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Zucchini-corn-basil soup and herbed semolina biscuits

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Zucchini corn soup

When last we’d left our intrepid explorers, Claire was yelling at Malcolm and feeling bad about it. CUT TO…several days later. Claire’s walking home from work. She’s tired, and if we’re being honest, she’s a little cranky and discouraged. Suddenly, through the shifting crowd of tourists, she sees two beaming faces bobbing towards her. It’s her boys! Isaac stops at the corner, and leans cooly against a lamppost; Malcolm charges across the street and nearly knocks her over with the force of his hug. Back in their paint-peeling, disordered, yet charming home, Claire makes a quick and delicious dinner. Then she and Malcolm set out to get a cup of coffee and a quart of milk for their breakfast. The air is cool and sweet, it’s a peach of an evening – a perfectly ripe, sweet, peach of an evening. So they take the long way, they walk down to the tow path. Malcolm says he wants to swim, but the air is like water, and it feels good when he flaps his arms like wings. Claire loves him so much she could cry, at that moment, but they walk along the towpath, both flapping their arms slowly like big strange birds. They meet friends who had a beagle that died the same week Steenbeck did. They have a new beagle puppy, who’s boundingly happy. They all seem happy, and they remark that Malcolm is almost as tall as Claire. “I know!” she replies, “and he’s only ten!” When Malcolm and Claire reach the main street, the shop is closed, so they keep walking. Somehow, Malcolm catches Claire’s hand…and holds it! Claire feels as though she’s caught a rare, sweet toad, that might jump through her fingers. This won’t happen much longer, she knows that. On the way home, they pass a boy they knew when he was Malcolm’s age. Now he’s a teenager, a big, lanky, laughing teenager, walking with his friends. Malcolm eyes them appraisingly. In the house, David and Isaac are playing a game with bug-inscribed tiles. Claire passes through the house to the backyard, because the air is so delicious. She listens to the katydids and the whirring evening insects. David joins her, and they hear a screech owl. He calls to it, and it calls back. They watch the day change into night, they feel the summer change into autumn. The boys come out, and Isaac curls up in Claire’s lap, his smooth cool/warm skin glowing milkily in the dusky light. They don’t want to go inside, they want to listen for the owl. It’s hard to make them go to bed, at this moment. CUT TO…

Herbed semolina biscuits

But wait a moment, you’re asking yourself! What was the quick and delicious dinner that Claire made? Well, I’ll tell you. It was a soup with zucchini, corn, scallions and lots of basil. Malcolm said it tasted like winter, and David said it tasted like something we’d eat in winter to remind ourselves of what summer tasted like. And we had biscuits made partly with semolina flour, with fresh sage, thyme, and oregano, and freshly ground black pepper in them. Isaac loved the biscuits. Everyone else liked everything together.

Here’s A Tribe Called Quest with Excursions. “I said, ‘Daddy, don’t you know that things go in cycles.'”
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Cuban beans & rice burgers, and cuban sofrito

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Sofrito – cuban style

Aww, man, I’m having trouble writing this post! I was going to keep it simple and brief, and that is still my intention! But I can’t even get started. I keep wandering around, watching Malcolm dismantle the kitchen shelves. (In theory, I’m reorganizing the shelves under the counter to make a home for my new food processor. In practice, Malcolm is spreading pots, pans and dishes all over the kitchen floor). This post feels significant, somehow. It feels like an ur-Ordinary post. It covers Ordinary themes and motifs. I feel like I’ve been assigned an essay on how this meal exemplifies various qualities we go on and on about here at The Ordinary. What are those themes? I hear you asking. And will they be on the test? Yes! It’s all on the test, all of it! First of all, we have sofrito. Sofrito was one of the first things I wrote about, nearly a year ago, in its Spanish form, which is tomatoes cooked very slowly till they’re an intensely delicious paste. I first discovered sofrito, in any form, because of Mongo Santamaria’s brilliant song of the same name, which is one of the first songs I posted. Sofrito fascinated me, at the time, because it’s one of those foods (here comes a theme, take this down in your notes!) that appears all over the world in different forms. It travelled with imperialism and colonialism – people brought the recipe with them from home, and then it changed over time, to become new and distinct and definitive of their new home. Second of all, we ate cuban beans and rice two nights in a row, once as, well, beans and rice, and once as beans-and-rice burgers. Repurposing leftovers is a thing we do. We do it all the time! We even invented a scheme to define it! What were the other themes? I can’t remember! because Malcolm is banging pots and pans around my head and singing “let’s go to the creek creek creek.”

