspoons of cornstarch. The fruit went into a nine inch pie pan lined with pastry and the reduced juice over that, put the top on and bake for 45 minutes at 350. I haven’t got a name for it yet, Plear Pie?
Summits and valleys . . .There’s a line in the Dire Straits song On Every Street that always makes me smile, “Every victory has a taste that’s bittersweet.” Happily this is not the case with Plear Pie.
Great Gossip
I have mentioned Diana Athill here before. She is someone who impresses with her fairness, candour, and humanity. The first half of her memoir Stet, an editor’s life gives an insider’s perspective on the gamble that is publishing. The second half is a collection of portraits of the some of the writers who became her friend including V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, Mordecai Richler and Brian Moore.
I confess it is the second half that beguiled me. Who could fail to be charmed by this description of Brian Moore and his first wife, Jackie, “They were both great gossips—and when I say great I mean great, because I am talking about gossip in its highest and purest form: a passionate interest, lit by humour but above malice, in human behaviour.”
Isn’t that where most great books begin?
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Post from England
I came to England a lot as a child; and I have fled to England as temporary refuge as an adult. The England I visit is not the England of the film This is England or Coronation Street. The England I visit is of my past and my imagination - what would it be like to grow up with family close by? to travel roads that are tunnels of green daily, to have milk delivered in bottles, to make jam from fruit gathered from hedgerows and never be far from a castle? I have an unearned nostalgia for these things.
On my most recent visit my niece-lets (cousins once removed takes too long both to write and to say) and I went for a four mile ride. More accurately, I walked along side trying to look like a responsible adult should such a creature be required. The horse clearly thought not.
We walked up lanes shouldered by hedges jewelled with blackberries (fruit not PDA’s I hasten to add in advance of wiseacres). We climbed a hill past an abandoned orchard to views of the North and South Downs and quilts of fields of varied green. We passed a cottage where a brown lab sprang as if by magic from a large dog flap, ran to his gate tail wagging furiously but didn’t bark. We scared up a brace or two of pheasant as we passed through a quiet farm.
There are two pheasants to a brace, one male, one female, if anyone cares. Thomas Hardy has a poem, Afterwards in which he wonders if he'll be remembered as a "man who used to notice such things". I like to be a woman learns such things.The Paston Letters are a medieval collection valued by scholars for their insights into family life and manor management of the period. This trip I learned that just above a horse’s hoof is the paston joint. I have also learned how to prune roses, how to roll pastry properly and discovered slipcote, a mild sheep’s milk cheese.
I first had it in a quiche at Sissinghurst, Vita Sackville-West’s famous garden, and then bought some at a farmers’ market. I used it in a salad of rocket (aka arugula), cress and lettuce which I dressed with vinaigrette and topped with the cheese, sliced beets and walnuts, and served with thinly cut slices of my aunt’s homemade bread buttered. Madam, lunch is served. Thank you, Jeeves.
I have been to a pub where they offer a platter of three different kinds of chips (French fries) as an appetizer. I have also been to a pub, The Red Lion in Horsted Keynes where I had roasted pork belly with a cider sauce, served with a salty wafer of crackling, gently wilted spinach and a timbale of potatoes. Pudding (dessert) was a champagne jelly encasing summer berries.
The first day of my trip we had lunch in the garden to the sound of sheep bleating in the next field. My last day came quickly. Hope is an act of imagination, someone, a poet or philosopher once said. I hope to have more weeks of summer in England.
Five for the Road
The best argument I have heard for the Kindle, Kobo or any other electronic reader is that it means you can take more books with you on a trip than you would normally carry. I am more afraid of finding myself without engaging reading material than being without suitable clothing, as proven by this trip, when in a fit of uncharacteristic optimism, I packed almost nothing warm. But I had five books on board and another three waiting for me (free shipping within the UK? Why not?).
This trip I read three novels set in my other favourite country to visit, Italy. Inspector Montalbano frequently breaks the rules in pursuing the truth of his cases, but wait, this is Sicily and there are no rules, except perhaps that of the nobleman in di Lampedusa’s The Leopard, who insisted everything must change in order to remain the same. Montalbano knows he wins battles, but never the war and consoles himself with wonderful meals, especially local seafood.
Italophile mystery lovers will probably already know Donna Leon’s Inspector Brunetti series set in Venice and Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen, but perhaps you haven’t read Peter Elbing’s The Food Taster. Starving to death in the late medieval countryside, Ugo is a widowed peasant with a lovely daughter when he lands a new job. Tasting the delicacies prepared for his local lord is part dream come true, part potentially a fatal nightmare.
There are several givens in the mystery genre. We are often served red herrings for instance. In the mystery set in Italy, we are also served superb food.
On my most recent visit my niece-lets (cousins once removed takes too long both to write and to say) and I went for a four mile ride. More accurately, I walked along side trying to look like a responsible adult should such a creature be required. The horse clearly thought not.
We walked up lanes shouldered by hedges jewelled with blackberries (fruit not PDA’s I hasten to add in advance of wiseacres). We climbed a hill past an abandoned orchard to views of the North and South Downs and quilts of fields of varied green. We passed a cottage where a brown lab sprang as if by magic from a large dog flap, ran to his gate tail wagging furiously but didn’t bark. We scared up a brace or two of pheasant as we passed through a quiet farm.
