Eggplant and white bean turnovers
Eggplant and white bean turnovers
Here’s the Velvet Underground with Sweet Jane, because I’m currently obsessed with it, and because you could be a clerk and still make art.
Tarragon ice cream
Many ages and ages ago, I told you that David and I are going to try to watch as many movies from 1967 as we can find. And I promised I’d tell you all about them. Well, we’re making a slow go of it, and it’s taken me weeks to even tell you about the first film we saw.
That film was La Collectionneuse, by Eric Rohmer. Rohmer begins the film with a sort of prologue, introducing the three main characters; two men and one woman. The men are introduced in their natural habitat, in the natural habitat of a Rohmer movie, they’re with friends and they’re talking, they’re all talking. The woman, Haydée, is introduced in a bikini on a beach. I thought, “Please let her talk, please let her talk,” but she doesn’t, she doesn’t say a word. And this seems to be setting us up for a movie in which the young woman is just an object and the men are more interesting and likable. But in fact, in many ways, Haydée’s silence is her strength, and the men trip themselves up with talking.
The character of Haydee is not very thoroughly-drawn, but she is a strong, compelling presence in the film. The film takes place in the south of France during a couple of idyllic weeks. The three main characters share a home owned by an absent mutual friend. We catch glimpses of the mens’ lives before and after this summer interlude, but we don’t know anything about Haydée, we don’t know where she comes from, or where she’ll go after the vacation. The men think they have her all figured out…she’s just a little slut, with a different boyfriend each night. She’s younger than them, and they think she’s flighty, thoughtless, easily dismissed. They can’t help but be attracted to her, against their will and judgement, though they try to laugh it off. They feel obliged to seduce her, though not very determined to actually go about it, and they discuss who should do it, giving each other permission as though she was the last ripe plum in the house, and they don’t want to be greedy in their enjoyment of it.
Rohmer lets the men talk more than Haydée, and he gives them enough words to tangle and hang themselves. Rohmer has said, “You should never think of me as an apologist for my male character, even (or especially) when he is being his own apologist. On the contrary, the men in my films are not meant to be particularly sympathetic characters.” A fourth character enters the film, an American antiques dealer, a collector. He sees Haydée as something the men will give him to ensure his business, a beautiful object he expects to collect. He’s a crude and brutal man–we’re not expected to like him and we don’t. He acts as a sort of mirror for the other men, showing what they really are, in a harsh and unflattering light.
The men accuse Haydee of being a collectionneuse, using young men for her own shallow pleasure. She says she’s not collecting, she’s searching, and she has never yet had a lover in the true sense of the word. She doesn’t have many words, but she has the most honest and sincere of the words. In the end Adrien leaves her by the side of the road to an uncertain future. He goes back to the house, and this man who is always talking is suddenly afraid of the silence and aware of the loss of something he had not valued at all. “I was overwhelmed by a feeling of exquisite freedom. Now I could do whatever I wanted. But once back in the emptiness and silence of the house, I was seized with anxiety and unable to sleep.”
Tarragon
Tarragon ice cream! Following on the success of my tarragon cookies a few weeks back, I did what any sane person would do and made tarragon ice cream. It’s sooooo delicious, with a haunting unplaceable flavor. I stewed the leaves in the milk of some time, and then I saved a few leaves to chop and add at the end, to give it flecks of color and flavor.
Here’s The Blossom Toes with Love Bomb. They did some music for the film, don’t you know.