Okay, back to simple and brief. We got some green and purple peppers from the CSA. I don’t love green peppers. I’m sorry, but there it is. I like red peppers! Especially roasted. I was searching my mind for a way to “use up” the green peppers, and I thought of the radio dj describing sofrito, after playing the mongo santamaria song, a year ago. It sounded good. I read some descriptions of it, and I decided to have a go at making it. Obviously it’s not officially cuban, it’s my odd version of cuban sofrito. But it’s very tasty! A relish, almost. And then I just went crazy with a cuban-themed meal. I decided to make black beans and rice, with a cuban sort of flavoring, and I made crispy smoky tofu to take the place of ham. So that’s what we did. The boys loved the tofu, as I’ve described. And David and I loved the burgers we made the next day with the leftover beans and rice. Amazingly flavorful, and a with nice texture. I didn’t try grilling them because of a big dinner-time thunderstorm, but they worked well pan-fried in olive oil.

Cuban beans & rice burger

Here’s Mongo Santamaria’s Sofrito. I know I’ve posted it before, but, remarkably, it’s been nearly a year!

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Crispy tofu in smoky-sweet sauce

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Tofu with sweet smoky sauce

Malcolm is on the roof. I’m so worn to a nub that I’m not telling him to get down. Not right away. We’ve had a spate of bad ideas, defiance and sassiness, here at The Ordinary, that has us retreating to the secret underground swimming pool, where we can swim through the cool, blue, shifting waves of quiet. Sigh, of course there are no such pools. There’s just me losing my temper and screaming like a crazy person, and regretting it instantly, but yelling again a minute later. (Is that the definition of insanity?) Malcolm’s bored, and I don’t believe in boredom. I don’t believe that the smartest, most creative, most interested ten-year-old boy I know, who also happens to have more toys on the floor at this moment than I had my entire childhood, could possibly be bored. Didn’t I raise him to have inner resources? Didn’t I pioneer the parenting method of making no plans for him, and not signing him up for any activities, and submitting him to long periods of nothing-to-do, just to prepare him for these occasions? It’s because he has too many toys isn’t it? I should have given him a balloon and a cardboard box, and left it at that! Because now, he doesn’t want to draw, or write, or play with his brother, or with his toys, he wants to walk in circles hitting things with a stick. (Why? Why?) He wants to sit on the roof. And I’ll leave him there, just for a little while.

We’ve all been a little tense and cranky lately, with anxieties that are distracting us from that bittersweet end-of-summer piquancy. We needed to do something as a family, just the four of us, something calm, and pleasant, and free, because we don’t have any money. Malcolm and David hit on the perfect thing, yesterday. We sat by a fire in the backyard. We talked about summer passing, we watched the perfect August evening deepen all around us. We watched the balance of light shift, so that at first the sky was brighter than the clouds, and then it deepened and the the clouds glowed brightly in the dusk. Isaac watched the glowing embers and the clouds of smoke, and I remembered what he’d said earlier in the summer, that it’s like the fire’s telling us a story of what it looks like in the clouds.

