Thursday, March 31, 2011

new orleans part 2: tonique and the pimm's cup

I left the blooming azaleas back in New Orleans, but I took the Pimm's Cup back home with me.
It tastes just as good here as it did there, even though we are on the eve of an impending April 1 snowstorm, even though you can't walk two steps without hearing reference to "mother nature's April fools joke,"  even though there is not a drop of humidity and when the temperature got up to 42 degrees today, we all took of our coats as if it were truly warm.  Even though all of these things, still, the Pimm's Cup is just the drink for the day.

 Of course I came to it like most things, peering in from the sidelines, checking out what everyone's doing.  Like kosher salt and vanilla beans, I got it from gossip first- then waited for the right moment.  I'd never heard of the stuff when Molly wrote about it last summer, and then it came up again here and there, and then my friend Naya sent me a few emails that turned out to be our primary guidebook to the city, and there it was again: "have a pimm's cup."

And so there we are, and it is Saturday.  We've started our in depth perusal of the road food festival and  there appears our friend Alice, who, superhero that she is, decided to fly standby from Providence so that she could spend four hours eating in New Orleans with us before getting back on a plane to go back to graduate school.  This is Alice.  I have known her for a long, long time, and she continues to surprise me in a good way.

And so we ate.  And when it was time for Alice to go, we walked her back to where she had parked her funny looking rental car, which was almost all the way out of the French Quarter, and across from Louis Armstrong Park, which still remains eerily and firmly closed since Katrina. And we hugged and said goodbye, and when kisses were blown and she was on her way back to the airport, Joey and I let out a collective sigh at the shortness of the visit.  I looked up, and there was a little sign, and I said, "isn't this that bar that we were supposed to find?"


And of course, because it was New Orleans where all of the places seemed to find us, it was.  It was only 3 o'clock, earlier than usual for a drink in my usual life, but it was New Orleans, and so really, we were late to the party.  And so we slid into a little white leather booth, and I swear to you that the air smelled sweet and the music was perfect.  And I said to Joey, "I'm so glad that we don't have anywhere even remotely this fabulous near us.  I'd drink here everyday."


The drink menu read like an epic poem, and I wanted to order every single thing, just for a taste of each.  Of course, I never had to think about what I would order.  It was time for the Pimm's cup.

 

Pimm's #1 is a British liqueur for sunny days, and it can be mixed with many things, but the classic is ginger ale or 7-up.  My Pimm's cup at Tonique was my first of several over the next 36 hours that I had left in New Orleans, and I studied the differences.  What made Tonique's cocktails so special, besides the perfection of the place itself, was it's ice.  I was so moved by the ice, and I marveled at it's squareness and stability within the drink.  I tried to contain myself, but I had to ask the lovely tattooed bartender how she made such ice.  "We have a special machine," she said, and although she told me the long and scientific name, I was drinking at 3 o'clock, and I don't remember what it was called. 


That first Pimm's cup was fantastic, but later there was one with sliced cucumber.  It seemed like a pretty garnish, but what it really did was infuse the whole drink with coolness.  I would imagine that if it were Summer, and I were sitting on my porch, I would pick a bit of mint and smoosh it up in there too.  I've heard rumors of strawberries if the time is right.  I think that the possibilities are endless.

And what does a  Pimm's cup taste like?  Besides summer itself, I'd say there's a bit of fruity iced tea in there.  My first thought was that although I've always hated the whole Dr. Pepper/ Moxie family of sodas, this would be how they would taste if they actually tasted good.  Don't get me wrong- this is not an April kind of drink.  This is not an eve of snowstorm kind of drink to sip while you are stirring soup to get you through the hunker down.

Except that it might be.  If you're like me and you're timings a little off, if you come late to the party or laugh a beat after the joke is over.  Screw timing.  The winter has been long, and we need summer any way we can get it.  It will come, friends, and by the time it does, you will be an expert at mixing your perfect Pimm's cup.

Pimm's Cup
(partly from the back of the bottle, and partly from my favorite parts of my varied New Orlean's Pimm's cups)

Start with a tall glass.  Fill it half way with ice (from a special machine!).  Add about 1 1/2 to 2 ounces Pimm's #1.  Then fill it most of the way up with ginger ale (Reed's brew is a winner here).  Add a hefty squeeze of lemon, a hefty squeeze of lime, and stir.  Top with slices of cucumber.  Acceptable to drink with a straw.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

butcher


Like any other tourist destination, New Orleans has a neighborhood where the tourists hang out.  
The French Quarter is amazing in its own right--people stay there because it is beautiful and creepy and filled with gas street lamps and little restaurants. But it is also a party all of the time, and walking down Bourbon Street at two in the morning, pushing past teenagers holding their bong-shaped plastic cups made especially for some New Orleans specialty drink with the especially classy name of "the hand grenade," carefully stepping over the running brook of vomit through the street, one can't help but feel stuck in a perpetual college spring break.

