Lisa is the author of the award-winning memoir, A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood, which was an National Book Critics Circle Top-10 Independent Press Pick for 2011. With Caroline, she's the co-founder of Learning to Eat and co-editor of The Cassoulet Saved our Marriage: True Tales of Food, Family, and How We Learn to Eat. She holds an MA in creative writing, a PhD in English and has taught literature and creative writing widely, most recently in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco.
Life has been very, very busy around here, and we’ve been eating very fast, easy, unadventurous things. We’ve also eaten out a lot more, which has been a nice change of pace during this busy season. Last weekend, we went to Martin’s West, one of very favorite local places, where I had an escarole and persimmon salad with walnuts, apples, and andante cheddar cheese. It was spectacular. So, last night, I recreated it at home with what I had on hand. This is not as good or magical as the version at the restaurant, but it is an excellent winter salad. We ate it, in the spirit of Mark Bittman, with grilled raddichio, alongside a quickly seared tuna topped with capers and the broccoli romanesco left over from the kids’ dinner.
Escarole & Persimmon Salad
escarole
sliced persimmon
walnuts
Comte cheese (or, ideally, Andante cheddar)
olive oil
white balsamic vinegar
Toast the walnuts lightly in a 350 degree oven until fragrant.
Layer persimmon slices over the escarole, shave thin slices of the cheese with a vegetable peeler.
Unknown to us, Caroline & I have the same advent wreath tradition. We light ours, made with greens from the Redwood tree in our backyard and 3 tealights (3 violet, one rose for Gaudete (orRejoice!) Sunday) every night during this season. So I will leave you with just this image and a poem by Wallace Stevens which has nothing to do with food, or Advent, but with the power of light in darkness. Which is something I think we all need, and something a candlelit table can sometimes help to provide.
Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour By Wallace Stevens
Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one…
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
We’ve been taking a cue from Mark Bittman’s latest book around here and making meat even less of presence than it usually is on our table. One of the things he suggests is to keep meat as a side course, not the focus of the meal. This is good for the eater and good for the environment. This week, this strategy happened kind of by accident, but it was terrific: economical, efficient, and versatile.
Remember that ham steak? That’s half of it on the plate. The kids ate only half of that, and the husband and I ate the other half. The following night, I cooked another quarter, choppped it up, and used it for our baked potato bar. Which was a big hit.
We still didn’t finish it, so the next night that leftover chopped up ham went into a country omelete with chives and cheddar cheese.
And we still had a 1/4 of the ham left. Kory and I finished it a few nights later with a potato/celery root mash & the left over pan sauce (which I had kept in a glass jar for just this eventuality). On the side we had roasted beets & puntarelle, and it was a perfect cold winter night’s meal.
That makes 4 meals (3 for 4 people, 1 for 2 people) for about $6 worth of meat, which in this house is an accomplishment.
Most of us have experienced this moment: You set the plate of food on the table. The kids eye glare at it with disdain. They groan, or turn up their noses, or pretend-barf. They say, “I’m not a (fish/meat/chicken/potato) person” or “That smells bad” or “What’s that?” (meaning, how in the hell did you ever think to cook that disgusting mess of so-called food?).
This happened at my table the the other night, in reaction to something I’ve cooked many times–a simple ham steak with a really quick country mustard sauce.
I said, “Fine, you don’t have to eat it.” But I asked them to try. And this has been my attitude of late: I let them choose what to eat. So far, they haven’t gone hungry.
On this particular night, my son braved the food first. “Huh,” he said. “It tastes better than it looks”
That was all the encouragement his sister needed, who agreed with him about the taste. I didn’t think it looked particularly bad, but I suspect it was the grain of the mustard that looked weird to them
I’m not really sure exactly what I’ve done to get my kids to be moderately brave about food. Certainly, some of it is how their wired, but I suspect some of it is habit and expectation. Certainly, it works in my favor that they like and trust each other. If one likes something, the other is more willing to try. I set things in front of them over and over and over again. I don’t argue or pander, but I give them a range of good choices. I never force them to eat, but I do ask them to try small bites of new food. Seasonal eating helps too–they expect certain things at certain times of year, and while there is sometimes a re-acclimation period (witness the ham, which I never cook in the summer), their memory is downright Proustian.
This ham is one of those fast weeknight dinners that I don’t cook too often, but it’s so easy, that probably I should.
Ham with Country Mustard Pan Sauce
Ham steak
Olive oil
Shallot, chopped finely
Country Mustard
Beer–a lager or light ale works well
Apple cider or apple juice or water
Butter
Fry the ham steak in a large skillet until warmed through, just a few minutes on each side.
Sautee the shallot in a few tablespoons of olive oil until soft.
Deglaze your pan with a few splashes of beer.
Swirl in about 1 Tablespoon of mustard
Add about 1/4 cup of cider, juice or water. The cider or juice will make it sweeter, but water works too.
Simmer until the pan sauce reduced to about a 1/4 cup. Taste and adjust seasoning.
This recipe comes straight out of Lidia’s Italy–I have what seems like and endless stream of recorded programs, which I generally don’t get around to watching. But this weekend I did and on Sunday I made this simple, comforting pasta. It has 5 ingredients and comes together in the amount of time it takes to cook the pasta–which means it’s also perfect for a busy weeknight. It’s also made from ingredients: pasta, garlic, day old bread, olive oil, oregano–that you will very often have on hand. You can watch Lidia cook it for Al Roker here (and add spinach to the basic recipe). My adaptation is below. It’s faithful to the spirit and the technique of the basic recipe, but it was a rainy Sunday, so I wasn’t about to go out for bucatini, though I would have liked to, and I didn’t have any oregano dried, so I substituted parsley and sage, which may be nontraditional, but was very good. I added a side dish of cauliflower roasted with olive oil, whole garlic cloves, and seasoned bread crumbs, which would have been just as good tossed in the pasta.
Spaghetti with garlic and bread crumbs
adapted from Lidia Bastianich
1 lb spaghetti
3/4 loaf day old bread, shredded into coarse crumbs (use a box grater or your food processor; you might have to cut off some of the hard crust)
lots of thinly sliced garlic (about 6 large cloves, but to your taste)
olive oil
4-5 sage leaves, chopped finely
1 T parsely, chopped finely
salt
Bring water to a boil. Salt and cook pasta.
While pasta is cooking, pour about 1/4 cup of oil in heavy pan. The oil should coat the bottom of the pan
Cook garlic for a minute or two, until it begins to soften.
Add bread crumbs and cook, stirring occasionally, until bread crumbs are nicely toasted. You want them nicely browned, so they have some crunch.
Add sage & parsley (or dried oregano), stir.
Turn off heat.
When pasta is finished, drain and add to the pan, tossing to coat.
