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Red bean, potato and pine nut tacos…and croquettes

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Red bean, potato, and pine nut croquettes

Red bean, potato, and pine nut croquettes

We woke up this morning to grey and stormy skies, torrential rains, thunder, flood warnings. Everything was dark and slaty as far as we could see; grey upon grey upon grey. I’ve always liked a day like this in the summer time, a day to stay inside, to read and write and eat chocolate. (Of course that was before the boys and the stir craziness and the cabin feverish daziness.) I’ve always seen a lot of beauty in a grey day, and this seems like a good time to finish my small series of discussions of kitchen sink films, by talking about Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner. It’s a beautiful film despite the relentless smoky greyness of the industrial landscape, despite the gloomy wintery bleakness. The film tells the story of Colin, a poor boy from Nottingham played with characteristic brilliance by Tom Courtenay. He doesn’t have a lot of options in life, he doesn’t have a lot of hope, and he takes advantage of an open window to pilfer a cash box. It’s the rain that gives him away, washing all of the money out of its hiding place in a drain pipe to collect around his feet while he’s being interrogated by a policeman. He finds himself in a boy’s reformatory, and his only relief from the drudgery and degradation is running. He runs to escape, but you feel as though he runs to figure things out, too. He finds the space to think, in the solitude, in the regular rhythm of his feet. He finds joy and solace, and he finds enough hope and self-respect to quietly take a stand against the repressive authorities and the brutally condescending public school boys he’s pitted against in a race. As he comes to understand his life and his place in the world while he runs, so do we, we share in his memories to see what brought him to this place, and we share a bleak sort of hopefulness for his future. He might be stuck in a place he doesn’t want to live, but at least he can live with himself and his decisions.

Red bean, potato, pine nut tacos

Red bean, potato, pine nut tacos

This is two two two meals in one! I made tacos with potatoes and green peppers and tomatoes from the farm, with some crispy diced tomatoes and pine nuts. They were somewhat smoky, with smoked paprika and chipotle puree. We ate them with warm tacos, basmati rice, grated cheese, and avocados mixed with cherry tomatoes. The next day I combined the leftover bean mixture with the leftover rice to make croquettes, which were almost better than the tacos themselves!

Here’s Belle and Sebastian’s The Loneliness of the Middle Distance Runner. One of my favorites!

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Spicy tomato coconut sauce; smoky basil pesto; collard “fettuccine”

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collard fettucine with two sauces

collard fettucine with two sauces

The Hagakure is a practical and spiritual guide to warfare written by a samurai in the beginning of the 18th century. The word “hagakure” literally means “hidden by leaves,” or “hidden leaves,” and I believe this is because the writings, though seemingly about a warrior code, are filled with hidden meanings that shift and grow as you read them, as something viewed through shifting leaves and shadows. I know about the Hagakure because extracts from it are beautifully read in Jim Jarmusch’s beautiful Ghost Dog. One of my favorites is this advice for understanding a rain storm, “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.” Every once in a while my boys will impart some wisdom they’ve gleaned from their travels, and it feels as though they should end it, “This understanding extends to all things.” Last night before bed and this morning on our towpath walk, I peppered them with questions, and I’ve compiled a short list of their advices.

    The Way of My Boys

    When walking through a forest, always think that a tick is biting you. In this way you will know when you have been bitten by a tick. This understanding applies to all things.

    If a bee stings you but you don’t know it, it will not hurt. This understanding extends to all things.

    When swimming in a pool, if you want to touch the bottom, go slowly so that you don’t hit your head. When swimming in murky water with a bed of sharp stones, go slowly so that you don’t scrape your knees. This understanding extends to all things.

    If you want to catch a firefly, don’t pinch it, hold your hand out and let it land, so that you don’t kill it. This is true of all things.

    If you miss a friend, play with things that you learned about with him. This understanding extends to all things.

    If you’re waiting on line and your legs get tired, think about something else and the pain will go away. This applies to all things.

