Cookery

I'm making risotto.  Lynn declared it so last Tuesday, after she'd made a stock with the bones of the turkey she'd spatchcocked for smoking on the 4th of July.  She came out to the living room, excited, cup and spoon in hand.  "Taste this..."  Yum.  Field and forest, a living taste, herbs and spices sparking across my tongue, redolent of that wild bird ancestor of the factory formed fowl that'd been sacrificed for our holiday.  Eyes gleaming, she said, "Mushroom risotto!"  She was absolutely right.  I could taste it in that broth, how it craved the mushrooms.

I ordered shiitakes from the guy who delivers fresh produce to us every Saturday.  Everything else – the rice, the butter, cheese, wine, shallots, garlic – we always have on hand.  I ordered asparagus, a lemon for a vinaigrette.

But I was anxious about it.  Not the risotto per se.  I’m very good at risotto.¹  It’s one of the most relaxing meals you can make, once you’ve learned the rhythm.  It’s a dance – swirl the rice in the pan, add some more broth, swirl and twirl, set out the plates, another stir, open the wine...  It requires an hour or so of attentive time in the kitchen, but there’s nothing about it that’s intense.

At least, that’s the way it can go if all your limbs are in good working order.  If none of them are, which is the case with me, it requires a bit more planning.  And a lot more time.

***

From the early years of our marriage it evolved that I fixed the weeknight dinners.  Pastas and stir-fries mostly, things I could fix in half an hour using mostly fresh ingredients or pantry staples.  Lynn took over on weekends – roasts and breads and pies and stews and thick soups that we could make a meal out of and then freeze for those nights when, for one reason or another, neither of us had the time or inclination to cook from scratch.  Twenty years ago, when we tore out the floor and rebuilt the kitchen from the ground up, she designed it so that we had complementary workstations, mine organized around the stove top, hers around the oven.  A bespoke kitchen for serious cooking, not for hanging out.

I kept an extra copy of Jack Bishop’s Pasta e Verdura at the office.  I’ve never been a vegetarian, but Jack makes it easy to incorporate superb vegetarian dishes into the rotation.  As the afternoons wound down and I was starting to contemplate supper, I’d flip through the pages, favorites marked, plenty of new ones to try.  Broccoli in "hot" pink tomato sauce with basil.  Red cabbage smothered with onions and red wine.  Salsa verde with garlic, herbs, green olives, capers, lemon.  Spinach and mushrooms with garlic and white wine.  I’d pick two or three, then stop at the grocery store on my way home and make my final choice depending on which vegetables looked the most promising.  At home I’d pull off my necktie, go straight to the kitchen, pick out the pasta (long or shaped depending on sauce and my mood), and get at it.

I’d’ve spent my day in meetings or working on reports or presentations.  Trying to use what political and managerial skills I possessed to nudge people and resources into an alignment that would further the studies of the students and faculty while making my library a good place to work.  Only very rarely was there a concrete payoff that I could claim as my own.  My job was to nudge the pieces in ways that would make it possible for other people to have those successes.  It was a good job, and I was good at it.  But nebulous, all the same.

In the kitchen, on the other hand, I was on my own, bustling about, transforming ingredients into meals.  The immediacy of it was a tonic.  Within an hour of my getting home we’d be at the table with a glass of wine and something delicious, healthy, and sustaining.  What could be more concrete than that?

***

These days I’m awake many times during the night.  It’s been a decade since I slept as much as four hours at a stretch.  Three is a cause for celebration.  Two and less than two is the norm.  At least I’m rarely awake for long, and I try to make good use of those moments, pushing back against the frustration, the fear that this is as good as it gets.  Dread of the future fills me.  Death looms, shadowy and implacable.  I search for patience.  I calm myself with my meditation mantra.

Planning for something positive helps.  So for the next four nights, as part of my getting back to sleep journey, I play it out in my head.  I visualize the risotto’s mis-en-place.² As a phantom I move through the kitchen, grabbing ingredients, lining them up.   Can I reach high enough to get the container of rice from the pantry without dropping it on my head?  We’ve a stepladder I can use if need be, although that has dangers of its own.  I think through which bowls I’ll use, which pans.  Picture myself pulling them from their cupboards and drawers.

