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Roasted carrot and sweet potato bisque (and more Eliza)

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Roasted sweet potato bisque

I feel like I’m in slow motion moving through a fog. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I have so much that I want to do, that I’m not doing any of it, and I frequently find myself on the couch with a soft warm puppy rather than attending to my important tasks. I blame it on the power failure, dammit!! I used up all my batteries, apparently, and now I’m blinking and stuttering like a machine about to lose all power. Well…I’ll catch up eventually, or realize that none of it matters. In the meantime, here’s a recipe for soup and another installment of the serialized drama known temporarily as Eliza and Hyssop. (For previous episodes, click here.)

We have ten pounds of sweet potatoes at the moment, from our CSA! And two huge bunches of beautiful carrots. What better way to use them then roasted in this smoky spicy bisque? It’s a very simple soup – just a few ingredients and spices. So it’s quite light, though satisfying. The warm sweet flavor of the vegetables really shines through.

Could be a spoonful of diamonds, gold, or sweet potato bisque!! Here’s Etta James with Spoonful.

And here’s Eliza, after the jump. When last we left her, she had raced to the top of the stairs, looking for the boy who had come to enlist her help in healing his brother…
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Crispy soft cornbread pudding

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Cornbread pudding

When the power went out last september (I think it must have been during Irene, but it’s all a blur at this point) Malcolm’s first concern was making me coffee. We can smash the beans with a hammer! And boil water over the fire! Must…get…mom…her…coffee!! Ha ha! As if I was some kind of caffeine addict. Well, okay, I’m probably a tiny bit addicted to caffeine. But I’m not the only one! You should have seen this place by the third powerless day. An army of hollow-eyed zombies roamed the town fiending for coffee! The first day after the storm, I wandered the drizzly town, feeling very tired and dejected, but my friend Pat made me a cup of coffee on his gas stove, and my day instantly cheered. The second day, David braved the compromised roads to make a journey to dunkin donuts. And on day three, we made coffee in our own home. We bought ground beans, and boiled a pot of water on the grill. We grilled coffee! And tea! It seems like such a little thing, but the act of making coffee in (or just outside the door of) our own kitchen restored some small sense of normalcy, and made me feel nearly ecstatic. (Or maybe the coffee was unusually highly caffeinated.) It’s not just the caffeine, it’s the simple daily rite of grinding the beans and boiling the water. (Or lying warm in bed listening to David downstairs performing the ritual.) I eat the same thing for breakfast every day. I feed my boys at the same time, most days, and they’re fairly predictable in what they’d like to eat. David eats peanut butter and jelly for lunch almost every day. Anything can happen at dinner time, I like to experiment and make odd meals, as you know, but that cooking and scheming is part of the pattern of my days. I hadn’t realized quite how routinized we were, as a family, until this ten day spate of powerlessness. I hadn’t realized how much the food that I prepare and eat, and the patterns of preparing it and eating it were involved in my comfort and ability to function. It made me feel a little anxious. I worried about the boys getting enough healthy food, even though they probably ate as well as usual. And anxiety makes me want to bake, which, obviously, wasn’t an option. We had fun straying from our usual pattern. We grilled scrambled eggs and toast, which was absolutely delicious. We were more social than usual, and shared meals with friends – everybody bringing their rapidly spoiling food. But I never felt quite right. I had a constant queasy feeling. And I found myself craving solid comforting food – bread and cheese and potatoes. One day we went and bought cans of beans and jars of artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers, and I was actually very excited about the prospect of cooking them over the fire. But dusk came early and the evenings were chilly, and I lost my enthusiasm for standing in the drizzly yard dirtying pots and pans I didn’t have hot water to clean. So what did we eat? We ate grilled toast and grilled bagels and grilled scrambled eggs. We ate rapidly thawing veggie dogs and veggie burgers. We ate pasta at a friend’s house. I made salads with cans of chickpeas and hearty vegetables like carrots and olives and cherry tomatoes. We had a few bags of potato chips scrounged from the dark, cash-only convenience store, and ate quantities of chocolate bars left over from our cancelled halloween. Peanut butter and jelly. Crackers and peanut butter. All-in–all, we ate lots of good food. We lived comfortably. I’m so grateful to have my warm home back, and my working stove and hot water. I cooked up a storm the first day with power – and I haven’t really stopped since. But I think it’s good to shake things up sometimes. So maybe we’ll grill scrambled eggs and toast one morning, just for fun, but I’ll be glad for the hot water needed to wash the dishes after!