There are two pheasants to a brace, one male, one female, if anyone cares. Thomas Hardy has a poem, Afterwards in which he wonders if he'll be remembered as a "man who used to notice such things". I like to be a woman learns such things.The Paston Letters are a medieval collection valued by scholars for their insights into family life and manor management of the period. This trip I learned that just above a horse’s hoof is the paston joint. I have also learned how to prune roses, how to roll pastry properly and discovered slipcote, a mild sheep’s milk cheese.
I first had it in a quiche at Sissinghurst, Vita Sackville-West’s famous garden, and then bought some at a farmers’ market. I used it in a salad of rocket (aka arugula), cress and lettuce which I dressed with vinaigrette and topped with the cheese, sliced beets and walnuts, and served with thinly cut slices of my aunt’s homemade bread buttered. Madam, lunch is served. Thank you, Jeeves.
I have been to a pub where they offer a platter of three different kinds of chips (French fries) as an appetizer. I have also been to a pub, The Red Lion in Horsted Keynes where I had roasted pork belly with a cider sauce, served with a salty wafer of crackling, gently wilted spinach and a timbale of potatoes. Pudding (dessert) was a champagne jelly encasing summer berries.
The first day of my trip we had lunch in the garden to the sound of sheep bleating in the next field. My last day came quickly. Hope is an act of imagination, someone, a poet or philosopher once said. I hope to have more weeks of summer in England.
Five for the Road
The best argument I have heard for the Kindle, Kobo or any other electronic reader is that it means you can take more books with you on a trip than you would normally carry. I am more afraid of finding myself without engaging reading material than being without suitable clothing, as proven by this trip, when in a fit of uncharacteristic optimism, I packed almost nothing warm. But I had five books on board and another three waiting for me (free shipping within the UK? Why not?).
This trip I read three novels set in my other favourite country to visit, Italy. Inspector Montalbano frequently breaks the rules in pursuing the truth of his cases, but wait, this is Sicily and there are no rules, except perhaps that of the nobleman in di Lampedusa’s The Leopard, who insisted everything must change in order to remain the same. Montalbano knows he wins battles, but never the war and consoles himself with wonderful meals, especially local seafood.
Italophile mystery lovers will probably already know Donna Leon’s Inspector Brunetti series set in Venice and Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen, but perhaps you haven’t read Peter Elbing’s The Food Taster. Starving to death in the late medieval countryside, Ugo is a widowed peasant with a lovely daughter when he lands a new job. Tasting the delicacies prepared for his local lord is part dream come true, part potentially a fatal nightmare.
There are several givens in the mystery genre. We are often served red herrings for instance. In the mystery set in Italy, we are also served superb food.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Empress of Ice Cream
Things lodge in your brain but aren’t understood for years. Years ago, in the throes of an excruciating break up this returned to me: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.” I don’t have a lot in common with Tennyson’s Ulysses, but suddenly I understood that, along the pulses as Keats would have it.
More recently I hosted one of my Wonderful Wild Women parties. To these I invite the many WWW that I know, but who perhaps don’t know each other. In honor of summer it was an ice cream and cake party. The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream. It’s taken me decades to get that.
I have a theory that everyone has a defining paradox. I don’t know what mine is and it would be impertinent of me to say what yours is. So here’s an example, from someone I don’t know and can’t offend: Ben Franklin said something to the effect that you should live as if each day were your last and as if you were going to live forever.
Prayer flags, ice cream and relationships have a lot in common. Prayer flags fulfill their function, in fact become prayerful flags by unraveling. Ice cream can only be enjoyed in circumstances fatal to its iciness. Relationships, well perhaps you see where I’m going.
But you want to know about the ice cream. I made five flavors: cream cheese (yes, sounds weird), cherry with fruit fresh from the Niagara peninsula, malteser with wholesome chunks of organic maltesers, peanut butter and chocolate (if peanut butter and chocolate were people they’d be blissfully con-joined twins), and coffee. I’ve never had a store bought ice cream that did justice to coffee. Homemade ice cream isn’t difficult, as with bread, it is more a question of time than skill, and the results are infinitely better than store bought. I made three cakes: a lemon poppy seed pound cake, a buttermilk cake, both from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Cake Bible, and a dense chocolate fudge cake.
I had hoped to make my party in the garden, but the weather thought otherwise and sent a monsoon. So we crowded into the living room. Conversation flowed, cake was had an eaten too, ice cream fulfilled its destiny and I felt truly joyous. So rarely and so lucky am I to be surrounded by so many caring, smart and kind women. When I first read the Wallace Stevens poem I remember tasking myself with remembering what concupiscent meant (lustful). Now I get the rest of it. It is a happy thing, if only to be had once a summer, to be an Empress of Ice Cream.
Overlooked (?) gems
When I find a writer I enjoy I make my way through their whole oeuvre. This can lead to disappointment – though it’s nice to know even great writers have some training wheels books. Sometimes a la Grey’s Elegy you discover that flower born to blush unseen.
Julian Barnes is most famous for Flaubert’s Parrot, but my favorite of his is England, England, a hilarious send up of the museum-ification of his home and native land. I would also recommend a slim volume, The Pedant in the Kitchen, about his adventures as a home chef.
Hilary Mantel is still topping the charts with her Booker winning Wolf Hall, but the book of hers that I would pack if exiled to a desert island is Beyond Black. Anyone can do tragedy. A lot of people can do comedy. A really skilful writer takes the reader the full 360 of experience. Hilary Mantel is a supremely skilled writer.
