This Little Piggy Went to Market

I’ve always liked markets. When I was a baby, the only way I wouldn’t be cranky after my nap was if my mom popped me and my sister into the stroller while I was still almost asleep and took us to the market. This was Beirut, 1969. We would get a drink called Bone Juice and buy food.

I don’t remember any of this. It’s family legend. And I’ve always pictured Bone Juice as a brightly colored sugary drink in a little bone-shaped carton or plastic bottle. Why not? Enzo’s gummy vitamins are shaped like bones.

But as I was writing this in my head a few nights ago, it occurred to me that it probably wasn’t Bone Juice but Bon Jus, as in Good Juice, as in French. Somehow Bone Juice had lodged in some pocket of my mind and lasted forty years. We must all have these childhood scraps and misapprehensions, tucked away, untouched by time.

That makes me wonder what Enzo’s will be. Whenever I help him put on his Thomas the Tank Engine backpack we say together, "Backpack! Shark Attack! Easy-Isy-Over!" What do backpacks have to do with sharks? Nothing! I just made it up. But in his mind the two will be linked forever. (Maybe.) And whenever we fart we say, with great glee, “Gas Tax!” The other day we drove by a gas station, and I told him that that’s where you could actually pay your gas tax. And the hopelessness of ever explaining anything dawned on me for about the hundredth time. And yet kids do learn the world. They’re amazing at it.

But back to markets. I still like them—even boring old Safeway. They’re packed with life and possibility. And in Sacramento you can step into so many other worlds: The Red Sea Market on Florin (five gallon tins of olive oil from the West Bank, crates of dates, halal game hens, Bulgarian feta at incredible prices, Al Jazeera playing on the TV) to the Esperanza Mercado on Franklin (four kinds of bananas, brown sugar in a huge cone-shaped lumps, pig’s feet and cow’s feet and octopus). And then there’s the Asian Farmer’s Market on Sundays, set up in an abandoned gas station, where you can buy live chickens and roosters or fresh soy milk and where oranges and sweet potatoes are about half the price they charge at the regular farmer’s market, a few blocks down and over. And the Asian grocery a few blocks down has these beautiful ancient oak chests behind the counter where they store medicinal herbs. You can get huge pieces of curled cinnamon bark about a foot long. I don’t know what to do with a foot a cinnamon, but just knowing it’s out there makes me feel alive with possibility.

Grocery Goddess

Ideally you’d be at the Farmer’s Market yourself with no plans, no recipes, no lists--ready to be inspired by whatever is fresh and cheap, but who’s got the fucking time? So I give Teresa a grocery list for Safeway full of arcane instructions and contingency plans.

• Apples—Fujis, but only if cheap. And not from Chile

• Lettuce--romaine or oak leaf, whichever is cheap and looks good

• One bunch of celery—not in a bag. Get the kind with just a little plastic around the bottom and lots of leaves on the top.

• One pork shoulder roast--around five pounds, but only if still on sale, should be $1.99 a pound

• Jack or cheddar cheese--only if on sale and NOT pre-grated, unless the pre-grated is super-cheap.

• Green enchilada sauce--but cancel if you don’t get the cheese.

• Corn tortillas--three dozen if you get the cheese and enchilada sauce; one dozen if not.

• Flour tortillas--be careful not to get the supposedly butter-flavored ones, also NOT low-fat.

• Coriander—not from spice section, get from Mexican section in little envelope. Also, whole seeds, not ground.

• Cumin--same as above

• Olive oil--cancel if going to Trader Joe’s anytime soon, because it’s cheaper there.

• Red wine (Shiraz, second to cheapest bottle you can find.)

• All the usual: eggs, milk, frozen things you need

I know that shopping with Enzo is pretty much like having an unexploded bomb in the cart. An unexploded bomb that says, "Cookie, cookie, cookie." Translation: tick tick tick. He is only going to stay there so long, and it’s almost impossible to comparison shop or change plans or even follow complex instructions. You’ve got to move.

So I get out of court and check my messages:

Hello, this is your family. What’s cheap for lettuce? And how am I supposed to know if it looks good? Call us!

