Staring
I like to look people in the eye. I mean, I really look at them hard. In conversation, upon being introduced to someone new, in meetings… I tend to stare. In polite terms, I observe. Always, I am in violation of the Cardinal Rule of Public Transit – do not, ever, under any circumstance, look at a stranger on the streetcar with the faintest intensity.
My sister, Eleni, has three words she uses over and again when we share a restaurant meal: “Maria, stop staring!” It makes her crazy that I like watching people, that my gaze gets caught up in how they do things. Have you ever followed closely someone’s movements – watched how he lifts a utensil, the way he switches off knife and fork, or how he places the napkin when he leaves the table? That we each cradle a water glass or clink to a toast differently? I love all these gestures, I get absolutely taken away in them, and I suppose this makes me a difficult dinner companion if you’re not used to either – a) intense observation, or b) someone whose attention is fixated on the table next.
I remember an ex from my university days, Alex. He had a subtle – barely noticeable – way of pushing his bang back in moments of quiet apprehension, when otherwise his body language would not betray him. Everything is right, but he’s pushing back his bang: something’s amiss. These years later, I see his cue everywhere in others.
It’s a lot to admit publicly that I live by watching people live their lives. I worry that it seems pedantic to treat observation with so much mental rigour: a scientist collecting her data. But – what it means to be here, the infinite ways to compose a day, and the tiny actions that lead to the mundane and sublime? I will spend years puzzling over this stuff.
I really – and initially, against my will – like a genre of writing known as “stunt non-fiction.” The label’s a bit unfortunate, mostly because of the connotations in the word “stunt” – falsity or something done for attention. The genre refers to the recent explosion of writing about an author’s quest toward some kind of self-discovery through a gimmick. A few titles you will recognize - Julie & Julia, The Happiness Project, The Art of Eating In or Living Oprah. Each has a narrowly-defined scope and time frame: for instance, attempting every recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking or devoting an entire year to the study and living of “happiness.”
This type of reading provides me an easy, cheap thrill – the high someone else might experience from hours of reality television. The books aren’t complicated and the lessons aren’t profound, especially when they set out to be. The real meat is the 300-page glimpse into someone’s real – albeit, heavily edited – life. The minutiae within the less-considered bits make this genre exciting and infuriating. Powell’s puddle of woman and stuffed chicken on the orange and black checkered tile; quiet, keen bedtime observations from Rubin’s husband; or how Cathy’s experiment, to me, is a story about relationships, not avoiding restaurants.
It all comes back to the looking really hard at people: on the streetcar, at the table, through the words they write and omit, however uncomfortable… The individual bits often don’t say much. But in composite, our gestures are revelatory. Figuring out the lessons in each glance, each movement absorbed, each excruciating detail, and then comes the difficult part – using this bric-à-brac to some end, maybe to live better.
[Photo, with thanks, via.]
Fanfic
A a teenager, I read a ton of fan fiction.
If you didn’t share in my indulgence, let me explain. Fan fiction is a genre of writing about celebrities or other obsessions, written by the more rabid parts of a fan base. Where musicians and actors are involved, the typical fanfic narrative might feature a celebrity moving in next door to – and falling madly in love with – a female protagonist, who is modeled after the story’s author. Or, our teenage protagonist might attend a concert and end up backstage, where the lead singer sees her through the crowd love-at-first-sight and whisks her away, happily ever after. Teenage dreams, with lots of adjectives.
Fanfic authors and food writers are the same kind of beast. We like certain narratives and crutch descriptors – and we like to reuse them.
His eyes were deep and swirling chestnut pools. The pork belly was unctuous and toothsome. Food writing is fanfic, with the pig starring as Justin Bieber – not to say that Bieber is unctuous or toothsome or local/organic.
About 90 per cent of the time, I would like to strike certain words from our food-writing arsenal: decadent, authentic, assertive, rustic, complex, sinful, artisinal, aged, cloying, elegant… I’ve missed many in this short list. And not to throw stones – I’m guilty of using all these words just because they fall effortlessly into sentences. Like a smear of red lipstick they are striking, yes, but only when worn just so, which makes them difficult to pull off.
It’s true, there’s a finite pool of words in our language that combine to create a memorable image. Even more so when writing about food, which demands descriptors that have a certain built-in aesthetic quality. No one wants to describe dessert as just good or nice or tasty. A word like cloying is loaded with meaning – sweet, almost too sweet, syrupy, tooth-achingly over the top… we get what it conveys instantly. And the overused word is better than an haphazard thesaurus replacement, especially when the new word’s meaning is almost-but-not-quite-right for a given context.
