Asparagusto

Everyone's gettin' married. Boom. There it is. Everyone's gettin' married and everyone's havin' kids. This past month has seen a sharp increase in the wedded bliss, both imagined and actual, of my friends and family. And tens of little baby buns all warm and toasty and ready for the world. I predict a barrage of petite, flawless squares of paper urging me to "save the date" and even more dedicated to the teeny squinty-eyed perfection of little kiddos and doting mum-and-daddas.

What accounts for the spike in all-around good newses? I was warned about this by my older cousins ("Oh, those years. Those years are just going to be a blur of brides and babies")(I assume they were referring to my 20's and 30's?), but this seems unprecedented. It's like everyone jumped all over poor June's soul and threatened to overtake it with flower arrangements and bassinets.

(Ha. Do bassinets exist anymore?)

Now, I enjoy a good party, don't get me wrong. I'm all for happiness, and babies are awfully cute...but my god! My tearducts! My...wallet! Ack. I know it's summer and this trend isn't new by any means and really, when love and children are all you have to complain about, c'mon...but there's something afoot here and it's freaking me out. I believe I'm approaching the phase in my life otherwise known as Looking Back On. Or maybe it's the Why Didn't I? Or the Never Will I Ever. It's kind of profound in a sort of fluffy way.

So of course I revert back to my very least responsible and most excellent self. I've been thinking an awful lot about college, daring myself to return to the dirt, grime and muck of those few years that were good, so good while they lasted. The intrigue, the sleepovers (in twin beds! I still can't believe that), beer for breakfast which I haven't been able to do since, all the learning, growing, the BOOKS my gosh, and the incredible transformation that happens when you're suspended in a four-years-wide bubble...I wasn't what you'd call "naive," but I was significantly brighter-eyed and bushier-tailed than I am now. In fact, I think that my tail's all but fallen off (we've all gotta lose it sometime).

I also remember the food, and bear with me please. Wash U. had tremendous food. I think that we were ranked higher for our food service than for our academics, which was fine for the students (if not for the endowment). Perhaps the culmination of this stalwart commitment to culinary quality was weekend brunch at Center Court (I still don't know exactly what Center Court was, but I was an ardent fan). We had omelets made to order, kids. French toast, a waffle bar, meats, cheeses...and we'd lug our hungover asses to the cafeteria and pig out. I'm getting sick just thinking about it, both for the sheer volume of food consumed and the idea that our university more resembled a luxury hotel than an institution of higher education. But I ate, and ate well, and don't remember complaining about it while I was there.

One day I was at Center Court with my friend and I decided to reenact a scene from one of my favorite movies, Dangerous Beauty. It's a silly film and I adore it, and there's this one moment where a rather aged but still with-it lady suggestively eats a stalk of asparagus (it's classy! it's...classy.). With the steamed asparagus I'd picked up at the buffet, I attempted the same...and got the end lodged in my throat. About a minute later (and no thanks to my friend, who was laughing and pointing across the table while I turned red, then blue) I managed to pull it out and, scowling, finished my meal.

My relationship with asparagus has never been the same. I don't really get excited when it comes into season. I'm still apprehensive and it might be about my behavior and it might be about the vegetable, but I just don't use it all that much. So I was quite surprised with myself when I picked up a bunch the other day. I'm not going to talk about its gorgeous tender buds or the verdant essence of musk or whatever it is asparagus looks/smells/tastes like. I'm just going to say: that night I fell to sleep in my full-sized bed (!!!) with a newfound respect for the long green stalk. Maybe I'll give asparagus another chance. I am growing up, after all.

Tagliatelle with Asparagus and Pancetta

This wasn't really an inspiration. This was "I have to get everything out of my fridge and NOW." I used SchoolHouse Kitchen's SweetSmoothHot Mustard  because, well, I work for them and it's a fabulous product, but you can use a mixture of honey and mustard with almost identical results. The dish, before adding the pasta, stands alone as well...so if you don't have pasta milling about your cupboard, don't despair...just don't, please, don't overcook the asparagus. And add more pancetta if you'd like, and more cheese if you'd like, and eat it with your fingers, if you'd like. I'm sure I did.