We didn’t eat this over the last ten days, but it’s exactly the kind of thing I was craving. It’s comforting and warm and crispy but soft and cheesy. It’s halfway between a sort of corn pudding and cornbread. If you’ve ever made semolina dumplings or roman gnocchi, it’s the same idea, as is yorkshire pudding and choux pastry. But this is made with cornmeal. So it happens to be gluten free! I made it twice in the weeks before the storm, with varying amounts of cornmeal. If you make it with the larger quantity, it’s more like a cornbread, and with the smaller quantity, it’s softer, more like a baked pudding. One time I flavored it with oregano, cayenne and sharp cheddar, and the next I used mozzarella, basil, rosemary and black olives. We ate it with spinach and chickpeas the first time, and with a saucy, tomatoe-y soup the next.

Here’s Comfort Ye from the Messiah, performed by Paul Elliot and the Acadamy of Ancient music, which is (I think) the version I grew up with. It’s so warm and calm.
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Roasted beet, arugula and goat cheese tart

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Beet, goat cheese, and arugula tart

Our little garden is so wild and tangled at the moment. We didn’t grow much, just herbs and a few peppers and two pretty bull’s blood beets. The herbs have all gone to seed, and curl around each other in a crazed tangled web, which catches Clio as she runs through the garden, to emerge the other end with herbaciously scented paws. David brought the beets home in spring, tiny and pretty, with shiny deep red leaves. I was going to use them then, in a salad, and I did pick a few baby beet leaves. But then I thought I should wait, and save them till they were more fully grown, and the beets were bigger. Of course it’s hard to tell when a beet is ripe, because it’s underground. So I kept waiting and waiting, watching the leaves get longer and thicker, watching the beets themselves swell out of the ground. And still I didn’t want to use them too soon. I wanted to save them for something really special. I do this with all sorts of things! People will give me blank notebooks, and I’ll set them aside until I have something really important to write. I buy vanilla beans, from time to time, and save them to make some remarkable dish, only to lose them in the cupboard. I’m like this with ideas as well – I’ll have a good idea for something to write, or a film to make, and I’ll set it aside till it’s just the right moment to act on it, only to lose it in the giant dusty cluttered room that is my head. I’ll find it in a dream, maybe, tucked away in some dim corner of my mind. But this past week, looking over the decadent mess that my garden had become, it became very clear to me that it was time to pick the beets. And they were lovely! A bit past it maybe, but so pretty inside, with rings of pink and rings of scarlet. I think my new motto will be EAT THE BEET!! Seize the moment! Don’t save it for a special day, because the very act of eating it will make a day special.

I wanted to do something to showcase their prettiness, so I roasted them and set them on top of a tart. I used the red leaves to color the custard. If you have regular beet greens, I think they’ll still work in this, but the custard will be greenish instead of pink – which will also look nice with the beets! I think the combination of roasted beets, arugula and goat cheese is a classic one, and that’s what we have here.

Here’s Pete Rock with What You Waiting For?