    If you want something very badly but can’t have it, imagine that you have it, and that will be almost as good. This applies to all things.

    When eating a plum, take a big bite, pull out the pit at once, and you can have fun eating the rest. This understanding extends to all things.

Smoky pesto

Smoky pesto

I keep picking armfuls of basil each week, and I wanted to think of something different to add to pesto, so I asked Malcolm. He suggested smoked paprika, and then we decided to add smoked gouda as well, and to roast the garlic and toast the pine nuts. It turned out very good. It’s quite a subtle flavor, but nice. And I’ve been picking lots of tomatoes, too. I had some chunky sauce left over from the day before, and I decided to mix it with some cream of coconut and spices, and then add some fresh cherry tomatoes at the end.
tomato-coconut-sauce
Bright and spicy and a little sweet. And, finally, I’ve been thinking a while about cooking collards in long ribbons, and eating them as a person might eat pasta, with a sauce (or two!) on top. I thought it turned out very very tasty. Satisfying, like pasta, but with more flavor and texture. The boys just ate soba noodles, though, which is a perfectly acceptable substitute. collard-fettuccine

Here’s Flying Birds, from RZA’s remarkable soundtrack to Ghost Dog.

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Cornmeal-spinach-goat cheese cake and chunky tomato sauce

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cornmeal cake with goat cheese and spinach

cornmeal cake with goat cheese and spinach

Yesterday I foolishly went on and on about how if you Hergéed my name it became Assez, and about how much I like the word “enough.” And I closed with a joke about how Assez would make a good graffiti tag. It was all inane nonsense and probably not worthy of one post, let alone two. And yet, I’m sorry to say, today’s post is going to be a follow up. A part two. Because I became very taken with the idea of having Assez as a graffiti tag! I developed this whole fantasy in which I had a) artistic talent b) guts and gumption c) money and freedom to travel and d) the ability to stay up past ten o’clock at night, and in which I travelled the word leaving my mark. Because “enough” doesn’t just mean an amount that is right and needful, or a sufficiency. “Enough” is also a word you yell when you’re fed up with something, when something is depressing, discouraging, or just generally wrong, and you want it to stop. (You know, when you’re watching your programs, and your children are upstairs beating each other with sticks, and you don’t want to stop them right away because you don’t want to discourage their creativity or dampen their competitive spirit, but finally, the noise is just too much and you can’t hear what the people on the TV are saying so you stomp upstairs and yell, …well, you know.) I had this vision of going to all the places in the world where people are being cruel to one another or to animals, which, let’s face it, is pretty much everywhere in the world, and sneaking in at night to write ASSEZ! “Then I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look.” I’d go everywhere that people are breeding ignorance and creating hatred and suspicion to keep some poor while they themselves become rich. I’d go wherever men are waging war for profit. I’d go to all the fast food places where people are serving pink slime burgers and cover their walls with it. (“Assez” not pink slime…) I’d go to all the places where people are making dangerously stupid television programs or reporting lies as truth, and I’d write ASSEZ!! And today I went so far as to waste a ridiculous quantity of time playing with the spraypaint app on my phone. It’s not perfect, of course, because as soon as I realized how much time I’d spent thinking about it I had to sheepishly stop.
assez
But do you see what we have here? Tintin blue, of course, and golden tear-bubbles, and a glowy quality, and the same sort of font as my Atget book, and … I know, I know, that’s quite enough of that, Claire. Basta! Genug! ASSEZ!

Spicy chunky tomato sauce

Spicy chunky tomato sauce

So we came home from the farm with about ten pounds of tomatoes! We’ve been eating them for lunch every day with olive oil, basil, goat cheese and baguette. But of course I had to make a sauce! I made it light, quick, chunky and flavorful with capers, olives, herbs and a little hot red pepper. And then I made this cake to spoon it over. It’s almost like polenta, except that it has a lot more flavor and a more interesting (to me) texture. It’s soft and puddingy inside, and a little crispy on the edges. It was very easy to make–I mixed it in the processor and then poured it right in the pan to bake it. Even the boys liked it!!
Cornmeal, goat cheese & spinach cake

Cornmeal, goat cheese & spinach cake

Here’s KRS One Out for Fame, about graffiti writers.