Hello, this is your family again. [Enzo in background, “cookie! banana!”] How can you tell if the apples come from Chile—do they have a sticker or something? Why don’t you answer your stupid phone? And what’s the matter with Chile anyway?

Hello, this is the last time I’m calling you. The pork roast says it’s still on sale, but it’s not $1.99 a pound, it’s $2.50. Do you still want it? Never mind! We’re getting it.

Okay, this is last time. They don’t have whole cumin in the Mexican section. Do you want me to get whole cumin from the regular spice section or ground cumin from the Mexican section? Never mind, you don’t get cumin. Deal with it. Or answer your phone.

It’s us again. Do you think we’re mature enough to get Nutter Butters? They’re on sale. Remember The Debauch?

That last message refers to one time when we ate a hole package of Nutter Butters at a sitting, while playing chess. That was pre-Enzo, of course. We still talk about it fondly as The Nutter Butter Debauch.

I think most of our life together is like this—messages in writing and then on answering machines, a few emails, an occasional debauch. It’s like an epistolary novel of domestic life. And the plot goes like this: muddling through somehow–more of the same–Nutter Butters—answer your phone!—Cookie, cookie!–Check Mate.

Recipe Rebellion

Every few months I buy tofu. Meat is expensive. Also sort of disgusting, but only when you think about it, which I don’t. I adore charred flesh far too much to think about it.

Tofu seems like the perfect food—clean and cheap and easy and nutritionally excellent--if only it didn’t taste like pencil erasers. But time passes and I forget how hopeless it is, and I buy tofu again thinking this time I’ll marinate it, rub it with spices, or perhaps massage it and then light it on fire. My latest attempt sprang from the recognition that tofu is pretty much a vegetable, and almost all vegetables are wonderful coarsely chopped, drizzled in olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted in the oven for about an hour. So I did this and ended up with something that had not just the taste but also the texture of pencil erasers—a tough, bouncy resilience.

Why not try a recipe? I obviously have no intuitive tofu-sense. Oh, all right. I’ll get back to you on that in a few months. I have to wait for my tofu hopes to rise again.

Meanwhile, the honeymoon is over with Marcella. The bloom is off the rose, baby. Last week I made cauliflower with raisins and pine nuts and fricasseed chicken with onions and cognac.

The cauliflower. What is the point of first boiling the cauliflower until it’s tender and then breaking it up and sautéing it with the raisins and pine nuts? Do I look like I have time to wash extra pots and pans? Surely you could break up the cauliflower raw, sauté it with the raisins and pine nuts and then put in a splash of orange juice or water or broth, cover it and cook until tender. Basically braise it. And why are there no onions in this recipe? Was this a clerical error?

The chicken. And here’s the problem with recipes. There’s always one expensive ingredient that you don’t have on hand and will never use again. In this case, cognac—two tablespoons of cognac. I put it on the grocery list, and Teresa refused to buy it because they only had big bottles at Safeway. So I ended up walking to the corner store with Enzo to buy the stupid cognac. Enzo had a cold. Earlier that day he had knocked his head hard against my cheekbone, and I had a pretty bad black eye. It was raining. Enzo wore his cute slicker, and I wore my homeless-looking Carhart jacket. We found the smallest flask of cognac and got in line. We bought nothing else. Of course there was a young mom in line in front of us with two small children buying a quart of milk. I clutched my flask and my crusty-nosed child. I felt like saying, “It’s for a recipe. It’s Italian. Northern Italian.”

Another problem with the chicken recipe is you had to cut up a whole chicken. I usually just get thighs for braising type recipes, but the Marcella said cut up a whole chicken and I was by-god following the recipe. I haven’t cut up a chicken in years. I do not own poultry shears. It’s a grisly task. Also, the breasts cook faster than the thighs and legs, so doesn’t it make sense to choose one or the other? I have to admit, both recipes turned out pretty good, and I ate them for lunch all week.