How long will it all take.  How much stamina will I have?  I worry. 

How do I pace it all so that I can:

            Serve Lynn a delicious meal

                        that I'm proud of

            Have fun fixing it

            Without overexerting myself to the point I'm gasping for breath and wracked with pain by the time we sit down.

Am I overthinking it?  Prob’ly.  But each time I wake up I run through it again, and by the time Sunday arrives, I have a plan.

***

When the short circuit hit my spinal cord it knocked me out of the kitchen for a while.  I’d lost fine motor control in my hands and they were (still are) constantly tingling.  You know what it’s like when you accidentally knock your funny bone and you have that electric shock that runs down into your fingers?  Lasts maybe as long as a minute before the sensation subsides and dexterity returns?  It’s kinda like that except that it never clears.  Legs the same.  At six months I could no longer walk without a cane.  Getting the body to do anything required tremendous effort and in those days I was still working full time.  By evening the fatigue would be so heavy that even the easiest meals were often more than I could handle.  I still managed to fix my simple lunches, but the evening meals seemed out of my reach.  I was learning to cope, trying to figure out how to adjust as some symptoms eased and some got worse. 

Lynn filled the gap, of course, and her cooking kept getting better.  She’s always been more adventurous than me.  She’s a devoted fan of Kenji Lopez-Alt (“my beloved Kenji”) and loves trying out the new techniques he comes up with.  She loves spices and she loves heat.  She follows Bill Penzey’s essays with glee and fills our cupboards with his concoctions.  That kind of adventurousness leads to occasional disasters, but far more brilliant successes.  And she’s always paid particular attention to presentation, so night after night she was bringing these beautiful and beautifully delicious meals to the dining room table (where we always have wine and candles and jazz playing softly in the background).

I’d always felt that our cookery skills were pretty even, but now she kept getting better and I was stagnant.  I don’t think of myself as a particularly competitive person, but I needed to keep up.  I needed to get back into the kitchen.

It took a while, but I think we’re back to parity.  We order in one night a week, split the rest.  Her presentation still surpasses mine, she’s still more adventurous, but my successes are equal to hers and the failures, for both of us, are blessedly few.

***

Suppertime is typically between eight and eight-thirty, so at four I head to the kitchen to prep and do as much mis-en-place as I can.  I make my way around the kitchen leaning on Ramón, my trusty rollator and butler.³  I use him to carry things, sit when I need to rest.

I can’t stand at the counter for more than four or five minutes before the pain in my trunk and legs becomes too much of a distraction.   I know the mushrooms and shallots will take longer than that, so I pull out the little black folding table.

Get the paper bag with the mushrooms out of the fridge.  Make my way around the stove to the kitchen pantry where we keep the onion bin and pull out two shallots – one for the risotto and one for the vinaigrette.  Cutting board.  Chef’s knife.  Prep bowls for the vegetables when they’re chopped.  Have I got everything I need for this stage?  I think so.

I tell kitchen Alexa to play some Miles Davis, settle myself on Ramón.  I’m backed up against the dishwasher so that he won’t roll away from me when I need to get up.

Getting to this point has taken about twenty minutes.  Not bad.  I reach for the bag of mushrooms.

***

Many years ago it became apparent to me that how much fun one was having in the kitchen had a direct impact on how the meal turned out.  You can do all of the same steps in exactly the same order, all the ingredients just as fresh, all the spices just as balanced and if you’re feeling stressed and distracted it’s just not going to be as good as if you were entirely present and experiencing the joy that comes from transforming raw ingredients into something that soothes and savors and delights the tongue and the mind and the soul.  I don’t want to get all mystical about it, but there it is.  Believe it or don’t. 