Anthony Burgess wrote many booky wooks, some would say too many, the most celebrated being Clockwork Orange. I spent two weeks at a northern Ontario fishing camp oblivious to black flies and impervious to boredom thanks to his Earthly Powers.
More recently I hosted one of my Wonderful Wild Women parties. To these I invite the many WWW that I know, but who perhaps don’t know each other. In honor of summer it was an ice cream and cake party. The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream. It’s taken me decades to get that.
I have a theory that everyone has a defining paradox. I don’t know what mine is and it would be impertinent of me to say what yours is. So here’s an example, from someone I don’t know and can’t offend: Ben Franklin said something to the effect that you should live as if each day were your last and as if you were going to live forever.
Prayer flags, ice cream and relationships have a lot in common. Prayer flags fulfill their function, in fact become prayerful flags by unraveling. Ice cream can only be enjoyed in circumstances fatal to its iciness. Relationships, well perhaps you see where I’m going.
But you want to know about the ice cream. I made five flavors: cream cheese (yes, sounds weird), cherry with fruit fresh from the Niagara peninsula, malteser with wholesome chunks of organic maltesers, peanut butter and chocolate (if peanut butter and chocolate were people they’d be blissfully con-joined twins), and coffee. I’ve never had a store bought ice cream that did justice to coffee. Homemade ice cream isn’t difficult, as with bread, it is more a question of time than skill, and the results are infinitely better than store bought. I made three cakes: a lemon poppy seed pound cake, a buttermilk cake, both from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Cake Bible, and a dense chocolate fudge cake.
I had hoped to make my party in the garden, but the weather thought otherwise and sent a monsoon. So we crowded into the living room. Conversation flowed, cake was had an eaten too, ice cream fulfilled its destiny and I felt truly joyous. So rarely and so lucky am I to be surrounded by so many caring, smart and kind women. When I first read the Wallace Stevens poem I remember tasking myself with remembering what concupiscent meant (lustful). Now I get the rest of it. It is a happy thing, if only to be had once a summer, to be an Empress of Ice Cream.
Overlooked (?) gems
When I find a writer I enjoy I make my way through their whole oeuvre. This can lead to disappointment – though it’s nice to know even great writers have some training wheels books. Sometimes a la Grey’s Elegy you discover that flower born to blush unseen.
Julian Barnes is most famous for Flaubert’s Parrot, but my favorite of his is England, England, a hilarious send up of the museum-ification of his home and native land. I would also recommend a slim volume, The Pedant in the Kitchen, about his adventures as a home chef.
Hilary Mantel is still topping the charts with her Booker winning Wolf Hall, but the book of hers that I would pack if exiled to a desert island is Beyond Black. Anyone can do tragedy. A lot of people can do comedy. A really skilful writer takes the reader the full 360 of experience. Hilary Mantel is a supremely skilled writer.
Anthony Burgess wrote many booky wooks, some would say too many, the most celebrated being Clockwork Orange. I spent two weeks at a northern Ontario fishing camp oblivious to black flies and impervious to boredom thanks to his Earthly Powers.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Kitchen Devils
Ann Hodgman wrote a cookbook called Beat This! The premise of which is that she has perfected the chocolate chip cookie, devilled eggs, meat loaf and so on. She invites her readers to ‘beat this’ that is to say send her an even better version. She can make anything better she says; she’d just add bacon and chocolate. (Weirdly I was recently presented with a tiny bar of chocolate and bacon, which disproved Ms Hodgman’s theory.) But the reason I started this meander is, like all cooks, I am looking for the Platonic Ideal of my favourite dishes.
I’ve found some. I will look no further for my ideal cheesecake. My niece Mei Anne will tell you that my macaroni and cheese bows only to the serving spoon. I have recounted here the path to the perfect pain de mie . . . However, I remember my dad saying he could never be a stamp collector because you could never have ALL the stamps. You can never have ALL the recipes but you can have an awful lot of them and worse luck, however careful (read anal) you may be, some will go astray. If there are kitchen gods, then I think there must also be kitchen devils.
Case in point, I found my perfect pasta puttanesca in an olive oil ad in Food & Wine magazine. Strange admission time: for years I have been cataloguing my cookbooks and magazines, i.e., the recipes I want to try and when this is done rating them, making notes about ingredient substitutions, etc. Imagine my frustration when I discovered that despite having years of back issues, in order, the one I want, October 1994 is missing.
When I began my catalogue of recipes I thought that I would eventually try them all. Instead, the culinary universe is expanding and the Kitchen Devil is abroad in the land. He let that magazine slip away with the recycling. The rice salad recipes my friend Lynda wanted? He has tucked them in the back of a cookbook containing something else I was cooking at the same time.
Perfection is the enemy of good. You hear that a lot lately. At the risk of sounding flippant, everyone’s got enemies. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” You hear that a lot too. What most people don’t realize is that the “speaker,” Browning’s Andrea del Sarto knows himself to be a failure, a cuckold and a cheat. Now I don’t think there is any shame in being a cuckold, but my point is I retain the vestiges of my girlish figure because I will only eat perfect cheesecake.