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Thinly sliced potatoes topped with french lentils and crispy pecan-crusted eggplant

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Potatoes, french lentils, and eggplant

Potatoes, french lentils, and eggplant

For some reason I woke up in the middle of the night with the term “bioluminescence” in my head. Maybe I was dreaming about fireflies–I don’t remember. Of course I like bioluminescence, I love fireflies and angler fish and whatever plant it is that makes miles and miles of ocean glow. Apparently animals and plants use luminescence to attract prey and mates and to signal danger; some even use it to illuminate their surroundings so that they can see better. It makes me sad that humans are trying to steal this ability…to make glowing mice or tobacco plants. This feels like something we should leave alone, one time that we should admit that other species have a sort of miraculous complexity of their own, completely different from ours. We’re not the center of everything, and we try to control it all, but we’re off to the side somewhere, messing everything up, and feeling very important and proud of ourselves. The earth is unbelievably complicated in beautiful ways that we will never understand. We have our own methods of keeping out the darkness. And if we meddle too much we run the risk of blotting out the light all around us, the luminosity that shines out of people when they’re joyful or curious, the glow that sometimes feels deadened by our frantically artificially bright world.

Here’s a list of some far more interesting words that people have dreamed, than “bioluminescence,” and they probably didn’t go on and on about it so foolishly, either!

Eggplant, french lentils and potatoes

Eggplant, french lentils and potatoes

We’re getting a lot of eggplant and potatoes from the farm right now, which is fine with me, because I love eggplant and tomatoes!! In this instance, I sliced the potatoes very thin to make a sort of crust. Then I piled layers of french lentils, fresh tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and eggplant baked till crispy with a pecan crust. Very very good!

Here’s Lightworks by J Dilla.

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Fresh cherry chocolate chip cookies

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Fresh cherry chocolate chip cookies

Fresh cherry chocolate chip cookies

“When are you going back to school?” asked the bartender, calling over her shoulder from across the bar. “NEVER!” I replied, with an evil laugh. Of course she wasn’t talking to me, she thought I was somebody else, some bright young woman with her future ahead of her who will be going back to school within the month. Everybody is going off somewhere…to school; to a new, real, job; to a trip abroad. And I’m just sitting here, sitting. I’d like to go back to school, but it would be frivolous at my age; I should get a new real job, but I don’t really want to, if I’m being honest. I’d love to go on a trip abroad, but I’ve got kids and a dog and no money. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not great with change, and I’m genuinely content with things the way they stand. Sometimes, though, it’s discombobulating to take a step back and see how many decisions have already been decided–almost without me knowing I was making them. We own a house, we have as many children as I ever wanted, I can’t imagine ever leaving this town. Of course we have dreams, we talk about doing something else. We’re just about ready to launch our back-up plan of moving to Provence and raising goats and writing children’s books. I’m thinking of moving to Uraguay to form a film collective with whoever has been making the beautiful films I’ve seen from that area. I fully intend to move to Barcelona and become a secret street artist. I’d like to be a polyglot troubadour like Manu Chao, and gallivant to Brazil and Algeria to make huge wine-filled dinners with scores of fascinating friends from all over the world. It’s only a matter of time, really, before I travel back in time to 30s or 60s Paris, to make movies with Renoir or Godard. Just one or two things to put in order, first, and we’re off.

This is my summer of cherries! I’m cherry-obsessed. I’ve always been a raspberry fan, but I have to admit, this summer I’m very nearly ready to declare the cherry as my favorite fruit. I’m especially obsessed with the combination of cherries, almonds, and chocolate. So I warn you in advance I’ve tried lots and lots of combinations, and I plan to tell you about them all! ALl of them! I thought it might be fun to make cookies with fresh cherries. The cookies turned out very soft, like little cakes. But tasty–fresh and juicy.