Our fires smell ridiculously good, because David saves leftover pieces of cherry and walnut. I love the sweet, smoky smell, and I love smoky flavors. It’s sort of a quest, as a vegetarian, to come up with that perfect smoky briny taste. I think this sauce is deeeeelicious! And it’s extremely easy to make – smoked paprika, sugar, tamari, some smoked sea salt. And it’s perfect with crispy tofu! This is my first tofu recipe on The Ordinary! I’ve been posting a vegetarian recipe a day (almost) for nearly a year, and this is the first time tofu has made an appearance! Must be some kind of record! I thought of this preparation because I made a cuban-inspired meal of black beans and rice, and this was my equivalent of crispy pork to go with it. (I’ll tell you about the rest soon, I hope.) I only like tofu if it’s fried till very dry and crispy, but it doesn’t have much flavor. Coated in this yummy sauce it was perfect – not too dry, and really tasty. I had to fight the boys off from eating the last few pieces so that I could take a photo!! I made the sauce again the next day, to go with some oven roasted french fries. I’ll be making this a lot!

Smoky sweet sauce

Here’s What a fire, by The Ethiopians
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French cake a week #3 – Gateau savarin

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Gateau Savarin

In which Claire, who doesn’t speak french, bakes her way through the cake section of a french cookbook from 1962.
Oh, how we laughed as we made this cake! We gathered in my immaculate kitchen, my perfectly obedient boys danced around me, singing songs about raspberries and strawberries in fluent french. Every stage of the process went perfectly, and we smiled as we popped the cake in the oven! We certainly didn’t curse the fact that we know french much less well than we thought. We certainly didn’t swear at google translate for making absurd suggestions as to the translations of french words. We didn’t frown anxiously as Malcolm said, “are you sure that’s the right amount?” We didn’t get called away from the dough at a critical moment, and leave it in Malcolm’s capable but unpredictable hands. We didn’t hear him say, “Ooh, t’s like play-doh!” as we left the room, and we didn’t think about the fact that when Malcolm plays with play-doh I generally have to peel it off the ceiling. We didn’t let it rest for an hour and then find a lump of stodgy dough with bits of dried yeast clinging to it. We didn’t add lots of other ingredients that didn’t mix in, only to find ourselves up to our elbows in a a sludgy mess. Certainly not!

I let Malcolm choose which cake to make by opening to a page in the book, and seeing which name he liked best. He chose the gateau savarin. It’s a yeasted cake with very little sugar, and then you pour a sugary, alcohol-laden syrup over, which soaks in and sweetens and flavors the whole thing. Kind of like a rum baba, really! If I was being perfectly honest, I would tell you that I had some trouble with this one. (Spoiler alert, it turned out very good in the end, and it was worth all the trouble, and I’m glad I didn’t give up half way through and throw the dough against the wall and stomp out of the house in a terrible temper, which, of course, I wasn’t tempted to do at all.) I have diagnosed my problem, and I think it’s because the yeast I used is the little packets of yeast granules, and I have no earthly idea what kind of yeast the recipe called for, but it certainly wasn’t the kind I used! My food processor saved the day, and with its noble help, I was able to pull everything together in the end. I’m going to give you instructions to make this the way I would make it with packets of yeast. It should all go smoothly from there. It’s supposed to be made in a ring-shaped mold, but I don’t have one, so I used a regular cake pan. Apparently you can use rum, kirsch or curacoa. I’d like to have used kirsch, but I don’t have any, so I used a bit of rum, a bit of cassis.

Here’s Django Reinhardt with Nuages
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Beet carpaccio with warm goat cheese, pecans and sage

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Remember the Chekhov play The Three Sisters, in which one of the sisters longs to go to Moscow? It’s a theme! Well, here at The Ordinary, for the past few days, our Moscow has been the secret path that leads to the secret path on the other other side of the towpath. If you think I’ve mentioned it before, it’s because I have, and that’s because IT’S ALL I’VE HEARD ABOUT FOR DAYS NOW!! When will we go? Why can’t we go? Why shouldn’t we go just because a storm is raging around our house? On the very first day of summer vacation, way back in the glowing, hopeful, anticipatory month of June, Malcolm and I happened upon a small winding path that branched away from the towpath. He was ecstatic! We ran through it, leaping fallen logs, stooping under trees, racing through light and shadow. He’s wanted to return ever since, but with one thing and another, we’ve never made it back. Lately his yearning has reached a fever pitch, so today we braved spiders, ticks, stinging nettles, poison ivy, mosquitos and impending thunderstorms, and set out on our journey. (Who is an anxious mom? Who is?) It’s quite a long journey, as the Isaac walks, but it was worth it to see how happy the boys were. After a night of rain the ground was muddy, the leaves sodden and fragrant, the creeks fast-flowing. In June all the green things were small and pale and bright, but today they’re lush and dark and overtaking all the paths.