I will drive myself and anyone within 100 yards of me crazy, because I can’t find the rice salad recipes, not even on epicurious. I will mismanage my own system and discover that I’ve just made eight servings of a recipe I’d already tried and found wanting. The devil isn’t just in the details. He’s in us.
Beryl Wrote Gems
Beryl Bainbridge died July 2. The BBC interviewed someone, I think Kate Moss (the novelist, not the model – super models don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 and not at all for departed novelists, methinks). The BBC reporter asked her why she thought Bainbridge had never won the Booker, though she was short listed five times. Before Kate could respond I told my iPod the answer: her books were too short.
Short like diamonds are small, like a little semtex packs a big bang. Short like a well timed glance can cause gales of laughter and silent tears can reflect a howling grief. No doubt about it, Beryl’s humour is delivered on a sharp blade. Her characters aren’t often likeable, but they are human. And she conveyed it all in so few brush strokes.
My friend Carolyn introduced me to Beryl. She gave me The Birthday Boys, about the doomed Scott expedition, and Every Man for Himself about the Titanic for a house warming gift (a bit ominous, now that I think about it, but never mind, I loved them.) I was off. Off like a pig after truffles. Off like a Sandra after chocolate. Not pretty, but very satisfying.
Kate Moss said she thinks that in years to come According to Queeney, my favourite, Bainbridge’s account of Samuel Johnson’s last days and his patron Mrs. Thrale and her daughter, Master Georgie, which deals in part with the Crimean War, and The Birthday Boys will be recognized as works of genius. I agree. Perhaps as we survey the consequences of excess, politically, environmentally, and fiscally, the zeitgeist will make more room for small treasures.
I’ve found some. I will look no further for my ideal cheesecake. My niece Mei Anne will tell you that my macaroni and cheese bows only to the serving spoon. I have recounted here the path to the perfect pain de mie . . . However, I remember my dad saying he could never be a stamp collector because you could never have ALL the stamps. You can never have ALL the recipes but you can have an awful lot of them and worse luck, however careful (read anal) you may be, some will go astray. If there are kitchen gods, then I think there must also be kitchen devils.
Case in point, I found my perfect pasta puttanesca in an olive oil ad in Food & Wine magazine. Strange admission time: for years I have been cataloguing my cookbooks and magazines, i.e., the recipes I want to try and when this is done rating them, making notes about ingredient substitutions, etc. Imagine my frustration when I discovered that despite having years of back issues, in order, the one I want, October 1994 is missing.
When I began my catalogue of recipes I thought that I would eventually try them all. Instead, the culinary universe is expanding and the Kitchen Devil is abroad in the land. He let that magazine slip away with the recycling. The rice salad recipes my friend Lynda wanted? He has tucked them in the back of a cookbook containing something else I was cooking at the same time.
Perfection is the enemy of good. You hear that a lot lately. At the risk of sounding flippant, everyone’s got enemies. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” You hear that a lot too. What most people don’t realize is that the “speaker,” Browning’s Andrea del Sarto knows himself to be a failure, a cuckold and a cheat. Now I don’t think there is any shame in being a cuckold, but my point is I retain the vestiges of my girlish figure because I will only eat perfect cheesecake.
I will drive myself and anyone within 100 yards of me crazy, because I can’t find the rice salad recipes, not even on epicurious. I will mismanage my own system and discover that I’ve just made eight servings of a recipe I’d already tried and found wanting. The devil isn’t just in the details. He’s in us.
Beryl Wrote Gems
Beryl Bainbridge died July 2. The BBC interviewed someone, I think Kate Moss (the novelist, not the model – super models don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 and not at all for departed novelists, methinks). The BBC reporter asked her why she thought Bainbridge had never won the Booker, though she was short listed five times. Before Kate could respond I told my iPod the answer: her books were too short.
Short like diamonds are small, like a little semtex packs a big bang. Short like a well timed glance can cause gales of laughter and silent tears can reflect a howling grief. No doubt about it, Beryl’s humour is delivered on a sharp blade. Her characters aren’t often likeable, but they are human. And she conveyed it all in so few brush strokes.
My friend Carolyn introduced me to Beryl. She gave me The Birthday Boys, about the doomed Scott expedition, and Every Man for Himself about the Titanic for a house warming gift (a bit ominous, now that I think about it, but never mind, I loved them.) I was off. Off like a pig after truffles. Off like a Sandra after chocolate. Not pretty, but very satisfying.
Kate Moss said she thinks that in years to come According to Queeney, my favourite, Bainbridge’s account of Samuel Johnson’s last days and his patron Mrs. Thrale and her daughter, Master Georgie, which deals in part with the Crimean War, and The Birthday Boys will be recognized as works of genius. I agree. Perhaps as we survey the consequences of excess, politically, environmentally, and fiscally, the zeitgeist will make more room for small treasures.
Friday, June 25, 2010
In Full Flour
To make pizza at home requires some equipment that you won’t otherwise have much call for. (Not that I have much call for madeleines and I’ve got a pan for those, and a cast iron one that makes little corn breads in little corn cob shapes; it weighs a ton as one of my less fortunate toes can attest – but I wouldn’t be without either of them.) So if you are thinking about making pizza think about getting a peel and a baking stone.