Narratives are even more challenging. As with fanfic, we have only so many storytelling formulas – based in nostalgia, the seasons, comfort, memory, heartbreak, suspense.
And some of these narratives are necessary, if overdone. The local/seasonal/organic storyline, for one. These words are thrown around often and without care. Just the other night, I saw “fresh local summer tomatoes” on a respected Toronto restaurant’s January menu. But when handled with care, this is an important story to keep telling. We are keen to address where our food comes from, and how our cooking reflects the seasons. I’m at once exhausted and invigorated by paragraph-long menu item entries that list each ingredient’s origin. To concoct another narrative – one involving hothouse tomatoes and Costco mesclun mix – is not just unromantic, it’s against what we love about eating.
Formulas are not all bad. Certain plot structures just work, which is why writers recycle. Words become crutches out of good intention, because at one time they were startling and meaningful. But it takes just a little effort to be more thoughtful, critical of cliche, and aware that words strung together are the mental pictures I create.
Fanfic kept me reading when I saw myself in the girl next door, who was just like me in the best way, but found herself in an extraordinary circumstance. Food writing keeps me reading when I see myself in the girl next door’s dinner, whose ingredients and rituals of eating are mine-but-different, whose words tell something new about otherwise-ordinary circumstances.
[Photo, with thanks, via]
Unscientific
When other kids were dreaming of being firefighters and ballerinas, I wanted to become a geneticist. I was a 12-year-old with a DNA obsession, a love for James Watson and Francis Crick (Maurice Wilkins, too), and a Genetics for Dummies book I carted around like a security blanket. I was set on being the first woman to grow babies in pods, Matrix-style, long before the movie was released.
A rigorous math-and-science highschool experience drove away this early love. All I’m left of my calling is an affinity for biology-themed Jeopardy! categories, and a family who tease me now and again about my childhood pod babies.
I’ve never naturally gotten on with children. Perhaps this is a product of my particular breed of introversion, but I don’t dream of becoming a mom like many women I know. If anything, the notion of responsibility for another life makes me want to run far, far away from the opposite sex. I have terrible fears of dropping babies or stepping on them or the worst case: not knowing how to love them right.
But with the birth of my nephew back in August, I changed a little. I love this little being with all my might, in an unexpected and unexplainable way. I make my sister email me photos. I have his ever-rotating picture as my desktop background at home and work. Baby Kieran is snuggly and fragile and smells nice. He even seems to like me.
I’ve warmed up to the idea of just loving, and not needing to understand the why and how.
My nephew ate his first solids this week, which was my inspiration for a whimsical way to showcase some market beets. After all, I do know how to feed people (babies included) and breakfast the colour of Play-Doh is fun for adults alike. These beet pancakes are a brilliant shade of magenta and packed with goodness – slightly sweet, very dense and almost earthy.
They’re exactly the food to fuel childhood dreams, however strange those dreams may be.
Beet pancakes
These pancakes are hefty and dense – the texture is similar to pound cake and one or two make an ample breakfast. Because of the honey in the batter, they are sweet enough plain. They’d also be delicious with some maple syrup and Greek yogurt or toasted walnuts. For a savoury take, omit the honey and up the salt to one teaspoon – then top with sour cream and dill for a non-traditional take on borscht. In coin-sized portions, the savoury version would make a terrific blini base.
Ingredients
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup spelt or other whole grain flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp fine sea salt (increase to 1 tsp for savoury version)
1 Tbsp cocoa, non-Dutch processed (I like Nativas Naturals raw cacao or Scharffen Berger cocoa)
2 medium red beets, roasted to tender (about 1 cup)
1.5 cups warm water
2 Tbsp honey (omit for savoury version)
1 large egg, beaten
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
Equipment
blender
large metal or glass mixing bowl (beets will stain plastic)
spatula
whisk
heavy non-stick frying pan or griddle
baking sheet
tin foil
Method
To roast the beets: preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Scrub beets well and remove ends. Wrap individually in tin foil (as you would a baked potato) and roast for approximately one hour, until a sharp knife is easily inserted. This can be done in advance – just store the wrapped beets in the fridge.
To make the pancake batter: in bowl, whisk together flours, baking powder, sea salt and cocoa until very well incorporated. Set aside.
In another bowl, dissolve honey into warm water. Add honey-water mixture and beets to blender and puree until very smooth and liquefied - there should be no beet pieces remaining.
