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Spicy honey ice cream and almond coconut ice cream

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Spicy honey ice ceam

Spicy honey ice ceam

We watched Akira Kurisawa’s Ikuru the other night. It’s so beautiful – mournful and hopeful, discouraging and life-affirming all at the same time, and it seems to me to portray certain tenets of Ordinaryism. In English the title means “To Live,” and the film tells the story of Kanji Watanabe, a middle-aged, middle management bureaucrat.

He works at city hall, a kafkaesque maze of offices, hallways and stairways. Every surface is covered with teetering piles of paperwork, which threaten to cave in and bury the (mostly) men who work there. They keep their heads down as they do their monotonous work, and seem to do just enough to get by. A group of women complain about a disease and mosquito-infested cesspool, and they’re driven from department to department in a sort of hopeless joke that everybody is in on but them. Everybody knows that nobody is going to help them.

Watanabe, a quiet man with huge, expressive frightened-rabbit eyes, learns that he has stomach cancer, and realizes he has less than a year to live. He’s not ready to die, because he’s never really lived. The next few days unfold in great detail – he meets a novelist, and they hit all the nightspots. He meets a young woman from his office who needs his help to quit her job. And then in an odd but oddly effective twist, the film shifts to six months later, and is told in a series of flashbacks by Watanabe’s co-workers.

So that’s the story. And you should know that it’s visually beautiful – full of graceful, thoughtful space and movement. As Watanabe is consumed with self-reflection, as he examines his life, we see him through windows, through waving panes of glass, in mirrors, through gleaming rows of glasses. The film itself has a pale, cloudy light that washes over you in waves as you watch.

And now to the Ordinaryism. From the first, Watanabe is established as an ordinary man. Nothing about his life is glamorous or even all that interesting, until we learn that he’s going to die. And here’s the beautiful extraordinary ordinary part…in his search for some understanding of what it means to live, he doesn’t become a less ordinary person, he doesn’t have a fling with a celebrity or go on an extravagant shopping spree or hang glide over a volcano. (As he might do in a Hollywood film.) He goes back to work! Back to his same job. He finds his way after spending some time with the young woman who recently quit her job. She represents life to him. She’s brimming over with it, she laughs, she chatters, she eats. (Everywhere they go, she eats her food and Watanbe’s as well, because he has no appetite. I love the fact that her hunger and her obvious enjoyment of food is one of the things that marks her as bright and vital.)

      • “…somehow I was drawn to you.” He explains to her. “Once when I was a child, I almost drowned. It’s just like that feeling. Darkness everywhere, and nothing for me to hold onto, no matter how hard I try. There’s just you.”
      • “What help am I?”
      • “You – just to look at you makes me feel better. It warms this – this mummy’s heart of mine. And you’re so kind to me. No; that’s not it. You’re so young, so healthy. No; that’s not it either… You’re so full of life. And me… I’m jealous of that. If I could be like you for just one day before I died. I won’t be able to die unless I can do that. I want to do

    something.”

    .”

And do you know what she does that makes her so happy and glad to be alive? She works in a factory! Making toy rabbits. But she loves the toy rabbits, and she says that while she makes them she feels as though she’s playing with every baby in Japan. She tells him he should make something. And that’s when it all becomes clear to him, and he goes back to his job and pursues it with a passion, and uses his office to make something good. Because, like everybody else in the world, he’s been extraordinary all along. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

almond coconut ice cream

almond coconut ice cream

Holy smoke! I’ve gone on so much longer and more tediously than I intended! I apologize. I would like to tell you about these ice creams though. I was seized with a desire to make ice cream, as one usually is the coldest week of the year! I wanted to try something a little different. The first ice cream is sugar free. It’s made with honey!! I’ve made honey ice cream in the past, but it had sugar, too, and this one doesn’t. It does have cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice and cayenne. I thought it was so good! It had such a lovely hot and spicy zing to go with it’s cool creamy sweetness. The second ice cream had no eggs. Instead of a custard, I thickened the milk by cooking it down, the way one would make dulce de leche or ribadi. I also cooked it with ground almonds and coconut, and then I added a bit of cardamom. I thought it was lovely as well. It had a nice texture, with the coconut. I might try the same method again without the coconut and almonds, though, just to see how it turns out!!