Then there is the question of heat. The classic wood fired pizza oven reaches temperatures the domestic oven only dreams of in a rage. I read recently that some people use the self-cleaning setting to bake pizzas at home. The whole idea of “self-cleaning” is as ludicrous to me as scrubbing bubbles and age defying creams, I mean, don’t you just wish inanimate objects had such good intentions? Yes, I mean you, roll of tape with no apparent beginning. Anyway, I say 550◦ is plenty hot.
Great pizza starts from the bottom up and the night before (true of so many things, no?) though I began the pizza pictured here at 7:30 in the a.m. I am told that really good pizza dough rests over night in the fridge. This was pretty darn good, which I attribute to the flour, Antimo Caputo tipo 00. My friend Elizabeth says it is available in Little Italy, but I ordered it from Forno Bravo.
My previous attempts at pizza have been stymied by the dough’s elasticity. I’d shape it, turn my back to gather my toppings and discover my circle of dough had gathered itself back into ball with a yeasty harrumph.
I let this dough rise in the fridge about nine hours, then divided it and let it come to room temperature for about an hour and a half before shaping it. Here’s where I need to improve my technique. My pizzas were thin in the middle almost to the point of tearing, but still too thick at the edges. I’ve since watched a couple of You Tube videos and will take up the dough again shortly. As soon as those bubbles have tidied up the kitchen . . .
Me, Impressed
Last October I had a delightfully spooky experience. I got to swim lengths in Johnny Weismuller’s favourite pool in his hometown, Chicago. The present day Intercontinental Hotel embraces an earlier hotel built in 1929 which included the pool at the then dazzling elevation of 13 storeys. Salad or fries? How many times have you watched someone virtuously choose salad and then not eat it? Hotel pools are like that. That’s why I love them.
Entering this Art Deco playground is like walking into an amphitheatre made of Spanish tiles instead of marble. At one side of the pool is a ceramic fountain filled with ferns. The other side is raked and fitted with tables and chairs so the audience can watch swimmers while getting watered. Except no one is there. Send in the Sandra.
I kept thinking of that setting as I made my way through Me, Cheeta the autobiography of Tarzan’s best friend. Yes, I said autobiography. The story is told by the chimp to complex effect. Scientists tell us that the act of observation influences the outcome of experiments, but this Hollywood insider has the animal advantage of in no way inhibiting the behaviour of those he observes. His misunderstandings of human motivation are funny and poignant by turns. Or does he misunderstand?
Cheeta sees human hierarchies as paralleling that of the chimp pack, hard to argue with; and always refers to Jane Goodall as attractive. Cheeta dislikes Chaplin, Rex Harrison, and Maureen O’Sullivan. He views himself as ground breaking comic actor, deserving of the Academy’s first Oscar for Best Animal in a Comic Role – one of the most powerful parts of the book is his imagined acceptance speech. The heartbeat of the book is Cheeta’s love for Tarzan/Weismuller. That you believe in with aching certainty.
I wish I had time to read this book again and eventually I will in the vain hope of puzzling out just how he did it.
Then there is the question of heat. The classic wood fired pizza oven reaches temperatures the domestic oven only dreams of in a rage. I read recently that some people use the self-cleaning setting to bake pizzas at home. The whole idea of “self-cleaning” is as ludicrous to me as scrubbing bubbles and age defying creams, I mean, don’t you just wish inanimate objects had such good intentions? Yes, I mean you, roll of tape with no apparent beginning. Anyway, I say 550◦ is plenty hot.
Great pizza starts from the bottom up and the night before (true of so many things, no?) though I began the pizza pictured here at 7:30 in the a.m. I am told that really good pizza dough rests over night in the fridge. This was pretty darn good, which I attribute to the flour, Antimo Caputo tipo 00. My friend Elizabeth says it is available in Little Italy, but I ordered it from Forno Bravo.
My previous attempts at pizza have been stymied by the dough’s elasticity. I’d shape it, turn my back to gather my toppings and discover my circle of dough had gathered itself back into ball with a yeasty harrumph.
I let this dough rise in the fridge about nine hours, then divided it and let it come to room temperature for about an hour and a half before shaping it. Here’s where I need to improve my technique. My pizzas were thin in the middle almost to the point of tearing, but still too thick at the edges. I’ve since watched a couple of You Tube videos and will take up the dough again shortly. As soon as those bubbles have tidied up the kitchen . . .
Me, Impressed
Last October I had a delightfully spooky experience. I got to swim lengths in Johnny Weismuller’s favourite pool in his hometown, Chicago. The present day Intercontinental Hotel embraces an earlier hotel built in 1929 which included the pool at the then dazzling elevation of 13 storeys. Salad or fries? How many times have you watched someone virtuously choose salad and then not eat it? Hotel pools are like that. That’s why I love them.
Entering this Art Deco playground is like walking into an amphitheatre made of Spanish tiles instead of marble. At one side of the pool is a ceramic fountain filled with ferns. The other side is raked and fitted with tables and chairs so the audience can watch swimmers while getting watered. Except no one is there. Send in the Sandra.
I kept thinking of that setting as I made my way through Me, Cheeta the autobiography of Tarzan’s best friend. Yes, I said autobiography. The story is told by the chimp to complex effect. Scientists tell us that the act of observation influences the outcome of experiments, but this Hollywood insider has the animal advantage of in no way inhibiting the behaviour of those he observes. His misunderstandings of human motivation are funny and poignant by turns. Or does he misunderstand?