I’ve often used that fact in restaurants, particularly in restaurants that have delectable menus that I don’t expect to get to again (or at least not often).  I’ll ask the server to ask the chef what the kitchen is having the most fun with that day.  Sometimes it takes a bit for me to get across to the server what I’m asking – not what’s most popular, not what the server’s current favorites are, not what the chef was encouraging them to push when they all sat down for supper just before the restaurant opened – but what the cooks are having the most fun with on that particular night, the dish that makes them feel like magicians, that makes the heat and the burns and the cuts and the pressure of the rush all worth it.  I love it when the server’s eyes light up because they get it and they’re excited to go ask.  At Tangled Up In Blue in Taylor’s Falls, the chef came out to our table, amused and curious about this strange request.  We talked about likes and what he had on hand.  I’d already picked a big wine, so we wanted to stay with red meats.  Lynn ended up with a bison strip steak that she said was the tenderest, most flavorful she'd ever had.  Carrot potato gnocchi, wilted spinach and tomatoes, bleu cheese demiglace.  For me he recommended the filet mignon, which came with a slightly spicy roasted pepper and raisin risotto, cilantro lime carrots with a honey habanero sauce.  Did the chef and his crew have the most fun that night or was it Lynn and I?  At Springhouse on another evening the server brightened right away and hurried off.  Chef McDaniel is a big burly guy with a shock of red hair and a beard and handlebar moustache to match.  Through the open kitchen I could see the two of them, our little blond server pointing us out as the big guy leaned down to listen, knife paused in his hand.  He gazed around the kitchen, leaned back down.  She came back to us and said, “Chef suggests the pork loin – because he knew that pig.”  It was splendid, and knowing that made me more reverent for what was on my plate.

***

Fun requires paying attention.

Start with the mushrooms.  A couple of years ago a young married couple, lunatics for sure, started up a local delivery service from nearby farms.  The Till shop opens online at 2:00 on Sunday and closes at 5:00 on Wednesday.  Delivery is Saturday morning.  They have plenty of locally pastured meat, fish from the Gulf, interesting pantry items, but what I generally focus on are the vegetables.  Lettuces, kale, tomatoes, peas, onions, baby potatoes.  Slim pickings during the winter months but a fabulous wealth come spring and summer.  The shiitakes arrive in a paper bag, usually about six or seven ounces.  I pour them out onto my little table.  The farm does a good job of cleaning them, there’s only occasional specks of dirt I need to brush off.  Shiitake stems are woody and inedible (although they’re good to add to a stock), so I start by pulling those off.  I’ve learned just how to hold and pull and pinch to get the stem off without tearing apart the cap.  My fingers have just enough fumbled dexterity to get the job done.

Next is the slicing and chopping.  I’ve learned to be particularly observant of where the fingers of my left hand are when I’ve got the chef’s knife in my right.  There was the time a few years ago when I was dicing carrots and celery for a mirepoix to use in a bolognese.  I was slicing a stalk of celery down it’s length and did not notice that my ring finger had curled underneath.  When I drew the blade along the length of the stalk, I could feel, with my hand holding the knife, that I had cut across something that was not celery.  Then I saw the blood, realized what had happened.  It didn’t hurt, I hadn’t felt it, but I was annoyed that it meant having to staunch the blood and get Lynn to help me get it bandaged so I could continue.  It’s not that I have no sensations in my fingers, I remind Lynn.  I have lots of sensations in my fingers!   They just only vaguely correspond to what’s happening in the real world.

Because I’m planning to make arancini tomorrow with the leftover risotto, I need to make a fine dice of most of the mushrooms.  For the arancini I’ll take a spoonful of cold risotto, flatten it, put a nub of mozzarella in the center, roll it into a golf ball sized sphere, dip it in flour, egg wash, and bread crumbs, fry it (and its brothers) in olive oil.  So I need a risotto that doesn’t have big chunks.  But tonight, for visual effect and to provide some contrast in flavors and textures, I want some big slices.  I take several of the biggest caps, slice them fat and set those pieces aside.  Then tend to the rest, going for about a quarter inch dice.  Once they hit the hot butter they’ll shrink a bit more.  Just what I want.

It takes a while.  One cap at a time.  It would be tedious if my goal was to get it over with as quickly as possible.  I bite my impatience, push myself to pay attention to each one, marvel at the different sizes, the variations of their common shape, the colors shading from beige into deep brown, the connection to the earth they were grown in, not that many miles away.

