Tomato Kumato

February 3, 2010

I’m a Writer

Filed under: Cake Day, Cakes — Tags: , — emiglia @ 3:38 pm

The conversation is inevitable: after a few minutes of talking to a new group of people, of asking “What can I get you to drink?” and “So, where are you from?” comes the question I so loved a year ago, but that now I dread.

“What do you do?”

I take a sip from my glass. I pause. I try to decide if I should just make a joke and say I’m “funemployed” and let that be the end of it. But I suck it up. “I’m a writer,” I answer.

“Oh! Wow!” They say appreciatively, nodding. I hold my breath. The worst is still to come.

“What do you write?”

And that’s where I stop being able to answer. What do I write? Well… it all depends…

Every day, I blog. I write about things that people should be buying and places that people should visit. Never mind that I don’t buy most of the stuff I tell people to buy and I haven’t been to a great majority of the places that I research… that’s what I do, every day. And I do it in French.

I write about the places I’ve lived, like Paris, the one that stole my heart, and San Francisco the one that got away, for they are my inspiration, my muse. I write about my home of New York-Toronto-Cannes-San Sebastian-Paziols-Westhampton. Paris. sigh.

I write restaurant reviews. Somehow I got famous for this one in San Sebastian, where people, I think, had lofty visions of me being a female Calvin Trillin. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I generally get paid less per review than it costs me to go to a place, which means that 99% of the time, I only review places I was planning on going anyway: dive bars and cafés.

I do translations. I write other people’s resumes, cover letters and letters to the French bank (quelle horreur). I write letters to people I like and Facebook messages when I don’t have time, energy, stamps or stationery. I write recipes, as you all know by now. I write telephone messages. I write movie reviews. I write query letters… lots and lots and lots of query letters. I write some good stuff, but I also write a lot of bullshit. I’m OK with that, I think.

But when my fingers are aching for a pen and I answer distractedly to people’s direct questions. (”Em, you want pizza or Chinese for dinner?” “Uh… um… just a sec. One sec. One sec. Wait. What was the question?”) When I get an idea in my head that won’t shake free, when I remember why I chose this as a job: sitting at my desk with an endless cup of coffee that I microwave every few hours when I forget about it, trying to ignore Twitter so that I can actually get down to work… That’s when I write novels. Above all else, I’m a novelist; my heart lies in other people’s stories, in characters so real that I find myself falling in love with the good ones and promising them happiness and crying when I finally break their hearts on page 256.

“What do you write?” they ask. I want to answer… but I usually just shrug.

“You know. Stuff.”

Gingerbread (Culinary Concoctions by Peabody)

Peabody serves this with cream cheese frosting, which I’m sure is a dream. I chose to top mine with a Speculoos spread that isn’t available in the States, but if you ever find yourself in France, pick up a jar… it’s divine.

1 1/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon ground Ginger
1 teaspoon ground Cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup  (1 1/2 sticks)  butter, softened
3/4 cups sugar, divided
1 egg
1/3 cup molasses

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a brownie pan and set aside.

In a small bow, mix flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.

In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar in large bowl with a whisk until light and fluffy. Beat in egg until well blended.  Gradually beat in flour mixture until well mixed. Stir in molasses. Spread evenly in prepared pan.

Bake 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan 15 minutes, then remove from pan and finish cooling on a wire rack. Spread speculoos spread over the bars. Cut into bars.

January 28, 2010

Apple-Cream Cheese Bread

Filed under: Cake Day, Cakes, Quickbreads — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 6:54 pm

“Is there anything you can’t make?” The Artist asks me as she sits in a chair in my kitchen watching me put the finishing touches on an Indian feast one of my first nights back in Paris.

The Artist and I met for the first time at my Thanksgiving celebration last year, where she waxed on and on about this Pumpkin Tarte Tatin that has become a staple at my Thanksgiving table, going so far as to make it for her boyfriend, even though she only cooks tortillas and Kaiserschmarrn.

I thought about it for a moment. “Really simple things…” I answered, reaching for a dish towel to move one pot to another burner and stirring with the other hand.