Here’s Manu Chao with Denia. We’ve been playing this album for Malcolm lately, because I think Manu Chao might be a satorial soul mate for our Malcolm.

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Broccoli rabe with brown sugar, spices and pecans

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Broccoli rabe with spiced butter and pecans

Broccoli rabe with spiced butter and pecans

The sky at the moment is a strange shade of electric grey. It might storm at any moment, but it probably won’t. They’ve predicted thunderstorms almost every day this summer. You never know, it might storm, so they may as well say that it will, just in case. This can make a storm-o-phobic person feel a bit anxious! It could happen at any time! Under your beds, everyone. until the all-clear some time in mid-autumn! Actually I love storms, if everybody is safe and accounted for. I love when the sky grows inky and the leaves turn their bright selves upside down in the wild wind. I love when half the world is glowing and golden ahead of fast racing purpling clouds. I love the sense of release and relief after a storm has cleared the brooding muggy air. In honor of our stormy summer, today’s Sunday interactive playlist will be on the subject of storms. Songs about thunder, lighting, rain, and blowing gales. Add songs to the list if you like, or leave a comment, and I’ll try to remember to add it through the week.

This broccoli rabe is cooked with butter, brown sugar, and a few select spices, viz: ginger, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom and smoked paprika. It’s a little spicy, a little sweet, a little bitter (because it is, after all, broccoli rabe!). It’s also extremely easy to make. You could use this method with any other greens you like: kale, collard, beet.

Here’s a link to the playlist.

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Goat cheese tart with roasted eggplant, olives, and a lemon-semolina crust

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Goat cheese tart with eggplant and olives

Goat cheese tart with eggplant and olives

It’s Saturday storytelling time! It’s summer sporadic schedule Saturday storytelling time!! As I’m sure you’ll recall, each Saturday we post a found photograph, a vernacular picture, and we write a story about it, and invite everyone else to write one, too. And then, in theory, we all read each others’ stories and offer wise editorial advice. Today’s picture is lovely, I think. It has layers. And here it is… Send me your story and I’ll print it here, with mine after the jump, or send me a link to share, if you have somewhere of your own to post it.
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eggplant-olive-tartIt’s a summery tart! The eggplant is from the farm, of course, which means it’s really really the middle of summer. This whole tart is quite light and fresh-flavored, I think. The crust has semolina in it, which makes it extremely crispy, and it has lemon in it, which makes it bright. I think olives, eggplant and goat cheese form a sort of perfect trinity of flavor. So there it is!

Here’s Up on the Roof by the Drifters

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Pearled couscous & french lentils with yellow squash, and burgers!

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Pearled couscous and french lentils with yellow squash, tomatoes and fresh herbs

