Butternut Squash Soup

Five years ago, last month, a woman named Shauna commented on this blog.  I had just begun to write again after the accident that changed my life—when I was hit by a car while jogging and fractured my skull and pelvis, tore the tendons in my left knee, and lost my sense of smell.  I began to write again after the headaches and vertigo receded enough to let me focus my eyes on a computer screen for more than a few minutes.  As it is, I don’t remember much of that autumn.  So I’m glad I did decide to again write on this space, even if my attempts were shaky, sugar-coated efforts to convince myself that I was okay.  I’m glad that I heard from Shauna.  

Shauna wrote to tell me about an experience she had with a car accident, and how it ultimately changed her life.  For the better, she wrote.  For the better? I remember thinking.  No way.  It would be the same for me, she said.  “Your smell will come back.  The pain will ease.  And you’ll be a better cook, a better writer, and a much more alive person once you’ve survived this.  Time, my dear.  Time.” 

The searing pain that I experienced for weeks after the accident, the kind that enveloped and consumed me, radiating up from my bones, had very recently ceased to be a part of my day-to-day when I heard from Shauna that first time.  It was more like a light fog around the periphery of my experience, a constant low thrum easy to ignore.  Enough time had passed for that, at least.

I wanted to believe that she was right.  But I couldn’t really move, I could barely read, and I certainly couldn’t smell.  I knew I wouldn’t be able cook, not in the way I wanted.  Shauna’s words were kind but also kind of crazy, I thought.  But later, in an email, she passed along a quote: 

"Let everything happen to you,

beauty and terror.

Just keep going.

No feeling is final."

It’s a quote from Rilke.  She had it taped next to her computer, she said.  I copied it onto a yellow Post It and stuck it onto the top ridge of my laptop, too.  Then, whenever I sat down to write, I paused to read it again.  And though I’m not a “quote person,” not a saying person, not even really a Rilke person, you know what?  It helped.  That little reminder (nothing lasts forever!) helped me to move on and through.  Today—now years since I last experienced that kind of pain and believed that I would never, ever be okay—it still helps. 

This is a roundabout way of getting to my point: Shauna, as my grandmother would say, is a mensch.

And Shauna has been up to a lot these past few years.  She’s been writing.  Cooking, too.  Her second book, Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, just hit the bookstore shelves across the U.S.  Today she has rounded up a group of bloggers to share some gluten-free recipes for Thanksgiving.  And these days, I have a lot for which to give thanks.

Now, I eat plenty of gluten, a type of protein found in most grains and cereals.  If I could be a healthy human on a diet that consisted solely of bread and cheese, I would.  I’ve never had to contend with the restrictions of those with celiac disease like Shauna.  But I’d like to share a recipe in her honor, one for my favorite butternut squash soup, which is completely gluten free.

I’ve made this soup for my family's Thanksgiving dinner for years.  I made a batch last weekend, too, and served it as the first course of a dinner party.  It’s light and creamy, rich with both roasted and simmered squash, and with just a bite of pepper.  Thomas Keller, who originally published this recipe in Bouchon, serves it with browned butter and little leaves of frizzled sage.  Though delicious, I find those additions a bit too fussy.  I think it’s perfect with a dollop of cold nutmeg crème fraiche plopped right onto its steamy orange belly.  

Butternut Squash Soup with Nutmeg Crème Fraiche

Adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks, Bouchon

1 3 – 3 ½ pound squash

2 tablespoons canola oil

Salt and pepper

2 sage sprigs

1 cup thinly sliced leeks, white and light green parts only

½ cup thinly sliced carrots

½ cup thinly sliced shallots

½ cup thinly sliced onions

6 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

2 tablespoons honey

6 cups vegetable stock

1 bouquet garni, which consists of 8 thyme sprigs, 2 Italian parsley sprigs, 2 bay leaves, ½ teaspoon black peppercorns, all placed in cheesecloth and tied up in a bundle with kitchen twine

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

¼ cup crème fraiche

pinch of nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.  Cut the neck off the butternut squash, and set aside.  Cut the bulb in half, scoop out and discard seeds.  Brush with 1 ½ teaspoons canola oil, on both the inside and out.  Season liberally with salt and pepper.  Tuck a sprig of sage within each open bulb, place the cut side down on the baking sheet, and roast for an hour.

Remove the squash from oven and let cool.  Scoop out the flesh and set aside.  Meanwhile, peel the skin off of the rest of the squash.  Cut its flesh into ½ inch pieces.  You should have around 4 cups.

Place the remaining tablespoon or so of canola oil into a large stockpot set over medium high heat.  Add the leeks, carrot, shallots, and onions.  Cook, stirring frequently, for about 6 minutes.  Add the cubes of raw squash, the garlic, 1 ½ teaspoons salt, and ½ teaspoon pepper.  Cook for 3 minutes, stirring.  Then, add the stock and the bouquet garni and bring the pot to a simmer.  Cook for around 15 minutes, until the squash is tender.  Now, add the reserved roasted squash and simmer together for around 30 minutes, to let the flavors meld.  Remove from heat and take out the bouquet garni.