“For awhile I didn’t like my tomato sauce… and I still can’t make latkes.” I kept thinking for another moment as I made a spice blend for the dal. Suddenly, it hit me.

“Bread,” I answered. “Anything with a yeast dough.”

I know it’s not an uncommon difficulty, but for me, it’s a very frustrating one. I bake all sorts of quickbreads, muffins and cakes with ease, and then the second I try to mix yeast, flour, water and salt, four simple ingredients, all Hell breaks loose and I end up with a rock-hard-on-the-outside, kind-of-raw-on-the-inside ball of tasteless yuck.

Oh well… someday I’ll figure it out, maybe. Until then, I can content myself with being good at this: I do love a nice quickbread, and this one is no different. It’s very light in texture–my father compares it to the inside of a cupcake. It’s all gone now, so I assume that’s a compliment.

Apple-Cream Cheese Bread

1-1/4 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 pinch freshly ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/4 tsp. cardamom
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
2 large eggs
2/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 apple, chopped
1 8 oz. block of Neufchatel cheese (or regular cream cheese)
1/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a baking pan (I used a tart pan and an 8×8 brownie pan) by greasing the interior and lightly dusting with flour. Set aside.

Combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, combine the melted butter and sugars with a wooden spoon until well combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix until completely encorporated and slightly lighter in color. Add the applesauce and vanilla to the wet ingredients and mix to combine.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet, mixing until just combined. Add the apple and fold into the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared vessel of your choosing.

Combine the cheese with the remaining brown sugar, and dollop in small amounts over the top of the batter. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the cake is set in the middle. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then remove to a rack to finish cooling.

January 21, 2010

Au Revoir

Filed under: Salad, cheese — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 4:08 pm

“When you went home this time, I had a feeling you weren’t coming back,” he says when I tell him, finally. I’ve only just admitted it to myself: the next step is saying it out loud, and who else to say it to than my best friend, this extension of me who, by now, knows everything about me, just because I needed someone for this exact purpose: to hear the truth said out of my very own mouth so that I can finally start to believe it myself.

“I didn’t,” I reply. “But I ran out of options.”

“I know.”

***

When I lived in Paris, I very rarely did things that most people consider to be “Parisian.”

My visits to the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay were relegated to the handful of weekends I had out-of-town visitors who clambered to see the famous paintings I took for granted. My strolls through the Jardin de Luxembourg were the exception, not the rule, of my daily excursions to God-knows-where. And while my friends and I were known for uniting on most evenings over a bottle (or five) of wine, these were enjoyed barefoot on the floors of our apartments, scattered across the city, and not at the Café de Flore as we waxed on about existentialist theories clad in black and berets.

Why, then, am I overcome with the overwhelming urge, now, to watch any and every movie about Paris and reminisce. I watch La Maman et la Putain and imagine myself at les Deux Magots smoking endless Gauloise cigarettes with Jean-Pierre Léaud, though I never sat for even one minute at the famous brasserie, forgoing it for cheaper dive bars further down the Seine. I am glued to my screen as Chansons d’amour plays before me, and I imagine myself having Sunday lunch in la Bastille even though I know my true Sunday lunches were, more often than not, either taken in Breuillet at Alex’s parents’ hotel, or else not at all, as we slept off Saturday night’s events well into Sunday afternoon.

When I left Paris, I forbade myself from doing any of these things in my last few days there. I didn’t want to have “one last” walk around my favorite neighborhood of Montmartre, “one last” meal at the brasserie that Emese and I had visited countless times. My last trips to spicy soup, to the cinémathèque du Quartier Latin, to the vintage shops in the Marais… I wanted all of it to be genuine, for the memories I associated with these places to be real, and not that forced reminiscence that comes when you leave a place, trying to accumulate memories, like so many souvenirs. That is, after all, the word in French for memory: un souvenir.


“Comment peut-on s’acheter un souvenir ?” I often asked myself as I watched people purchase handfuls of cheap trinkets with “Paris” emblazoned on them to stuff in their suitcases and bring home. How can they be attempting to buy memories? I had judged it pathetic and sad and therefore forbade myself from what I judged as similar strolls down memory lane. Trying to glean all that was esoterically Paris in a last-minute dash attempt was lame and sad and wrong, especially when I was so convinced that I would return. Paris, after all, was my home. I had a plan, a way that I would force my dreams to come true… I just hadn’t laid all the groundwork yet.