Pearled couscous and french lentils with yellow squash, tomatoes and fresh herbs

I’m in a little bit of a blue funk these days. MId-summer slump? Mid-life crisis? A skewed perspective? I’m anxious about the future and regretting a past that hasn’t even happened yet. I’ve been looking at my life from the outside too much, maybe, and that’s never a good thing. You can’t think about it too much, right? You just have to splash through it like it’s cool creek water, try not to slip on the mossy rocks, and enjoy the dousing you get if you do. But I’m not going to talk about that, because who cares!! I’m going to talk about Adventure Time, again. I just love it, as Malcolm would say. I find it such a comfort…it makes me feel happy. I love the friendship and the humor, and the way that the whole world of the show is morally complicated but ultimately righteous. We bought the second season the other day, and we got a few Tintins at the same time (I have to tell you that we got some real books, too, with lots of words and chapters and the like, just so you don’t worry too much about the boy’s intellectual development.) And I had a major revelation! I love Adventure Time the way I used to love Tintin, and maybe haven’t really taken to anything else since. It makes me happy in the same way: watching it reminds me of being little with a new Tintin and a plate of fries, which was such a good feeling. (It’s not fries anymore, it’s grolsch and punjabi mix, which we had yesterday during a thunder storm, and which will surely be one of my best memories of this summer.) Well, I started to think about similarities between Adventure Time and Tintin, and I think I’ve gathered enough that I could write a thesis on it. A nice thick scholarly thesis. They both wear the magical Tintin blue. They’re both drawn in bright solid colors, they both have yellow-blonde hair. They’re both young boys who live, improbably, in a dangerous adult world, with only a dog for a companion. In both cases the dog is a sort of saltier, more mature individual…Snowy with his whisky drinking, and Jake with his gruff voice and tail-wagging appreciation of imaginary cute girls. The dogs are like manifestations of the maturity that these strangely independent boys lack but need to survive in the world. Tintin and Finn both cheerfully and eagerly face every challenge, and it’s this very enthusiasm that helps them to win the day. Yes, I love these boy-and-their dog stories, but it got me thinking that what the world needs now is a girl-and-her-dog story. It will be about Clio and me! A perplexed overgrown child, strangely out of place in the complicated and often sinister adult world, and her wise-cracking canine companion. Of course in this scenario, it’s Clio who has all of the enthusiasm, gumption and curiosity, but she has enough for two, so that’s alright. Our adventures will be slightly more low-key than those of Finn and Tintin. We’ll sleep an extra hour after the alarm goes off! We’ll chase cats (and squirrels and birds and dried leaves) on the tow path! We’ll walk the boys home from school! Can’t you just see it? Can’t you hardly wait to read about our exciting adventures?

Couscous french lentil burgers

Couscous french lentil burgers

We got some big beautiful yellow squash from the farm, along with some pretty plum tomatoes, and lots of fresh herbs. I wanted them fresh and flavorful, so I only sautéed them lightly, and I made a sort of pilaf of whole wheat pearled couscous and french lentils as a sort of base for the bright vegetables. We topped it all with pine nuts and grated mozzarella. Nice summery meal. Everybody liked it, even the picky boys. The next day, I combined the leftovers with some romesco sauce to make burgers, and they were almost better than the initial meal! Juicy and flavorful. We ate them with fake bacon, smoked gouda, lettuce and sliced tomatoes. If you don’t happen to have romesco sauce lying around, it’s worth making some just for these, but also because it’s so delicious in its own right.
Couscous and french lentil burgers

Couscous and french lentil burgers

Here’s Finn’s Baby Song, it’s been stuck in my head for days!

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Pistachio tarator sauce and roasted fingerlings

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Pistachio tarator sauce and roasted fingerlings

Pistachio tarator sauce and roasted fingerlings

It’s time for your second installment of “Claire’s favorite kitchen sink films.” Today’s feature is a beauty called Taste of Honey, from 1961. The film, directed by Tony Richardson, was based on a play by Shelagh Delaney, which she wrote when she was eighteen years old. It tells the story of seventeen-year-old Jo, who is clever and funny, but something of an outsider, she awkward and acerbic and she doesn’t fit in easily. Her mother is a hard drinking playgirl, and they move from flat to flat and man to man, avoiding landladies and bill collectors. Jo meets a sailor named Jimmy. He’s kind and cheerful, and he obviously likes her a lot because he tells her, “I dreamt about you last night and I fell out of bed twice.” They spend a few days together, and then he has to return to sea. She’s pregnant and alone, but she’s fine, she’s better than ever. She finds herself a home of her own and a job in a shoe store…a job she’s good at. She meets a textile student named Geoff, and he becomes a good friend, he takes care of Jo and he’s almost more motherly than her actual mother. The film is a masterpiece of acting, writing and filming. It’s so aesthetically pretty, and so beautiful in its honesty and heart and wit. Jimmy is black and Geoff is gay, but aside from a few hastily mean outbursts on Jo’s part, which you know she regrets, this is not an issue. These are not their defining characteristics; they’re warmly, richly written characters and you think about them long after the film is over. And Jo herself, played by the amazing Rita Tushingham, is kind and cruel, strong and confused, loving but guarded. She’s made a life for herself and she’s justifiably proud, but she’s also terrified of having a baby, of being on her own, of having a baby on her own. She’s perfectly, endearingly human.

