Enter, reading on a book

Occasional reviews of books and such

What's a blog supposed to be? It's a question I've been thinking about about now and again, particularly during the Fall of 2014 when I found neither time nor inspiration enough to write regularly in this space. I will not promise to do more or better in the future - such resolutions are meant to be broken. But I also think that this blog - initially designed to showcase a particular place and its bounty through changing seasons - can also accommodate more than photos of places and things and descriptions of daily life.  Perhaps things such as books and essays, and other items of interest. So this post will inaugurate an occasional series on things I've read, and thought about. I hope that you might be moved to write and comment.

So - here goes.

Since Off Mill features recipes along with photos, it shouldn't surprise anyone that I like to read about cooking and about food. Heck, cookbooks, particularly old ones, are like novels to me: settings of particular places and times. The cookbook writer's characters are the choices of the recipes themselves, and descriptions of the methods and (sometimes) the photos of the finished products provide the plot and drama and resolution.

I am sure I am not the only reader who views cookbooks this way. The proof? The increasing number of memoirs-with-recipes that populate the cookbook shelves at the bookstore and library. The best, of course, are the two collections of essays written by the late Laurie Colwin. Home Cooking and More Home Cooking are not  - strictly speaking - memoirs, but the essays are miniature windows that permit us detailed views of Colwin the writer, the cook, and the sensitive observer of everyday domestic life. These books occupy the pride of place in my cookbook collection; they are (justly) celebrated enough to ensure their reprinting for years to come. If you have not already made their acquaintance, I beg you to do so.

Besides, the writing in these books is the model, in many ways, for the newer entries in the memoir-with-recipes genre. It has been the model for my own food writing, to be sure. I used to write a monthly column for my hometown newspaper (north of Boston) and Laurie's work was always on my desk as I wrote.

I'm sure Molly Wizenberg has done something like this. Ms. Wizenberg's blog Orangette (http://orangette.blogspot.com/) is one of those miraculous sites that consistently deliver on their promises, whether tacit or overt. I've been a fan for years, although I've known about the blog more than visited it, courtesy of Ms. Wizenberg's (can I just call her Molly? Privilege of age, and all that ...) now-defunct column in Bon Appetit. The fact that Bon Appetit no longer carries Molly's column, and instead seems to have become an aggressively testosterone-fueled cooking smashdown (as bizarre as that sounds, the reality is worse. More on that later.) is one reason I began to sample the blog. And then search for - and read - her memoirs. There are two of them. The first, A Homemade Life, sounds like a Home Cooking re-run by a twenty-something who has just discovered Laurie Colwin, until you begin to understand that this is a deeply-felt and beautifully-constructed paean to Molly's late father, and to the family life she shared with him and with her quite remarkable mother.

Molly is definitely a good cook. She's adventurous and experimental (qualities that are not the same, although they are frequently used as synonyms. One can be adventurous and just plain sloppy. One can also be experimental and precise, but never venture out of one's comfort zone of favorite tastes.) She works at the craft of writing as avidly as she pursues as the art of cookery. And she's really got a way with the first line that nails the reader's interest to the page. Consider this, from the chapter in A Homemade Life titled "Quite That Magnificent":

               To most people, I guess, turning twenty-one is all about booze. To me, turning twenty-one was all about coconut. Booze is nice, but coconut is chewable, and when push comes to shove, I will always like eating better than drinking. Everyone has their priorities. 

Try putting the book down after THAT elegant reversal of Ogden Nash's storied maxim.

Molly's memoir is written in a style that could be called casual, if it were not so evident that she's labored and rewritten and probably cried over her work. No one can possibly write with such seeming ease on such devastating subjects as the lingering death of a beloved parent - and follow such telling with the precise and bloodless language of a favored recipe - without some serious writing chops. She's not as open about the fact that she knows and delivers good writing as is Gabrielle Hamilton, but that bit of modesty is another of Molly's charms. She's as artless in her self-revelation as she is careful about her sentence construction.