But what to do with a flask of cognac? I called my mom ask about what we always called The Brandy Show. It’s basically pepper steak (but made with hamburgers for kids) and you deglaze the pan with butter, lemon, Worschester sauce and brandy or cognac and set it on fire. I thought Enzo might like that. So I got to the flambé part, and told him mama was going to do a magic show. He looked noncommittal. I turned off the lights and lit a match pausing for a moment to heighten the drama, then touched it to the pan. Blue and yellow flames sprang up, and Enzo ran out of the room. I couldn’t follow him. There was a fire to deal with. But in moments he was back looking extremely serious and carrying a big plastic fire truck. It was pretty fucking adorable.

Ave Marcella

Near the beginning of Marcella's Italian Cooking there's a section titled: The Taste of Italian Cooking: Elementary Rules. And then there's one page of short, direct, axiomatic principles. Many of them I will never follow. But I love reading them, knowing what they are, wishing to follow them and relishing the few that describe what I'm already doing anyway, such as: "Do not clarify butter" or "Do not esteem so-called fresh pasta more than the dry, factory made variety." There's something bracing about all that natural authority fit onto one page. It's like The Elements of Style, the United States Constitution or the Decalogue--brevity and authority in close relationship.

Anyway, here they are:

• Use no Parmesan that is not parmigiano-reggiano. (See the discussion of parmigiano-reggiano on page 11.)
• Never buy grated cheese of any kind; grate cheese fresh when ready to use it.
• With exceedingly rare exceptions, do not add grated Parmesan to pasta whose sauce has been cooked with olive oil.
• Use only extra virgin olive oil (Please see Olive Oil on page 7-10.)
• Dress salads with no other oil but olive
• Do not use prepared salad dressings, even if prepared at home. Mix the condiments into the salad when you are tossing it. Toss salads just before serving.
• Use herbs and spices sparingly. Think of them as a halo, not a club.
• Do not confuse stock with meat broth. Meat broth ( 73) is what goes into Italian cooking.
• When ripe, fresh tomatoes are in season, do not use the canned. (Out of season, see the recommendation on page 12-13.)
• Abstain from using frozen vegetables, except for frozen leaf spinach, which can be substituted for fresh in making green pasta.
• Do not overcook pasta
• Do not precook pasta
• Do not esteem so-called fresh pasta more than the dry, factory-made variety. (Please see discussion of homemade and factory-made pasta on pages 90-6)
• Match the sauce to the pasta, taking into account the shape and texture of pasta.
• Do not buy prepared pasta salads, pre-cooked or frozen pasta, or stuffed pasta.
• Do not turn heavy cream into a warm bath for pasta or for anything else. Reduce it, reduce it, reduce it.
• Vegetables and beans are, on occasion, passed through a food mill. Do not process them to a cream. It Italian cooking there is no cream of anything soup.
• Do not serve fowl rare. Italian birds are cooked through and through.
• Do not clarify butter. (See Cooking with Butter at High Temperature, page 16.)
• When making risotto, use only Italian varieties grown for that purpose. (Please see Risotto, pages 153-5.)
• Find a butcher who will cut scaloppine across the grain from the top round.
• Unless you are on a medically prescribed diet, do not shrink from using what salt is necessary to draw out the flavor of food.

Of course I can't afford to use no Parmesan that is not parmigianno-reggiano. It costs $23 a pound, and that’s more than shoes. Still, there's something wonderfully emphatic about the double-negative, no Parmesan that it not. I feel like saluting when I hear that. But I still buy second rate cheese. And yes I usually grate my own, but sometimes I buy the pre-grated in the plastic tub, feeling mildly furtive and ashamed. And as for no Parmesan with olive oil sauces--why not?

My favorite rules describe what I'm already doing anyway. They're like praise without the embarrassment. "Unless you are on a medically prescribed diet, do not shrink from using what salt is necessary to draw out the flavor of food." Three cheers for that advice. And I like the word 'shrink.' People are such cowards about a little salt. They have no idea how much salt is in the store-bought foods they're used to eating, so they get all timid about salting the pasta water, sprinkling in a few useless grains. I salt everything, even hot chocolate (you should try it).

