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More Thoughts on Catastrophe

• by Laura, January 13, 2010

Irene Nemirovsky
I have often asked myself how I can write about pasta and and matters of food while there are so many desperate and pressing issues in the world and people are suffering.  I ask myself, as a writer what is my responsibility?  I think about this all the time and struggle for resolution.  Today the news of Haiti’s earthquake raises the issue again along with the guilt of being safe while other people suffer so horribly.  My heart goes out to the people of Haiti who have suffered so terribly for so long.

Last year I read the beautiful unfinished novel by Irene Nemirovsky “Suite Francaise,” published 65 years after her death.  A Russian Jewish novelist living in France when the Germans were marching in during World War II.  As the campaign against Jews became clear, she understood she would soon die.  Before she was taken away she did two things: 1) arrange for her two daughters to be hidden and saved (they were) and 2) furiously write as fast as she could her ultimate novel.  It was to be a thousand pages long in several parts, yet she only finished a fraction of it before being taken to Auschwitz.  The events of the novel--documenting what she was witnessing as the Germans arrived--are incredibly sad and raise all the questions of human weakness and tragedy.  And yet her act of art, her act of writing on the brink of death was enormously optimistic.  She was a beautiful writer.

During this time, she kept notes where she mulled on her plans for this opus novel of hers.  She didn’t want to create a work that would be solely about the tragedies of World War II because she knew that ten years after the war, people wouldn’t want to think of the horrors any more.  What would endure and still matter in 2052, she asked, while writing in her notebook in the woods, waiting for her death.  And she answered herself:

“What lives on:

1.  Our human day-to-day lives
2.  Art
3.  God.”

I am so taken that someone amidst catastrophe and on the brink of death would understand that “our ordinary day-to-day lives” matter.  I suppose that when women write or paint about domestic life, they are addressing this enduring part of what it means to be human, and in this fact something deeply true.  And this helps me justify what I do.  Sometimes this in itself is art, and sometimes even a step toward what I imagine to be god. Still my questions remain not entirely resolved.

In the meantime what else is there to do but try to help those who suffer? 

If you’d like to help the victims of the quake, text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

Unicef has also appealed urgently for emergency assistance. Visit this link to help.

You can also help immediately by donating to the Red Cross to assist the relief effort. Contribute online here, or

Or, you can donate $10 to be charged to your cell phone bill by texting “HAITI” to “90999.”

Masher

Dining Room Table On The Garden

• by Nancy, January 12, 2010

Pierre Bonnard, Dining Room Table On the Garden, 1934-35
Pierre Bonnard, painter, lover of poetry, did most of the work emblematic of his mature style in his late fifties. It was during this time period that he moved with his wife, Marthe, whom you can barely see on the margins of the painting above if you look closely, to their house in the countryside of France. Out of the city, away from the noise and blur, he could contemplate the quiet domestic scenes flooded with color and light that fascinated him. I’ve been thinking a lot about color and light in my own paintings, coming to the conclusion lately that it is light and an unusual use of color - one that invites a poetic reading rather than a literal one - that most interests me. I’ve been looking at color everywhere, not only in painting, but in life all around me.


This tart I find particularly glorious. Look at the deep blue and gold and rose of those baked berries. There’s nothing else quite like that.


This is what I was thinking about when I painted this picture of the purple beans I grew in my backyard one summer. As I continue painting I would like to paint my emotional response to my subject; the essence of the thing and not the thing itself. It’s a process that I’ve only begun. Bonnard is quoted as saying that he wanted to portray the moment of walking into a room for the first time. If you turn from your computer and look behind you into your life, what do you see? A dining room table, a freshly baked tart, a handful of beans? Or is it the quality of the light and the colors it illuminates that will remain in memory long after everything else is gone?

Masher

Sunday Morning

• by Nancy, January 10, 2010

It’s a sunny Sunday morning, cold and bright. The furnace turned itself off in the middle of the night so I padded downstairs bundled up in a sweatshirt on top of p.j.’s and thick socks. Max was still sleeping. Bits of flour and dough were still on the table from the night before.


We made cinnamon buns from a recipe called “Overnight Sticky Buns” on Cooks Illustrated. I quietly got them out and put them near the radiator to warm once I got the furnace started again. Made a pot of coffee. Read email. Perused lists of grants for artists online. Trolled for a recipe for split pea soup for tonight’s dinner. Put the buns on the pizza stone to bake. Marked the pea soup recipe I chose finally with the green satin ribbon attached to my cookbook.


All I had to say was “Warm cinnamon buns,” and Max was down the stairs and at the kitchen counter in a moment. Good mornng.