Secret path

Tree climbing

The way home

Malcolm looked for the spider sitting on a milk jug, that he’d seen in June, and was surprised to find the jug buried in weeds, and the spider gone. Isaac had heard of this milk jug! He was excited to see it. Isaac jumped off of a huge log, and said, “Mom, did I hop like a toad?” Yes, you did. “I toad-hopped it!” They climbed a tree in the strange wet palely glowing light, they hid in a hollow of vines and branches. Isaac asked about each thing Malcolm had described to him – the vine to swing on, the stump to jump off of, the dead tree to crawl under, and Isaac could never be disappointed by any thing that Malcolm showed him. The late-summer smell of wet steaming earth was all around us, and I can’t smell that lately without craving beets. I know that’s odd, but there it is!

Glowing beet

Funnily enough, we’d eaten this beet carpaccio the night before, and I’d remarked that prepared this way, beets didn’t taste like dirt. Huh? Asked Isaac (he’s a small boy, dirt is his medium). I’d replied that beets grow in dirt, so they taste like dirt, but in a pleasant way. In this carpaccio, however, they were juicy and sweet. This couldn’t be easier to make, and it’s very delicious. The boys loved it!! I love goat cheese with beets – sweet and juicy meets a bit of creamy tartness. The pecans added crunch, and the sage added depth.

beet carpaccio

And here’s Modest Mouse with So Much Beauty in Dirt.
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Ginger cookies with white chocolate-cassis glaze

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Ginger cookies with white chocolate glaze

It has come to our attention, Here at The Ordinary, that there are, literally, a gazillion food blogs in the world. This is a precise number, tabulated in our statistics division. A gazillion. When the field is saturated to such a degree, questions of sustainability arise. In order to “stand out from the crowd,” we have decided to rebrand ourselves. A careful review of the trending of recent posts out of The Ordinary, suggests that “the time is now” for a blog devoted entirely to the analysis of bird gestures. Henceforth, we will conduct a definitive exploration of birdy gestures, from both the scientifical and the poetical angles. If any bird in the tri-state area (any tri-state area!) should snap a beak, pump a tail, flap a wing or move so much as a feather…we will be there. We will head out into the field to become leaders of the field. We will provide in-depth-studies, detailed technical drawings, DIY guides, celebrity interviews, step-by-step instructions, virtual 3-D models, and printable paper cutouts.

I’m joking, of course! Rest assured we will still be firing a recipe at you (almost) each and every day! In the meantime, though, I have been thinking about birds a lot lately. Some time ago, I compiled a list in my head of my favorite bird related movies, birds and movies seem so perfect together – a movie is about capturing light and shadow and movement, and a bird’s whole life seems to be beautifully made of those things! I’d like to share my top four with you now. So, here we go, yo…

Le Poulet, Claude Berri’s ridiculously beautiful short film about a boy and his rooster. It’s joyful and simple, but it’s also incredibly thoughtful – it makes you think! It makes you think, specifically, about how it is harder to be cruel to somebody that you know, that has a name, than to a generic, unknown being. Once somebody (be they chicken or otherwise) goes from being a random, unnamed individual to being a friend – you have to treat them differently.

In Le Samourai, Alain Delon’s pet bird is, oddly, the most endearing character in the film. The title character is so cold and mechanical, he’d be a lesser man without this bird, who seems to represent his soul. I honestly felt more anxious about the bird than any of the other characters.

Ghost Dog. Inspired by Le Samurai. I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll mention it again. Ghost Dog’s pigeons…his home is in their coup, he’s closer to them than any human, and they’re his only contact with people. Beautiful, fragile, and accompanied by some of the best movie music ever.