The rule about dressing salads is smart because it encourages simplicity. I used to shake-shake-shake the dressing in a little jar. Or use a whisk and slow-poured olive oil, straining for an emulsion, which always separated. Now my favorite dressing is olive oil, salt and pepper, right on the leaves. Maybe a touch of balsamic or lemon. Maybe.

But I don’t think I’ve got across why Marcella’s so great. Back when I was an English major I thought the perfect paper would be just my favorite parts of the book, typed, with a big Amen at the end. In that spirit, here is what Marcella says in a section called Cooking: A Language

All that really matters in food is its flavor. It matters not that it be novel, that it look picture-pretty, that it be made with unusual or costly or currently fashionable ingredients, that it be served by candlelight, that it display intricacy of execution, that it be invested with the glory of a celebrated name. Such incidentals may add circumstantial interest to the business of eating, but they add nothing to taste and signify nothing when taste is lacking.

Taste is produced by the expressive use of the cuisines that have come down to us. One becomes fluent in a cuisine as in a language: Expression must be vigorous, clear, concise. There can be no unnecessary ingredient or unnecessary step. A dish may indeed be complicated, but in terms of taste every component, every procedure must count.

Do not strain for originality. It ought never to be a goal, but it can be a consequence of your intuitions. [I love that.] If the purpose of flavor is to arouse a special kind of emotions, that flavor must emerge from genuine feelings about the materials you are handling. What you are, you cook.

Do not arbitrarily shuffle the vocabulary of one cuisine with that of another in an attempt to make your cooking “new.” There is no more use for such a hybrid than there is for Esperanto. The cuisines available to us have all the flexibility we can handle with felicity, and more variety than our invention can exhaust.

I am not suggesting that one must cook in pedantic submission to unalterable formulas. I hope the recipes in this book demonstrate that I do not. I am suggesting that the discipline of a cuisine’s syntax, cadence, native idiom can make invention and improvisation eloquent rather than contrived.

My New Year’s Resolution was going to be: Follow recipes. More or Less. Now and Then. Because I think my fault in cooking is a lack of discipline. I’m addicted to improvisation, and I hate measuring. In my life cookbooks are for reading, not for cooking. But, as with all New Year’s Resolutions, there was a reason you weren’t doing that in the first place—you don’t want to!

So instead I will devote myself to Marcella for a year or so, actually cooking the recipes, not slavishly, mind you, but pretty close. And I think I'll start with cauliflower with pinenuts and raisins, page 256. It’s occurring to me only this moment that discipline and disciple are more or less the same word. And since I already worship Marcella, what could be more natural?

But I want to say more about authority. I’m a lawyer, so I run into unearned authority all the time--judges, stuck up on that pedestal, just as foolish as the rest of us and so few of them know it, god help them. And how true authority is instantly recognizable, whatever the subject.

Marcella teaches you not just how to eat but how to live. But mostly how to eat.

Onion Obsession

I’ve been listening to this weight loss self-hypnosis CD that I ordered online. I’m incredibly embarrassed about this in real life but writing is not quite real life, so I don’t mind talking about it here. In real life humiliation is just humiliation. In writing it’s material.

The soothing voice on the CD says I will be amazed to discover that after eating less than half my meal, I am completely satisfied. It says that every time I eat, before I eat, I will ask myself, is this what a healthy person eats to lose weight? And it says to picture a mirror that says: MY FUTURE IN CONTROL, and then see in the mirror an image of myself at my ideal weight, looking happy and fulfilled. And through it all my mind keeps wandering away to things like: butter--don’t forget to buy--sweet or salted?--both--maybe make bread--whole wheat--try with quinoa--raisins too?

The CD says hypnosis can’t make you do anything that you don’t really want to do. And so I’ve concluded that I don’t really want to stop thinking about food all the time. And besides, what else is there?