Add the beet puree, egg and butter to the dry ingredients, stirring well to incorporate until an even bright magenta batter is achieved.
Drop 1/4 cup spoonfuls onto a heated griddle or frying pan over medium-high heat. Cook for two minutes per side until pancake is cooked through and forms a light brown crust. You will know when to flip because tiny bubbles will crack at the pancake’s surface.
Serve plain (the pancakes are slightly sweet from the honey and beet) or with maple syrup. For a savory version, see headnote. Makes 8 large pancakes. Leftovers can be refrigerated or frozen and reheated.
Resolve
As someone who spends an awful lot of time cooking and writing about cooking, I’ve been timid about sharing my kitchen of late. Not to say that I haven’t been cooking – oh, I have – but I’ve become a boring sort. My stove produces a steady stream of baked sweet potatoes and parsnips, bowls of brown rice, salads and avocados on toast, lentils doused in olive oil, and lots of soup.
Perhaps it’s the time of year, or the thick layer of snow blanketing my street, or the pervasive scent of resolution in the air, mid-January. But my cooking has been basic.
It’s become unfashionable to make new year’s resolutions. For every promise to resolve I’ve read this month, I’ve read three more confessions to the contrary – people are allergic to resolving, refuse to jump on that bandwagon, or decry resolution-making as a task for the weak, the January Joiners. (Each of those anti-resolutions have appeared in my feed reader.) Sometimes I’ve nodded along in agreement. I’ve been hesitant to compile my own list for self improvement.
But nothing is shameful about setting goals and starting anew, however arbitrary January 1 is as a beginning. In a way, I think my humble, pared-down kitchen fare has been an unintentional resolution of sorts: to eat simply, to make uncomplicated and delicious food, and to honour my body. All darn good resolutions, I’d say.
With that in mind, I bring you more soup. A double-fennel split pea soup.
As someone who despised licorice-flavoured anything for years after an unfortunate youthful bout with ouzo, I’m still making up lost time with fennel, and this soup sure helps the task along.
It’s full of softened fennel and apple and studded with crunchy bits of the plant’s seed, a monochromatic soup fit for mid-January. It turns a traditional pea soup – smoky and slick with oil from the ham hock at its base – on its head, offering a surprisingly bright and round flavour. I often find that split pea anything has a murky and dull quality. This soup is anything but.
Perhaps my late-to-the-game resolution this year should be to eat more soup. Three weeks in, I’m off to a pretty good start.
Double fennel split pea soup
Developing this recipe, I initially used only one-half tablespoon of fennel seed. As I refined, I found the split peas really stood up to the strong anise flavour, and so increased the measure to a whole tablespoon. It seems like too much fennel going in, but I promise it’s the perfect amount, both texturally and flavour-wise. Diced carrot was also used in the initial recipe, but the soup is plenty sweet without it.
Ingredients
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp whole fennel seeds
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1 Tbsp minced fresh ginger
1 cup onion, diced (about 1 medium)
1 cup fennel, diced (about 1/4 bulb)
1 cup green apple (Granny Smith, Crispin), diced
450 grams dried green split peas, rinsed well
4 cups neutral stock (chicken, vegetable)
3 cups water
Equipment
1 large heavy-bottom soup pot with lid
Method
In soup pot, heat olive oil over medium-low with fennel seeds for about five minutes, until fragrance is released from the seeds. Add the onions and fennel with salt, and sweat until tender and translucent, about five minutes. Do not let the onions or fennel brown. Add the ginger and apples, and continue to cook until softened slightly, about 10 minutes.
Increase heat to medium-high. Add the split peas, stock and water. Let this mixture come to a rapid boil, then reduce heat to medium. Simmer, covered, for approximately one hour. When the soup is ready, the split peas will be nearly disintegrated into a pulpy green mush. At this point, you can continue to cook to your desired consistency – for a very smooth soup, continue to cook for approximately 30 minutes.
To serve, ladle into bowls. Makes 8 generous portions and freezes very well. I pour two-cup servings into freezer bags for quick defrosting (as in the top photo).
Treasures
Over the holiday, shiny new things everywhere, I thought a lot about minimalism. Now, five days into 2011, though I’ve read approximately 2746 resolutions, it’s fitting only one is stuck in my head.
Purge the trinkets and hold on to the treasures.