“When you went home this time, I had a feeling you weren’t coming back,” he said, and as I heard it, my heart broke.

For whatever reason, now isn’t the time. I have to accept it, because there’s honestly nothing else I can do about it. For whatever reason, the universe has come together to decide that right now, in this moment, I will not be in Paris. My parents have made it easy for me to stay in New York, I’ve cut all major ties with the people who used to pin me to that city that I so fell in love with. Funny, how quick I was to try to leave when it was within my control, and now that it’s been taken from me, I feel as though I’ve been broken up with.

I can plan and pray as much as I want, but even I’ve come to terms with the fact that September in Paris is not in the cards for me.

I’m not sorry about those last few days in Paris: sure, it would have been nice to take one last walk along the Champs-Elysées, to pop the cork of one last bottle of cheap Champagne in front of the Eiffel Tower. But on the other hand, it’s nice to only have those genuine memories, the ones I created when my days in Paris seemed limitless. It’s nice to have left Paris, not by saying adieu, but au revoir, until we meet again.

I can’t say for sure when that will be. I like to think it will be sooner rather than later, that now that I’ve committed myself to staying in the States, the perfect opportunity will arise, as it often does when you’re least expecting it, and I’ll be back at Charles de Gaulle airport once again, walking out into that cloud of billowing cigarette smoke to find a taxi who will take me to my familiar péripherique, to where I can finally see all those twelve-story buildings that make up the blocks of the city that stole my heart away from New York.

But I can’t say for sure when that will be, or if Paris will ever be my home again. I don’t think my mother thought, when she left Paris more than twenty years ago, that her last flight out would be the last time she would call it home, but now she’s a New Yorker, through and through, and she won’t live there again.

I guess my only regret is the fact that I had it: for one brief moment, I lived in Europe, everyone’s dream. My backyard was the Boulevard St-Germain, my playground the Jardin de Luxembourg. I snacked on baguette and quenched my thirst with Bordeaux. I lived in France, and it’s gone… at least for now.

I’m embracing everything that is, now. I don’t want to feel this sort of regret when, someday, I leave New York or Argentina or anyplace else for that matter–this irksome itch that says that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t take full advantage of the fairytale life I was leading. I am living every day for today, because I never know when the “last day” will creep up on me again, and I’ll be left, once more, with mere memories of a place and a time that used to be normal, of a place that was, for a moment, my chez moi, my everything, my home.

As for the food, I offer you today something that I no longer have access to: one of those perfectly French things that can be picked up at your local Monoprix along with the milk and eggs, but that once you’re back in the States is a remarkable delicacy : Cabrichaud au Lardon.

If you, like me, now, don’t have access to this perfect specimen of cheese, get some bacon and wrap it around flattened rounds of goat’s cheese. It’s not exactly the same, but it will still be delicious.

Salade de Cabrichaud au Lardon

1 package of Cabrichaud au Lardon OR 4 rounds goat’s cheese and 4 slices of bacon. (To prepare: flatten the goat’s cheese gently with the palm of your hand. Wrap each slice in raw bacon.)
1/2 head green leaf lettuce
1 peach
2 tsp. olive oil
1 tsp. cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
salt and pepper

Heat a nonstick frying pan over medium heat. Add the cheese to the pan and cook without moving, two minutes per side.

Meanwhile, combine the oil, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper in a jar with a lid. Shake to combine.

Toss the lettuce with the vinaigrette in a large bowl, and then distribute between two plates. Section the peach, and arrange the slices amongst the greens. Remove the hot cheese from the pan and place on top of the bed of greens. Serve immediately with a cool glass of white Bordeaux.

January 12, 2010

Lime-Raspberry Quickbread (Lactose free!)

Filed under: Cake Day, Cakes, Quickbreads — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 10:53 pm

I think I should set up an office in a train.