Now, puree the soup in a blender in batches, or, as I do, in the pot with an immersion blender.  Thomas Keller recommends that you run the soup through a strainer to remove any chunks or impurities.  I don’t think it’s necessary.  But do taste the soup for seasoning, and add salt and pepper to taste.

To complete: place the crème fraiche in a bowl and whisk it vigorously until it holds small little peaks.  Season with nutmeg to taste.  Place a dollop of the crème fraiche onto the top of every bowl of soup.  Enjoy!

Updated 11/25/10: The 4 tablespoons of butter in the recipe can be used in the final stages of preparing this soup.  Originally, I omitted this step, though kept the butter in the ingredient list (apologies!).  To use: Before serving, melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.  Watch it carefully as the foam subsides, and then turns a golden brown.  Don't leave it on the heat for too long, just long enough to color and smell nutty and rich.  Pour the browned butter into the pot of soup and stir, or spoon it individually over each bowl.  

Lemon Tart

On Sunday night Matt and I threw a dinner party.  There were eight guests in total.  They trickled into our home in twos and threes soon after dusk, and we crowded around the two tables pushed together in the center of the living room floor.  It was a big crowd for our already small apartment, which seemed immediately to shrink in size.  

Most of our guests were friends of Matt’s from graduate school.  They came along with their husbands, wives, or dates, and, in one case, the cutest one-year-old little boy.  Many were in the military—active duty officers who have, like Matt, been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan or both.  Even though I’ve been with Matt for three years, including a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan, and have been spending inordinate amounts of time thinking about the military, about military families, and what it means to serve, I will admit: I was intimidated.  What do you cook for a group of people who have done so much?  Who have seen things I can hardly imagine?

As it turns out, I cooked what I would normally cook for an overwhelming number of people crammed into a small space: dishes easy to make ahead.  Butternut squash soup.  Coq au vin.  An arugula salad and a bunch of crusty bread.  To finish: a lemon tart and a plate of chocolate bouchon.

As I sit here writing this post now, days later, I’m thinking about why, exactly, I felt so intimidated by this dinner party.  In the week leading up to it, I focused my anxiety on the menu.  But I’m pretty sure that wasn’t it.  After all, I’ve cooked for that many people many times before.  I've cooked all those dishes before.  But never for so many veterans.  Not for their families, too.  And as today is Veterans Day, I think that’s something important to address.

My experience of war and deployment has been a solitary one.  When Matt was in Afghanistan, I lived alone in Brooklyn.  A hip neighborhood in Brooklyn.  As far from the front lines as one can go.  I’m almost embarrassed to say that before I met Matt, I knew no one who had fought in these wars, which have raged now for almost a decade.  I know I’m not the only one.

Until we moved to Boston where Matt met several fellow students from the Army, I had never spent any time around a military community.  I’d never really met people who understood the ups and downs of deployment, the triumphs and struggles of those who serve.  And for all of my talk about the disconnect between those in the military and civilians in America today—I wrote a little about it here; there have been other great articles published, like this one here—there I was, embodying that very separation with my jittery nerves.  I mean, these men and women are warriors.  They have experienced things I cannot comprehend.

This blog isn’t about the distance between the military and civilians during these wars, I know.  It’s about food and smell, and the memories and pleasure that come from them both.  But this is universal: there is little better than a group of people who feel connected, sitting around a table full of food.

And, as it turned out, there was nothing for me to worry about on Sunday night.  Everything went well.  The food was good and the company, even better.  Our guests were a hilarious bunch, really.  I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard. 

I’d like to write about all of the recipes from that night, because I love every single one.  Maybe I will sometime soon.  But to start: the lemon tart.  It’s a simple though intensely flavored dessert that I’ve made countless times with a recipe from Thomas Keller’s Bouchon.  The crust, which is made of pine nuts and butter, comes together easily in a Cuisinart.  The filling, a tart and creamy lemon sabayon, takes some arm power and a whisk, but ends up a beautiful pale yellow, light as a cloud.  

Lemon Tart

Adapted, barely, from Bouchon

Lemon Sabayon: 

2 large eggs, cold 

2 large egg yolks, cold 

3/4 cup sugar 

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice 

6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Pine Nut Crust:
You will only need one third of the dough from this recipe.  But with only one egg, it's hard to reduce the quantity of the finished product.  Freeze the extra for another time.
10 ounces (2 cups) pine nuts, (I toasted mine in a dry skillet beforehand)
1/3 cup sugar
1 pound (3 cups) all-purpose flour
8 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the crust:
In a food processor, pulse the pine nuts a few times.  Add the sugar and flour and continue to pulse until the nuts are finely ground.  Transfer to a large bowl.

Add the butter, egg, and vanilla extract and mix to incorporate all the ingredients (either by hand or with the paddle attachment in an electric mixer).  Divide the dough into three equal parts and wrap each in plastic.  Refrigerate for at least 10 minutes before using.  The two extra dough bundles can be frozen for up to a month.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Butter and flour a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom.  Refrigerate the pan while the oven warms up.  

Remove the tart pan from the refrigerator.  Using your fingertips, press the pine nut dough evenly over the bottom and sides of the pan.  Trim off any excess.