It's no wonder that every time we talked to someone from New Orleans on the street (which was a lot, as people actually talk to each other on the street there), they would inevitably take our shoulders and turn us around as if we were blindfolded and headed towards the pinata, and they would point us in the right direction, and with a loving shove, say "go there- out of the quarter.  Keep walking until you find this."  We had a few recommendations too, a few emails from friends suggesting that we "try the drinks here!" or find this place.  We never did our homework, we never mapped out the city to find these mysterious locations, and we rarely employed the gps on my phone.  We just wandered.


We met a woman on our last night in New Orleans, an artist named Bobby who had lived in the city on and off for 30 years.  We had seen her earlier when she was volunteering at the Tennessee Williams Festival, and she had steered us off the street into a theater so that we could witness the drunken finally of the festival, the annual "Stell-ahhh!" competition where anyone can enter with their best channeling of Stanley Kowalski.  We saw her later outside of a lovely bar called d.b.a. (best music I've heard in a while, everyone dressed in their best to dance) in the Marigny neighborhood, and we thanked her for pushing us into the Stella competition.  We got to talking, and we told her about how we had found Butcher the previous day, and about how we kept running into the places that people had told us to find even though we never actually stopped to figure out where there were.  This happened over and over, that we'd be walking for an hour and end up in some new neighborhood, and then we would look up and see that restaurant that our friend Luke had told us that we should find.  It all had a bit of a fairy country feeling, like we just had to wander enough, and as soon as the heat really started to get to us, the place that we needed would appear.


Bobby said that New Orleans had always been like that, that it just made sense in the strangest way, and that you couldn't walk five feet without experiencing some sort of magical coincidence.  She said that after the storm, nothing made sense.  The city lost that quality, you couldn't actually find anything, and nothing really matched up.  She said that the city was just starting to make sense again, and that our experience enforced that.  She said that even though there are still neighborhoods entirely without power and running water, even though some of the streets are nearly impassable by car, even though there are hospitals and hotels that remain empty and over half the population of the city has left for good, the fact that the city had shown us that old quality of magical coincidence was a sign that it was coming back to life.


There are two adjoining restaurants in the Warehouse district that occupy one corner.  The first is Couchon, a lovely sit down restaurant with an exciting menu crafted by its owner and rising star of a chef, Donald Link.  Next door, he has opened Butcher, a cafe that is mostly a meat counter, but it has tables so that you don't have to wait until you get home to tear into your little package of sopressata or chorizo.  Butcher has a small menu so beautiful that it is necessary to order one of everything and a beer list that fits on a chalk board comprised mostly of Louisiana beers. We sat down at one of the high bar tables, and before we even ordered we had made friends on either side of our table.  To our right was a couple that included a woman who was born and raised in Berkshire County about 30 minutes from our house, and to our left sat an older couple, two teachers from Memphis who got into a passionate conversation with Joey about Memphis bbq.


We sat at Butcher for hours, talking to people, eating, and admiring the assortment of meat hanging behind the counter.  I had a charcuterie plate of fennel sausage, chorizo, and sopressata.  It was simple- sliced thick with a side of grainy mustard and house-made bread and butter pickles. A scoop of pork rilletes in the center without any ceremony, and a pile of crunchy, seeded flat bread crackers.


It blew my mind, and I don't say that lightly.  I begged the waitress for more pickles.  Joey admitted that he had just consumed the best hot dog of his life.  We finished our beers and wandered home, hoping that it would appear to us in the same way that the restaurant itself had.

And of course, after a few more adventures of the night, we found our way back and there was our hotel in front of us again.  I said, "maybe we should go back? across the expanse of city just for one more taste?" Our dreams were filled with perfectly smoked meats and sweet and sour pickles, and I must admit that those dreams are still with me.

Monday, March 28, 2011

new orleans

 If you think that 2 days might is a very small amount of time to eat your way through New Orleans, you would be right. However, I assure you that if you keep to an hourly eating schedule, anything is possible.


We got back in a few hours ago, and I'm not quite seeing straight yet.  I'll tell you more about our adventures as soon as my head clears.

 It's cold up here, and although it's good to be back, I must say that I miss that hot breeze. 