Serves 3-4

One bunch of asparagus, woody ends removed, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 tbsp. olive oil
3 tbsp. pancetta, coarsely chopped
2 shallots, chopped fine
4 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
2 tbsp. of SweetSmoothHot Mustard, 1 tbsp. dijon and 1 tbsp. honey (or sub your favorite)
1.5 tsp. butter
Couple glugs leftover dry white wine from lunch 
2-3 cups cooked pasta (from fresh or dry, really, any shape will do), just al dente
1/2 cup (or more) reserved pasta cooking liquid
Salt
2 tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped
2 tbsp. parmesan, grated, plus more for serving
Sprinkle truffle oil (optional)

Simmer about an inch of water in a saute pan over medium heat. Add asparagus, salt and a bit of olive oil. Shake around until water has evaporated, then remove asparagus. Pour in rest of olive oil and saute pancetta until crisp. Remove pancetta to paper towels to drain, leaving the rendered fat in the pan. Add shallots and garlic, and sweat for about 3 minutes until translucent. Add mustard (or honey and mustard), butter and wine, and check for seasoning, adding salt if necessary. Add asparagus and pasta, plus a bit of cooking liquid until sauce is loose enough to just coat pasta -- you don't want a soup so add water sparingly. Stir in parsley and parmesan and remove from heat. Before serving, stir in crisped pancetta and sprinkle on truffle oil and extra parmesan if desired.

Smashed

When the end of the week rolls around, especially if it's been a 15-day week, I don't so much walk home from my job as trudge. That's right, folks, I'm a trudger. I drag my feet, I stomp, I huff and puff. If it's really warm outside, I'm probably sweating. Essentially, at the end of the week I become a crotchety old man, at least on the walk from the Sterling station to my apartment (on the third floor, can you believe it? Oh, the misery). Overall I'd say it's about the dopiest I ever look, and god bless (and god save) the poor soul who finds it appealing in any way.

The rest of my routine is pretty straightforward: I go directly to the cupboard, retrieve a wine glass, fill 'er up, gulp 'er down. Then fill 'er up. Then gulp 'er down. Interspersed with the fill-and-gulp (which sounds rather unfortunately like a new dance craze made perhaps most popular around petrol station convenience stores) is an episode of tv, a chapter of a book, and dinner, which doesn't generally require anything other than a pot, a jaunt through my fridge and a fork. Maybe another episode, possibly another chapter though by this time my eyes have generally glazed over, and to bed, to bed, to bed.

At the end of last work-week, though, I was pleasantly surprised. On my walk from the job to the subway, the lights all turned green for me, which was very polite. I was half-expecting a lamppost to throw down its coat to prevent my dainty feet from touching one of the many puddles on the rainy, dreary day. I also found a penny in the street and then another one on the subway stairs, and I'm proud of my superstition and you'd better believe I picked both of them up and straight into pockets and purse. I passed several games of Double Dutch despite the rain, and you've gotta hand it to those shrill little voices, they've got spirit if nothing else. I think it's even fair to say that my step picked up a bit, edged on by the screams and rhymes, hey, I was nostalgic for the rope I never jumped as a young girl in the suburbs of Chicago.

So I grooved on into my kitchen, tween temporarily overtaking curmudgeon, and rifled around in my refrigerator for some ingredients to compliment my mood, which was almost carefree and helped along by the obligatory wine and extreme gummy bears I practically chugged upon realizing that I still had a stash. I came up with an onion, some lovely grape tomatoes, both yellow and red, garlic, mozzarella, and basil...and decided to make a sauce for the fresh-ish tagliatelle I'd picked up at Eataly earlier in the week. Generally my favorite spaghetti would be enough, but I felt like putting pan to heat on this particular day and I also felt like demolition 'cause young souls can jump rope and yelp and destroy and feel no guilt. So a mass of caramelized onions later, I poured the unsuspecting tomatoes into the mix, let them get soft, and mashed the shit out of them with my tongs. I ended up wearing much of it and burning my arms with the wayward juices of several of the violated fruits, but I suppose I deserved it. I also cut up a radish and dragged it through the melting butter on the onions, sprinkled it with salt and ate it down, followed by a glug of wine. I'm not really sure what's wrong with me.