Kes is surely one of the most beautiful saddest movies ever. The bird is his refuge and his friend. I can’t even watch the trailer without getting weepy!

What are some of your favorite bird-related film scenes?

And your recipe for the day is ginger cookies with a white chocolate cassis glaze. I had a small amount of white chocolate chips left in the cupboard, and I wanted to bake something with them. I thought to myself…white chocolate is very sweet, let’s combine it with something with some bite – ginger! These aren’t like ginger snaps, though…they’re pale and simple, and quite elegant. I decided to mix a bit of cassis in with the white chocolate, because I thought its tartness would be pleasant with the spiciness and the sweetness. You could leave it out, or add the liquor of your choice. Rum goes nicely with ginger! So does orange! The flavors are very nice together. Strangely lemony, despite the fact that there’s no lemon!

Here’s Patti Smith’s remarkably ecstatic birdland
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Crispy cornmeal crusted eggplant and chickpea ratatouille

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I love gestures. I love that we can convey meaning without words. I like carefully planned and highly stylized gestures – the kind you see in old movies or certain ceremonies. I like gestures unwittingly made – graceful movements of the hand or head that say things we don’t even know we’re saying. I try to pay attention to gestures, but it’s difficult because there’s so much noise. It’s the words that you notice. And sometimes, of course, we misread people’s movements. The other day I took Malcolm down to the river to swim. A couple floated by, each in their own giant tube. They were floating next to each other, and I watched curiously as they touched each others hands, and then their own lips. Touched hands and then lips, touched hands and then lips. They seemed very happy, and it struck me as odd and beautiful. And then it dawned on me that they were sharing a smoke of some sort of other. Heh heh. We were at the shore the other day, and I spied a mockingbird. Mockingbirds are beautiful, clever-looking, sweet, flashy birds, with white-patched-wings and long tails. This particular mockingbird landed not far from us. He raised his wings, half open, in a precise and snappy fashion, and then he opened them further and held them in a sort of arc away from his body, then opened them fully and held them stretched, then closed them. Four jerky, careful steps. Then he turned and faced a new direction and did the same thing. He flew from place to place – fence post to ground to rooftop – performing the same series of gestures, turning in a different direction each time. It was one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen. I followed him for a while, watching him show off his lovely white wing patches. When I tried to film him, he flew to a wire, pumped his tail a few times and left. I’m so enamored of this mockingbird and his beautiful gestures! I read a bit about mockingbirds. Did you know that they’re very social, and they’ll play with birds of a different species? They play with their young. And, apparently, this series of gestures is a display to attract a mate. I didn’t see any other mockingbirds around, though. Maybe he was practicing. Maybe, like me, he just likes the feeling of stretching out his wings. Maybe he’s sharing his beauty with the world. I’ve been feeling a little discouraged lately. I feel overwhelmed, sometimes, when I think about everyone trying so hard, working so hard to say something to people, or show people something they think is worth seeing. But everybody’s talking so loudly we can’t hear what anyone is saying. Or maybe we hear but we miss the gestures. When I think about all of the words in all of the books in all of the world, and all of the work and passion that went into recording them, I become completely exhausted. One could almost ask oneself, “why bother?” But now I think, when I feel that way, I’ll think about the mockingbird, and his perfect dance for no bird audience.

And, thus, I’ll keep on telling you about these crazy recipes. This one was gooooood. Everybody liked it, even little Isaac, our toughest food critic here at The Ordinary. It’s very simple and summery. It’s not ratatouille exactly, I know that. But it’s a sort of take-off on ratatouille, in that it involves eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, and herbs like thyme and rosemary. I’ve kept the eggplant separate, and coated it with a crispy cornmeal coating, and roasted it till it’s like a crispy chip. And I’ve added chickpeas and olives, which are really lovely together, really lovely with eggplant and olives. Isaac used the eggplant slices like little taco shells, picking out a few chickpeas and olives to stuff inside. David made little stacks of eggplant and ratatouille. I put the eggplant chips on top, like a sort of crispy topping. However you do it, you can’t go wrong!