I can have a seemingly perfect setup at home: a desk, a bottomless cup of hot coffee, headphones, a blanket… and I’ll still sit in front of the screen, the cursor blinking at me, taunting me. So I distract myself with something else–one of my myriad of freelance jobs or a webcomic or messing around in the kitchen for awhile–and my characters stay in suspended animation in their unsaved wod document, waiting, waiting, waiting for me to get back to them.

But be it a half-empty subway car, the New Jersey transit train that takes me from Penn Station to Princeton, the LIRR that I ride home from the Hamptons, the RER C that I used to take out to Breuillet on the weekends, or the five-hour train ride that I so love—the one that takes me from north to south, from my beloved Paris to my beloved Cannes–the second I set foot on a train—any train—I’m scrambling for a pen and a notebook or the inside cover of a paperback or a crumpled receipt (or even my arm, as some of you may remember all too well) to jot down sentences and half-baked thoughts that I’ll come back to later, when I have time to think. When my hand has time to catch up to my racing brain.

I notice when I reread what I’ve written that the ideas I was sure about–the ones I had already been chewing in the back of my mind–are clear and sure. The things I don’t know about yet, the word vomit that spills so fast that I can hardly get my hand to write fast enough before the words are gone, that writing is riddled with errors, barely legible. I hope I can read it, when I finally sit down at sunrise and decode purple scribbles on the lined pages, crawling from within, their prison like vines on an iron gate. This is what I write when I’m on the train.

A billboard in Belleville : one must be wary of words.

A billboard in Belleville : one must be wary of words.

It’s not just stories–it actually hardly ever is. Most of the thoughts I write on the train are detached from any other reality. Sometimes they’re phrases, descriptions of things I never realized I’d thought of before. Sometimes they’re characters–someone who doesn’t yet have a place in any of the worlds I’ve created, but who, someday, may integrate themselves somewhere. Whatever it is, it’s not until I bring it home that I realize what I intended.

Trains are also where I do some of my best thinking: this cake, for example, was envisioned on board a train, when I was trying to decide what to make for a lactose intolerant friend. I scribbled a bunch of things in the margins of the recipe I’d printed, and by the time I’d arrived home, it was easy as pie. Or cake, as the case may be.

Lime-Raspberry Quickbread (adapted from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody)

1 ½  cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 1/4 cup plain soy yogurt
1 1/3 cups sugar, divided
3 extra-large eggs
2 tsp grated key lime zest
½ tsp pure vanilla extract
¼  cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup lime juice
1/3 cup raspberry jam, heated with a bit of water until pourable

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a loaf pan.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium sized bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the yogurt, 1 cup sugar, the eggs, lime zest, and vanilla. Slowly whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Fold the vegetable oil into the batter.

Pour half the batter into the prepared pan. Spread raspberry jam evenly over the batter. Add the remaining batter on top of the raspberry jam.

Bake for about 50 minutes, or until a cake tester placed in the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Meanwhile, cook the 1/3 cup lime juice and remaining 1/3 cup sugar in a small pan until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is clear. Set aside.

When the cake is done, allow it to cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Carefully place on a baking rack over a sheet pan. While the cake is still warm, pour the lemon-sugar mixture over the cake and allow it to soak in.

January 11, 2010

Carrottes Râpées

Filed under: Salad — Tags: , — emiglia @ 11:08 pm

I get this odd sort of satisfaction from performing relatively mundane everyday tasks. I used to think that it was linked to language, that it was the satisfaction of employing phrases I had practiced over and over again in class in the real world.

“Combien coûtent les tomates?” I would casually ask the market vendor at Place Maubert Mutualité, even though I have mountains of tomatoes sitting on my counter at home.

“Donde se puede alquilar un bici?” I would finally ask the lady who works at the front desk at my language school in San Sebastian after practicing in my head over and over, even though I probably wouldn’t end up renting a bike: I like walking too much, even in the rain, and if I ride a bike, I won’t be able to wear my dresses, which are better in the rain… the hems of my jeans get too wet.

“Deux baguettes, ’sil vous plait,” with a smile and an obligatory five-second conversation about the weather to the woman who runs the tiny épicerie in Paziols.