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French cake a week – Quatre-quarts

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Quatre-quarts

In which Claire, who doesn’t speak french, bakes her way through a french cookbook from 1962. I seem to have gotten into the habit of talking about a french film as well as a french cake each week! I like that idea, so this week will be no different. The last few weeks I’ve spoken about films by Agnes Varda, and I’ve been thinking since about films by certain female french filmmakers, and about the significance of writing about them in the context of a food blog. For some, like Agnes Varda, it became important to have a new language of film – a language created by women…a new way of looking at women and showing their lives, a new rhythm to the film, a new way of asking questions instead of providing answers. 35 Shots of Rum, by Claire Denis, is a beautiful, mesmerizing film, with engaging actors and a glowing underwater light. And it feels, to me, as though it fits in this tradition of telling a story in a new way, not following accepted rules and expectatations. If you watch the trailer, you won’t get an idea of the pace of the film, because the nature of a trailer is to show big, punchy dramatic scenes; in 35 Shots of Rum, all of the important decisions and conversations happen when we’re not watching. What we see is compelling shots of every day life – buying a rice cooker, cooking rice, eating dinner, going to work, riding home from work. The drama happens on the edges, and outside of our view, but we feel more intimately connected to the characters, and care about the drama more. It’s also a very quiet film, and as I love silent moments and expressive gestures, I’m a big fan of this scene, which has, quite rightly, gotten a lot of attention. It’s a nearly wordless scene, full of grace and power.

This cake! It’s really just a pound cake, in the traditional sense, in which you have equal parts eggs, butter, flour, sugar. You measure the eggs, and then measure everything else to be exactly the same. It’s got no leavening, no salt, no vanilla. It does have a bit of lemon zest. It was very delicious, with a lovely dense but light crumb. We ate it with a compote made of apples, blackberry jam and cassis and some whipped cream. And it was nice the next day with coffee. If you don’t have a kitchen scale, I’ve provided some measurements that should work!

Here’s some music by the Tindersticks, accompanying the opening scenes of 35 Shots of Rum.

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Greens, olives & pecan tart

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Greens olives and pecan tart

Malcolm and Isaac did some free writing in school. Isaac said that he wrote about Clio, our puppy. He wrote that she was mostly housebroken. It’s sweet that he loves her, and he’s “writing what he knows,” which is the oldest advice in the book. He’s writing about something solid and important to him. We asked Malcolm what he wrote about, and I expected something along the same lines. “Tennis ball world!” Yes, a world made entirely of tennis racket strings. We all have tennis balls on our shoes, and we bounce from place to place. And there’s water under the tennis racket strings, and we all have cups that we can dip in the water… I love both answers so much! For some reason it made me think of Thoreau’s quote, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” For Malcolm and Isaac at this moment, imagination is their work. Letting their minds wander, and inventing new worlds and new ways of living in this world is their job. I love to see the earthbound objects that hold their flights of fancy. Everything they see and hear and find and eat, everything is fed into the fire of their imaginations and comes out wonderfully transformed. My mom and dad gave Malcolm my old tennis rackets. Isaac’s new pictures of dragons have Clio’s claws. It’s all connected. I hope as they get older they manage to find a balance between practical and fantastical. I’ve seen their drawings and heard their stories, I know they’ll both make remarkable castles.

This tart has layers. It has lots of greens. It’s very densely greeny. The crust is tall and thin and crispy, to provide some crunch for all the greeniness. We got bags of small fall lettuces from the CSA. They’re a little bitter, and very delicate. Not to everyone’s taste in a salad. But if you sautee them lightly, and then combine them with eggs and cheese, their sharpness provides just the right kick. If you can’t find little fall lettuces, you can use arugula. The second layer also involves greens. It’s chard, not pureed, but chopped, so it retains some of it’s lovely texture. It’s combined with olives and garlic. And the top layer is a sort of pecan frangipane – another custard, that has the sweet nutty taste of pecans whirled right in.