Cheeta sees human hierarchies as paralleling that of the chimp pack, hard to argue with; and always refers to Jane Goodall as attractive. Cheeta dislikes Chaplin, Rex Harrison, and Maureen O’Sullivan. He views himself as ground breaking comic actor, deserving of the Academy’s first Oscar for Best Animal in a Comic Role – one of the most powerful parts of the book is his imagined acceptance speech. The heartbeat of the book is Cheeta’s love for Tarzan/Weismuller. That you believe in with aching certainty.
I wish I had time to read this book again and eventually I will in the vain hope of puzzling out just how he did it.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
The Queen of the Carbs Meets Quinoa
Starch. When most people are planning a meal, they plan it around the protein. Me, I plan it around the starch. Crown me the Queen of Carbs, without them I simply don’t feel full. Where I would be wary of sampling an exotic fish (I’m squeamish about the bones), or cautious when considering an unfamiliar fruit, tell me about a noodle or grain I haven’t tried and I’m there, fork at the ready.
This isn’t to say I’ve never met a carb I didn’t like. I’ve never cottoned on to kasha. I will never forget the hiking trip in the Outer Hebrides where my companion would put a quantity of bulgur in a margarine container with some water before we set out. By lunch time it was sufficiently softened for her to eat. She also ate apple cores. Enough said. Happily the bulgur ran out and we fortified ourselves from little brown paper bags filled with shortbreads and oatcakes purchased at the various villages we passed through. Happy days. Farro is a high protein grain that sustained the Roman legions and is still popular in Italy, but not with me. So too soba noodles.
Pasta, potatoes and pancakes, they are all great things to build meals around, but even I can tire of these three princes, particularly now that the weather is turning warmer. Last year I made several nice rice salads: one with chicken and a lemon dressing garnished with pistachios, another with proscuitto and asparagus, but quinoa is my new favorite starch for summer.
This tiny grain looks rather like couscous, but takes considerably longer to cook. Every recipe I have tried requires you to boil it then steam it. It’s easy and worth it. If you don’t already have a fine meshed strainer that fits over a pot, this is a good reason to get one.
Like all good starches, quinoa is happy to be a vector for a variety of flavors. My most successful experiments have included dressings of melted butter and a citrus juice, combine with this with cooked corn, chopped scallions and mint and you have an ideal summer side dish that will keep well in the fridge for a couple of days. The dish in the banner picture uses lime juice, black beans, scallions, tomatoes and coriander. Bonus, quinoa is suitable for people who are gluten intolerant.
Library of the mind
I heard an interview recently with Apichatipong Weerasethakul winner of the 2010 Palme d’Or for his film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. To paraphrase, he said memory is fragmentary.
This struck me forcefully because with Father’s Day approaching, I have been trying to recall my dad. I was going to make this post about food we’d shared. He’s the man, after all, who taught me how to fry an egg. I remember him coming home from work on a cold night with redskin peanuts in a bag in his overcoat pocket still hot from the roaster. I remember a meal in Boston, my first time having lobster bisque, and the gist of what we talked about, and a dream that didn’t come true. I remember a richly sauced dish he made of partridges with pears and picking out the buckshot—fragments, literally and metaphorically.
More fragments: the smell of pipe smoke on wool, a grey cardigan I never remember him not having. He spoke Trevor, a basso profundo grumble that I had to translate for my friends. He laughed reluctantly, volcanically.
He gave me books. I remember one book of limericks that I’m sure he thought had been inspired by Edward Lear, but to his horror hailed from somewhere near Nantucket. The book I think of when I think of my dad is R. M. Ballanytne’s Martin Rattler.
Born in Edinburgh in 1825, Ballantyne is the granddaddy of dangerous books for boys (and the daughters of enlightened fathers). He lived a Boys’ Own Life. His father went bankrupt and died. At 16 he signed on with the Hudson’s Bay Company in order to support his mother and sisters and sailed for what became Canada. He spent most of his seven years here in cargo canoes, collecting furs from outposts.
Based on those experiences he wrote a series, The Young Fur Traders and Ungava. His most famous work Coral Island appeared in 1857, Martin Rattler the following year and believe it or not, is still in print. These are books about plucky youngsters in sticky situations and threatening environments.
In the Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim explains that the purpose of fairy tales, at least traditional ones, is to warn children that there are dangers in the world, but at the same to instill in them the belief that if they are sufficiently clever, calm, patient, hard working – you pick the adjective, they can overcome, perhaps even triumph. Isn’t that a parent’s job too?
My dad enchanted me with Kipling’s Just So Stories and Treasure Island. My dad taught me that in an emergency you can use a Brazil nut for a candle. I have long awaited a suitable opportunity. This bit of survival lore probably came from Martin Rattler, along with my fear of anacondas. Catastrophes have out numbered triumphs, but better to light a Brazil nut than curse the darkness. My dad, I miss him.
This isn’t to say I’ve never met a carb I didn’t like. I’ve never cottoned on to kasha. I will never forget the hiking trip in the Outer Hebrides where my companion would put a quantity of bulgur in a margarine container with some water before we set out. By lunch time it was sufficiently softened for her to eat. She also ate apple cores. Enough said. Happily the bulgur ran out and we fortified ourselves from little brown paper bags filled with shortbreads and oatcakes purchased at the various villages we passed through. Happy days. Farro is a high protein grain that sustained the Roman legions and is still popular in Italy, but not with me. So too soba noodles.