Eggplant croquettes
If you’re familiar with The Ordinary at all, you’ll know we’re big fans of Square America, an online collection of found photos: the kind you see in yard sales and flea markets, the kind that make you a little sad, because they’re pictures of somebody’s family and friends, and you wonder how they ended up here, in a jumble, in the hands of strangers. The pictures are intriguing, often moving, sometimes funny. You wonder what happened before, what came next. It’s a tiny moment in someone’s life, a rare glimpse. You might recall that all last year I wrote a story a week based on photos found on Square America, a habit that only died out because one of them turned into a novel, a habit I hope to pick up again as soon as I get myself organized. Last week, the proprietor of Square America posted a series of mug shots from New Castle, PA. What a strange thing to see! Probably the least private and personal of the Square America photographs, and yet you feel almost guilty looking at them, it’s really none of your business. All the same, you can’t help wondering about these people, captured in this way on a bad day, a low point in their lives, probably. You can’t help wondering what brought them here and where they went next. Well, the proprietor of Square America posted a link to Small Town Noir, a site where some very thorough person has scanned the local papers of New Castle, PA, to discover the story behind each mug shot, and then went on to research any information about the rest of their lives. [Update: That very thorough person is Diarmid Mogg, and he’s publishing a book called Small Town Noir! Learn more about it here.] You learn what brought them here and where they went next. You learn about their parents and their lovers and their children. It’s crazy, crazy to read. I couldn’t stop reading it yesterday, and it gave me such strange dreams. People are so vulnerable when they’re alone. People need each other so much and are so cruel to one another. And people endure. So many of these people have extraordinary, awful, strange and almost unimaginable tribulations, and they live to rebuild their lives and meet new people and raise their children, and survive to a hale old age. It’s crazy to read, crazy. Eggplant croquettes! We were eating eggplant almost every day at one point in the summer. We grew it, and we got some from our CSA. So I was trying to do something new and unusual with it, and I came up with this idea. I cooked the eggplants whole until they were meltingly soft. Then I peeled them and processed them with pine nuts, bread crumbs, cheese and herbs. Then I baked them in olive oil till they were nice and crispy outside and soft and warm on the inside. These have a nice smoky flavor because of the charred eggplant, the smoked paprika, and the smoked gouda. Here’s Tom Waits with Singapore, because many of these stories could easily become a Tom Waits song. Continue reading
Almond tarragon cookies
Almond tarragon cookies
Here’s Sister Rosetta Tharpe with Down by the Riverside.
Tomato, pesto, french lentil tart
Lentil, tomato and pesto tart
Here’s 9th and Hennepin, by Tom Waits, because it’s been in my head all morning, and because it’s one of the best collections of words I’ve ever heard.
Continue reading
Cherry peach chocolate almond tart
The spirit of the end of summer. He’s laughing at us from behind a tree, full of mischief, but a little sad, too, maybe even slightly scared. He seems substantial, but if you run your hands through his tresses, as we did today in the bright afternoon light, he falls to nothing. Through his winking eyes and gaping mouth, you can see the beautiful darkening light along our towpath, and watch the leaves fall like bright shadows.
Cherry, white peach, chocolate, and almond tart
Here’s The Ethiopians with Feel the Spirit. Love this one.
Smoky eggplant dip
What’s your favorite sound in the world?
Smoky eggplant dip
Here’s Autumn Sounds by Jackie Mittoo
There’s a vine that grows outside our front door and along the back fence of our garden. It’s called wild clematis, or devil’s darning needles or old man’s beard. It has beautiful little white flowers, and the most intoxicating fragrance, not too sharp or too sweet, indescribable. Like honeysuckle, it blooms at the beginning and the end of summer, and like honeysuckle, it always comes as a sweetly melancholy reminder of summer’s passing. How fast these lazy days go! You can feel it…you can feel the hours drift away. Yesterday I took a blanket out for Clio, who likes to lie in the sun, but the sunlight moves so quickly these days that I couldn’t keep up. It races across the yard. We’ve had a ridiculous spate of perfect weather, the kind that almost hurts when you step outside, because you know it can’t last, and you feel as though you need to savor every moment of it, you don’t want to spend a second in the house. You want to feel the way the chill leaves the air in the morning and the day warms up but the shadows are so perfect, this time of year, that wherever you walk you move comfortably through sunlight and shadow in equal turns. The very air feels good, you walk out into it as you jump into water of the perfect temperature, it feels good on your skin, it feels good to move through it. This time of year, this kind of weather, you think about all of the summers of your life; when you were little and school started soon, when you’re older and you still have that strange feeling of transition, though you haven’t had a first-day-of-school in years. You think about all of the summers to come. I recently discovered the Portuguese word “saudade,” which is a beautiful thing. A sweet sort of nostalgia, missing something but glad that you knew it, and hoping to know it again some day.