Smashed Tomato Sauce

This sauce is totally all-purpose. You can throw it on pasta, as I did, or put it on toasted bread, or puree it into a soup, or serve it on top of grilled fish, chicken, beef...it's just brilliant. Caramelizing the onions was kind of a tough decision on my part, because they become a relatively strong presence, but if you think about the beauty of soft, jammy, sweet-as-candy onions up against the acidity of just-seared tomatoes, the bite of torn basil and the slight give of fresh pasta, it makes some sense (maybe I know what I'm doing). The sauce gets better as it sits, so make a bunch and keep it in your refrigerator for a few days. And hey -- tomatoes are good all summer long, so try different varieties.

Serves 2, several times

1 tbsp. olive oil
1 medium-sized onion, sliced into thin half-moons
1 tbsp. butter
5 large cloves garlic, sliced fine
1.5 cups or so of ripe pear, teardrop, cherry, grape (etc) tomatoes
Handful of torn fresh basil
salt to taste

Heat a large skillet, add olive oil and onions. Season with salt and add a splash of water. Over low heat, cook onions, adding more water as necessary so they don't burn (remember to stir!). When they're translucent add butter and garlic, and cook until deep brown and very sweet (adding more water as it evaporates, and keep stirring, please!). Add tomatoes, push them to the bottom of the pan and cover them with onion mixture. Cover pan for about three minutes, until tomato skin starts to blister and tear. Using tongs or the back of a wooden spoon, gently squeeze tomatoes just until they break. Add more salt if needed and stir in the basil.

Serving Suggestions:
-Pour over al dente pasta and cubed mozzarella, stirring until the mozzarella just begins to melt (see below)

-Cut a good ole loaf of bread into slices, put in oven/under broiler/on grill (400 degrees) until charred, rub bread with a garlic clove and drizzle with olive oil (you know the drill), and top with sauce
-Puree mixture, or most of mixture, and add a splash of cream for lovely tomato soup
-Spoon over grilled poultry, steak or fish
-Use as omelet filling, along with some cheese
-Make a sandwich with sauce, spinach, cheese, ciabatta, meats, etc.

It started with a hunch (and was all a game of numbers)

My overtired self tends to assume the worst always, as opposed to my regularly-tired self who is only a slight pessimist in comparison. Maybe starting with the dream I had this morning that wasn't entirely a dream, the time between sleep and wakefulness that in my semi-unconscious state seemed like an hour but was probably five minutes. The dream where I forgot the shirt, missed the train, miscounted the money, fell on the ground, didn't stock up that almost started to materialize as I stumbled out of one station and to the next, to the 4 instead of the 2 because the 2 wasn't coming for 18 minutes at 6 in the morning. Waited for the R to roll around, angry at myself for being too tired to walk the 20 minutes to 3rd and 3rd.

7 hours in the heat but some money to show for it at least. A man with a certain knowledge that could be useful, and anyway he was entertaining. A mushroom sandwich on good sweet bread. Home to sweat that freezes in the air conditioner's cold dry stream. Some dinner and some wine, too tired to read but not to watch, and a supposedly early bedtime. Brush teeth admire self-administered haircut splash face and taste salt.

And then I walk back into my room and even the opaque black shower curtain-cum-windowshade is glowing red, orange, green, blue, red, orange, green all staccato. I say "don't look don't look don't look you dreamed all this last night" but of course I look and there's a cavalcade of police cars, ambulances, fire trucks lining my street and nothing is happening but I know something's about to. First I think it's my building and a disaster but I'm out on the fire escape looking down and my eyes tell me that there's no smoke and my ears tell me that there is no panic. I see other heads straining out of windows and I also see passers-by barely glancing, and both reactions strike me as strange even though I'm of the former.

Finally a stretcher into the building next door...and even though I'm fine, I know I'm fine as I'm of sound mind, I'm scared for what comes out on that stretcher and I think, "I will see blood, there will be tears" and so I keep glued to the spot and what I see finally is no blood, no tears, no scene. Just 16 men in uniform, seven emergency response vehicles and one human on the stretcher.