Chickpea ratatouille

Here’s a blurry sort of video of a mockingbird doing his displaying dance.

And here’s Aretha Franklin singing Mockingbird. Happy song!

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Spicy smoky zucchini & tomato tart

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Smoky zucchini and tomato tart

Here at The Ordinary, we have acquired our first real food processor. It didn’t come with instructions, but we are performing exhaustive experiments in our extensive underground kitchen-laboratories to determine its function and capabilities. We have puréed paper, grated legos, and julienned our entire DVD collection. We would like to inform you that from this point onward, every thing we cook will be diced and sliced to within an inch of its life. You have been warned!! I’m joking, of course, but I’m very excited to finally have a food processor. My friend Jenny gave me her old cuisinart. I brought it into the house and Malcolm said, “Oooooh, what’s that?” And then he and I gathered around our new toy, and tried to figure out how to use it. Did you know that every little piece has to be locked into place, in a certain order, or it won’t work? I didn’t! I kept loading it up, pressing the button, expecting a huge loud noise, and then….nothing! We finally got it all figured out, though. And before I knew it Malcolm had grated two large zucchinis. And then I had to try the knife-type blade, so we chopped up some basil, cilantro, tomatoes, almonds and hazelnuts. We made a chunky sort of sauce. Very smoky and flavorful, because I’d put every smoky thing I could find in … black cardamom, nigella seeds, smoked paprika. We ate it with saltine crackers, and it was very tasty! The next day, I decided to further test the abilities of my processor, and I pureed this chunky sauce till quite smooth, then added some eggs and milk, put it all in a biscuit-like crust with smoked paprika in it, added some fresh cherry tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, and made a tart! What with the nuts and all, it’s almost like a savory frangipane. We ate it with potatoes roasted with tomatoes and shallots, which were sort of saucy, and everything went well together. You could make this with a blender and a regular grater, if you don’t happen to have a food processor.

Smoky zucchini/tomato/nut sauce

Here’s Sly and the Family Stone with Thank You Fallettin Me Be Mice Elf Again to dance to while you puree, grate and julienne. Thanks for the food processor, Jenny!!
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Walnut crackers with smoky tomato/pesto white bean dip

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White bean dip with tomato and pesto

We were away for a few days, and now we’re back. I love coming home! I’m such a homebody it’s just silly, I always have been. (It’s, like, totally cause I’m a cancer, man, so it’s in the stars.) In all honesty, I love being home. I love the idea of being a wild rambler. I love songs about rootless adventurers. I like going away, but I prefer coming back. As we get within an hour of our house, and the trees and the sky start to take on their exact perfect familiar size and spaciousness, I can feel my body relax and my spirits lift. Silly, I know, but there it is! I love my town: tiny, eccentric, imperfect, but so beautiful and full of good will. I was speaking to a friend the other day, who lives a block away, and I nearly laughed when he said he doesn’t want to leave the area. He really never even wants to leave our town. He just has no desire to venture beyond the ‘ville. Why did I nearly laugh? Because I know exactly what he means!! I love our house. It’s old, it’s falling apart, it smells like wet plaster, and that same plaster is crumbling off the walls, we have a large non-paying-tenant population of spiders (I like our spiders!). We have two little boys, so no matter how much I clean, the house is sticky and messy, and we have angry pee-spirits that live behind the toilets. But I love it all, right down to the little smudgy hand prints running along the walls at boy-height. I like walking home from my stupid job. I like having no plans, spending time with David and the boys, inventing small adventures. And, of course, I like cooking. For Robert Frost, home was the place they had to take you in. For Tom Waits, home is wherever he lays his head. For me, home is where I make meals for my family. If you can bring family and friends together around a table, and share a meal, and talk about all the things that have been racing around in your heads during the day. Well, then you’re home!

My wise friend Benjamin Franklin once said, “A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.” And I’d add that a house is not a home if it’s not ringing with good music, so here’s a short playlist of songs about home. Do you know of any good songs about home that I should add?