Masher

Thing of the Day — Fennel Pollen

• by Nancy, January 09, 2010

This is what happened: I got Sara Jenkins’ cookbook, Olives and Oranges, which you can read all about by clicking the link at the end of this post. In it, I found a recipe for a loved one who has a childhood fondness for oyster stuffing. But what was this ingredient I spied in the recipe? Fennel pollen. At first I thought I had read it wrong, and that it must have read fennel powder. But no. It said pollen, and that I might find it at Il Buco in Manhattan. “Wild fennel pollen can turn a simple dish into something truly spectacular,” writes Jenkins. So I tracked it down like a sorceress in pursuit of a new potion and was delighted with the corked glass vial and its rustic paper tag tied on with coarse string and handwritten in Italian. The seedy, powdery stuff inside, gathered by hand from the flowers, is a delicate soft sage green color that speaks of leaf and blossom.The real delight, however, was revealed when I lifted the cork. A perfumed aroma wafted out with such strength I was taken off guard for a moment. The scent is kind of like holding a very pungent anise and fennel scented flower right under your nose. Imagine this, then imagine you are in the garden surrounded by hundreds of these flowers. This stuff is strong and beautiful, and when spread on vegetables or poultry and roasted, it intensifies and delivers an intoxicating flavor. Read more about it here. Try it. It’s a splurge but worth it. And if you can’t get to Manhattan, you can buy it online here.

see also: Why I Love Olives and Oranges

Masher

Vasilopita

• by Nancy, January 08, 2010

How could I, an avid baker, artist, and lover of all things with a global connection and a long thread into the past, have gone my whole life without hearing about a Greek New Year’s holiday that is celebrated with a buttery cake, and not only that, but with a prize for good luck hidden inside? Here is a photo of my friend, colleague, fellow mom and musician Erasmia with her Vasilopita (which I am told can be a cake, bread or even pie) half-eaten by a crew of celebrants. It’s delicious and surprisingly light, and more than that, carries with it tales and traditions that reach back into ancient memory and history. The tradition of the vasilopita celebrates St. Basil, who made good on his promise to the impoverished of Caesarea that he would make their greedy emperor repent and give back all the coins, heirlooms and jewelry he had demanded from them to pay excessive taxes. Since the task was daunting to return everything to the rightful owners, the story goes that all the treasures were baked into a cake that was then sliced up and shared among the people. The miracle is that supposedly each family received a slice of cake that contained exactly the treasures they had contributed. In commemoration today, a foil-wrapped coin is baked into the cake and the person who receives it has good luck for the year to come. St. Basil is also credited with generosity in the community, having set up an orphanage and hospital during his lifetime.


Mastiha
I was intrigued also by old recipes for the cake, which contain Old World ingredients, mahlepi (crushed, powdered sour cherry pits with a fruity taste) and mastiha (a jewel-like aromatic resin) I had never heard of, but which Erasmia says are still available at cool specialty shops. She wrote to me, “I didn’t know that mastihashop opened in Soho last year!” You can also get this ingredient as a liqueur. About the taste she writes, ”This is the mastiha that I remember as a child – I see now that it is mastic with sugar and corn syrup.  It’s easy to find, any Greek shop will have it (such as The Greek Store in Kenilworth, New Jersey.) As kids, we did not like the gum so much.” Erasmia also told me about how difficult it can be, as with most old recipes from other cultures, to get exact measurements. She writes, ”This blog shows pictures of the almonds decorating the top, and the recipe includes brandy, which was an important ingredient in my mom’s version. (I have to ask her to give it to me sometime – it’s in a very very old Greek cookbook (my grandmother’s) and the language is a little dated, so I don’t understand measurements, etc.” Erasmia’s version comes from a 1957 cookbook, which she shared with Jellypress.

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Masher

Why I Love Olives and Oranges

• by Nancy, January 07, 2010

I don’t want to complain endlessly about how the food world exasperates me sometimes because it is mostly overrun with poser celebrity chefs hamming it up like culinary clowns on their gimmicky TV shows featuring soulless recipes, more entertainment than substance. I’d rather turn my readers on to something real that makes me happy and this is one of those things. Every once in a while there comes along a great cook, and even better when that cook is possessed of a genuine and generous spirit and reaches out to share her gift. Such is Sara Jenkins, daughter of the food authority Nancy Harmon Jenkins. I met Sara at a party thrown by Saveur magazine where I was tagging along with Laura who had recently written for them. Lucky me. Not only was the party food exceptional and the company welcoming, but I was fortunate enough to be waiting on the buffet line next to Sara. We struck up a conversation during which she told me about her new cookbook with co-author Mindy Fox, Olives & Oranges: Recipes & Flavor Secrets from Italy, Spain, Cyprus & Beyond (Houghton Mifflin 2008). pictured above, and her restaurant, Porchetta, in downtown Manhattan. I was so impressed with Sara’s down-to-earth, modest demeanor and intriguing descriptions of her food and restaurant that I bought her cookbook online, sight unseen and hiked into the city to Porchetta as soon as I was able. Why do I love both so much? Sara has the kind of sensibility that knows what the word flavor means. The Mediterranean-styled recipes, of substantial soups, salads, entrees and sweets, yield dishes with flavors that are intensely nuanced and complex without being in the least difficult. She’s almost like a painter in the way she assembles a palette of flavors that meld beautifully. Her roast chicken, stuffed under the skin with sage, garlic and lemon peel, which was chosen for Saveur’s top 100 issue last year, is one of my favorites. Her tiny restaurant, practically a hole in the wall but with a clean, modern allure, is a treat if you love all things homey and rustic. You can read an interview with Sara here. And if you’re anywhere near NYC and you’re dreaming of a hot bowl of good soup, a crusty slice of fresh bread, melt-in-your-mouth pork, soulful beans, greens, and an exemplary biscotti, visit Porchetta.