Pasta, potatoes and pancakes, they are all great things to build meals around, but even I can tire of these three princes, particularly now that the weather is turning warmer. Last year I made several nice rice salads: one with chicken and a lemon dressing garnished with pistachios, another with proscuitto and asparagus, but quinoa is my new favorite starch for summer.
This tiny grain looks rather like couscous, but takes considerably longer to cook. Every recipe I have tried requires you to boil it then steam it. It’s easy and worth it. If you don’t already have a fine meshed strainer that fits over a pot, this is a good reason to get one.
Like all good starches, quinoa is happy to be a vector for a variety of flavors. My most successful experiments have included dressings of melted butter and a citrus juice, combine with this with cooked corn, chopped scallions and mint and you have an ideal summer side dish that will keep well in the fridge for a couple of days. The dish in the banner picture uses lime juice, black beans, scallions, tomatoes and coriander. Bonus, quinoa is suitable for people who are gluten intolerant.
Library of the mind
I heard an interview recently with Apichatipong Weerasethakul winner of the 2010 Palme d’Or for his film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. To paraphrase, he said memory is fragmentary.
This struck me forcefully because with Father’s Day approaching, I have been trying to recall my dad. I was going to make this post about food we’d shared. He’s the man, after all, who taught me how to fry an egg. I remember him coming home from work on a cold night with redskin peanuts in a bag in his overcoat pocket still hot from the roaster. I remember a meal in Boston, my first time having lobster bisque, and the gist of what we talked about, and a dream that didn’t come true. I remember a richly sauced dish he made of partridges with pears and picking out the buckshot—fragments, literally and metaphorically.
More fragments: the smell of pipe smoke on wool, a grey cardigan I never remember him not having. He spoke Trevor, a basso profundo grumble that I had to translate for my friends. He laughed reluctantly, volcanically.
He gave me books. I remember one book of limericks that I’m sure he thought had been inspired by Edward Lear, but to his horror hailed from somewhere near Nantucket. The book I think of when I think of my dad is R. M. Ballanytne’s Martin Rattler.
Born in Edinburgh in 1825, Ballantyne is the granddaddy of dangerous books for boys (and the daughters of enlightened fathers). He lived a Boys’ Own Life. His father went bankrupt and died. At 16 he signed on with the Hudson’s Bay Company in order to support his mother and sisters and sailed for what became Canada. He spent most of his seven years here in cargo canoes, collecting furs from outposts.
Based on those experiences he wrote a series, The Young Fur Traders and Ungava. His most famous work Coral Island appeared in 1857, Martin Rattler the following year and believe it or not, is still in print. These are books about plucky youngsters in sticky situations and threatening environments.
In the Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim explains that the purpose of fairy tales, at least traditional ones, is to warn children that there are dangers in the world, but at the same to instill in them the belief that if they are sufficiently clever, calm, patient, hard working – you pick the adjective, they can overcome, perhaps even triumph. Isn’t that a parent’s job too?
My dad enchanted me with Kipling’s Just So Stories and Treasure Island. My dad taught me that in an emergency you can use a Brazil nut for a candle. I have long awaited a suitable opportunity. This bit of survival lore probably came from Martin Rattler, along with my fear of anacondas. Catastrophes have out numbered triumphs, but better to light a Brazil nut than curse the darkness. My dad, I miss him.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
When Your Road Doesn’t Lead to Rome
This is about love. This is an admission of failure. I love, I mean really, really love spaghetti carbonara. I have tried many, many recipes, including Marcella Hazan’s. The results have ranged from reasonable to greasy pasta with scrambled eggs.
I have ordered spaghetti carbonara in many restaurants, sometimes with disturbing results. The strangest (to me) in Aigues-Mortes where it was served with a raw egg yolk on the half shell nestled in the middle, as if it were pasta tartar.
The Platonic ideal of this dish is available to everyone, well everyone in Rome anyway, at the Grotte Del Teatro Di Pompeo. This is reputedly the site of Mark Anthony’s oration over the aerated body of Julius Caesar. The restaurant has been there since Pompey’s Theatre, on the ruins of which it is built, closed – so don’t worry, it will still be there when you go, but what to do about the carbonara in the meantime?
Here is what I do. This is not spaghetti carbonara, but it is a satisfying approximation. I read this recipe in an article about what chefs make for themselves after a long night in the kitchen. I have made it with Philadelphia cream cheese when I couldn’t get mascarpone. It works in a pinch.
Set a pot of salted water to boil for your pasta. In a heat tolerant bowl whisk an egg together with about three tablespoons of mascarpone, a pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper. While your pasta cooks hold the bowl just in or above the boiling water and continue to whisk. You want the cheese to melt and the egg to thicken, but not scramble. As the sauce cooks throw in some grated parmesan. When the pasta is cooked reserve a few tablespoons of the pasta water and add it to the sauce. Toss the pasta in the bowl with egg and cheese mixture. Garnish with more parmesan and, for “true faux” carbonara, some bits of crispy bacon or pancetta. Alternatively, it would be nice with half a cup of cooked and drained peas.
Friends, would-be Romans, it isn’t spaghetti carbonara, but to mix up my Shakespeare, ‘tis enough, t’will serve – as many as you like, just use an egg per person and scale the pasta and cheese accordingly.