Bake the crust for 10 - 15 minutes and then rotate and bake for an additional 10 - 15 minutes, until the crust is golden brown.  Remove from the oven and let cool.

For the sabayon:
Bring a couple inches of water to boil in a pot that is just slightly bigger than the bowl in which you plan to make the sabayon. Meanwhile, in a large metal bowl, whisk the eggs, yolks, and sugar for 1 minute, or until smooth.

Set the bowl over the pot of boiling water and, using a large whisk, whip the mixture while you turn the bowl (for even heating).  After about 2 minutes, when the eggs are foamy and have thickened, add one-third of the lemon juice.  Whisk vigorously.  When the mixture thickens again, add another one-third of the juice.  Whisk until thickened.  Add the final one-third of the juice.  Continue to whisk vigorously, still turning the bowl, until the mixture is thick and light in color and the whisk leaves a trail in the bottom of the bowl.  This should take around 10 minutes total.

Turn off the heat but leave the bowl over the water.  Whisk in the butter, one piece at a time.  If the sabayon loosens, don't worry: it will thicken as it cools.  Pour the warm sabayon into the tart crust, and place on a baking sheet.

Preheat the broiler.  While the sabayon is still warm, place under the broiler.  Keep a very close watch, leaving the door open and rotating frequently for even browning.  This will only take a few seconds.  Remove the tart from the oven and let sit for at least an hour.  Serve at room temperature.

Season To Taste

Something exciting arrived in the mail today: the first galley copies of my book! 

I found the package sitting on the steps of my apartment building when I arrived home from the local library this afternoon.  I picked it up, and brought it upstairs.  At my kitchen table, I ripped open the envelope, pulled out the first copy, and held it in my hands.  I could feel the weight of its 320 pages, which smelled of fresh ink and crisp paper, on my palms.  My name is on the front.  My picture is on the back.  It’s real.  Please wait a moment while I hyperventilate. 

So here it is.  Season to Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way.  It’s being published by the wonderful folks at Ecco/HarperCollins.  Though it won’t officially be out until next summer (so far away, I know!), I’d love to share the jacket cover.  It’s original art by Janet Hill, a talented painter who lives in Canada and has a wonderful blog of her own.  I couldn't be happier.  

Brrr

On Anxiety, and Pie

Yesterday I wrote a piece about a pie.  It was a cute piece about Thanksgivings growing up and the mornings my father let me eat leftover dessert for breakfast as a little girl.  I had planned to post it here last night.  It included my favorite recipe for pumpkin pie, which I baked after running the half marathon last week, and then again the other day.  (It’s really that good.  I swear.)  Sweetened with maple syrup, the filling is creamy and light.  The crust is crunchy and thick with butter.

But then I had an anxiety attack.  Sitting at the table after dinner, my heart began to beat quickly.  There was a shooting pain in my left shoulder and arm, and I felt like I couldn’t breath.  I’ve never experienced anything like that before.  Terrified that something was terribly wrong, that my heart would explode, I waited for it to pass.  And it did.  Today I’m totally fine.  But there it is.  The anxiety is back.

Last year I was anxious all the time.  For good reason.  Matt was in Afghanistan and I was on deadline writing a book.  I was terrified that Matt would die, and that my writing was no good.  I felt positive that when Matt came home and I turned in the manuscript, I would never have anything to worry about ever again.  Ever!  Again!  My inner monologue would never raise its staccato pitch; I’d never wake up at 3 a.m. with that wild low thrum in the back of my mind.

Well, I was wrong. Duh.

I don’t know exactly what I’m anxious about right now.  I’m pretty sure that it involves finishing one project and beginning something else.  It probably has to do with living in a new city, around new people, doing new things.  There are the usual distractions: money and health insurance, therapy and exercise and love.  But when it comes down to it, I’m living in Boston with my boyfriend, who is safe and sound and whom I love.  My book is available to pre-order on amazon.com and my family is healthy and close.  I make a mean pumpkin pie.  I’m really lucky, I know.  But I’m also anxious.

And I thought I’d write about this rather than my memories of Thanksgivings past.  Not because I have a solution or even a plan for these feelings. There’s no tidy ending in sight. But after the wonderful things that have happened to me in the last two years - regaining my sense of smell, writing a book, Matt’s safe return from war - I’ve felt like my life has been neatly wrapped.  I was hurt and I recovered.  I was scared and now I'm safe.  Sometimes I feel like I have been tied so tight with a pretty pink bow that there is no more room for hurt or pain, confusion or anxiety. 

At least there’s always room for pumpkin pie.

Maple Pumpkin Pie

Adapted from Gourmet

Pastry Dough

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 ½ sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into bits

7 – 8 tablespoons ice water

Whisk together the flour and salt in a large bowl.  Using your fingertips, quickly blend in the butter until the mixture resembles a course meal.  Add the ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time, tossing with a fork or your fingers to combine, until the mixture begins to form a dough.  Pour the dough out onto the counter, and smear is around with the heel of your hand in a few forward motions to bring it together. Form into a ball and flatten into a disk.  Wrap in plastic and chill for at least an hour.