Pistachio tarator sauce! I’m really proud of this one. We got some lovely rosy fingerlings from the farm. I sliced them into thin wedges and roasted them until they were crispy, all pink and golden. And then I made this pretty green sauce to go with them. It has pistachio kernels, baby spinach, rosemary, sage and roasted garlic. Simple, but distinctive and very delicious. It’s creamy but it’s vegan. I roasted the garlic on the tray with the potatoes, but you could toast it in your toaster oven if you’re not making the potatoes. This would also be good with greens or any other roasted or fried vegetables, or even as a sauce for pasta or rice.

Here’s Herb Alpert’s Taste of Honey. It has nothing to do with this week’s movie, but for some reason I love the song and the video.

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Trifle with black currants and cherries and almond custard

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Cherry and black currant trifle

Cherry and black currant trifle

Isaac just walked into the room with a tear-stained face and said, “Do you want me to run away?” Such has been our morning that I didn’t say, “Of course not, darling.” I didn’t even laugh. He wants to go fishing, desperately. And despite the dodgy ethics of a vegetarian fishing, we’ll take him, but first he has to write in his summer journal. It’s torture, I tell you! He drew a brilliant picture of himself imagining himself fishing. I said, now write about what kind of fish you want to catch. How can he be expected to know what kind of fish he might catch? He’s incensed at the absurdity of the situation. (Has he read Mcelligot’s pool? Of course he has.) I said, write about how angry you are that I won’t take you fishing…it’s okay to write about being angry. He burst into tears and said he didn’t want to write about me being mean. And now that he’s done trying to physically wrestle me from my chair and is yelling “I HAVE TO GO FISHING,” from a slightly greater distance, I will tell you that it strikes me as funny that I don’t want to go fishing at all, but I do want to write. What seems like a horrible punishment to him is my idea of a good time. He can maybe imagine a little polluted pool leading to the sea, and all of the strange and wonderful fish he might catch there, and I can imagine a tepid tide pool of my mind, cluttered and messy, holding every little thing that floats on shore. But maybe I’ll follow some bright silvery ideas into the waves, whole schools of well-organized shinily nimble words, and they’ll lead somewhere cool and quiet, with an underwater glow and an echoing resonance. And I’ll capture them all, somehow, without doing them any harm, and I’ll be able to take them and share them with others. “If I wait long enough; if I’m patient and cool, Who knows what I’ll catch in McElligot’s Pool!”

Isaac is finished raging and writing and talking about fishing like some kind of shot glass-sized Ernest Eemingway. And now the story is done and I have a promise to keep. We’ll head to the creek, and I’ll stand up to my ankles in cool water and watch the boys splash through pools of sunlight and shadow. They’ll catch minnows and water-strider spiders, and I’ll write a story in my head with all of the words swimming around there, and when we leave, we’ll let them all go, the fish and the words, and they’ll swim away into the shadowy depths.

Trifle! Why trifle? Because I made Malcolm two birthday cakes, and we couldn’t possibly eat all the cake. So for some reason it made sense to take some sweet thing we couldn’t possibly eat all of, and add lots more sweet things, and make it even bigger. Yes it did. I soaked the cake in rum, and then I added some black currants that I’d simmered in sugar till they were almost like a jam (you could just use black currant jam, if you don’t happen to have a black currant bush in your backyard.) I poured almond custard over all of this, then I added lots of fresh cherries and globs of whipped cream. Globs!! It was really tasty!

Here’s Tread Water by De La Soul
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