Finely dice the shallots – my favorite of the onion family, it’s mild sweetness that goes so well with so many of the sauces I like to cook.  For tonight’s meal I divvy the little pile into mounds of unequal size.  The larger will go into the risotto, the smaller into the vinaigrette for the asparagus.

And it’s that vinaigrette that needs to be tended to next – microplane the lemon zest, juice into a measuring cup, whisk together the shallot with a little salt and pepper, then slowly whisk in the olive oil.

Vinaigrette’s finished, mushrooms and shallot are chopped.  Pans are on the stove.  I get out the dried minced garlic, the plastic container of turkey stock, measure the cup of arborio rice.  Grate the Parmigiana Reggiano.  What else?  Mis-en-place.  Once I start the cooking process I need to have everything within arm’s reach.  Ah!  Normally I’d use a cup of white wine (dry vermouth, following the Julia Child example) but tonight I’ll use brandy, to stand up to the earthiness of the mushrooms and turkey stock, so I get that out and pour a cup.  While I’m at it, I open the bottle of red wine and leave it to air.  I can wait to snap the ends off the asparagus until I come back out to cook.

By now I’ve been in the kitchen for two hours and I’ve yet to turn on the stove.  An able-bodied person could’ve done all this in less than thirty minutes.  But I’ve had a fine time, happy to be able to do it at all!  Now I can rest for 45 minutes, sip some Jameson, read a bit.⁴

***

I was a little boy when my mother taught me how to make potato pancakes.  I don’t know where the recipe came from.  They’re not like the latkes that are traditional in some East European cuisines.  Grated on the rough (not the fine holes, not the larger shredding holes) side of a box grater, you end up with a pulpy, lumpy, runny batter.  Add a beaten egg, a little salt and pepper.  I’d sit next to her in the kitchen, fascinated.  Sift flour into the mix until it clumps just right when you lift out a spoonful and let it drop back.  Fry them in Crisco.  You know they’re ready to flip when all the pink has faded.⁵  If you’ve gotten the heat just right, they come out golden, a thin crispy layer on either side enveloping the delicious softness within.  Eat them with butter and a little salt.

When I left home, Mom gave me the electric skillet that she used to make them, and they were my comfort food.  When Lynn started staying weekends with me in St. Louis, I’d make them for us midday on Saturday.  She’d’ve come into town Friday evening, we’d’ve had dinner at Gian Peppe’s, spent the evening at the Soulard bars leaving Kelly’s at 3:00 in the morning to tumble into bed.  By noon we’d be hungry, blissed out on sex and hangovers.  I’d bring her a plate of potato pancakes, a little cottage cheese on the side, open a bottle of Spanish cava, and we’d fortify ourselves for the day.

Josie was born on Valentine’s Day, interrupting the potato pancakes brunch that Lynn and I were having to celebrate.  As she got older, Josie declared the “fried pancakes” to be one of her favorite foods.⁶  We’d have them several times a year (they’re our standard Christmas Day brunch) and she began to help me make them.  By now she does all of the batter prep, me looking over her shoulder.  It’s ritual, nearly sacramental.  The pan we use for nothing else.  The jar that we shake the egg in.  We sift the flour, even though today’s flour doesn’t need sifting, because that’s how my Mom taught me.  I do the frying, she takes them out to the table as each batch is done. 

For her last two birthdays (seventeen and eighteen) she asked for potato pancakes as her special birthday dinner, and a couple of weeks ago, as we were talking about her imminent departure for college, she asked for one more potato pancakes meal before she goes.  My Mom would be so pleased.

***

Back in the kitchen and I’m finally ready to cook.  Everything is in place.  I snap the ends off the asparagus, lay the stalks in a skillet, add a little water, turn up the heat.  They simmer four minutes.  I take a bite to be sure, use the small tongs to move them to a platter, drizzle them with the vinaigrette.  They can cool while I do the rest.

Empty the stock into a sauce pan.  It’s gelatinous, wriggling out of the container, quivering like jello as it plops into the pan.  I heat it to shimmering on the burner next to the risotto pot.

