Coleslaw with daikon & radishes and creamy dill-almond dressing

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Daikon, radish, dill colesalw

We got some daikon from our CSA. Of course, daikon always reminds me of the giant radish spirit in Spirited Away. The night we ate this coleslaw, I lay awake for a while thinking about the film, which I love, obviously – as I’ve said a million times, I love the idea of spirits all around us – spirits of polluted rivers and giant radishes, spirits of animals, food and people. It all begins with a meal. On their journey to a new home, Chihiro and her family take a wrong turn. They stop for a meal in a strange place, and her parents eat with ridiculous greed. They eat like pigs, and as a result, they’re turned into pigs. So Chihiro is stuck on an island of spirits. She’s remarkably brave, and she faces all sorts of strangeness with pluck and sass. She takes a job in the boiler room of a bathhouse, and works her way up to the baths themselves, where she meets strange spirits of every shape. Throughout the film, food has the power to comfort or transform. It becomes a part of each creature’s identity and it forms part of the judgement leveled upon them. Chihiro’s friend Haku offers her a small berry to eat when she’s becoming transparent, and this makes her more solid. When the spirits complain of her foreign smell, Haku says that once she’s eaten their food for a few days she’ll smell like everyone else. And he offers her rice to eat to build her strength after an ordeal. At the other extreme, we have a polluted river spirit, made ill by all of the junk and dirt he’s swallowed, and No Face, who eats everyone in his path and becomes so huge that only Chihiro’s magic emetic dumpling will save him. What and how people and spirits eat becomes as much a part of who they are as their name, and when they forget their name they forget their history. It’s such a strange and wonderful film!

I like daikon raw, so I decided to combine it with cabbages and radishes, also from the farm, and to toss them all in a creamy (vegan) almond dill and caper dressing. I liked it a lot! It’s a nice combination of sweet, sharp and savory. Isaac liked it, too.

Here’s Bob Dylan with Spirit on the Water

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Mushroom, cabbage, black beans and tamari

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Cabbage, mushrooms, and black beans

Cabbages always make me think of the Vittorio DeSica film Miracolo a Milano. De Sica is better known for his very realistic films – Bicycle Thief and Sciuscia, which show ordinary people in day-to-day situations which become beautiful and incredibly important when De Sica films them. Miracolo a Milano is literally a departure. It’s about ordinary people, about poor people, but it’s a fable, it’s unabashedly magical and fantastical. Toto is found in a cabbage patch, he’s taken in by a kind older woman, when she dies he’s sent to an orphanage, but she’s given him a magical dove. He winds up in a shantytown, and when oil is discovered in the shantytown, greedy capitalists try to send the squatters to prison. I don’t want to spoil the ending, so I won’t tell you how they rise above all that! The film is full of kindness, grace, and sweetness, but it’s also sharp, clever, funny and bitingly satirical.

Here’s one of my favorite scenes…

We’ve gotten a lot of cabbage from our CSA lately. Here’s one of the ways I prepared it. It’s loosely modeled on MooShoo vegetable, but made a bit more substantial by the addition of black beans. Very simple and quick to make, very tasty. We ate it with rice and tortillas.

Here’s The Jackson Sisters with I Believe in Miracles.
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Greens, white bean and potato soup & more Eliza

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Greens and white bean soup

If you cast your memory back to last weekend, you may recall that we’re going to share a story in these virtual pages in serial format. It’s time for our second installment of Eliza and Hyssop! Someday it will have a real title! This is a good season for soups – we’re having grey and chilly weather. And soups go nicely with Eliza’s story, because she finds comfort in a warm bowl of soup after wandering, cold and weary, through dark streets. Just as all self-respecting characters in stories do! We get a nice spicy fall mix of greens from our CSA. It’s a combination of little sharp lettuces and leaves…too bitter for a salad, but lovely in soups and savory tarts. I combined them with white beans and red potatoes for a simple, satisfying and delicious meal. If you don’t get bags of spicy lettuces from some random source, feel free to use any greens you have…spinach, arugula, kale…anything would work here! I was really taken with this soup – I had two big bowls, and we ate them with sharp cheddar melted on whole wheat toast, for the most perfect warm and comforting meal.

Here’s Howlin Wolf with Built for Comfort. I feel as though the connection between my songs and my rambling preambles (my prerambles?) is becoming more abstruse!

More Eliza after the JUMP!