Here’s Takashi Shimura (as Kanji Wantanabe) singing Gondola No Uta in his haunting voice.
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Spinach, apple, avocado bisque with ginger

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Spinach apple soup

Spinach apple soup

It’s cold here! (Sigh, is she talking about the weather again?) Yes! Yes I am, but I’m not the only one! It’s news. The Guardian UK (online US edition) has a story on their front (virtual) page about how cold it is where I live! It has a slideshow of pictures of coldness! But I have to say that I’m okay with this little cold spell. Every winter we get one or two weeks of below-freezing weather, and I’m fine with that. Let me tell you why. First of all, I stay in bed from just after Christmas till late May, so it doesn’t really affect me at all. Second of all, as Jon Stewart said just this morning, it’s irrefutable proof that global warming is a hoax – the fact that it’s cold, today, where I live. And if you need further proof, it’s cold today where Jon Stewart lives and where I live! These are the facts! Actually, I do like a very cold spell in winter, as long as it’s shortish. It feels cleansing. The summer after a mild winter always feels extra swampy, with larger stranger insects, and more germs flying around. And extreme cold feels surreal and other worldly. It feels like a reminder that the world and everything in it is so much vaster than our human understanding, and so far beyond our control. These cold spells always remind me of Faulkner’s Wild Palms, in which Charlotte and Harry strive to escape conventional morality and propriety “They had used respectability on me and…it was harder to bear than money. So I am vulnerable in neither money nor respectability now and so They will have to find something else to force us to conform to the pattern of human life, which has now evolved to do without love – to conform, or die.” The city in winter “herds people inside walls,” so they take a job in a mine in Utah, in a winter so severely cold that their underwear freezes like iron ice and their breath freezes like fire in their lungs. The landscape is wild, the people they meet are wild, and “…now they had both become profoundly and ineradicably intimate with cold for the first time in their lives, a cold which left an ineffaceable and unforgettable mark somewhere on the spirit and memory…The cold in it was a dead cold. It was like aspic, almost solid to move through, the body reluctant as though, and with justice, more than to breathe, live, was too much to ask of it.” It’s elemental, and it has stripped them down till they’re raw and vulnerable, and seem to have only each other in the world. Which was what they wanted, but more than they bargained for. “Excuse me, mountains. Excuse me, snow. I think I’m going to freeze.”

Of course, it’s not that cold here, and (hopefully) the cold spell won’t last for long. But in the meantime, we’re eating a lot of soup!! This is a bright, flavorful smooth soup, with spinach, apples, avocado and lots of ginger and lemon. It’s the sort of soup you feel might stave off a cold, and it tickles nicely in the back of your throat. When I’m feeling poorly, I have a warm drink of honey, lemon, ginger and cayenne, and all of those ingredients are to be found herein! I used a combination of spinach and arugula, which added a peppery flavor.

Here’s Tom Waits with Cold Cold Ground. Beautiful! Frozen weather makes people act strangely, I tell you!

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Summer-in-winter pizza with pesto, sofrito, chickpeas and artichoke hearts

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Pizza with sofrito, pesto and chickpeas

Pizza with sofrito, pesto and chickpeas

You wouldn’t believe the vast system of pantries we have here at The Ordinary. It extends for miles, beginning above-ground, with spacious, sunny rooms lined with floor-to-ceiling windows. And then it tunnels under to form a vast network of cellars, ice houses, larders, butteries, and spences. And the shelves are lined with bottles and jars. Those in the light of the windows glow like stained glass. Those in the darkened cellars shine with their own internal light. In each bottle and jar – a perfect distillation of a moment from each season from the year. We open these, as needed, to help us navigate the year as it unfolds. When you’re melting in summer, you can uncork a clear, cold, cleansing january day. In winter, we have a vial containing the cool-warm smell of a June morning. We have a whole room stocked with falling things. A jar of late spring’s flower petals – confused, whirled in a tangle; a summer sun shower; autumn leaves, curling to the ground; and a soft, quiet, gentle December snow. Each one will serve to remind you of what you’ve seen and felt, the fragrances and tastes that you have known, and each will remind you as well of the cycle of the seasons which will bring each moment inevitably back upon you. In one room, of course, we have flavors…ripe plump tomatoes, bursting with the hot sunny abundance of August, refined into a flavorful paste. Bunches of basil, sweet, sharp, and intoxicating, concentrated into one pure flavor of summer. And that’s what we used to make this pizza.