I had taken this explanation for my otherwise strange elation at asking these simple questions in stride; I had become aware of the fact that when I walked away from a social situation with a tiny smile on my face, the smile was a result of the use of my languages, pretty much the only thing I can do on a daily basis that makes it all seem worth it: the years and years I spent studying grammar (or pretending to) and asking everyone I knew to please, please, please correct me so that I could finally end up here–a place where I feel confident asking anyone pretty much anything in French or Spanish… though I may have to call blinds “the things that cover the window” in Spanish, and I’ll always ask for seven or nine of something in French so that they don’t have to hear me say “weet” instead of “uit,” pronouncing the number like a bread ingredient because I can’t for the life of me get my lips to make that sound (a high front rounded vowel, for those of you who care), at the beginning of a word. I have no problem saying “tu,” but I won’t say “huit.” I won’t.

But being back in New York, I realize that i’ts not a linguistic thing… not at all. There’s no reason I should be proud of my ability to speak English, and yet I live for asking the train conductor, “Does this train stop at Princeton Junction?” I love when people ask me for directions and to send them on their way, “Just make a right on 8th avenue, and head uptown four blocks.” What is it about these tiny, simple things that I love so much? I don’t know. My theory has been debunked, and all I can do now is enjoy it.

I shouldn’t enjoy making carrottes rapées this much either. This traditional French salad is nothing more than shredded carrots and vinaigrette… it’s simple and not terribly exciting, but I love making it anyway. I love making it because of the way we called it “raped carrots” (a little off-color… sorry) when we first moved to France. I love it because I’ve eaten it in every city in every region of France I’ve lived: it’s eaten in the north, in the south, in Paris… everywhere. Mostly I love it because it’s simple, and I think that’s as good a reason as any to love something.

Carrottes Rapées

3 large carrots, grated
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
the juice of 1/2 lemon
salt and black pepper
1 tsp. dried basil (this is not traditional, but I like it)

Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl and toss to combine. Allow the salad to sit for at least fifteen minutes, covered, before serving. Can be kept, covered, in the fridge for up to three days.

January 4, 2010

Mini Speculoos Cheesecakes

Filed under: Cake Day, Daring Bakers, cheese — Tags: , , — emiglia @ 1:58 am

I swear I saw a stranger from a former life on my crosstown bus tonight.

It was appropriate, I suppose, considering the rest of my evening. It’s always been important to me to have intense people to call upon at all hours of the evening, friends who will force me to think and discuss. It’s always been important, but even moreso now that my daily bread is won by writing. Now, when I can spend hours and hours in front of a computer screen without ever looking up and participating in the world around me.

A writer is only as good as the stories he tells, and a writer’s stories are only as interesting as the life he leads. As a surgeon makes a point of memorizing the major arteries, as a chef makes a point of familiarizing himself with the food choices and trends around him, I must make a point of living my life.

I forget, until I get back here and see him again, see New York through the tinted glasses he eased onto the bridge of my nose nearly five years ago, how much of what I love about New York came from him: the Prep. One night spent the way we used to, the television on as little more than background noise to our long, persistent conversations about nothing at all brings everything back, and as I wander these streets, it’s as though the lights have changed. The director has called “action,” and I see New York the way I used to when we were still in love.

It’s in this New York that I can find the perfection in tiny moments like this, in discovering the poignancy of seeing a face that used to be familiar to me, a name that I’d forgotten I ever knew until I saw him and remembered. He doesn’t remember me… there’s no reason for him to. He was the Golden Boy, a boy I never would have spoken to had it not been for one night at prep school orientation, eight years ago now. I don’t feel old enough to reminisce about eight years ago, but there it is. We got off at the same stop: he walked east, I walked west. I didn’t look back… there was no reason to. But I laughed out loud to myself as I walked up Madison Avenue at night, shivering in the coat I borrowed from my younger self before leaving this evening, as I did so many times it came to be routine so many years ago.

Abbey’s Cheesecake

An oldie but a goodie, this cheesecake recipe comes from a Daring Baker’s challenge from last year, but it’s still my favorite. I sub speculoos for graham crackers and use crème fraîche in place of heavy cream. For mini-cheesecakes, make them in a muffin pan, and bake 20 minutes before resting for an hour.

Crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Cheesecake Filling:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature
1 cup / 210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan. You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker’s choice. Set crust aside.

Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you’re looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don’t want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won’t crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill. Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.

January 2, 2010

Lentil and Rosemary Soup with Lemon

Filed under: Beans and Legumes, Soup — Tags: , — emiglia @ 1:35 am

After knowing me for a few months, most people replace the typical greeting of, “How have you been?” with the more useful, “Where have you been?” Those who I haven’t seen in awhile tend to get an answer that sounds like a list, and those who I haven’t seen in a very long while abandon the question entirely.

Suffice to say, I move a lot, and it’s been a very, very long time since I’ve been back in my native New York for more than a few weeks at Christmas. This year, all that has changed. I’m back in the land of bagels, lox and incredible pizza from John’s on Bleecker.

Returning home is strange for everyone, I think. I’m watching as my brother, a freshman in college, realizes this for the first time at eighteen: when you leave home, coming back is more like picking up where you left off. Your family may be aware on some level of the fact that when you leave the house, you actually continue living your life, meeting people, making decisions and mistakes, learning things and forgetting others, but when you actually appear at the doorway, your hair in dire need of a haircut and your laundry in dire need of washing, it’s all too easy for everyone around you to send you to the barber, toss you a box of detergent and treat you as though you had never left.

I’ve gotten used to toning down some of the developments in my life when I come home. I know now that some things are better left unsaid, and I’ve stopped vying for my time to speak at the dinner table, instead letting the normalcy wash over me, getting used to what has become the status quo in a place where I used to live. I’m used to having my own space, my own time and, especially, my own kitchen, things that are not the case when I’m living in my parents’ house.

This is one of the last things I made before leaving Paris for New York. It’s bright and delicious and perfectly light for starting those New Years’ diets for all of three seconds. I have several pictures from those last few days, and that’s probably all you’ll get while I’m here in New York, where the kitchen is most definitely not my domain, where I squat on a couch and live out of a suitcase. It’s not bad–just different, although I have to admit that when my cousin came back from Paris for the holidays and asked if I was sorry not to be standing in front of the stove instead of sitting in front of the television, I took pause.

And then I decided that the answer was no. I love cooking, don’t get me wrong, but this isn’t my kitchen, and in New York, my mother does the cooking. I may miss it now and again–that sense of possibility that comes from standing in front of a cutting board, reaching for ingredients without actually being sure what you’ll do. I miss serving what I’ve made to other people and watching as they enjoy it.

I’ll be leaving New York again soon… I always do. But while I’m here, I’ll be letting other people do the cooking: Barney Greengrass, John’s on Bleecker, Vico Ristorante, Artisanal… and, of course, my mother.

Lentil and Rosemary Soup with Lemon (adapted from Running with Tweezers)

1 tsp. olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup lentils
6 cups water
1 large rosemary sprig
1 lemon, cut in half, juiced, fruit and juice separated
salt and pepper

In a large stockpot, heat the oil and add the onion and celery. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until soft and translucent, 10 minutes.

Add the garlic and season with salt and black pepper. Add the lentils, water, rosemary and lemon, reserving the juice for later. Cover and cook until lentils are cooked through, stirring occasionally, about 30 minutes.

Remove from heat and remove and discard lemon and rosemary sprig. Using an immersion blender, purée to desired texture. Stir in remaining lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.

Optionally, you can garnish the soup with olive oil, parsley or parmesan cheese.

December 19, 2009

Christmas

Filed under: Seafood — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 4:20 pm

Christmas means different things to different people.

To some, it’s all about stress. To others, a time to get together with family. Sometimes, these two coincide.

Christmas when I was growing up was all about the city where I lived: New York. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, decorations would go up: the Rock Center tree would be lit, the windows at Macy’s filled with new things to peer at while being hustled and pushed by hundreds of other people in fur coats and heavy boots. I didn’t mind, although I hated going inside and suddenly sweating in all of my layers, only to go back outside and freeze.