Here’s one of my all time favorites…Clap Your Hands Say Yeah with Mama Won’t You Keep Them Castles in the air Burning?
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Curried butternut & black bean soup

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Curried butternut black bean soup

When we decided to get Clio, David said, “You can’t be insane about this one!” What? Me? Insane about a dog? What could he be talking about? Sigh, it’s true, there’s no denying it. I was crazy about Steenbeck, and not always in a good way. I wouldn’t let anybody else walk her or keep her overnight. I avoided getting a full time job, so I wouldn’t have to leave her alone. No…more than that…I got myself fired from a full time job a few months after we adopted her. Heh heh heh. That’s right! It’s all Steenbeck’s fault! And before I was insane about Steenbeck, I was insane about David – not that I wouldn’t let anybody else walk him, but that I worried about him all the time. And before I met David, I worried about myself a lot – I worried myself sick, I gave myself an ulcer at 23. Well, meeting David helped me to worry less about myself, and getting Steenbeck helped me to worry less about David, and each succeeding boy has helped me to worry less about everyone else. Because, of course, I’m insane about my boys as well. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, lately, since Clio has been in the house. I don’t feel insane about her, but have I left her alone for a minute yet? I have not. I will though, I think I’ll be better this time. I’ve let Malcolm walk her all over town! He’s very good at it! It’s such a joy to see how pleased he is with the responsibility, and how much he likes taking care of her. Because there is pleasure in taking care of someone, as well as anxiety. That’s partly why we get dogs; it’s partly why we have children. It’s a joy to love someone, and nourish them, and protect them, and make them feel safe. And one thing the boys have taught me, is that it’s a joy to give them some freedom, too. To give them responsibility, and to let them do things for themselves. If I had my way, I’d probably still walk the boys to school when they’re in college. But I remember the thrill, when I was little, of running to the mailbox on the next corner. We had to cross a street! We’d go when it was getting dark and spooky! We were fine, and made it home safely. The boys are so happy finding their own new paths like that. Around the block. To the candy store across the street. Small journeys that become huge adventures when they go together, without me. It seems silly, but it makes them stronger and more confident. When Malcolm walks Clio he’s very serious and careful, a far cry from the boy who zips down the towpath waving sticks and startling passing cyclists. Watching him with her, I feel like I have learned some balance. I’ve learned that I’d worry more about not letting him explore the world on his own (sometimes), because he needs that freedom, and giving that to him is a way of nurturing him. He knows that I worry, he knows that I need to know where he is at all times, even when he’s not in my sight. But if I can find the right balance, and let him know that I worry just enough to be glad when he makes it home, but not enough to keep him home altogether, that makes the journey all the more wonderful. After school yesterday, Malcolm was crying-tired. Everything we said or did upset him. He threw himself on the couch. Little Clio jumped up and curled up beside him. She’s taking care of him, too!

Soup seems like such a perfect comfort this time of year. David asked for soups, and soups he will get. He’s got what seems like the start of a winter-long cold, so I was hoping this spicy, flavorful soup would make him feel better. He said it was just what he needed!! I made it with a butternut squash and fresh tomatoes, but if you’re reading this in the middle of pumpkin, I suspect you could make it with a can of pumpkin, a good can of diced tomatoes, and a good can of black beans, and it would be very good as well.

Here’s Elmore James’ It Hurts Me, Too, which is one of my favorite songs ever by anyone.

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French cake a week – Gateau vatel

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Gateau vatel

In which Claire, who doesn’t speak French, bakes her way through the cake section of a French cookbook from 1962. I’m woefully behind with my French-cake-a-week series! Last week I didn’t make a cake at all, because it took us all week to eat David’s birthday cake. This week, I did make a cake, but I’ve been so distracted by little Clio that I haven’t had a chance to tell you about it. So here we go! In honor of little Clio and the Frenchness of the cake, we’ll begin today by discussing one of my favorite movies, Cleo From Five to Seven, by Agnes Varda. Varda was a member of the famous Nouveau Vague, and, in fact, Godard and Anna Karina appear in the movie in a sweet little film-within-a-film. The film tells the story of two hours in the life of Cleo, and is very nearly filmed in real time. It seems very simple…Cleo is a pop star, and the progress of the film follows her day-to-day activities. But she’s waiting for news about her health, and everything she sees and hears, every conversation she has, takes on significance and weight. In the end, she meets a stranger in the park, a soldier from the Algerian war. They connect on a simple human level – they’re kind to each other – and though you’ve only known Cleo for a short while, you can tell that this connection will change her.