Filling

1 cup maple syrup (Grade B suggested)

2 cups canned pumpkin

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 ½ teaspoons ground ginger

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup heavy cream

2/3 cup whole milk

2 eggs

Remove the dough from the refrigerator.  On a lightly floured surface, roll it out with a rolling pin into a thin disk, a few inches wider than the pie plate you plan to use.  Place in the pie plate (I used a 10-inch), and then shape and crimp the overhang into an even decorative edge.  Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a heavy saucepan, gently boil the maple syrup until a small amount dropped into a bowl of cold water forms a soft ball, which is around 210 degrees Fahrenheit on a candy thermometer.  Let cool slightly. 

In a bowl, whisk together pumpkin, cinnamon, ginger, salt, cream, milk, and eggs.  Then, whisk in the maple syrup.  Pour into the pie shell.  You can brush the edge of the pie dough with an egg wash here—one egg yolk whisked together with a tablespoon of water—if you want. 

Bake in the middle of the oven for one hour, or until the filling is set but the center still shakes slightly.  (The filling will continue to set as the pie cools)  Transfer to a rack to cool completely.

In Chronological Order

 

13.1

On Sunday I ran a half marathon.  It was my first.  I learned a lot.

I learned that to get to a half marathon, one that is located in Lowell, one that begins at 8 a.m., one with a lot of traffic, you have to get up really early.  Four in the morning early.  I learned that eating one breakfast in the pitch-black pre-dawn and then another right before the 8 a.m. start is a good idea.  But I also learned that it would have been a better idea to pack something else, one of those high-sugar bars, one of those caloried Gu packets that I saw empty and littered all over the ground on the course, because halfway through my run I was hungry again.  Really hungry.  I learned that running among hundreds of people can be tricky, with all the pacing and passing and maneuvering curves.  I learned that I’m really competitive, even when I don’t mean to be.  I learned that pushing myself hard—harder than I expected—is painful.  But also awesome.  I learned that I love to run.  And that I don’t love to race.

So there you have it.  My first half marathon. I ran it in an hour and fifty-four minutes.  The little medal that they hung around my neck as soon as I finished is now hanging on my fridge.  I’m glad I did it.  I’m glad it’s done. 

When Matt and I arrived at home after the race on Sunday, I limped up the stairs, chugged some water, and I took a nap.  A long nap.  And then I got up.  And then I cooked.  My mother and her boyfriend, Charley, came over for dinner.  They brought a nice bottle of wine and a hunk of my favorite cheese.  I made Chicken Normandy, a lovely dish rich with apples, apple cider, brandy and cream.  I served it over puddles of creamy polenta and alongside green beans, which I simply sautéed in butter and seasoned with salt and pepper.  For dessert: pumpkin pie.  Whipped cream.  Sleep. 

Married

Last weekend, my friends Ben and Philissa got married.  Matt and I flew down to North Carolina for the event and stayed in a hotel near Chapel Hill, which was packed with Tarheel fans for the Saturday game.  It was warm down south—up into the 80s during the day, a sudden step back into summer.  It’s hard to imagine as I think about it now, sitting at my kitchen table in Cambridge, listening to the cold autumn wind whip past my window outside.

I had been to Chapel Hill once before.  I went with the future bride and groom for a weekend last summer, when Matt had already been deployed to Afghanistan for a few months.  It was a sweet gesture, bringing me on their trip to find a spot for the wedding.  I think they hoped to distract me from thoughts of war, to show me where Philissa grew up, to eat some good food.  I was perpetually anxious, however, and always on edge.  I’m not sure I was all that much fun.  I remember going on long runs through unfamiliar neighborhoods. The sky seemed always on the cusp of a storm.  While Matt was in Afghanistan, I had a hard time staying still.  

And despite going from venue to venue, farm to inn to antique home on that first trip, I had a hard time imaging that this wedding could actually take place.  To imagine that would mean to imagine the end of Matt’s time at war.  The months still left of his deployment seemed to span out before me forever right then.  We still had to get through the rest of the summer, and then the fall, and then the winter, and then the spring.  Hundreds of days of the constant unknown, the persistent fear, were still to come.  Imagining an end point seemed impossible. 

But then it happened.  Matt came home.  And now Ben and Philissa are married. 

The wedding was held outside at a country inn, among willowy trees and Bocce courts, a photo booth, a klezmer band and a whole of lot of family and friends.  The ceremony was beautiful and the reception fun. 

At the end of wedding, as the sun began to set and the day careened toward evening, Matt and I sat next to each other under the tent where they had served lunch.  I could hear laughter and a bit of music, the clanging of the caterers beginning to put away their wares.  The temperature was sinking fast, and the mosquitoes had just come out to bite.   The next morning we would have to wake up before 4 a.m. in order to make an early flight back to Boston.  But right there, right then, we just sat, his arm warm around my shoulders.  It’s easier, now, to stay still.

Applesauce

I took the apples that Matt and I picked last weekend and turned them into sauce.  My mother has been making homemade applesauce every fall since I was small, and now October doesn’t feel real if it doesn’t include a steaming bowl or two. 