Brown the big slices of mushroom and set them aside.  More butter.  Cook the shallot for a bit, then add the mushrooms.  When they’ve cooked down (maybe a little more butter), add the garlic, then the rice.  Some salt and pepper.  Swirl it so that each grain is covered with butter and starts to toast.  Maybe a minute or two.  Then the brandy – it steams and sputters and deglazes the pan and adds it’s own strong scent to the butter and shallot and mushroom aromas filling the kitchen.  For the next twenty minutes I try to bring my jittering mind solely into this moment.  Sit.  Breathe.  Patience.  Add some broth.  Stir it around.  Pause.  Sit.  Mentally double-check that I’m not forgetting anything.  Give it another stir.  Adjust the heat ever so slightly so it’s simmering softly.  Another stir.  Sit a bit more.  Looks like the stock is absorbed.  Add another cup.  Repeat.  When I get down to the last cup of broth, I start tasting.  The grains should have just a bit of firmness, the overall texture leaning toward creamy.  I decide I don’t need the last half cup of stock.  Now the big finish – the Parmigiana and a dollop of cream.  Normally I’d use more butter, but I think against this stock and those mushrooms I’ll go with the cream.  Stir vigorously.  Fold in those reserved mushroom slices.

I apportion the risotto into our favorite wide black bowls, lay the asparagus stalks across the top (to be eaten with our fingers).  It’s supper.

I’ve spent some three and a half hours altogether in the kitchen.  But if I’ve done it right, if I’ve paid attention, if I’ve relished what I’ve done and ignored what I can’t do, it’ll be marvelous.

***

Balance.  Harmony.  Gratitude.  What I love most about cooking are those moments of transformation – the way the butter and flour thicken and brown, and then the liquid melds with them and becomes a sauce or a gravy or the beginnings of a chocolate soufflé.  The way a couple of chopped heirloom tomatoes added to the onion and garlic and anchovy sizzling in olive oil break down into a smooth sauce in just a few minutes.⁷  How the sourdough toasts from the color of snow to the color of sunrise.  A lump of cold rice from the stir-fry the night before, fried in the well-seasoned wok with egg and green onions, add some soy sauce and a little sesame oil and it’s as much as one needs for a meal.

The first night I spent with Lynn was in Birmingham and the next day we were in her kitchen.  Bed to kitchen to bed to kitchen.  She misheard something I said and thought I didn’t like garlic.  The look she gave me made it clear that would’ve been the end of it right there.  The letters, the long talks, the insights into each other’s dreams, the way our bodies fit together – all that was great, but how we shared food was fundamental.  Is that an exaggeration?  She’s put up with a lot from me and my failings over the decades.  Garlic?  Really?

When we tell that story to friends, we’re laughing, but we’re not kidding.  We’re complicated ingredients.  Combine us over heat, some tempestuous motion, exotic spices, the humblest of root vegetables, garlic, yes.  Wine and a little whiskey.  I love the moments of transformation.

***

Yes, the risotto is marvelous. 

We practice.  We get better.  I learn to accommodate my weaknesses.  Cookery.  It’s a lifetime of learning that you never find the end of.

Three nights a week, I bring the meal to the table.

1. I’ve learned much of what I know about cooking from Jack Bishop’s books.  The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook tells you everything you need about risotto.

2. Mis-en-place – the process of getting everything ready, from utensils to ingredients, and having it all ready to hand when you start cooking.  Good practice in general, but essential for me now.  I can’t go rushing off to the pantry to grab the spice jar I forgot to get out.

3. All of my assistive devices are named after characters from Pixar’s Cars movies. Here’s Ramón.

4. The Second John McPhee Reader.

5. She’d joke that the pink color is the blood from the inevitable scraping of your fingers as you grate the last bits of potato. 

6. Cacio e pepe is the other one I’ve been fixing for her since she was a toddler.  She was not eight when we were in a tiny Italian restaurant in Manhattan for an early lunch.  The place had just opened, we were the first ones there.  The owner came over to take our orders.  Josie looked up and sweetly asked, in her little Southern accent, for “cacio e pepe, please?”  He was stunned, then melted, totally charmed.  He sat with us while the restaurant filled, formed a beautiful paper napkin rose for his new friend.

7. Add chopped olives and some capers for an heirloom puttanesca.