Now I don't know what happened in that building and I don't want to imagine it, but I do know that the man was wheeled out and he was alone. The good city workers of New York, done for the moment, wipe their brows and exchange some smiles and some words before driving away unceremoniously as if they do this every day as if this is a job and which they do and which it is. And one lone man in the back of an ambulance who is maybe not breathing and his only company are the two whose hands I see fluttering over his body as the vehicle leaves and makes my street black again, almost all black, at least eighty-five percent.

2-18-6-4-20-3-3-7-16-7-

and 1

(and 2)

and 85.

All come to roost in the city tonight between Manhattan and Brooklyn despite construction on the bridge. Hot heat of two islands perspiring onto themselves and each drop that falls is another person crammed into the subway car, another life working all day long, another soul restless for a place of overwhelming exactitude and unbridled excess. Tonight though I know one drop and one drop is a man without any mourners who we shut our windows on when it gets too hot to breathe.

I'm not really sure how to finish this one.

On flying and fennel

For the past few days the monitor on my computer has been out. Nothing, kaput, and although the computer turns on there isn't a shred of communication between the innards of the thing and the screen itself. It's a relationship gone bad and, unfortunately, couples' therapy costs much more than I have banging around in my pocketbook at the moment.* So I've resigned myself to reading in bed before sleep instead of combing the interwebs for this and that. A life less digital, more tactile and present, if I may, because a good story doesn't lend to my escape so much as carry me home.

And I've been reading a good story, friends. A very good story. An epic, even: Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude which I've stupidly avoided since my move to Brooklyn over half a year ago (if anyone's counting). I'm not even halfway through and I really didn't like the first 75 pages, but somewhere around page 87 and "this crab runs sideways west/out of the pot/but not out of potluck," my eyes perked up and started relaying words directly to my gut which seems appropriate and which is where I feel this book the very most. This sweeping story of a city I'm still not quite sure about and her reluctant but inevitable son...is a story I've somehow connected to in the basest of ways. The book makes me revere and revel in my Brooklyn, this Brooklyn where I live that seems so much like the Brooklyn of decades past. And it reconfirms a pride in my neighborhood based on absolutely nothing but one I'll take. An acknowledgement of hardship, unwarranted in my case but one that Crown Heights wears like a cape, a superhero cape, one that's shredded and stained but effective nonetheless.

Crown Heights has a colorful history (word choice, Robin, word choice) and I'm glad to live here, against the better judgment of my family and friends who would rather I rent an apartment in Park Slope: an unrelenting baby boom of a neighborhood, lovely (really) but overrun with entitled children and parents who would never live anywhere else. Shops and dining galore, but I have trouble finding the soul of the place.

Now, I haven't abandoned my family's wishes completely. I work in Park Slope, smack dab in the center, and it's a nice place to visit. I walk around and if I can avoid bumping into strollers or stepping on a toy dog, it's quite sweet. Park Slope has a sense of humor about itself, in fact, so I actually respect the neighborhood and some of the people in it. I have friends there, and I'll even visit them sometimes. But for me? Not really....

Except for one not insignificant establishment: Union Market, where I've found the best (and some of the, dear me, most expensive) produce in Brooklyn. I would probably move to 5th avenue just so I could be close to this achingly gorgeous grocery store. I go there after work almost every single day if just to look at the shiny happy produce spilling over itself in an effort to get my attention. It's a bounty in every aisle, a tiny powerhouse of a food shop that calms and charms my aching heart (and, er, wallet) into submission.

The other day from Union Market I picked up: fennel, shallots, tarragon, ricotta salata, grapes. And here is what I done did:

It's a bulked-up Jamie Oliver recipe. He uses only tarragon, ricotta, shallots and grapes and creates, with a splash of vinegar and olive oil, a truly stunning salad. Since I'm god-damn crazy for fennel and thought it would complement the tarragon's licorice notes nicely, I added some, thinly sliced. I also put in radishes because I had them lying around and they didn't overpower the dish at all. In fact, they became a lovely counterpoint to the sweetness of the grapes, tarragon and fennel, echoing the shallots' spice and bite.