pizza with sofrito, chickpeas and pesto

pizza with sofrito, chickpeas and pesto

What? You think I’m waxing hyperbolic? You think this is why I earned the name “hyperboClaire?” Well, it’s totally true!! Every word! Okay, so I’m really talking about the sofrito and pesto that I made with our over-abundance of tomatoes and basil at the end of the summer. I froze them, and at the time I thought…in the middle of winter, this will make a welcome meal! And then the power went out for ten days, and I was worried that they didn’t stay frozen. But they seemed frozen! And our kitchen felt very near freezing through the time. And we ate them on this pizza and everybody seemed fine!! I also added chickpeas and artichoke hearts. I have long loved artichoke hearts on a pizza, and chickpeas on a pizza – well, it just sounded good to me! And it was good! They got all roasty and flavorful. If you happen not to have frozen sofrito in the summer, you can easily make it from a can of tomatoes (Spanish-style sofrito! Recipe to follow). And pesto can be bought in most grocery stores, if you don’t have that lying around in your feezer!! Anyway – this was a good pizza. It did taste like summer, and reminded me of golden afternoons spent picking tomatoes and basil. Very welcome indeed as the temperature plummets.

Here’s Summertime by Jimmy Smith.

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Pumpkin bagels

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Pumpkin bagel

Pumpkin bagel

There comes a point in every chef’s life when he or she understands that it’s all about the journey, that the process is more important than the product. Yes, they’ve been telling us this for years, and now it suddenly all makes sense. Invariably, this moment occurs when the chef’s ten-year-old son says, with a beaming smile, “This is so much fun!” while they make pumpkin bagels together. That’s right! Malcolm and I made pumpkin bagels. I was somewhat anxious at first about the outcome, especially after tipping in the better part of a bag of flour. “What if these don’t turn out? What a lot of ingredients I’m wasting.” Then along came my sous chef, who cheerfully agreed to wash his hands twice in hot soapy water, and then helped me punch down the dough, and form it into balls, and poke holes in it, and shape it into bagels, and put them in a water bath, and time them in the water bath, and take them out of a water bath. Good times! Malcolm has been so sweet lately. I grumbled about my stomach-ache and he surprised me with a big hug. He shared his red licorice shoelaces with me, and I didn’t even have to ask. I get so distracted with chores and nonsense that I forget to spend a lot of time with the boys, and he hasn’t been letting me do that lately. He made me cuddle with everybody on the couch to watch a movie. And he made me play a video game with him. Listen to this – this is how well he knows me!! Each of us controlled an airplane floating over an island with castles and caves and such. We were supposed to be shooting each other, but he said, let’s just fly around. So we did! We just flew around, exploring the terrain, at a nice leisurely pace. We were in split screen, and sometimes we could see each other, and the computer would encourage us to fire on each other, but we’d just drift along, seeing the sights. I worry so much about Malcolm. He’s ten, but he acts like such a teenager sometimes. They all do! All the ten-year-olds. (It wasn’t like that when I was a lass.) I want him to stay sweet in a world that doesn’t always value sweetness, especially in boys. I want him to stay interested in interesting things, and not succumb to pretending to like what other people think is cool. I’ve seen him with older boys who thought it was funny to hurt birds or bugs or other animals, and I want him to be strong enough to know better. It’s a powerfully powerless feeling to lie awake in the middle of the night, thinking of all that my boys will have to go through in this world, all the ways they’ll have to prove themselves to themselves, all of the convictions they’ll have to form and keep. It would be easy to panic about it, because there is no instant solution. But it’s probably better to remember about the pumpkin bagels, about the journey – the process, not the product. You put every good thing you have into it, you have fun as you go, you remember the lessons you’ve learned, and you trust in the quality of the ingredients. Because, guess what? The bagels turned out absolutely delicious! David declared that they were the best he’d ever eaten. And when we ate them with curried chickpea and cauliflower, nobody said, “what a weird meal.” They said, what an American melting-pot of a meal, and said they went well together! And the boys have taken bagels and hot chocolate for lunch all week, to warm them in this freezing weather.

pumpkin bagels

pumpkin bagels

I’ve always wanted to make bagels, but assumed they’d turn out stodgy little rock-hard lumps. I’m glad I tried, because it was so easy and worked so well that I think I’ll make them myself from now on. I’ll whip up a batch at the beginning of each week. I decided to make pumpkin bagels because, obviously, everything is better with pumpkin. You could spice them any way you like. I wanted them to be versatile, not definitively sweet or savory, and so I chose to season them with a pinch of nutmeg and a pinch of allspice. Cinnamon seemed like too obvious a choice, so I left it out, but I know they’d be good with cinnamon, too. I like them precisely as they are, though! Toasted with a generous layer of melty butter. Take that, 11 degree weather!!