 My mother’s recipe is simple—more like a technique, really—and doesn’t take much time.  It requires a food mill, which can be a pain.  But I’ve lugged mine around from apartment to apartment over the last five years just for this recipe here.  Not to overdo it on apples, autumn, and their aromas, but as this sauce cooks, the house fills with the welcome scents of cinnamon and nutmeg, the ripe sugar bouquet of long-baked fruit. 

I like to eat it warm in a bowl with a dollop of vanilla yogurt on top, carefully constructing every spoonful so that it includes a small portion of each.  It’s a magical combination, really – hot and cold, creamy and smooth.  As legend has it: this was the only way that my little brother would eat fruit for years. 

Applesauce

adapted from my mother

1 bag of apples (however many, whatever kind you want) (here, I used a mixture of McIntosh and Macoun)

2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half

ground cinnamon, to taste

ground nutmeg, to taste

1 food mill

Chop each apple in half, and then the halves in half, and then the quarters in half at 90 degree angles.  (Otherwise known as 8 chunks.)  Place in a large pot.  Add the cinnamon sticks and then a healthy dose of ground cinnamon, as well as a few shakes of ground nutmeg.  Add a quarter cup of water to keep the apples from scorching at the start.  Cook at medium-high heat, covered, until the apples begin to bubble away.  Turn down the heat to low, and let simmer until soft.  Then, run the mixture through the food mill, discarding the stem, seed, and skin detritus that is left behind.  Shake some additional ground cinnamon on top.  Serve with vanilla yogurt. 

Apples

Matt and I went apple picking last Sunday afternoon.  We picked Macouns, McIntoshes and Empires at an orchard in Harvard, Massachusetts.  It was chilly out, like fall is supposed to be, and I wore a thick yellow sweater that my grandmother gave me for my birthday.  The orchard store, where a blue grass band played live on the porch, was surrounded with the bright autumn colors of pumpkins and gourds. The air smelled of dirt, grass, and the vaguely fermented twang of wrinkled apples rotting on the ground. 

I thought about the first autumn after the car accident, the one when I could no longer smell.  Then, I watched the landscape change from the window of my bedroom at my father's house, where I recovered from knee surgery.  I could see the leaves fade from green to earthy shades of red and the grass wither and die.  But the season changed without me.  I could see it, but I couldn't feel it - not without the familiar scents of apple cider, butter crusts, and decaying leaves.  Like watching a movie, I was present but not participating.  Interested but not engaged.  The world was no longer as I recalled.

These apples that Matt and I picked this year are particularly delicious.  They are fresh and crisp, practically bursting with juice.  I've been eating a lot of them raw.  But last night I cooked pork chops with onions and apples, a recipe adapted from Martha Stewart online.  The chops browned in butter and oil, the onions and apples caramelized in the leftover fat.  Tonight I'm making an apple sauce, and then an apple pie. I'm happy to again possess fall.

U Pick

 

Road Food

I spent four days this past week in Maryland, skirting around the suburbs of Washington D.C.  While there, I did some research, conducted some interviews, and attended a fundraising event.  I drank a lot of coffee and ate way too many granola bars.  One night, while visiting with an old friend, I went out for Burmese food, which was good and spicy, and then out for a bunch of beers, which certainly took off the edge.  It was a good trip, a productive trip.  I’m happy I went.  But I drove there from Boston on Saturday, an epic 10-hour slog, and then back again Tuesday in the constantly spitting rain.  I never want to climb into a car again.

The drive on Saturday was especially rough.  I left early that morning feeling foggy and dazed.  The night before, Matt and I had a few friends over for dinner.  I cooked: spaghetti and meatballs, arugula salad with almonds and a balsamic vinaigrette, a tarte tatin.  A bit (well, a lot) of red wine.

The meal went well.  The meatballs were tender; the spaghetti sauce was rich and silky with a stick of butter.  I love a salad of greens and a simple vinaigrette, the crunch of toasted almond here and there. 

And the tart was good.  It wasn’t great.  It had the potential for greatness, yes.  I used a recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  La Tarte des Demoiselles Tatin.  An “especially good tart if your apples are full of flavor,” Child writes.  “It is cooked in a baking dish with the pastry on top of the apples.  When done, it is reversed onto a serving dish and presents a lovely mass of caramelized apples.”

But I was stupid.  I loaded the apples that I had peeled and thinly sliced—an entire 4-pound bag from the farmer’s market—along with the melted butter, sugar, and a blanket of pastry dough made from scratch, into a baking pan with a removable bottom.  A removable bottom? It seemed like a good idea at the time. I’m not sure why.  Because when I took the tart out of the oven, all bronzed and steaming a caramel autumn scent, I saw that all of the dense buttery goodness, the kind that should have clung to lowest layer of apples, almost candy-like, had seeped out onto the baking sheet.  Gone. 

Before I served the tart, I salvaged it with a dusting of powdered sugar and a few minutes under the broiler.  With a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, believe me, we were all okay.  But I fell asleep late that night feeling vaguely disappointed. 