I’ve always considered myself a minimalist of sorts. I rarely buy things that lack a practical purpose. I like bare surfaces and the word sparse. I treat each new year as a space to curate. But a minimalist mindset also diminishes the importance of stuff, and sometimes stuff is okay.
I uncovered all kinds of stuff during the holiday, holed up in my childhood bedroom, combing through old drawers. My dressers are treasure troves of things and enemies of minimalism. As I excavate, I thank my younger self for denying her minimalist impulses and for these souvenirs. Not magnets or keychains or seashells or snowglobes. But souvenirs of long-abandoned stories as objects, ones that honour this word’s true meaning: memories, remembrances, tokens.
On Christmas day, I marveled at the paper wrapped around a gift from my grandmother. It felt old and delicate, the white background yellowed with time. Inspecting the pattern I saw a trademark: MCMLXXXVIII. I exclaimed across the room, holding up the paper – “Gran, this paper is from 1988! It’s nearly as old as me!” She replied, ever insightful: “You don’t say! It still wrapped those presents pretty darn well, didn’t it?”
Many of us have been taught to live in the default setting of purge: our closets, our desks, our hard drives, our minds. In that process, we toss out bits and baubles that help frame tomorrow. I think about a passage I once read. The author lamented not keeping a few 50s housedresses for her daughter, relics of the everyday and the life she lived, the best kind of vintage. But reaility television tells sordid tales of hoarders and compulsive shoppers – people buried under stuff, real and imagined. Holding on to common objects defies the magazine rally cry to streamline, toss, discard!
We’ve been taught that minimalism is inherently good.
But those childhood drawers. Hidden deep in one is a cheap spiral-bound notebook from a summer in Greece. Lining its pages, recipes. Recipes dictated by my YiaYia, translated and transcribed in my hand – spinach pie, walnut cake, stuffed tomatoes, baked lima beans, honey-soaked custard pastry … versions of classic dishes that live only in her mind and this notebook. A goldmine, and all mine.
From dime stores spring prehistoric wrapping paper and notebooks filled with family history. Stuff, unexamined. We assign value in the game of toss or keep, but value is driven by meaning and context and future memories. Objective assessment is impossible. How do we separate the trinkets from the treasures, so the best recipes don’t get thrown away?
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Aside: I’m humbled to be amidst some of Canada’s best food writers as a nominee at the 2010 Canadian Food Blog Awards. I hope you’ll head that way to discover some wonderful Canadian-made food writing.
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Revithosoupa (lemon-chickpea soup)
This chickpea soup made many appearances at our island table: a peasant dish that we’d sop up with paximadia, rye husks that are a specialty of Crete. (If you subscribe to the Art of Eating, issue no. 82/fall 2009 had an in-depth feature on paximadia, well worth a read.) Traditionally, this soup requires advanced planning to prepare the chickpeas overnight, but I’ve modified YiaYia’s recipe for a speedier version.
I include oregano in my soup, which isn’t standard. You could omit it, but I love the herbal quality it gives. I also use half stock, half water – traditional recipes use only water, but given the reduced cooking time, stock lends richness. The amount of lemon I prescribe makes a bright-but-gentle broth. Lemon enthusiasts could up the quantity to one-half cup. For a less-bracing soup, reduce the lemon to one-eighth cup.
Ingredients
1/2 large onion, minced (~1 cup)
3 Tbsp good-tasting olive oil – this is for flavour as much as fat
1/2 tsp dried oragano
1 can (540 mL/19 oz) chickpeas with liquid
3 cups your best stock, vegetable or chicken
3 cups water
1 large piece (~1×1 inch) lemon zest
1/4 c fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
lemon slices and olive oil to serve
Equipment
1 large heavy-bottom soup pot with lid
1 potato masher
Method
In soup pot, heat olive oil over medium-low. Add the onions and oregano, and sweat until tender and translucent, about 5 minutes. Do not let the onions brown. Increase heat to medium-high, and add the chickpeas with liquid, stock, water and lemon zest. Let this mixture come to a rapid boil, then reduce heat to medium-low. Stir in the lemon juice and taste for salt, adjusting to your preferences. If your stock or chickpeas were particularly salty, you may need to add more water.
Simmer, covered, for approximately one hour. You’ll know the soup is ready when you can easily mush a chickpea between two fingers. Before serving, mash soup slightly with a potato masher to thicken the broth (or if you prefer a brothier soup, skip this step).
Ladle into bowls, and serve drizzled with olive oil and extra lemon wedges. Serves four for dinner with some crusty bread for dipping, or six as a starter.
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