The tale she tells is a very good one, although it's evident about halfway through the book that this will be only the first installment of a series. And the recipes? I'll make all of them. In time.

If Molly's first memoir is tinged with melancholy and terror (leaving a doctoral program! Focusing on a blog for a career, for Pete's sake! Meeting her future husband online! Who does THAT? [snicker]) and grace, her second is a virtual how-to manual for making a restaurant work, from the ground up.

After all, we have all heard the statistic: over half of all new restaurants fail in their first year. There are problems with location, financing, cash flow and budgeting, and of course the vision that makes the great new place in town into the favorite neighborhood haunt.  Well, in Delancey, Molly and her new husband Brandon take on the nay-sayers and create a pizza place that is a smash hit from the first night.

Oh, right, like that happens, you snort. Well, it does. I'd be more skeptical if it were not for the remarkable neighborhood place a mile down the road from me (The Village Tavern, if you want to look it up) that was a sellout on its first night, and has only been building its delicious business ever since. It happens. But it takes a lot of research, work, experimentation, and planning. And every bit of that work - along with all the pitfalls, and (yes) the obsessive focus on getting things right is distilled into the prose of this fast-paced second memoir.

That pacing is only one of the things that sets this book apart from the first. There are also photos in this book, welcome glimpses of the place that becomes the focus as well as the title of the book. And the photos become necessary - since I live across the country from Delancey, it's doubtful I'll ever get to actually see that immense pizza oven.

There are also many fewer recipes in this book. That's a shame, but it also (I think) is a reflection of the fact that Molly's life became much faster-paced as she got married to Brandon, opened a new restaurant, and had their daughter (in that order). We must permit that. But I really longed for the seemingly-casual but careful style of A Homemade Life. I'll return to that book over and over. Yes, much like my treasured books by Laurie Colwin.

Laurie Colwin's and Molly Wizenberg's books are available on Amazon.com as well as in your favorite bricks-and-mortar bookstore. Try the latter first.


P.S.: Extra credit to those who correctly identify the source for the title of this post.

The First Weeks of September

September does not come quietly. It elbows its way into the last of summer and shakes you to your foundations with its sudden requirements, quickened pace, and unyielding schedules. The beginning of the academic year is awkward and jarring - who ARE all these new students? What are their hopes, aspirations, and energies - and can I guide them gently but surely through their courses of study? What am I doing here, on stage, in lecture, when only a few weeks ago I was walking the warm sand on a Maine beach, enjoying the interplay of sky and cloud?

Even the solitary places are shaken by the changes brought by September. I found time today for a fast hike at Audubon's Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary,  and it was apparent that summer was fading fast in the woods, ponds, and meadows. The angle of the sun's rays encouraged haste, not relaxation. A comfortable stroll was impossible.  Jog down the path, clamber up the rocks, don't linger too long at the overgrown pond. The river, low and sluggish in its course, seemed oily and forbidding in the growing dusk.

No doubt about it, I am not making an easy transition this year to the post-summer academic life. Yes, there is joy to be found in the renewed energy of college life. Campuses once again are places of promise and excitement. But I long for Maine.

Life in Maine is changing too, rapidly changing. There is a palpable nip in the air in the morning, and sweaters need to be layered over t-shirts. In the garden, some annuals have already given up the ghost. I have cleaned the remnants of the cucumber vines and the green bean bushes out of the vegetable garden raised beds. The sunflowers, alas, will be next. Hot peppers are almost finished, as is the miniature sweet corn. But the zinnias, the wonderful tomatoes, and the mixed leaf lettuce are still producing abundantly. Some of summer still remains!

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A few recent photographs

Near Scarborough Marsh in Maine, a road leading into a farmer's field. 

Scarborough Marsh, again. The geometric shapes and contrasting colors of this scene really attracted my attention. 

The Marsh, in full sunlight.


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Some backyard blooms

Here's a small centerpiece arrangement in an Irish crystal candy dish (I broke the lid to the dish years ago, and it serves well as a small vase). Late Knockout roses are combined with fuchsia New England asters, multicolored zinnias, and purple viburnum berries.