Here’s the Menahan Street Band with Make the Road by Walking

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French cake a week – Gateau Alsacien or le schwowcbredel

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jumping-lionIn which Claire, who speaks no French, bakes her way through the cake section of a French cookbook from 1962.The other day we talked about Jean Renoir’s use of windows, and the way he creates scenes with an intimate yet public space, theatrical yet moving (in two senses of the word). I mentioned the film Boudu Saved from Drowning, which stars the remarkable Michel Simon. Well, as it happens, I’d never seen the whole movie all the way through – just a few scenes in film class. But it’s available on DVD, now, so we watched it last week!! It was so good! Thought-provoking, and beautifully acted and filmed. Full of wildness and grace and beautiful space. And the special features! O! The special features!! In recent American movies they’ll have a “making of” featurette, or a few interviews with the actors, and it’s always the same thing. “It was such an honor to work with [fill in name of major star}. She’s so…in the moment…she never does the same thing twice…it’s thrilling just to watch her work.” And then there will be a segment on the costumes, “It was just an honor to dress [fill in name of major star]. I mean she’s not even human! She’s like a mannequin. Just like a mannequin come to life. It’s just thrilling to watch her work in her clothes.” And then there’s a little segment about how much fun they had on the set. “The hi-jinks!! The practical jokes we played. What a good time we had making millions of dollars! Don’t you just wish you could be me! Don’t you want to get my face tatooed on your face?” But on Boudu Saved from Drowning, the special features are wonderful! There’s an interview with Michel Simon and Jean Renoir. It’s black and white, from 1967. They’re sitting in a cafe. Renoir is drinking a glass of wine, and Simon seems to be eating berries from a small, stemmed glass bowl. It’s so beautiful. Okay, maybe they are talking about how nice it was to work together, but I believe them! Their memories are so gentle and affectionate. (Maybe I do want to get Michel Simon’s face tatooed on my face!) And then there’s an interview with a filmmaker who has lots of fascinating things to say about the film, which makes you want to watch it all over again but pay attention this time!! And my favorite part is an interview with Eric Rohmer, the filmmaker, and Jean Douchet, the critic. This one is in black and white, too. The men are sitting side-by-side in a theater, facing the camera. They both seem nervous, they don’t know where to look. They fidget and cast sidelong glances at one another. Douchet has wild hair and a world-weary air, and he seems to have a cigarette glued to his fingers that he rarely smokes. Rohmer is delicate, with a slight beard and a shy, earnest air. And they hold forth on the film. They have so many ideas about the film, so many observations on the way it sounded and looked. They discuss sweeping themes and they remember each small, intimate gesture of the actors. They find significance in a bag of groceries hung in a window, in the summer heat, in salt spilled on a tablecloth. It’s beautiful to watch the way that they form grand, mythical theories about the film, and then shape their experience of the film to fit this mythology. They’re trying to seem cool and blasé, of course, this being the 60s, but they’re jumping and beaming with love for the film, so pleased with themselves for having discovered it as it unfolded before them, full of gifts that Renoir has hidden for them to discover. Wasn’t he clever to have made a simple film that’s about so much? Weren’t they clever to figure it out as they watched? This is the way to watch a film! This is a way to go through life! Noticing everything, maybe even things that aren’t there! Joyfully forming grand theories, talking about them with a friend, and building on them as the days go along. At one point they’re discussing sound in the film, and Rohmer says, with a shy glance at Douchet “…and we hear all the sounds of nature – the singing of the birds and such, which is wonderfully rich and well-worth analyzing.” This kills me!! Is he talking broadly about Renoir’s use of sound? Or is he talking about the singing of the birds – each bird with its own song, full of meaning that we can discover and share?

Gateau alcasien

Gateau alcasien


I like the way my French cookbook talks about cookies as if they’re cakes. I’m so confused by the recipes that I never know how they’ll turn out even as I’m making them, and it’s a joy to see them shape into this kind of cookie, or that kind of molded fruit and cream, or that kind of actual cake that I’d call a cake. My cookbook is very dry, each recipe is about 5 lines long, and they don’t take a lot of time to describe each step, let alone to editorialize about the recipe at all. And yet this particular recipe is full of charming asides. The cookies are to be cut in “bizarre and childish shapes.” It doesn’t go into further detail, so it’s really up to you!! And it finishes thus, “Et voila le gateau Alsacien, which one munches while watching the colorful candles on the Christmas tree.” Lovely! And I love the word schwowcbredel – talk about bizarre and childish!! We have some animal cookie cutters, so I decided to use an elephant, in honor of Babar, a lion, in honor of Duvoisin’s Happy Lion, and a balloon, in honor of The Red Balloon. The cookies contain marmalade, cinnamon, and orange flower water, which I’ve never cooked with before. It’s nice – floral but light and unexpected. I wasn’t sure the boys would like it, but they gobbled these down.