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

ikea and apizza

There have been several trips to Ikea in the last few months.  I'll admit that I have had a passionate Italian sort of relationship with Ikea in the past, but I think I'm really done.

 

It's not that Ikea is a bad thing, as far as those big companies go.  The whole Swedish thing earns them style points, and at least they don't seem to be supporting political organizations that make me cringe.  I've never lived near to an Ikea, so it's always held a glow for me, and when Joey and I walked into our first blue and yellow warehouse when we were on our honeymoon in Montreal over eight years ago, we were overcome with the possibility.  It seemed that with the right organizational tools, with the stuva and karlbad, we really could create a life where everything had its place, and we could do it for so little money.   I always have to ask how I'm paying for something so inexpensive if it's not with money (child labor? horrible ownership?), but while all the other corporations around them show their colors, they stay pretty clean.  I've been to Ikea maybe 5 times since that first one, and every time I catch the bug, and I transform our bedroom with a kvass duvet cover or I find the perfect duktig basket for the girls doll clothes that are strewn all over the floor.  Retail and redecoration therapy all at once.

I have only one question.  What is that language? It's not Swedish, is it?   


This last run of Ikea trips was brought on by our move into the part of the house that we'll finally be settling into, and by my parents' move into the house last month.  Between the two families, there has been a lot of stuff on the floor and nowhere to put it, and so we've been desperately constructing our ektorp and hemnes in the hope of creating places for everything to be.  The first trip was just Joey and my stepfather Chris and I, and we raced through the place like pros, pointing our fingers without deliberation with absolute surety and calm.  We packed two subarus, and out of money and time, we all ate frozen yogurt for dinner as we set off for the 2-hour drive home.  

It all seemed so simple.  Except that for every piece we had acquired, we were missing some essential element, some shelf, fourth wall, or other item that we thought was included.  Chris set off on his own the next week to nobly complete the shopping list, which of course was missing a few more essential items.  Then this past weekend, Joey and I took the girls, and we headed down to New Haven to finish it once and for all.  


Now Ikea has the distinction of being simultaneously a wonderful and horrible place for children.  They were one of the first places to offer nursing rooms, there are always stools for children to wash their hands in the bathroom, and they even offer daycare.  But Ikea is bright and overwhelming and filled with pink and green particle board, and those aspects alone make it a prime area for supreme kid meltdowns in any given corner of any given store. 

We did okay.  By the end of the day I had a full blown cold, and Joey almost ran Rosie over with an oversized cart.  The girls each had a hot dog, and, tucked in between the hovas and the tulsta, they clung to their mysteriously inexpensive stuffed toys that we had offered to placate any meltdowns, and we headed home.  Done with Ikea.

I have to say that the one who stayed the most chipper through the whole affair was Joey.  He didn't flinch at the thought of all of the furniture that he'd have to build that night,  and even when went through the credit card line when we meant to go through the cash line, and when we had to pack up the entire cart again and go through checkout a second time, he kept a smile on his face.

I blame it on the apizza that he had ingested just a few hours earlier.


Through these many trips to the New Haven Ikea, there has been one missing element.  Whether it is time or some other unforseen circumstance, we never seem to get into New Haven for pizza.

Do you know about New Haven and pizza?


Connecticut as a whole has a pretty big thing about pizza.  I dated someone from West Hartford, CT way back, and he used to take me to Lena's, where they claimed that they had invented pizza.
I know, what about Italy?  What about New York?  Chicago?  Hell no.  Connecticut defends their pizza history with all that they have.

New Haven has a special kind of pizza, something they call apizza.  As far as I can tell, the distinguishing factor is the crust, which is thin and sometimes black with the heat.  Mozzarella is not a given--it has to be ordered. And the real specialty is white clam pizza.

 
No sauce.  Just cheese, clams, and lemon.  The girls were not fans.


If you drive through New Haven, you'll notice that there is a pizza place on every corner.  But a few have particular notoriety.  Pepe's is the most famous, and I've heard you should plan on waiting at least an hour for a table and another hour for your pizza.  Sally's has a pretty rabid following too, but again, the lines.  But I'd heard about Modern, and the rumor was that the pizza was as good (or almost) as Pepe's, but without the time commitment. 

I've never been to Pepe's, but the pizza at Modern was fantastic.  
The combination sounds wrong, I know, but it's not. Because it's unexpected, you actually get to discover it when you bite into it.  crust. cheese. clams. lemon. 

Did they really invent pizza in Connecticut?  It all depends what you mean by invent.  crust. cheese. clams. lemon.  Sounds original to me. 