All of the recipes in my French cookbook are cryptic and brief, but this was the most perplexing of all. It calls for hazelnuts, and tells you to peel them, but that’s it. The cake has very little flour, so I assumed the hazelnuts should be ground, which is what I did. Otherwise you’d have a sort of hazelnut omelete! As it is, the cake is very nice. It doesn’t have any butter in it, so it’s quite light and simple, but it has a pleasant sponge-cake texture, and the subtle, unmistakable flavor of hazelnuts.

Here’s Sans Toi, from Cleo from 5 to 7.

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Our new Ordinary Friend

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Clio in a blur


If you had talked to me lately, it would have gone like this. Me: “Puppy. Puppy puppy puppy. Puppy, puppy puppy. Puppy! Puppy puppy, puppy. Puppy? Puppy puppy puppy…” Dot dot dot. It all started when I saw a small picture of a puppy on a dog-rescue site. I shouldn’t have been looking. We’re not ready, emotionally or financially for another dog. Holy smoke did I get fixated on this puppy! Two weeks later, she’s romping around our house like she owns it. Apparently 20+ people went to meet her, but nobody was quite right, because she was meant for my family, she was waiting for us.

Here’s Rufus Thomas with Walking the Dog.

I have a million recipes to share, and I’ll be back when I’m done with this small and delightful emotional crisis of welcoming a new puppy to the family.

The Ordinary on NPR!

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I had the pleasure of sharing some of my (what else?) savory tart recipes on the NPR website!

I’m pretty happy about it, and very grateful for the opportunity. Here’s some brief footage of us celebrating, here at The Ordinary.

Almond tarragon sauce

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Almond tarragon sauce

Yesterday we had a rare day off, all together, and it was the only sunny day in recent memory. So we went for a hike in the woods. It felt good to clear the cobwebs and feel the sun on our heads. At one point, a big golden leaf fell behind me – I could sense it as a sort of glowing shadow. It seemed so slow and quick all at once. It almost made me wish I was someone else. Somebody who could wander around in the woods thinking about things and noticing things – like Basho or Thoreau, instead of just some idiot who forgot to pay the credit card bill (god I hate that!). Of course I was somebody wandering around in the woods, thinking things, and watching my little ones glowing with high finally-out-of-the-house spirits, as well as being the non-bill-paying idiot. And on the way home I had the strangest sensation of time travel. The sun was very bright and warm on my face, so I closed my eyes. I had that peculiar feeling you get in your head when you’re about to get a cold, when it seems like all of your senses are heightened and dulled at the same time. I had such a distinct memory of having this exact experience before – the sun, the onset of a cold, the movement of the car. I could have been any age. I had a flood of memories of myself at different times. With my family growing up. With David when we were younger. With my dog when she was a puppy. I may have fallen asleep for a few moments, because I felt my thoughts taking off, into the air. And then Malcolm said, “Mommy…” and showed me a picture he’d drawn, or told me how much baby bears weigh at birth. Human voices woke me, and I drowned…in the present. Where I forget to pay bills, and can’t keep the house clean, and yell too much at my boys, but I feel so grateful to have them all around me – to have this messy glowing life, which I wouldn’t trade for anything.

This almond tarragon sauce is another version of a tarator sauce. I made it to go with some very pretty dragon’s tongue beans, which I lightly steamed. But I ate it for days afterwards – with every kind of vegetable, with empanadas, on salads. It’s a nice creamy, cream free dressing. Very good with roasted beets!

Here’s Sunshine and Clouds and Everything Proud from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

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