Here’s Edith Pilaf singing La Lulie Jolie
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Red bean, sweet potato & hominy stew and Olive oil rosemary biscuits

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Red bean & hominy stew

Red bean & hominy stew

Well, it’s been a day of catching up after working all weekend. A day of laundry and grocery shopping and trying to get the boys to clean their room. It’s been a day of thinking about Martin Luther King Jr, of driving on the grey wintery streets, listening to fragments of Barack Obama’s inauguration speech on the radio, moved to tears. Obama’s first election was fueled by hope, it was buoyant with hope. And despite snide comments about hopey changey stuff, despite the sort of fatigue and discouragement that four hard years of dealing with Bush’s financial crisis have brought upon us, at this moment I feel more hopeful than ever. It’s not a hope as bright and far-reaching as that of the first election – but it’s a stronger, fiercer hope, based in reality and hard work. I don’t agree with all of Obama’s decisions, I don’t love every action that he’s taken, but I feel so grateful to him for starting conversations about health care, gay rights, women’s rights, gun control, climate change. Of course we should talk about these things! It’s remarkable to me that in 2013 these are issues we still need to address, let alone issues that take extraordinary courage to address. I think it’s difficult to understand just how brave Obama is for speaking publicly and openly about gun control and gay marriage. Despite petty political squabbling, despite ignorance, hatred and fear, we are taking small steps in a good direction, towards a world that must be inevitable if people are as kind and thoughtful as they have the potential to be. Martin Luther King spoke of non-violence with these words, “In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation.” I hope that this is true, with the deepest weightiest and yet most buoyant hope imaginable. Obama ended his speech with these words, “Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.” And that birthright is not a possession or privilege unique to Americans, but a natural or moral right possessed by everyone, the world over – to work for freedom from the darkness of fear, ignorance, and cruelty.

I felt a little silly posting a recipe today, (and doing laundry, and cleaning, and all other trivial chores). But, maybe that’s part of what it’s all about – about the freedom to get on with these things. These chores are trivial to me, but are luxuries for some people. To buy healthy, nourishing food for your family, to cook it up in a way that you feel good about. To have a safe, warm home to serve it in. Everybody deserves these things! In that spirit I present to you a recipe for a warm, comforting stew full of flavor. I bought pomegranate molasses for the first time, and I’m having fun playing with the sweet/tart continuum. I decided to pair it with a tiny bit of mustard, balsamic, sage, red pepper flakes and smoked paprika, to make a spicy, sweet, tart, smoky sauce. And the biscuits are incredibly easy to make, and very tasty, too. They’re butter-free, and the taste of olive oil in a baked good is always surprising and pleasant.

Well, there are quite a few songs I could choose for today’s post, but I’m going to give you Mos Def’s Fear Not of Men. It’s based, of course, on Fela’s Fear Not For Man, the lyrics of which go thus…

    Brothers and sisters
    The father of Pan-Africanism
    Dr. Kwame Nkrumah
    Says to all black people
    All over the world:
    “The secret of life is to have no fear”
    We all have to understand that

Mos Def’s song isn’t explicitly about Martin Luther King’s Day, but the lyrics have always resonated on this day of all days. He says, “A lot of things have changed, and a lot of things have not.” And there’s no doubt that this is true, for better or for worse. But the song is about courage in the face of danger, courage to work towards something that’s bigger than all of us. And it’s about a universal rhythm that beats through all of us, surely leading us inevitably in the same direction.

    All over the world hearts pound with the rhythm
    Fear not of men because men must die
    Mind over matter and soul before flesh
    Angels for the pain keep a record in time
    which is passin and runnin like a caravan freighter
    The world is overrun with the wealthy and the wicked
    But God is sufficient in disposin of affairs
    Gunmen and stockholders try to merit your fear
    But God is sufficient over plans they prepared.