(that's another picture because I think that this salad is very very pretty)

One thing Jamie Oliver does, and I do this all the time, is "marinate" the shallots in a bit of vinegar and salt before adding them to the dish. I opted out of this and instead combined all of the ingredients before sprinkling delicately and carefully with salt, olive oil and vinegar. It gave the salad a very clean taste and none of the strong flavors were muted, yet as I ate (and I savored this, slow as honey) they spoke with each other, got cozy and created something different entirely. An orgy of delicious, really, and happening right on my plate. I couldn't ask for more.

Fennel, Grape and Tarragon Salad

Don't be afraid of this. Every single ingredient is confident but humble, asserting itself best in the presence of one of its friends. Eat a grape with some fennel and tarragon, make sure it's all coated in the salata, place a shallot sliver right on top. The second time I made this I used some balsamic vinegar which gave the salad a rich, deep flavor, but I like it best without (you can, of course, experiment). Also make sure to taste before you add the salt, as the ricotta salata is quite stand-up. And add more tarragon than you're comfortable with. Really, you must.

Serves 1

1/3 cup fennel, shaved thin with knife or mandolin
3 tbsp tarragon leaves, picked off of their stem
1/4 cup grapes, halved
2 tbsp ricotta salata, grated, plus more for garnish
1/4 of a medium-sized shallot, sliced very thin
1 radish, sliced into thin half-moons
glug of olive oil
splash of red wine or cider vinegar
sea salt to taste

Combine everything except oil, vinegar and salt. Gently toss with your fingertips. Taste for salt, season accordingly. Add a good glug of olive oil and a bit of vinegar (you'll be surprised at how quickly the salad takes on the acidity, so don't go overboard). Let sit if you'd like, or eat immediately, with extra cheese sprinkled on top.


*The computer's fixed now, for the moment. Thank you for your concern.

Buzz buzz (to the honey)

A minute to breathe, please.

Breathe...breathe...breathe....

Ah. That felt good.

Now to business: I've been swamped. No, in fact, I am swamped. Writing hasn't happened for a few days and to the two or three of you who care: my sincerest apologies. I haven't been busy like this in years and it's exhausting and it's nothing else right now: not even 9:30 and fingers and eyelids alike feel as if weighted by tiny stones. A beer and I'm flat on my face. My college self scoffs and mocks from the sidelines, but I can't help it. A month of up before 7 am, 7 days a week awaits and a week of it has gone by and I'm not (quite) complaining but I can't say I'm in tip-top shape either.

I suppose I can brag a bit though, because I'm the proud owner of a new job. This new job in addition to my other two keeps me up at night and fills the "weekend" days I'd grown accustomed to with such a lot of activity. But again, I'm not (entirely) complaining because I get to work with these cats. It's a bit silly that I was even hired in the first place but I'll happily play along until they realize that I'm really not competent at all. 'Cause I'm slightly smitten. Read their website, read their mission, and understand that they do very fine work with food.

There are two parts to this job: One is very grown-up because I do things like make spreadsheets and I'm held accountable and I have an email address. Good for me, but the other part is that I get to work at farmers' markets around New York and this is the most exciting part (we know it's exciting because I put it in bold text). Two or three times a week I set up shop at markets in the city and sell 'til my throat is sore.

One of my most favorite things to do is watch New York wake up and this job allows me to see this process in its truest sense. It's actually a kind of intimacy and camaraderie I haven't felt with the city before. A reluctant, slow build, nuanced and even slightly joyful. New York and I rub the sleep out of our eyes at 6:30 and dare each other to get on with the day. Hooray, I think.

But let's get down to it, and it in this case is the idea that I'm surrounded by food for eight hours at a time. Real good honest food. At the wonderful New Amsterdam Market on Sunday (I'll be there every week, folks!) I was stationed next to Sullivan St. Bakery and, after snacking on their strecci with roasted tomato and garlic the whole day, I was given three loaves of chunky, salty olive bread to take home. I had a shiny loaf of eggy challah set on my table and how could I refuse? A specialty dairy farm brought me a wheel of blindingly fresh, lip-puckering goats' cheese. After giving away several loaves of bread I still had to make room in my freezer...and that's only the first week. These markets are gathering places for genuine craftspeople who, proud of their hard work, can't wait to bestow it on the public (and give their leftovers to charity...and to me). It already feels like home and I'm just so damn pleased I'm able to exist alongside these people. It makes the early mornings more than bearable and it's thrilling to be busy in a way such as this.