Which brings me to the Super Bowl. We had hotdog magic, caramelized onion dip, Fritos (the big ones) and potato chips (the wavy ones). Also other assorted dips. The hotdog magic recipe was from one of my grandma’s handwritten recipe cards, a family heirloom in faded pencil. So we buy the hotdogs and cheese and crescent rolls in a tube, and there on the Pillsbury crescent roll package is the same exact recipe. Not much to it: wrap hotdogs and cheese in a crescent roll and bake. The highlight is really when you peal the paper off the crescent roll package and it goes, POP! and the dough starts to ooze out. Enzo liked that part. Of course he wanted to do it again and again, and it’s sort of a one-off thing. He got over the disappointment by beating on his allotted crescent roll dough with some metal tongs. He’s been into tongs lately.

But the true star of the Super bowl is the dip. Enzo and I made the caramelized onions the day before. Slicing five pounds of onions with a sharp knife is not an ideal kitchen chore for a two-year-old, so I prepped them in advance by pealing off the dry outer layers and them cutting into quarters, or even smaller. Then I adjusted my swim goggles to fit Enzo, and let him run the food processor while I fed the onions through that ridiculous little feed tube.

The goggles didn’t work that well, and he and I both started to cry. I explained how onions hurt your eyes, but it would go away, and for the rest of the day he kept rubbing his eyes and saying, “Onion eyes! Onion eyes!” and looking sad and dramatic.

But the onions turned out great: about ten yellow onions, a cube of butter, a sprinkle of brown sugar, salt of course. Cook on low in the slow cooker for about seven hours. Stir it a few times. Oh, and no lid because you have to let all the onion juice cook off. For the first five hours it perfumes the whole house with raw onion, and it seems unlikely that it will ever be anything but raw onion slush. (Come to think of it, maybe Enzo really did have onion eyes all day, and it wasn’t just drama.) But gradually the onions get golden and soft and syrupy.

And here’s the genius part. When the slow cooker is done with whatever time you’ve set it for, it automatically switches to the warm setting. So I accidentally left the onions on warm overnight, and they got darker and sweeter and more fabulous. I think I must have cooked them almost 24 hours total, using the warm setting for most of it, and by the end they were dark chunky brown sludge, like industrial waste, only delicious. We may all die of botulism, but god they were great. And easy. The dip part is—mix caramelized onions with equal parts sour cream and cream cheese.

We had a lot of onions left over, so I keep thinking of more things to eat with caramelized onions. Caramelized onions and hotdogs (obvious but fabulous); caramelized onions, black beans and scrambled eggs; peanut butter and caramelized onion sandwich; and what about risotto?

Also, variations on the onions themselves. Next time I’m going to add some nice hot peppers or maybe fresh ginger to the onions just to add a little kick to that sweetness. Any why not try frozen pearl onions? It would be so easy, and maybe even pretty.

Is this how teenage boys are with sex, thinking about it all the time with endless interest and variation? And what about caramelized onion upside down cake? Hmmmm... .

Laziness Is Next To Godliness

I want to write something about luck and laziness and the openness to possibility that comes with true sloth.

Organized people never get the satisfaction of lying on the couch reading, then wanting to write something and just reaching down into the couch cushions and finding a pen right there. Hurrah! It’s rare, but all the more wonderful for that.

They also don’t get to make the following discoveries:

Last weekend I threw out some garam masala that had been stored in a Tupperware for a few years. I washed the Tupperware, but not vigorously. A yellow tinge and scent of Indian spice clings to it. This morning, I put my oatmeal in it and took it to work. And so I discovered the complicated deliciousness of steelcut oatmeal with raisins, dried apples, almonds and a hint of garam masala.

Last month we visited friends. Their wonderfully civilized custom is he cooks, she cleans up the next morning. Or afternoon. For dinner one night he cooked an amazing couscous with fresh mint and lot of other stuff. The next morning I sliced up an apple for Enzo. I could have washed the knife and cutting board first. But I didn’t, and that’s how I discovered that apples with a touch of mint—just what was left on the knife and cutting board--are delicious together.

A couple of nights ago, Enzo and I were cooking together. He still sucks at it, but we both enjoy it. And it’s the only interest we share. I gave him a cooked Japanese sweet potato to hack at, but of course he wanted what I was hacking at: a red bell pepper. So I handed one over, partly cut, seeds still inside.