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Fennel & walnut croquettes

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Fennel and walnut croquettes

Fennel and walnut croquettes

Olga Von Till was born in the 1890s. As a girl she lived in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She played piano for silent movies, providing a soundtrack for their voiceless antics. She was sent to Hungary to study with Bela Bartok, and became stranded there when World War I broke out. She made a living as a companion for wealthy, eccentric women. When she returned home she lived in New York City for a while, and she taught classical piano to Bill Evans, amongst many others. In the 80s she lived in a small town next to New Brunswick, and it was at that point that I met her – she was my piano teacher all through high school. She was an intimidating teacher, exacting and persistent. She heard the tone of each note, and she heard the silence between notes, which were as important as the notes themselves, and needed to be given their exact space, their exact weight. Ms. Von Till would hold your arm with her strong hands, feeling the muscles, and she’d put her hand under your hand, so that your fingers stretched to the piano keys from a seemingly impossible height, but with just the right force when they finally touched. She had a hard round belly that she’d prop a blank music-lined book on, and she’d write careful instructions for the week’s practice in strange and wonderful felt tip pens that I coveted, but never found in the real world. She had two pairs of glasses, one with round thick lenses and gold frames, and one with horn-rimmed frames and small blue flowers. Everything in her house was exactly as she wanted it, and she could tell you stories about choosing the fabric on the walls or the rugs on the floor. She had two steinway grands, and she talked about them as if they were living creatures – each had its own tone, its own voice. Her husband Sam played the violin, and he’d been a child prodigy, but his career had been disappointing. He heard music in his head, and would gesture passionately as he listened to it. I was a mediocre student, we all knew I would never amount to much as a pianist. But I loved to sit with Ms Von Till. After I left for college, I would visit her every time I came home. I’d bring her flowers every time, and I’d sit and listen to her stories. As she got older, she wouldn’t come down the stairs, and we’d sit upstairs in her study, side by side. She would tell stories of her remarkable life, sometimes the same stories over and over, but they were worth hearing again. She’d hold my arm, and feel the muscles, she’d support my hand with her strong hands. She could tell I hadn’t been playing piano. Sometimes we’d sit in silence, and then she’d look at me with a beaming smile through her thick round lenses. I didn’t talk much, she couldn’t have known much about me, but I felt that she loved me. I felt that she was a good friend, despite the more than seventy years between us. I still dream about her sometimes, about the world that she created with her music, her elegance, her strength, her stories, and her expectations.

Obviously I admired her very much! So this week’s Sunday interactive playlist will be about songs of admiration for other musicians. The tribute can be in the lyrics or in the tunes. I thought I had a lot of these stored up, but I’m struggling, so I need your help!

And these fennel croquettes – I wanted to have a combination of comforting and wintery and bright and fresh and summery. I used fresh thyme and fresh rosemary, and I made them light and crispy. But they also have bread crumbs and melty cheese to get you through the winter evening. We ate them with a simple tomato sauce, but you could eat them with any kind of sauce you like.

Here’s the interactive playlist as it stands so far. Feel free to add whatever you can think of!

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Curried crispy oven roasted potato slices

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Curried crispy potatoes

Curried crispy potatoes

    “You see, I really have wanted to make it so that people get the idea that these folk, who are eating their potatoes by the light of their little lamp, have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labor and — that they have thus honestly earned their food. I wanted it to give the idea of a wholly different way of life from ours — civilized people.”

This is Vincent Van Gogh talking about his painting The Potato Eaters. The quote makes me crazy! On the one hand, it’s so earnest and well-meaning, he’s trying to understand the way others live, and he’s recognizing the value of their work. On the other hand, it’s so condescending and anthropological, (which I’ve just read as defined as “human zoology”!) it seems he’s saying that the potato eaters are as dull and insignificant as the potatoes they eat, as low and as covered in dirt. I’m impatient with this view of the artist as a rarefied, superior being, a view that I trace back to the late nineteenth century. (Somebody correct me if I’m wrong!) I can’t read Thomas Hardy, with his supersensitive characters disturbed by the base animal instincts of the common man (or woman)…

    But with the self-combating proclivity of the supersensitive, an answer thereto arose in Clare’s own mind, and he almost feared it. It was based on her exceptional physical nature; and she might have used it promisingly. … Some might risk the odd paradox that with more animalism he would have been the nobler man. We do not say it. Yet Clare’s love was doubtless ethereal to a fault, imaginative to impracticability.,