“The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.”
As the poets of wikipedia say, “one feels an interior satisfaction because it is impossible to find something, but one never stops thinking that one is searching for it.”
And doesn’t that sound like late August? Doesn’t that sound like the light shifting fast, and the days dawning cold, and the wild clematis blooming outside your door?
Summer means summer squash! We got three lovely little summer squash from the farm. I decided to make empanadas with them. I combined them with white beans, spinach, cherry tomatoes, small hot peppers, some herbs from the garden and sharp cheddar. They were a nice combination of crispy and tender. Very light, for an empanada. We ate them with a fresh tomato sauce, but you could make it all simpler still by chopping some summer-ripe tomatoes and having that alongside.
Here’s Saudade, by Cesaria Evoria.
Ratatouille-style ratatouille
It’s squash, eggplant and tomato season, and we all know what that means! It means ratatouille! We thought it would be fun to try to make it like they make it in the movie of the same name. Lots of other people have already recreated that recipe as closely as possible, so we thought we’d mix it up a bit. We decided to pre-cook everything, so that it got a little crispy. We decided to add potatoes and beets, because they’re nice thinly sliced and roasted, and because we’ve had them in abundance from the farm as well. And I cooked the eggplant separately, because I like it best crispy and roasted breadcrumbs, nuts and herbs. I cut the eggplant in large rounds, and we used it as a sort of plate for the ratatouille. Delicious!
Here’s Lulu’s To Sir with Love, the top song from 1967 from the movie released in 1967.
Almond cake with blueberry and chocolate filling
We went to look for eagle feathers though we knew we wouldn’t find any. As with most things in life, it was more about the journey–the walk on the towpath, over the old train bridge, down the hill through the tall ferns and prickly vines, up to the tower where the eagle had lived. Maybe we’d go farther past it, all the way to the river, maybe we’d see the eagles flying over the water, looking for fish. We didn’t see the eagles, we didn’t find any feathers, the prickly vines scratched our ankles, but it was a wonderful walk. The wild ferns and flowers and vines are taller than me down by the eagle’s tower, and it’s a strange bright green world with narrow paths, some that lead into the woods, some that lead to the river, and some that lead up the hill back to the path. Under the staring blue sky, with small white clouds and grasshoppers flicking across our path, this felt like summer. Is it the dog days? Because we’re living like dogs, sun dogs, dogs of summer, here at The Ordinary, with no plans. We snooze in the warm sun, and wake to eat or run to the river for a swim, or chase wildly through tangled ferny paths. Clio is the leader of our pack, she shows us how it’s done, and the boys are attentive pupils. We’re trying to slow down the days, with our lazy ways, but they’re flying by anyway. Evening falls earlier, and there’s almost a chill in the air in the mornings. So we’ll follow Clio into the sunshine, and soak it up, we’ll store it inside of us against the cold days ahead.
You know what I’ve been making a lot this summer? Flat wide cakes with fillings inside. Almost like a gateau basque. This one had blueberries and chocolate chips. (They almost always have chocolate) I’ve made some with ground almonds or almonds and pistachios, and I’ve filled them with jam or other kinds of fruit. Sometimes they’re soft, sometimes they’re crispy like big cookies. This one was quite soft inside, and a little crispy on top. It was very juicy, you can’t turn it out of the pan or anything, because it will fall apart. David said it’s like blueberry fudge. I’ll tell you about the other cakes another time.
Here’s Summertime by Sam Cooke.
Out of the Ordinary 