For a little while, Christmas coincided with panic… go figure, as pretty much everything else in my life, at one time or another, has coincided with panic. I remember panicking because I was growing up, panicking because suddenly things that seemed so easy to believe were difficult to fathom. I panicked because I wasn’t ready to have to deal with being an adult, and for some reason, at Christmas, growing up seemed much closer and much more difficult than anything else.

I’m still not quite sure how I got from where I was then to where I am now, but somehow it happened, and I like Christmas again, although it’s not nearly as magical as when my father would take me by the hand and bring me to the huge department stores to pick out a gift for my mother and look at the windows, finishing up with lunch at Fred’s (in Barney’s New York), where I would undoubtedly order risotto, which at the time seemed like a magical transformation of rice, which I didn’t like (still don’t), into a silky, savory pudding I wished would never end.

I’ve learned the magic behind risotto and that behind Christmas, and perhaps that’s why I don’t get the anxious flutter in the pit of my stomach when I buy my Advent calendar or start shopping for Christmas presents. I still get it when we sing Oh come, oh come Emmanuel, but since I don’t go to Catholic school anymore and Advent masses are typically in French, not English, the times when I sing that song are few and far between.

Sometimes, I wonder about what Christmas means to other people: after all, Christmas means something different to everyone, even to the people in my house, who were all raised with the same Christmas and finished by growing up with distinctly different views of the holiday. I always wanted the Christmas of Italian feast of fishes: staying up all night on Christmas Eve to go to midnight mass and eating our huge meal to break the fast instead of after a morning of opening presents.

This years windows at the Bon Marché in Paris.

This year's windows at the Bon Marché in Paris.

Instead, I have a strange mix of my old Christmas, when I slip back into my childhood bedroom and pretend that I never left, and my new Parisian Christmas, where I let the windows of Le Bon Marché stand in for those of Macy’s and make myself a mini fish feast, with two instead of seven in a spicy tomato sauce that reminds me of home.

Pasta Fra Diavolo

2 cups pasta, cooked

2 tsp. olive oil
1 onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp. chili flakes
1/2 cup white wine
2 cups tomato coulis
250 g. shrimp, heads and tails removed
250 g. calamari rings
salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil in a wide, heavy saucepan over low heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt, and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and translucent, about 10 minutes.

Add the garlic and chili flakes, and cook until fragrant, 1-2 minutes. Add the wine and stir to encorporate. Add the tomato coulis and stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook the pasta according to the directions. When it is nearly ready, bring the tomato sauce to a simmer and add the shrimp and calamari. Cook for 2 minutes, until cooked through. Add a ladleful of sauce to the pasta to keep it from sticking, and then serve the rest of the sauce on top of the spaghetti. For a true, traditional experience, do not serve this pasta with cheese.


December 13, 2009

Nearly a month ago…

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — emiglia @ 9:48 am

Nearly a month ago, I made my first of two Thanksgivings this season. We turned grocery shopping into a team sport and bought more butter than should ever be purchased at once. We cooked pounds upon pounds of sweet potatoes, the last of which we had grabbed from under the nose of another American woman (it’s a dog-eat-dog world when it comes to sweet potatoes in France). I set out two days to make the meal: one for pies, one for food. What had at first been an early Thanksgiving for those who could not go to my “real” Thanksgiving in London soon became a meal of epic proportions, as people started requesting invitations. The group exploded exponentially from seven to fifteen, and there were five pies.

So why have I waited so long to write about it?

I’m lazy. I’ve been at school 9-5. I’m exhausted. I’m lazy.

I really don’t know.

For the past three years, Thanksgiving in Paris has been my tradition. It started on a whim and soon exploded to what it is today: weeks of planning, careful preparation and timing, writing schedules so intense that if I had paid this much attention to studying for my exams, I would probably have a Nobel Prize in physics by now. What I liked about this year was the fact that I was actually able to enjoy myself, actually confident enough that I could finish everything without burning that I sat down with everyone else and ate.