Hardy’s luck
Dickens is often faulted for his reliance on coincidence. And I must say my life’s been short on serendipitous encounters with benefactors, but I have experienced at least one distinctly Dickensian coincidence. A few years ago I was telling Naomi I had stumbled on a book that I was really enjoying. “It’s just like Dickens,” I told her. She said she was reading something she just hated because, “It’s just like Dickens.” We were both reading Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda.
Now that I’ve told you that story, I’m reminded of the incident in Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat where two drunken friends share a hotel room. In the dark they climb into the same bed. Each man thinks he is in his own bed with a stranger. “There’s a man in my bed.” “There’s a man in my bed too.” A fight ensues. They both end up on the floor. “My man chucked me out.” “So did mine.” It’s not a very good hotel they conclude.
That sort of thing happens a lot. The other day at the gym I was trying to divert Steve from our next set of torture. I said I loved Thomas Hardy. Steve made a face. I feared pinky-only dead lifts would follow. He’d been made to read Tess in high school and hated it. What a shame! The place to start with Hardy is Under the Greenwood and Far from the Madding Crowd. Then, I know you won’t, but honestly, he’s a tremendous poet.
Hardy wrote cinematically before there were cinemas. I am thinking of the scene in Madding Crowd when Bathsheba and Gabriel struggle to save Boldwood’s hayricks from the rain and can only see each other by flashes of lightning. I am thinking of young Jude considering life, flat on his back in a field on a hot day looking through the interstices of his straw hat.
I know what you are thinking. It’s warm kidney salad all over again. And it’s a fair cop. Still, I hope you will take a wander through Wessex, in Hardy's early summer it is particularily fine.
P.S. We are all full of contradictions and to prove my own case, having said I don't make cakes that require icing, I made the cake pictured in the banner for Naomi's birthday. (She asked for 'elaborate' and it was more photogenic than spaghetti.)
I have ordered spaghetti carbonara in many restaurants, sometimes with disturbing results. The strangest (to me) in Aigues-Mortes where it was served with a raw egg yolk on the half shell nestled in the middle, as if it were pasta tartar.
The Platonic ideal of this dish is available to everyone, well everyone in Rome anyway, at the Grotte Del Teatro Di Pompeo. This is reputedly the site of Mark Anthony’s oration over the aerated body of Julius Caesar. The restaurant has been there since Pompey’s Theatre, on the ruins of which it is built, closed – so don’t worry, it will still be there when you go, but what to do about the carbonara in the meantime?
Here is what I do. This is not spaghetti carbonara, but it is a satisfying approximation. I read this recipe in an article about what chefs make for themselves after a long night in the kitchen. I have made it with Philadelphia cream cheese when I couldn’t get mascarpone. It works in a pinch.
Set a pot of salted water to boil for your pasta. In a heat tolerant bowl whisk an egg together with about three tablespoons of mascarpone, a pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper. While your pasta cooks hold the bowl just in or above the boiling water and continue to whisk. You want the cheese to melt and the egg to thicken, but not scramble. As the sauce cooks throw in some grated parmesan. When the pasta is cooked reserve a few tablespoons of the pasta water and add it to the sauce. Toss the pasta in the bowl with egg and cheese mixture. Garnish with more parmesan and, for “true faux” carbonara, some bits of crispy bacon or pancetta. Alternatively, it would be nice with half a cup of cooked and drained peas.
Friends, would-be Romans, it isn’t spaghetti carbonara, but to mix up my Shakespeare, ‘tis enough, t’will serve – as many as you like, just use an egg per person and scale the pasta and cheese accordingly.
Hardy’s luck
Dickens is often faulted for his reliance on coincidence. And I must say my life’s been short on serendipitous encounters with benefactors, but I have experienced at least one distinctly Dickensian coincidence. A few years ago I was telling Naomi I had stumbled on a book that I was really enjoying. “It’s just like Dickens,” I told her. She said she was reading something she just hated because, “It’s just like Dickens.” We were both reading Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda.
Now that I’ve told you that story, I’m reminded of the incident in Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat where two drunken friends share a hotel room. In the dark they climb into the same bed. Each man thinks he is in his own bed with a stranger. “There’s a man in my bed.” “There’s a man in my bed too.” A fight ensues. They both end up on the floor. “My man chucked me out.” “So did mine.” It’s not a very good hotel they conclude.
That sort of thing happens a lot. The other day at the gym I was trying to divert Steve from our next set of torture. I said I loved Thomas Hardy. Steve made a face. I feared pinky-only dead lifts would follow. He’d been made to read Tess in high school and hated it. What a shame! The place to start with Hardy is Under the Greenwood and Far from the Madding Crowd. Then, I know you won’t, but honestly, he’s a tremendous poet.
Hardy wrote cinematically before there were cinemas. I am thinking of the scene in Madding Crowd when Bathsheba and Gabriel struggle to save Boldwood’s hayricks from the rain and can only see each other by flashes of lightning. I am thinking of young Jude considering life, flat on his back in a field on a hot day looking through the interstices of his straw hat.
I know what you are thinking. It’s warm kidney salad all over again. And it’s a fair cop. Still, I hope you will take a wander through Wessex, in Hardy's early summer it is particularily fine.
P.S. We are all full of contradictions and to prove my own case, having said I don't make cakes that require icing, I made the cake pictured in the banner for Naomi's birthday. (She asked for 'elaborate' and it was more photogenic than spaghetti.)
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