Fast-forward to late on Tuesday afternoon, when, after the final hours of what felt like a never-ending drive—my legs in cramps from operating the clutch of my car in traffic, my stomach empty but for weak gas station coffee, my podcast supply severely diminished—I finally arrived home.  I parked, unloaded my bags, walked up the stairs to my apartment, and immediately opened the fridge.  There wasn’t much in there.  Nothing, really, but the remains of the tarte tatin.  It was few days old and quite stiff in its chill, but I cut a slice, sat down at my desk, and ate it with my hands like a piece of pizza. 

Now that was great.

A Long Week

 

 

 

 

 

     

State of the Book

I am sitting at my desk right now, a thick stack of paper on my lap. I'm rereading my book, beginning to end. Again. Page by page, chapter by chapter, I've read this book more than a dozen times. A million times, it seems. I can practically recite the entire thing. The words have become so familiar I can hardly see them; the sentences contemplated so often that their meaning fades in a moment, vaporous and fast. (I don't even want to know how my poor editor feels...)

But now the book has been written and edited and rewritten and copy edited and put into its first round of galleys. Not yet bound. But close. It's exciting and totally strange to see the typeface, the copyright, the dedication already inset. I saw the cover for the first time last week. It's a painting done by a talented artist. I can really only stare at it in disbelief.

The best part, though, is its new title: Season To Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way. Also, underneath it on the jacket cover: my name. My name on a book. A real live book. Who woulda thought?

Flatbread, Za'atar

On Saturday night, Matt and I threw a dinner party. All of our guests were graduate students. Some were there to break the Yom Kippur fast. Others, simply to celebrate an early autumn night away from school. At one point I realized that I was the only person in the room without an incomplete problem set looming over my head. (And I will admit: this I enjoyed.)

I cooked a lot for this party, beginning early that day. There was an heirloom tomato tart with caramelized onions, olives, and capers on puff pastry with edges a crisp golden brown. Short ribs braised in red wine, served over polenta creamy with butter and cheese. An intensely chocolate tart. Whipped cream.

That morning I relished the quiet hours bent over the stove with a wooden spoon, chopping onions on the counter, melting chocolate in a deep glass bowl in order to make a glaze. It was a beautiful day, and the kitchen was full of light. I concentrated on the colors and the textures of my ingredients. The clanking sound of fork and knife, the sizzle of meat in the pan. The slow, low scent of butter, sugar, and chocolate as the tart baked in the oven. There were moments, here and there, when I was sure nothing had been so vivid as the orange of that grated carrot, the smoky smell of that rib as it seared. The thought came often and unbidden: I love to cook.


As people filtered into our apartment, which glowed in the dusky light of gloaming around 7 p.m., we began by drinking red wine and sampling homemade hummus, scooped onto strips of the flatbread covered in za’atar that I had baked that afternoon, filling the kitchen with the scent of the Mediterranean, of the Middle East.

The chatter, the laughter, the taste of cumin and chickpeas lingering on the tongue—that’s when I remembered that even more than cooking, even more than the solitude of the senses at the stove, what I really love isn’t to cook: it’s to feed. I love when friends and strangers come together around a table laden with food. There’s nothing better over which to bond. There’s nothing more like home.


Flatbread with Za’atar
Adapted from Spice, a lovely cookbook by Ana Sortun

1 package (¼ ounce) active dry yeast
¾ cup warm water (between 110 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit)
¼ cup olive oil
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons za’atar*

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine and whisk the yeast and warm water. Let stand for around 10 minutes, until it begins a gentle bloom of foam.

Whisk in the ¼ cup olive oil and then the flour with ½ teaspoon of the salt.

Using the mixer’s paddle, stir on low speed until the flour is combined and a dough forms. Switch to the dough hook, and mix on medium speed for 7 – 8 minutes, until the dough is still sticky to the touch but stays on the dough hook in one piece.

Lightly oil a large bowl (glass or stainless steel) and put the dough within. Cover with plastic. Chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, or overnight. The dough should double in volume.

Two hours before baking, place the dough and 2 tablespoons of the extra virgin olive oil onto a baking sheet and cover again with plastic. Let it rest and rise for 1 ½ hours at room temperature.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Press the dough onto the baking sheet, using your hands to stretch and pull. It should make a flat 10x12-inch rectangle. Make dimples in the dough with your fingertips and brush it all with the remaining olive oil. Sprinkle the za’atar evenly over the entire sheet of dough. And then with ½ teaspoon salt.

Let the dough rest for 20 – 30 minutes more, uncovered.

Bake for 15 minutes, until golden on the edges and cooked through in the center. Serve warm. Preferably with hummus.


*I bought a container of za’atar—a Middle Eastern spice blend that includes the dried herb of the same name, which is a very green type of thyme, as well as sumac, sesame seeds and salt—at one of Ana Sortun’s restaurants, Sofra. Sofra, unlike Sortun’s first restaurant, Oleana, which is fancier dinner spot that I’ve also been to and love, is a causal bakery on the Watertown/Cambridge line. She serves breakfast and lunch foods, some of the best baked goods I’ve ever had. The last time I was there I couldn’t resist buying some of her spices – za’atar as well as a small container of Aleppo chilies. I have put them to good use.

Sprouts

Matt began graduate school the first week of September, just when I began to work on a big new project of my own. The long, slow days of summer came suddenly to a halt.