But nothing beats the stunning simplicity of a single dinner-plate sized dahlia! This is on my kitchen window sill. 

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A bit of fall color near the side door

An old milk can from Paul's family farm gets a new cap of mums. More mums, small lanterns,  and pumpkins  help the sumer planter of geranium (pelargonium) and lobelia transition to fall.


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Late summer tomatoes! 

There's probably no summer crop I anticipate more avidly than ripe, homegrown tomatoes. They are just coming into their own now in the garden, and may - with luck - continue for some time yet. 

This late-summer abundance makes possible one of my all-time favorite breakfasts. So simple: ripe tomato slices on hot, freshly-buttered sourdough toast. With a sprinkle of sea salt and a grind of pepper. So luscious! I could eat that meal every day.  And for the past week or so, I have been treating myself often. 

Tomato time also encourages me to make some favorite recipes. I have already made a batch of green tomato chutney, which is splendid with roasted meats such as pork. And there are tomatoes roasted in the oven with olive oil, garlic cloves, and salt and pepper. A baking pan of roasted tomatoes can easily be frozen, and will form the basis of marinara, pizza, and cacciatore during the winter. 

But my favorite tomato time recipe is one originally published in the late, lamented Gourmet magazine in an essay by Laurie Colwin. It's a recipe for a fresh tomato pie in a homemade biscuit crust. It is so delicious that I have seen people go back for thirds and frown if there isn't just a smidgen left for fourths. Laurie was a prodigiously talented writer of fiction, and remains my favorite food writer of all time. Her essays for Gourmet, collected in two volumes with the unassuming titles Home Cooking and More Home Cooking, are classics that belong in every serious cook's collection. 

Laure's recipe for Tomato Pie is almost as scrumptious to read as it is to taste - so I will allow her to tell the recipe:

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TOMATO PIE from Laurie Colwin

"I have never yet encountered tomatoes in any form unloved by me. Often at night I find myself ruminating about two previously mysterious tomato dishes, which I was brazen enough to get the recipes for. One is Tomato Pie and is a staple of a tea shop called Chaiwalla, owned by Mary O'Brien, in Salisbury, Connecticut. According to Mary, the original recipe was found in a cookbook put out by the nearby Hotchkiss School, but she has changed it sufficiently to claim it as her own. The pie has a double biscuit-dough crust, made by blending 2 cups flour, 1 stick butter, 4 teaspoons baking powder, and approximately 3/4 cup milk, either by hand or in a food processor. You roll out half the dough on a floured surface and line a 9-inch pie plate with it. Then you add the tomatoes. Mary makes this pie year round and uses first-quality canned tomatoes, but at this time of year 2 pounds peeled fresh tomatoes are fine, too. Drain well and slice thin two 28-ounce can plum tomatoes, then lay the slices over the crust and scatter them with chopped basil, chives, or scallions, depending on their availability and your mood. Grate 1-1/2 cups sharp Cheddar and sprinkle 1 cup of it on top of the tomatoes. Then over this drizzle 1/3 cup mayonnaise that has been thinned with 2 tablespoons lemon juice, and top everything with the rest of the grated Cheddar. Roll out the remaining dough, fit it over the filling, and pinch the edges of the dough together to seal them. Cut several steam vents in the top crust and bake the pie at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes. The secret of this pie, according to Mary, is to reheat it before serving, which among other things ensures that the cheese is soft and gooey. She usually bakes it early in the morning , then reheats it in the evening in a 350 degree oven until it is hot.

It is hard to describe how delicious this is, especially on a hot day with a glass of magnificent iced tea in a beautiful setting, but it would doubtless be just as scrumptious on a cold day in your warm kitchen with a cup of coffee."

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I usually don't bother to peel the tomatoes, by the way. Extra fiber and flavor! 

I beg you to make this pie - you will not regret it, and you will definitely remember it the next time tomatoes ripen by the boxful in late summer.