Masher

Thing of the Day — Klee

• by Nancy, January 06, 2010

Around the Fish, 1926
Paul Klee
Today I was reading a book about Paul Klee, another of my favorite artists. His work related so beautifully to my last post, below, that I decided to share this painting and quote of his:
“It is not my task to reproduce appearances . . . for that there is the photographic plate. I want to reach the heart. In this way, we learn to look beyond the surface and get to the roots of things.”

see also: Thing of the Day — Chardin

Masher

Thing of the Day — Chardin

• by Nancy, January 05, 2010

Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin
“Still Life with Fish and a Copper Pot”
This is one of my favorite artists, the eighteenth century master of all things humble and home. The color especially resonates right now in the midst of the bleak beauty of another north-east winter. On the kitchen counter: the makings of a good dish, and more than that, the light of inspiration. Laura and I subtitled Jellypress “Old recipes, modern life.” Mostly people assume that this means we are bringing the old recipes with us into modern life, such as when I baked challah with my son who I wish to teach a connection to his ancestry and their old foodways. Laura and I talk about wanting to shed some of this goody-two-shoes image of being the dutiful daughters of the kitchen. So sometimes “old recipes, modern life” means breaking tradition, leaving the old recipes behind if that’s what’s necessary to move forward. This is what I’m thinking about a lot now in my painting, and especially when I look at the Chardin, which I cherish for its light and economy, but know that I can’t paint like that now. To bring that old recipe entire into the present would be to deny the present time, to look backward instead of forward. It also would be to deny the viewer the opportunity to enter the painting imaginatively, and it would deny the forward movement of painting from the moment it came into its own after the invention of photography.


This is what I was thinking about when I painted myself recently, a self-portrait from this photograph my son took of my back. I knew I couldn’t just copy it in the manner of Chardin, or any other old master, even though I am trained as a realist painter, fluent in the art of illusion. I wanted something more. Something like what Virginia Woolf wrote in her memoir A Sketch of the Past: “If I were a painter . . . I should make a picture . . . of things that were semi-transparent; I should make curved shapes showing the light through but not giving a clear outline. Everything would be large and dim . . .”


Instead I painted it like this. I hope you understand. It has, hopefully, the light of inspiration.

see also: Old recipe: Modern Child

Masher

A Good Night’s Dinner

• by Nancy, January 04, 2010

My son: if you read our posts often, you know he’s 12 and that I am a working single mom, a painter with a full-time gig. So some nights, anxious to get back into my studio, all I can manage is to coach him to get his homework done and microwave a bowl of canned soup for us. Tonight was different. My copy of the Gourmet Today cookbook arrived in the mail and leafing through it I got inspired. Here’s the homey plate of pork with balsamic glaze I made from it. I threw in carrots and substituted onions for the shallots (sorry, Ruth) To the book’s credit, it was easy and worked perfectly. Then I made my tried and true healthful mashed potatoes with lowfat milk and chicken stock and finished it with a little butter and salt. Admonished the delighted child, “Take human bites.” And plenty to be packed into lunch boxes tomorrow. 

Masher

Thing of the Day — My French Press

• by Nancy, January 04, 2010

I love my new French Press coffee maker. Here’s a photo of it pre-plunge. A lot of people have the glass ones, but I read recently about how the stainless ones keep the coffee hot longer. Yes they do. Ten minutes after plunging (and I know this since I am always rushing around in the morning and never quite getting to pour the coffee) it’s still piping hot. I went looking for old coffee recipes to post with this photo and came across cool ones for coffee cake on The Old Foodie. Back then, they baked in a hearth which was an overwhelming amount of work, and even though it’s wonderful to fire up my stove in a second rather than chop wood and work for hours with a tinder box to get a fire going, I still fantasize about how nice it would be to have a toasty hearth in my kitchen on a frosty ‘morn like this. It’s 32 degrees here in the east today and what they call “feels like 17.” Brrrr. Feeling pretty grateful for that hot cup of Joe just about now.