Next time I'll try Pepe's.  But as I'm done with Ikea, I'll have to go to New Haven just for the pizza.

And I will.  Because watching Joey analyze that crust was worth the drive.  
I'm starting to think that Joey and I should have written something about roadfood into our wedding vows.  Like "I will always stop at that little dive that we are driving by, no matter what. I will always stop, because to discover that new and perfect bite makes you happy."  I would have said it to him, and he would nod and glow with joy, and he would say it to me, and I would do the same. 

Monday, March 21, 2011

white bean soup with garlic, kale, and sausage


There was a bakery in Santa Fe that I used to go to when I was in school, a place called Sage Bakehouse. It was all concrete inside, big and cavernous and always warm from the ovens.  They had a few little tables and a counter up front, and I loved to sit there and eat a muffin and just inhale the smell of it all.  They had fantastic coffee, and this was before there was wireless everywhere, and you wouldn't bring your computer- and their muffins were good enough that you didn't even need another activity besides enjoying the muffin.

The primary draw of Sage Bakehouse was their bread, and they made big mushroom-top shaped loaves of sourdough, not with a crunchy crust that would cut the roof of your mouth, but with a soft crust that sliced well, and it was so good for sandwiches and even better for toast.  If it wasn't a day for a muffin, there was always a toast basket, and they would give you three kinds of toast with a little ramekin of strawberry jam.  It was a princess breakfast.

I went there a lot over my four years in Santa Fe, and I almost always went alone.  It's one of the only places that I used to go in that wonderful town where I don't have a memories of being with other people. It was college, and most places hold some undertone of a dramatic conversation or a heartbreak or something.  But I went to Sage Bakehouse to smell the bread, and that is all I ever did there.


For lunch there were also sandwiches, all ready made, and always the same kinds.  They were on these big ciabbata type of rolls, and there was a tuna with pesto, and some sort of ham and cheese. They were great, but I usually had the soup.
There was a day when I was there, alone before an afternoon class, and the soup was white bean with garlic and rosemary.  I had the soup, and it was a revelation.

I only mention it, because it struck me that as I made a big pot of this soup this week, altered with the variations that the week required, that this soup is the first thing for which I ever asked the recipe.

I finished the bowl of soup, and I mopped up the creamy white broth with my sourdough bread, and when the bowl was absolutely empty, I stood up, and I walked to the counter, and I said, "Please tell me how to make that soup."
And the the lovely woman with the apron and her hair tied back in a kerchief said this:


"1 pound of dried cannellini beans, covered with water that extends at least 4 inches over the top of the beans.  Bring them to a boil, then cover and simmer, along with 5 peeled, unchopped garlic cloves, 1 bay leaf, 3 sprigs of rosemary, and a whole lot of salt and pepper.  Cook for several hours, or until the broth turns creamy. Add more water as you go if it seems to need it."

That's it. That was the recipe.


And what happened then was that it became the first soup that I made that my mother had never made.  It became a soup that I made for dinner, and then people asked me for the recipe.  It was the recipe that made me feel like I might be able to cook.

Over the years, there have been endless variations, but the basic soup is good enough to make over and over.  But this week, there was a half can of crushed tomatoes added to the cooked beans.  There were several chopped leaves of curly kale.  There were three garlic sausages, chopped in little slices.  And instead of rosemary, there was fresh chopped sage. 

There could also be chicken broth instead of water.  And olive oil drizzled on top is a good idea.  And parmesan cheese, too, if you've got a nub of it around.

And that, friends, is the entire recipe.  Until you add something else, that is.
Happy Spring.  Judging by the two inches of snow on my car, we still have a good amount of soup weather left.


Wednesday, March 16, 2011

celebrating

Thank you.

Last week I posted this, and the next morning we learned that there had been an earthquake so major that it actual shifted the axis of the earth. I stayed in my house, and I worked and worked, and every few hours I watched another video of water rushing through city streets.

It's hard to know what to do.
A friend remarked to me about how there seems to be an increase in natural disasters.  I'm not sure if that's true--I think perhaps we might just have more ways to experience them through the media.  Videos and twitter and the news and facebook--it's almost like we're there.
Except we're not.  And we watch all of these people losing everything.  And we give our coffee money for the month, or anything else we can pull together.

But in between the editing and the watching of the earthquake, I checked back here to read your comments.  And you guys are fantastic.  You really know how to celebrate.  You kept me smiling and cheering for you, and you kept me working.  Thanks for helping me finish this book.