I was making fried sweet potatoes, which are pretty much a dessert. I invented this dish in my mind a long time ago, and finally I decided to cook it. We usually have cooked sweet potatoes on hand in the winter: two and a half hours in the slow cooker on low—no water, just wash them, put them in wet, and that’s plenty of moisture. Anyway, I sliced some cold cooked sweet potatoes, sauted them in a lot of butter, sprinkled them with salt and the spiced sugar that I use for toast. (Sugar, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom—your basic fall baking spices.) Oh, and I put some walnuts in there too.

But back to Enzo and our discovery. Of course when he saw me sprinkling the spiced sugar from a little shaker thing, he wanted it. So I gave it to him, and he shook and shook and shook the spiced sugar into and around and on the red bell pepper. Then he mashed it in. I let him do it---let him complete the mess to its fullest, and when the sugar was gone that was the end of that project.

We ate dinner. The sweet potatoes were great—buttery crisp caramelized sugar on the outside, soft chestnut-like savory-sweet on the inside. I think blue cheese would have been good with that, now that I think about it.

We cleaned up. I cleaned up. Of course the red pepper was a mess, but I’m not about to throw away food because it’s been mashed around a bit. I rinsed the sugar-spice off and sliced it lengthwise for my lunch the next day. And it was wonderful—just a little sweeter than your usual bell pepper, still crisp, with a hint of winter spices.

Besides the luck of these combinations, what I learned from all this is that subtly isn’t all bad. My general philosophy is More is Better, and I’m not saying that’s wrong, God forbid. But it turns out that a tiny hint of garam masala is all you really want in your oatmeal. A whiff of leftover mint is enough for a fresh crisp apple. A remembrance of sugar and spice is all a red bell pepper needs.

As my yoga teacher used to say, back when I went to yoga: Do Less. I can only Do Less by accident, it seems. But just being open to accident is something. It’s a start. Oh happy Chance—my personal domestic goddess.

Wonder Bread

Is there a Nobel Prize for baking? If not, why not? Splitting the atom was nice, but you can't eat it.

Since there probably isn’t a Nobel Prize for food, I nominate Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street bakery for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Also for the Nobel Peace Prize, which seems to go to whoever has most improved human existence in some tangible way. Move over Al Gore. This man is a hero and a national treasure.

In case you’ve been preoccupied with electioneering matters for the last two years, Jim Lahey is the guy who invented the famous no-knead slow-rise bread that has swept the globe. The recipe first came out in the New York Times two years ago. It has since been featured in Vogue and been re-printed in the food sections of most decent newspapers. It is on U-tube. It is easy as pie (way easier actually) and freakishly delicious. The original New York Times article is at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html.

Everyone knows that gluten is what makes good bread good. Gluten gives bread chewiness and texture and makes those big holes in the crumb possible. Conventional bread baking develops gluten mechanically, by kneading. Mr. Lahey figured out that you can skip the kneading and develop gluten chemically by letting the bread rise slowly, slowly for about 12-18 hours. I say “chemically” in the breeziest possible meaning of that word. The gluten molecule lengthens and strengthens and complicates itself in some marvelous way if you just leave it alone to rise slowly. Mr. Lahey’s recipe calls for just a pinch of yeast to slow the rising. His genius was to get out of the way and let nature do its work.

Then there’s the crust. Mr. Lahey’s dough is very wet. You put this wet, slowly risen dough in a ceramic or cast iron lidded pot pre-heated to about 450 degrees, and the wetness of the dough and the super-hotness of the pot create the crustiest, chewiest crust you ever saw or tasted. I’m sure there’s chemistry to that part too, but I don’t know what it is. I do know that it works. It is not just like the best old world artisan bread, it IS that.

The technique is radical. The product is classical. This bread is what Jesus ate. Make that Moses. It is ancient, basic, staff-of-life stuff. It’s as if someone discovered a simple and significant improvement in the design of the wheel. How surprising. How wonderful. It lights up the world a little bit.

(Photo credit, Todd Anderson; baking credit, Annie Anderson.)