From the first pie crust I made with my friend Matt sitting in the kitchen, watching and keeping me amused, to the last tray I pulled out of the kitchen, carefully watching in front of the oven to make sure that nothing burned, it was a surprisingly stress-free Thanksgiving. My friend Kat had made us feathers to wear in our hair so that we could dress up as Indians. Matt made sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes, and our friend Shyan brought a giant salad. We ate leftover pie for weeks.

And then, because I am a crazy person, the next weekend, I went to London and did it all again.

The Menu:

Apéro
Pigs in a Blanket
Baked Brie

The Meal
Rotisserie Chickens
Stuffing
Cranberry Sauce
Make-Ahead Thanksgiving Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Creamy Herbed Potatoes
Corn Muffins
Sweet Potato Biscuits

Dessert
Pumpkin Pie
Sour Cream Crumble Top Apple Pie
Pecan Pie
Sweet Potato Pecan Pie
(all with Vodka Pie Crust)

Tarte Tatin

December 3, 2009

La Sidreria

Filed under: Beef — Tags: — emiglia @ 5:06 pm

I’m sorry it’s been so long. Please say that steak makes up for it.

I am still in Paris, but I’m so overloaded with work, I hardly know what to do with myself. I’ve taken to riding the bus the wrong way on purpose, just to have some time to think, before finally getting off the bus somewhere near St. Paul and dragging myself onto my bus to ride it all the way home, where I devote myself to lesson plans, concept questions and trying to figure out why my teacher uses the word galvanizing so often.

It’s strange to be back in school, especially when I was convinced just a few months ago that it would be years before I went back, if I went back at all. It’s even stranger, though, to think that just a little bit less than a month ago, I was still in Spain. I spoke Spanish… it’s been weeks since I uttered a word of Spanish. I was still surfing every day and spending my nights drinking cider. Oh, that I had the time to spend my nights drinking cider.

In San Sebastian, the sidreria, the cider house, while perhaps not as internationally well known as the other specialty of pintxos, is, regardless, an important staple of the gastronomy. January is prime cider time, and the barrels lining the walls of these massive restaurants are filled with the freshly made bubbly drink.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity to be in San Sebastian during the cider season. Fortunately, I knew several people who knew of sidrerias that were still serving the classic meal, and so I went twice: once at the beginning of my trip and once at the end.

As you can see from the photos, the meal is always the same: served family-style, each table receives sausage, omelette, bacalao with green peppers, txuleton (that would be the steak), and sheepsmilk cheese with membrillo and walnuts. And, of course, unlimited cider.

And pretty much unlimited everything else as well.

Cider is served by the customer: you fill your glass as you see fit from the taps on the wall, and if you hear the call txotxe! you’re expected to run to the taps with everyone else to fill your glass and down it. It’s a very amusing thing to watch, and even more amusing to participate.

Just typing this now, I can’t help but be struck with disbelief. Disbelief of the fact that it’s already been a month since I left Spain, and disbelief of the fact that it’s only been a month. Disbelief of the fact that it’s been so long since I posted on here, or since I had time to make anything more exciting than stewed lentils for myself as an evening meal and chicken and mustard sandwiches for lunch.

But school is temporary. Work is temporary. My Internet silence, for better or for worse, is temporary. I miss this blog, but I know that it will be waiting for me when my life no longer revolves around making flashcards and telling people, “You can say it, but I understand something different.”

Food is forever, for food is tradition. If I’ve learned anything since moving to Europe, I’ve learned that. Food cannot be rushed: I know more Parisians than I would care to admit who would rather chain-smoke a pack of cigarettes than eat a rushed meal. And that’s their decision. For me, it’s a strange balance between the food I want to make and the food I have time to make, the things I want and need to write and the things that I know I will write someday, that hide out as little blips of ideas on the backs of the worksheets I make.

Radio silence isn’t over yet, I’m sorry to say, but until it is, I leave you with apples.

Note: Thanksgiving has come and gone, with no word from me, and for that I apologize. I actually did have the time to make and serve not one but TWO extremely intense Thanksgiving dinners. I just haven’t had the energy to scrape myself off the floor and post about them. Look for it this weekend, my first weekend in the past three that I have NOT made upwards of four pies.

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