Before we left for a few days, I made a meal with tomato sauce and pesto sauce. The night before we left, I was going to make a galette with a walnut crust. At the last moment I surprised everybody (keep em guessing!) by making walnut Isaac crackers, and making a dip to go with it which involved puréeing white beans with each kind of sauce, and then swirling them together. (I still plan to make a galette with a walnut crust, so act surprised!) The dip couldn’t be any easier, and it’s a good thing to make if you’ve been baking different kinds of pizzas, and have some leftover sauce. The crackers go together in a breeze, as well.
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Tacos with chickpeas, black beans and pumpkinseed basil sauce

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Chickpea & black bean tacos with pumpkinseed basil sauce

I’ve moaned many times about the death of American Independent cinema. The way I see it, the thrilling golden era of the seventies and eighties (Jarmusch! Lee! Sayles! Hartley!) gave way to an era of derivative, overblown hollywood-wannabes. American independent cinema is dead – killed off by two clever young men who made flashy little hollywood movies, and by the generation of filmmakers following them, whose knowledge of film history went back no farther than these clever young men. Independent filmmaking became an industry – the films were products, the filmmakers wanted to be stars. But the films were like fast food, at once too much and too little – insubstantial and unsatisfying. Rather than carry on with this cantankerous whinge, I’ll tell you that lately I’ve been very excited to discover that American independent cinema is alive and well – it’s just not living in North America.

We’ve watched a number of films lately from Latin America that give me so much hope – engagingly human, unforgettable, and inspiring. Despite being low-budget, and not containing celebrities, each of them achieve some level of perfection of production that I find thrilling. Acting, camera work, music, writing – all carefully combine to make films that glow on the screen, and in your memory. All of the films share a quality that made them especially dear to me. They are ordinary – stories of ordinary people, of their day-to-day-life, of the food they make, their mundane jobs, but they are so beautifully presented that they become extraordinary and compelling. Like a well-made meal, the films are simple, but the ingredients are exactly as they should be, and they’re sustaining and memorable.

I’ll tell you about a few! Duck Season has become one of my favorite films of all time. It’s the first feature by director Fernando Eimbcke, and it tells the story of two boys in a high-rise in Mexico. It’s Sunday, they’re stuck in their apartment, and the power is out. It’s a really ecstatic film, and we watched it twice in two days!

From Brazil, we have The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, by director Cao Hamburger, about a boy who goes to stay with his grandfather and develops an unlikely friendship with his neighbor. A perfect example of how attention to every detail of production can make a simple film resonate.

I’ve already mentioned Adrian Biniez’ Gigante, from Uraguay, because it inspired me to make pizza with faina! A lovely movie with an underwater glow about the lighting and the pacing. And Whisky, a disarmingly dry, touching, and funny movie from Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll. The same directors made 25 Watts, a day in the life of three friends that’s low key, funny, thoughtful, and that you’ll think about long after you’ve seen it.

One more! From Argentina, the tale of a housekeeper and her over-bearing employer – Live in Maid, by Jorge Gaggero. It’s a quiet film, but the small telling details, which examine the routines that shape these two women’s lives, make them alive for us. The film is a very human and immediate way of describing what’s happening in the larger world of politics and economics.

All of these films are like little gems – it’s so wonderful to discover them. They allow you to travel to another part of the world, and give you such an intimate glimpse of the people that live there, and do so with such generosity, humor, and subtlety, that you feel fortunate to spend some with them.

Your song for today is from Lake Tahoe, another remarkable movie by Fernando Eimbcke. The song is La Lloroncita by Los Parientes de Playa Vicente, and it’s gorgeous.

And your meal for today is tacos made with black beans, chickpeas, yellow squash and corn. Everything is combined in a sauce of pumpkinseeds and fresh basil – a sort of pumpkinseed pesto, but lighter. We ate it with warm tortillas, chopped tomatoes, avocado, romaine, and grated sharp cheddar. I have to admit that it’s a little funny-looking (David laughed when I brought it to the table) but look beyond that! Because it tastes very good! Sweet, savory, a little smoky, a little spicy.

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