So there I am, and I didn't even (really) complain. I will admit that I haven't been working nonstop -- one free night was spent on a steamy date with a roasted pig's tail. I probably could have just gone home and slept instead, but a pig tail hangover is one that I'll happily subject myself to over, and over, and over again.

Salad days

When I first read Kitchen Confidential a couple years ago, the one quote that stood out to me, more than any other, and in a book full of razor-sharp one liners and fabulous anecdotes, was:

"Vegetarians, and their hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn."

I laughed so hard I snorted (ok, it happens all the time, but only when I find something seriously funny). I high air-fived Anthony Bourdain and, with my free hand, gave myself a hearty pat on the back. Then I probably went out and, to make myself feel extra special good, ate a burger with bacon and duck-fat fries. Or something, and the whole time I'm thinking, "you and me, Bourdain, we're on the saaaame page, baby."

I'm such a hypocrite.

Because for about 15 years there, I was a happy vegetarian and then, for an entire year, I ate no animal products at all. I was a (**shudder**) vegan. I ordered my pizza without cheese and had my first, but not last, encounter with Quorn (**shuddershuddershuddershudder**). I never looked down on my meat-eating peers, but I wasn't one of them. I wasn't a vegetarian for political or health reasons, either. I thought it was (and now I hang my head in utter shame)...cool. Different. Vegetarianism made me a badass, which seems counterintuitive in retrospect, but I guess I was a weird kid.

Around the middle of college I started eating meat again. If I recall correctly I was under some stress of a personal nature, and my friends showed up to my apartment and took me to get a burger. They said it would make me feel better. And, lo and behold, they were right. They were good friends. And 15+ years of veggies-only went sailing away as I tucked into my charred, griddled meat-on-bun at Blueberry Hill in St. Louis, which I still think has the best burgers in the entire universe. I was saved.

I'm now a Carnivore, and proud of it. But here's the thing, and this is why I'm very lucky: I still love vegetables. I adore them. I think that I like them more than I like big hunks of meat, and while I crave a burger every few weeks, I crave fennel always. And right now, when my kitchen is several thousand degrees above fit for human habitation, I want salad. I hunger for it. I desire it, I fall victim to it. Salad lust overtakes me and sends me on almost-daily trips to the grocery stores and farmers' markets to buy fresh veggies that I'll devour the same night, crunching away and filling my cheeks like Bugs Bunny on a carrot binge.


I'm actually not exaggerating.

So...why? Why now, and why so intense? I don't care about "swimsuit season" whatever in the hell that is -- bathing suits elude and terrify me and always have. I'm also not trying to improve my health -- the only thing scarier than a bikini is a diet, and besides, you see how I cook. No, I think that it has to do with balance, that perfect storm of crunch, sweet, salty, tart, that every salad should strive to be. The spray of water as knife cuts through cold lettuce, the gentle give and snap of a radish sliced wafer-thin. The way a simple vinaigrette, applied sparingly, spruces up the produce. The dynamic, bracing way a vegetable perks up when salt is applied...I live for this stuff. Salad isn't just for accompanying a piece of meat. If it's good, salad can be the thing itself.

It was last night, and I chose to make a really simple salad that I think came out of an informal cooking lesson from my Uncle Marc's mother Georgette. She owned a restaurant in New Jersey and is a gorgeous cook, and as soon as she heard that I was interested in food she pulled me into the kitchen to make this:

It's a combination of chopped red onions, romaine lettuce, loads of fresh mint, apple cider vinegar, olive oil and salt, all tossed together. In whatever quantities suit you (some like more onions, some like less mint or, most likely, the other way around). She added avocado but my sorely lacking supermarket was out, so I omitted and instead chose caramelized onions and a bit of diced mozzarella. The vinegar softens the onions if you mix them before adding the other ingredients, especially if you sprinkle in some salt and give them a few minutes to mellow. Then the mint, just tear up haphazardly, and use more than you think you should. It becomes a beautiful note of "what is that?" Let the salad sit for a minute or two after you combine it all, and serve it on its own with some bread and nothing else, because this beauty demands attention.