…and DH Lawrence, who congratulates himself on understanding people, but really has no idea.
It makes me uncomfortable that certain people are set apart – set above – in this way; separated by class, or race, or artistic temperament, and that their emotions are seen as more legitimate and more valuable. Surely everybody has their own sensitivities – maybe they swoon at a beautiful sunset, or can tell the difference between two malbecs, or tremble with the new green leaves in spring. (Personally, I can’t wear scratchy wool clothes close to my skin!). Maybe they don’t have the talent to paint what they see, or the means to buy spices to flavor their food, but this doesn’t make their appreciation less important. I suppose this is like the great-grandfather of indie snobbery, which is a trait I’m guilty of myself. When I was younger I only liked alternative, eccentric music, and I remember teasing a friend because he liked “top 40” artists. “Why do you like something just because everyone else does?” I asked. And he replied, “Maybe everybody likes it because it’s good!” Harumph!! And now we have a sort of reverse snobbery, from why-does-anybody-care-what-she-says Palin and her ilk – if you’re educated or care the least bit about anything that might matter to a human being, you’re weak, you’re an intellectual elitist. It’s hard to keep up with this judgmental roller coaster, isn’t it?

And, honestly, potatoes aren’t dull or stodgy at all! Yes, they grow in dirt, but they’re magnificently variable and infinitely adaptable. You can make anything you want with them! you can make them as flavorful as you like, or you can relish their simplicity, and take time to appreciate their own subtle flavor. In this case I sliced them thin and roasted them with curry spices. Simple, but delicious.

Here’s Bob Marley with Judge Not.
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Pumpkin crumpets

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pumpkin crumpets

pumpkin crumpets

So we got the boys a wii for Christmas. We didn’t break down, exactly – it was something we’d talked about getting for a while. We’d been holding it out as a promise and a threat, just as it said to do in our parenting book; making the purchase of a video game system contingent on wildly unrelated behaviors that defied all reason, just because we could. “Honestly, if you don’t eat your soup how do you expect to be able to play on a wii?” I’m not sure that’s even the right terminology. Do you play on a wii? Do you just play wii? Do you wii? Who knows! It’s not that I’m anti-video game, exactly, I just don’t like them. (I learned that logic from our parenting book, too! It’s called Parenting by the Irrational and Inconsistent Method: Raising a Confused but Biddable Child.) I’ve never wanted to play video games myself for more than five minutes. They seem like an epic waste of time, and they make my head hurt. But it was obvious that the boys didn’t share this view. And I was lying to myself if I thought they weren’t playing video games, anyway. They played on the computer, but they’d have to go one at a time, and oh! the tears and arguments that ensued because Isaac thought he didn’t get a fair turn. He has so much fun playing video games that half an hour passes as in an instant, the twinkling of an eye, and he squeals, in his indignant, ascending voice, “No! I only played for five minutes!” So now they play together. They have fun, they’re a team, they sit next to each other and giggle and help each other through the hard levels. And they’re playing lego Star Wars, for heaven’s sake, and lego Harry Potter, and Tintin, not World of Violent Wish Fulfillment Armageddon. So far, so good. But there’s still this nagging doubt, this feeling that they should just be playing with legos, not playing with virtual lego figures. I fear for their imaginations and their creativity, I fear that they’ll lose the ability to tell their own stories. Well! The other day I came home from work tired and discouraged. I looked through the window and saw them on the couch, seemingly deep in concentration. I assumed they were playing (on? at? with?) the wii. Not at all. They were bent over little blank books, drawing and writing. They’ve invented a world that they inhabit together. They have different names and powers and personalities, but they’re still brothers. charlie-flintMalcolm is Charlie, and Isaac is Harry. They have a little brother named Johnny who grows at an alarming rate. They have a sister named Caty, and they have a dog who can fly. Of course they do! I should have known that nothing could dull the bright world of their imaginations, that no video game could dampen their creativity. It’s in them and it’s got to get out! They’ll talk for hours about the goings-on in Charlie and Harry’s world, with fervent glee. And they still play with legos – Malcolm made the most amazing little kitchen, with doors that open and secret cabinets that slide out. And pumpkin crumpets. Pumpkin crumpets!! Tiny little plastic pumpkin crumpets. What could be more fun to say? Or eat? So I decided to try to make some for really reals, in real life. I consulted my trusty Mrs. Beeton, and she said that crumpets are also called pikelets. Is that more fun to say? Pumpkin pikelets? It’s a close call. It turns out crumpets are fun to make, but a little messy. My problem was the rings. I had a pair that I’d gotten some time ago, but they didn’t work out too well. They were too small, and the crumpets stuck to them like a mother flipper. I made my own rings out of tin foil, because I’m crafty like that, and they worked slightly better. The crumpets are a little softer and denser and less chewy than crumpets from a shop. Perhaps this is the result of pumpkin puree? Perhaps it’s the result of my clumsy crumpet-making method? It was actually quite comforting and pleasant, though. I also tried not using rings at all, just putting the batter on the griddle. They were nice, too, but more like little yeasted pancakes. (You can see an example of one on the left in the picture) We ate a whole batch of crumpets in one night with some spinach, apple, avocado and ginger soup, which I’ll tell you about another time. pumpkin-pikelets