Masher

(Fabulous) Thing of the Day — Sea Salt Chocolate

• by Nancy, January 03, 2010

I’m having a love affair with specialty chocolates made with sea salt. This craving for sweet plus salty has been on chefs’ minds a lot recently, and one of the results are some incredible chocolates. If you are trying to cut back on all that’s sweet this January, as I hear some people are, you might find it satisfying to have a chunk of dark chocolate after a meal instead of cookies or cake. Works for me. Here’s two of my current obsessions: Hawaiian sea salt and burnt caramel chocolate from Chocopologie and Butter Toffee Infused with Welsh Sea Salt in chocolate from Chocolat Moderne. My son bought me these for my birthday. Aw! Ain’t that sweet?

see also: Thing of the Day — Black Walnut Shortbread

Masher

Thing of the Day — Black Walnut Shortbread

• by Nancy, January 02, 2010

Laura says she’s over all the holiday sweets. Not me. I never can tire of baking and sweet things, but that’s because I’ve got a baker’s soul, generations deep, and an athlete’s psyche, out on the street taking a run or riding my bike every day to compensate. So, with all due respect for the January buzz urging moderation in eating, here’s a photo of the black walnut shortbread I just baked. Black walnuts in particular are an obsession of mine. I wrote about them in my book Walking On Walnuts which is much more about old recipes and modern life, just like jellypress, than it is about walnuts. My favorite black walnut recipe comes from Sarah Belk, who wrote the fabulous cookbook Around the Southern Table. These cookies are like pecan sandies in texture, but in flavor, worlds beyond the ordinary. If you’ve never tasted a black walnut, do. They’re more intense, more darkly rich and more flavorful than other nuts, and though they need tempering with other ingredients to render them palatable to most people, they are sublime in that way that food lovers crave: singular, unrivaled, challenging to the adventurous. Their toughness to crack has made them legendary (there are stories of trucks being backed over them in order to open them, but I can’t confirm that . . .) Read about and buy them here. So I know it’s officially Get-in-Shape-and-Eat-Light January, but if you still want something sweet once in a while, try this recipe:

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Masher

One Badass Gingerbread Cake — Happy New Year

• by Nancy, December 31, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner. The search for the perfect gingerbread is over, and here is the winning recipe - a combination of an Edna Lewis recipe my sister sent to me, and “Grandmom Lindner’s Gingerbread” I found in a book. I am proud this New Year’s Eve to bring to you, yes indeed, One Badass Gingerbread. Here’s to a great 2010 for us all. And if you want, you can do what I have been doing for years. Make your list of the things you wish, dream and hope for in the coming year. Print it on a bright colored 3 x 5 card and hang it in sight somewhere in your home. Watch your dreams come true. And in the meantime, if you love to bake and love gingerbread, here’s the most badass of the badass gingerbreads:

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Masher

Thing Of The Day — Fresh Dough

• by Nancy, December 29, 2009

When I’ve had it with the holiday pressure and rush, this is one of the places I like to go: into my kitchen, up to my elbows in dough.

they dreamed of following in out of the light
to hear step after step

the heart of bread
to be sustained by its dark breath
and emerge

to find themselves alone
before a wheat field
raising its radiance to the moon.
Excerpted from “Bread” by W. S. Merwin, 1993.

see also: Thing of the Day

Masher

Calling All Gingerbread Detectives — Post-Christmas Update

• by Nancy, December 26, 2009

I just sent my boyfriend off to work with two giant foil-wrapped pieces of fresh gingerbread cake. How lucky is he to be the significant other of the obsessed baker-blogger? It’s day three of the search for perfect gingerbread and even though there’s still work to do to find the one true recipe, it sure was nice to have a plate of fresh gingerbread with warm lemon sauce for Christmas dinner dessert, whatever its shortcomings. You’d think I’d get tired of baking and tasting the stuff but I still can’t get enough. Good thing I’m on the stationary bike every day. Update: We have tried four recipes so far and procured the chefs’ molasses of choice, Steen’s Pure Cane Syrup, plus several jars of different types of molasses found at most supermarkets, among them “Grandma’s Original” and “Plantation Blackstrap.” We’ve also been out there on the ‘net looking around, and were not surprised to find that this holdiay gingerbread obsession is shared by a lot of us food bloggers. And we are happy to announce that we have a contender! The promising recipe, found by my sister, Janet, as I mentioned in my previous post, is pictured on the left: Edna Lewis’ Dark Molasses Gingerbread, adapted from The Gift of Southern Cooking, by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock (Random House, 2003.) On the right is a very good, well-spiced but lighter version from Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by the late Laurie Colwin (Harper Perennial, 2000.). So what do we do now? 

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