You're getting married, you're having babies, you're leaving jobs or starting jobs that get you closer to what you want to do.  You're celebrating friends and love and the moment.  You're celebrating revolution.

I'm celebrating you.
I'm seeing how much good there is just in choosing to celebrate.  Because here we are, and I'd say that's enough to make it a special occasion.  Because along with coffee money, I think that celebrating the moment helps, too. 

Today I emailed the book to my editor.  I took a shower and folded the laundry.  Then I walked into the backyard for the first time in too long.   I pulled some rotten kale out of the newly thawed ground.  I looked at the tiny rhubarb shoots making there way into the world. And then, I saw buds on the lilacs.



And who won the gift certificate?  Heather, who celebrated the first whole weekend together with her fiancee in a while.  I hope the weekend was a good one.  Send me an email and I'll let you know how to get in touch with Caroline.

Thank you, friends. Happy day to you all.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

let's start now (that's right, a giveaway!)


I feel like celebrating.
I'd bring out the champagne, except that I'm not actually quite finished with the book yet.  I'm waiting for the girls to get into pajamas so I can get settled in for the night, but in the last twenty minutes, Sadie has managed to take only one arm out of her shirt.  Rosie succeeded in taking all of her clothes, but then she put them back on again backwards and is calling them her pajamas.
We're getting there.
But even though I've got a few more days of work on this thing, I'm ready to celebrate now.  I'm almost there--I'm just checking for commas and spaces and making sure that I wrote "farmers market" instead of "farmer's market" every time.  I'm so close. Let's start now.
Because I'm thinking the secret to these days might just be more celebrating!  There are plenty of excuses.  Like, it's Thursday night!  And less than two weeks until Spring!  And my parents and Maia moved in and it's working out wonderfully!  Even the cats are getting along!
Any good celebration involves a present or two, so I asked my friend Caroline if she she would help out.  She's an artist, and she makes some of my favorite jewelry. She's doing some pieces with bakelite right now that might just have to be my end of book splurge.  Last year, Joey bought me a Caroline necklace for my birthday, and it's the only necklace I wear.  It's a little pearl that looks like a bird on wire, and it's up there in that photo on top of my draft.  I thought they'd like to pose together, that necklace and that draft. They're celebrating together.
So the good news is that Caroline said Yes! She said that she would love to give a $40 to one of you to spend in her etsy store.  She's always up for a celebration, that Caroline. 
So if you're up for one too, let me know! Are you celebrating?  What's your excuse?
I'll keep the comments open until, Tuesday March 15 at midnight.  I'll finish my book by that night, and then I'll announce the winner.  So let's do it! Let's get started!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

custard-filled cornbread

Uh, oh.  I might perhaps have lost my mind.

To the friends who have called in the last two weeks, who have yet get a response from me, next week, next week!
To the mothers of children who have birthdays in the next two weeks who all want Rosie to attend, I am sorry.  She will attend.  I will get back to you too.
To the IRS, my taxes are in the mail.  Aren't you impressed?
To all of the utility companies to whom I have late bills, I am sorry.  I have the money, but I am out of stamps, and I will get to the post office soon.
To my editor- I'll be done by the end of the week!  (that's right, I said by the end of the week! hooray!)
And to the custard-filled cornbread who slid off my seat and overturned on the floor of my car, shame on you. Didn't you know how delicious you would be?  How heartbreaking it was to lose you?  How, in these days when I have (okay, okay, I'll say it!) entirely overstretched myself, that I needed you to stay whole, and lovely, and filled with custard the way you should be?

Of course your cornbread might not look like mine.  Maybe your cornbread will have the good sense to stay home.

Good sense! Where have you gone!


Custard-Filled Cornbread
from  Molly Wizenberg, A Homemade Life

(This is an incredible magical recipe by the way.  My friend Amy introduced it to me, and although the steps will seem a little strange, you end up with something wild and delicious)

serves 6

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 tablespoons distilled vinegar
1 cup heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Butter an 8-inch square pan or 9-inch round pan.  Put the buttered dish in the preheating oven. 
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and baking soda.  Set aside.
Add the eggs to the cooled butter and whisk well.  Then add the sugar, salt, milk, and vinegar and whisk again.  Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture while whisking constantly.  The batter will be thin and smooth.  Remove the heated pan from the oven, and pour the batter into it. Then, slowly pour the heavy cream into the center of the batter.  Do not stir or knock the pan.  Bake for 1 hour, or until golden on top.  Serve warm.  Reheats beautifully for breakfast with maple syrup.