Here’s K’naan, with Dreamer.
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Millet, red lentil, and sweet potato dal and pumpkin ricotta flatbreads

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Millet dal and pumpkin flatbread

Millet dal and pumpkin flatbread

Yesterday around mid-morning, I spent ten minutes sitting on the couch in my pajamas, with Clio half-on/half-off my lap. I petted her velvety ears and watched people rush by in the rain. They seemed so busy and productive, and I could just imagine how the world smelled like rain to them, and how they felt icy drops trickling into their collars, and how their cars had that feverish chilled-but-warming feeling. And here I was, so toasty and still and unproductive. I felt like I was in a Basho poem. I thought of the quote from the Hagekure (and Ghost Dog!)

There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. By doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you will still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to all things.

I found that I didn’t feel quite so unproductive, because my mind was busy, and then I felt foolish for thinking that. Then I thought about writing about thinking about writing about sitting there. And then Clio said, “Man, you’re cramping my style. I’ve got some napping to be getting on with.” The mail came, but I didn’t bring it in because it’s only bills and advertisements. Then I went up to clean the bathroom, and thought about writing about that, but luckily for you I won’t do that. When I was little, I used to narrate my actions in my head in the third person. Not all the time, because that would be crazy! But often. “And then Claire sat on a bench in the middle of the room. She always got through with looking at paintings before everyone else. She did everything quickly. And now she sat and watched the people looking at the paintings…” And on an on it goes! I feel like I’ve been doing that again lately, because of The Ordinary. Not in third person now, so it’s slightly less eccentric. But when I cook, I’ll think about writing about it, and aboutexplaining how it’s done. And sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, and try to occupy my brain with whatever I might say on here the next day (explains a lot about the quality of the work, doesn’t it?) and I’ll find myself writing in my head. And, yes, this might seem crazy, but I think this is a good thing!!! I firmly believe that the more you write, the more you write. The more you think about writing, the more you’ll write, and hopefully it will become a habit. (This doesn’t guarantee good writing, mind you! It just makes it easier to get started.) I think this understanding extends to all things. The more you draw, the more you’ll draw. If you want to make movies, you should watch movies, talk about movies, take photographs, write movies, make shorts. The more you cook, the more you’ll think about cooking, and the more you’ll want to try new things and experiment with new ingredients, until you’ll get sick of it all and go out to dinner. If you want to make music, the more you listen to songs, and practice making music, and think about music, the more life will present itself to you as a song. Because even if writing and making movies and drawing aren’t important, which, arguably they’re not at all, I’d still like to go through life looking for things to write about (or sing about or draw pictures of.) Just as the actors that work with Jaques Tati started to see little comic pieces in everyday exchanges in the world around them, you’ll start to find that even small things are worth noticing and remembering and examining, which in some way makes life worth living.

And now I feel foolish for writing about writing, so let’s talk about this dal instead. It’s made with red lentils, millet and sweet potatoes, and it’s cooked for some time, which makes it dense and soft and porridgey. Red lentils are nice because they cook quickly, but if you cook them longer, as (I believe) Indian dals are cooked, they take on a whole different life. I added spinach and peas to pep things up and provide a little texture. And I used beautiful black cardamom pods, which are so smoky and sweet (but watch out for them when you eat the dal, you wouldn’t want to bite down on one!) I decided that cumin was too obvious in this dish, so I left it out in favor of other sweet and smoky spices, like cardamom, nigella seeds and smoked paprika. The flat breads were quick and easy to make – they have a little pumpkin puree and a little ricotta, which gives them a nice flavor and texture, and they were just crunchy enough to provide a pleasant contrast to the soft dal.

Here’s Station Showdown from the Yojimbo soundtrack, cause it’s all about the millet. Golly, this soundtrack is brilliant!

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