No more lazy weeks hiking in Maine or long bike rides near Plymouth. I’m still writing a lot, still cooking a lot, but everything is now scheduled into bite-sized bits; sudden movement and looming deadlines abound. It’s exciting. But a little sad, too.

On Thursday I scurried around Boston doing errands after a morning of work. Little errands. Doctor’s offices, hair salons and the Apple store—menial, mind-numbing things that I’ve been avoiding for more than a year, ever since I began writing my book. I found myself in Coolidge Corner, Brookline, around 5 p.m. in order to turn my eyeglasses into the shop for new lenses and a tune-up. While they worked I had an hour to kill. I spent it in the nearby bookshop, standing in an aisle with my bag on the ground, reading cookbooks: my favorite activity.

Mollie Katzen wrote the Moosewood Cookbook, that famous vegetarian tome published in 1977. Yesterday, I picked up one of her more recent books, The Vegetable Dishes I Can’t Live Without, which is sweet in its handwritten font and line-drawn illustrations. Flipping through, I stopped at the section for brussel sprouts, a vegetable that I love dearly, especially when roasted crisp with just a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Unfortunately, with this sentiment not everyone agrees. I’ve succeeded in converting my mother and her boyfriend, Charley, to the cult of sprout. I’m still working on Matt. Once I had a partial win with him, that time that I braised the brussel sprouts with bacon and balsamic vinegar. Bacon, after all, makes everything taste good. But I’ve been in the market for something a bit healthier.

Katzen, I read, sautés sweet onions and then adds the sprouts to a pot on the stove. She steams them until fork tender and then, just before serving, adds a maple and mustard sauce. Sweet and spicy. Easy and cheap. Quick, especially. Interesting, I thought.

Later that night, I began cooking at 8. It was raining, dark and heavy outside. Matt and I were starving and exhausted. Not even a glass of wine as I prepped dinner seemed to help.

I trimmed and halved the bag of brussel sprouts that I had picked up on my way home, put them straight into a pan hot with olive oil, and cooked them for a few minutes with salt and pepper until just beginning to brown. I added a splash of water and covered the pot. Ten minutes later, when they were tender and bright green, I added Katzen’s magic sauce: ¼ cup Dijon mustard, 2 tablespoons maple syrup. I let it cook for a few moments more, infusing the dish with its flavor.

We ate them alongside grilled chicken sausages with basil pesto, sauerkraut, and some fingerling potatoes, which I had roasted with olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary. Matt took seconds. We both felt a lot better.

New Year

Bread Pudding

On Thursday night last week, Matt and I attended a gathering to honor the sudden autumn weather and the start to the football season—specifically, the New Orleans Saints. It was a quick party, a flash-like dinner before heading to the bar to watch the game. Most attendees were New Orleans natives, transplants to Boston like Matt. They sure do love their city, their football team, their home turf. Who Dat.

Our host made po’boys, the classic New Orleans submarine sandwich often filled with meat or seafood, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. That night, plump little shrimp were fried in a batter of cornmeal and spices and stuffed into crusty French bread. We ate them with ketchup, and a cold beer. Then: dessert.

Rewind a few hours. Earlier that afternoon, when I was at home stalling over blank Word Documents and attempts to schedule reporting interviews on the phone, I decided to bake. Because, hey, why not. “Procrasticooking,” as someone told me on Twitter. I’m an expert.

I took a cookbook down from the shelf—The New Orleans Cookbook, by Rima and Richard Collin, which Matt’s mother had given me for Christmas the year before. I had never cooked from it before, I’m now embarrassed to admit. It’s not that I don’t love the food in New Orleans. I do. I’ve traveled to that dynamic, Caribbean-style city a handful of times since I met Matt. And since my first visit, I’ve been entranced. It’s a place filled with energy and flavor; its copious sensual pleasures come with the same fierceness as its pains. There was my first jambalaya, gumbo, crawfish étouffée; billowy mouthfuls of beignets and greasy bites of muffalettas stuffed with salami and olive paste; countless cherry-flavored sno-balls from a stand on the side of the road. I often think about the fried frog’s legs that Matt and I ate down south in Creole county, and my first bananas foster, which was flambéed tableside by a well-coifed waiter before being scooped it into our individual plates.

But my food experiences in New Orleans have been so memorable in part because they have had such strong ties to moments, to feelings, to place. I figured that it was pointless to cook anything from that city while living here in the North East – it just wouldn’t be the same.

But in honor of the evening’s event, I opened the cookbook and flipped to page 215. There, I read the recipe for something very simple, something I don’t normally eat, let alone make. It’s not indelibly New Orleans, or even Louisiana. But it’s classic, it’s easy, and it turned out pretty damn good: Bread pudding, New Orleans style.

The ingredients were quick to mix, bright colors against my deep blue pot. The pudding slid into the oven, cooked for an hour, and then emerged all bronzed and crusty. The recipe included canned fruit, which seemed strange to me at first glance, but, as the authors write, “that’s the local touch—it is sweeter than fresh and its syrup becomes part of the pudding.”

I made a sauce out of milk and eggs, butter and vanilla, cloves and sugar and brandy. Heating on the stove, it filled the apartment with a happy scent—like the autumn crackle in the air, like Christmas, a tipsy party prop.


Later that night we poured the sauce—a rich, pale gray—around thick hunks of pudding, warm in a bowl. Lined up in a row, they looked like a strange archipelago of islands, each with its own miniature castle, surrounded by a cloudy moat.


Bread Pudding
Adapted from The New Orleans Cookbook
(for eight or more)

3 cups milk
1 twenty-four inch loaf of day-old French bread, cut into 1 ½ - 2 inch cubes (about 12 cups)
1 can fancy fruit cocktail, cherries removed, drained
1 can peach halves, drained, cut into large chunks
2/3 cup raisins
¼ cup (half a stick) of salted butter, melted
4 large eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¾ teaspoon grated nutmeg
¼ teaspoon allspice
¼ teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Scald the milk in a heavy quart saucepan. Remove from heat and allow to cool for a few minutes. Then add the bread, fruit cocktail, canned peaches, raisins and melted butter. Mix. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and add the sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and salt. Mix thoroughly, and then add to the bread mixture and blend well.

Butter a 3 – 4 quart casserole dish (or baking dish, 3 – 4 inches deep). Pour the mixture within, distributing ingredients evenly. Bake uncovered for an hour and ten minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out cleanly, and the top begins to brown and develop a rough crust. Allow to cool to room temperature. Serve with brandy sauce.

Brandy Sauce
(makes about one cup)

3 large eggs
¼ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup (half a stick) salted butter, melted
¼ cup brandy
1/8 teaspoon cloves
½ cup milk

In heavy saucepan, beat the eggs thoroughly. Add the sugar, vanilla, and melted butter and heat slowly, stirring constantly, until the mixture begins to thicken. (I wasn’t sure how long to stir here, but ended up doing it for about ten minutes, until the sauce was pretty thick, like heavy cream). Remove the pan from heat and add the brandy, cloves, and milk, stirring constantly. Pour into a blender and blend at high speed for 1 – 1 ½ minutes, until the sauce has an even thicker, creamier texture. Serve over bread pudding.

On Running

I signed up for a half marathon. It’s in October, right when the autumn leaves will be at their peak color. When I hit the “pay now” button on the race’s website and officially committed myself with a token forty of my hard-earned dollars back in June, I had never run more than six miles at a time. But I was on deadline for my book and feeling somewhat desperate. Pushing myself physically seemed like a great idea. After all, I was already used to that constant thrum of anxiety in the base of my throat. Training for the race, I thought, would take my mind off of work and give me a goal beyond word counts.

I’ve been a casual runner for a long time. I love to be outside, to feel the sun on my shoulders, to let mind grow more and more blank with each beat of shoe against pavement. Even being hit by a car while I was jogging in 2005 right here in Boston, that infamous accident that caused me to lose my sense of smell, didn’t stop me. In fact, in many ways, it allowed me feel more powerful with each run. But crossing the ten-mile mark? Until this summer, it never seemed possible.

Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite novelists, wrote What I Talk about When I Talk About Running in 2008. I bought it when I was in New York last year, and devoured it in a day. He writes about his relationship with running—which, as a marathon runner and triathelete, is intense—and how it relates to his own writing.

“I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself,” he writes. “To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring.”

Me too.

I picked up Murakami’s book for a second time this week. I have been ramping up the distance on my runs, pushing myself to go just a bit farther each week. Sometimes it’s painful, but for the most part, I’m learning to let go. It’s the expectation of discomfort, I’ve found, that keeps me back. The book resonated with me even more in my second read. Murakami, after all, lived in Cambridge and writes of his runs on the same path as mine: along the Charles River.

Murakami is often asked what he thinks about when he runs. “On cold days I guess I think about how cold it is,” he writes. “And about the heat on hot days. When I’m sad I think a little about sadness. When I’m happy I think a little about happiness. As I mentioned before, random memories come to me too. And occasionally, hardly ever, really, I get an idea to use in a novel. But really as I run, I don’t think much of anything worth mentioning. I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.”

Me too.

Two weeks ago I ran fourteen miles in one go. It took more than two hours. Granted, I stopped halfway through for ten minutes in order to eat a banana and stretch my legs. But I did it. And along the way, I acquired quite a void.

I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing about running here, now. It has nothing to do with food or with smell, except for the fact that after I run I’m very hungry, and I’ve come to love the bursts of briny river scent that come at certain points in my running route. But I’ve been thinking a lot about writing of late – how to go about it, how to complete long projects, how to keep going after one book ends and another is just hanging a bit out of reach. I’ve been comparing it a lot to my runs. Murakami does too.

“Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day,” he writes. “These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate – and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? I know that if I hadn’t become a long-distance runner when I became a novelist, my work would have been vastly different. How different? Hard to say. But something would have definitely been different.”

But in the end, whatever running means, however it relates—or doesn’t—to writing, fiction or non, I have learned one thing: there is nothing better than a cold, cold beer and a plate of homemade enchiladas on the day that you first run fourteen miles. Chocolate ice cream is best served for dessert.