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Beet green, black bean, pumpkin and cashew curry with roasted beet kofta

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Roasted beet kofta

While we walked to school the other day, Isaac told me that recess isn’t fun anymore because two of his friends won’t play with him. He said “sometimes I feel like I don’t exist at all.” It gave me such a pang! I used to feel that way all the time. I used to feel insubstantial and empty. But I was a teenager! He’s so young to feel that way. I suppose sometimes you’re so close to yourself – literally inside, looking out – that you can’t see yourself at all. I used to get all confused about that. I felt sort of dull and colorless, and it seemed as though everybody around me was brighter and louder – more visible, more easy to hear and understand. I still feel that way sometimes, when I’m with people who are charming and vocal, but I’m not so worried about it any more; I no longer struggle to make myself heard, because so often it just doesn’t matter. I used to try to make myself disappear, in some ways. I wanted to be small and weightless and invisible. I feel so much more solid, now. I feel as if gravity has much more pull on me, these days. But I’m fine with that, it’s a way to feel rooted and real. It’s a way to make shyness and self-consciousness immaterial. The funny thing is that Isaac is so vivid, so vibrant – he’s not shy at all, he’s the sort of boy you can imagine walking into a room and throwing up his arms and yelling, HERE I AM!! He’s like sunshine, but he’s got a seriousness and depth to him as well. We sometimes laugh that if he had a band it could be called “Little Mr. Sunshine and his Dark Thoughts.” I just hope he knows how brightly he glows!

Of course beets grow upward but they’re rooted. They’re beautiful and bright, and covered in dirt beneath the earth. We just got a big lovely bunch from the farm, with the greens attached, and I wanted to use every part. So I made a curry with the leaves, in a sauce of cashew and pumpkin purée. And I grated and roasted the beets themselves, and mixed them with chickpea flour and spices to make kofta. If you don’t have beet greens, this curry would work equally well with spinach, chard, kale, or any other kind of green you have!

Beet green curry

Here’s Linton Kwesi Johnson with Age of Reality, which, upon reflection, doesn’t have much to do with anything, but I like it.
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Pumpkin blondies with chocolate-covered ginger

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Pumpkin blondies

I’ve mentioned in the past that my fun-o-meter might be broken. I’ve told you how things that I’m supposed to find fun make me anxious, and things that many people think of as chores are my favorite things to do…every….day. On my ideal day we’d go for a hike, write or draw a bit, listen to music, make a nice dinner, go for a walk around town, watch a good movie. Nothing fantastic, but we’d do it together, and we’d all be in good moods and get along with each other (this means you, boys!) Nothing makes me feel like getting out the old fun-o-meter adjuster like a holiday. I like holidays, but I don’t anticipate them as eagerly as I once did. You can never quite match that childish zeal, and sometimes it makes me feel a little sad to have lost it. Isaac is a living manifestation of Halloween excitement. He asks me every morning how many days are left. He plans his costume, wears the bits we’ve already made, changes his mind about what he wants to be. He draws zombies and skeletons and ghosts. He’s sad that we don’t have more Halloween decorations, and he spent an afternoon cutting them out of paper and hanging them in the windows. And he wants to carve pumpkins, lots of pumpkins. I’ve been thinking about pumpkins, this morning, and I think they might be my golden ticket back to Halloween glee. I can’t really get excited about trick-or-treating. I love making the boys’ costumes but I’m anxious that I won’t get them done on time, or they won’t look right. But pumpkins…lately I’ve looked on pumpkin carving as a messy and slimy task. But today I realized the error of my ways. I love pumpkins! I love everything about them. The way they taste, the way they smell, their color, the word, “pumpkin.” I love how mythological they seem – they can replace a horseman’s head or they can become an enchanted carriage. And I love the idea of souls and spirits…this time of year is so rich in the remembrance of souls, so joyful and awe-ful. A jack-o-lantern is a pumpkin spirit, smiling out at you with fiendish glee. It’s the ingis fatuus that leads you across dry fields of middle-aged disillusionment to the vibrant, glowing, slightly frightening, sweet, morally complicated, highly anticipated night that is Halloween. I can’t wait to carve one!

I thought these pumpkin blondies turned out very tasty! They’re a little softer than a normal blondie, cause of the pumpkin, but they make up for this (not unpleasant) attribute with taste. I spiced them with cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice, and I added chocolate-covered-ginger, which contributed a lovely chewy little bite. I added a handful of chocolate chips, too, because you can never have enough chocolate!

Here’s Mikey Dread’s spooky Pre-Dawn Dub.
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Tomato and artichoke tart with walnut custard

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Tomato artichoke walnut tart

Here at The Ordinary’s institute of culinary studies, we have an entire division devoted to the study of nut custards. It is completely staffed by squirrels, who are frantically busy this time of year. They are, in fact, so occupied with eating and burying the test subjects that they have not had an opportunity to report their findings. So many questions still remain. Viz: If a sweet baked almond custard is called frangipane, does that same word apply to a savory almond custard? How about a sweet hazelnut, pecan or walnut custard? How about a savory pecan, hazelnut or walnut custard? I know that I’ve discussed these issues before, and I’m in danger of becoming some sort of nut-custard fanatic, wandering the streets of town mumbling about nuts, but I need answers, dammit! It’s keeping me up nights! Not really, but I would like a better way to describe it. I’ve been experimenting lately with various types of nut custard in savory tart applications. For instance, we had a greens and pecan tart the other week. Some time back we had small chard and almond tarts. This being autumn, I decided to try one with walnuts. I made a sort of smoky, spicy, sharp sofrito of tomatoes and artichokes, and I added lemon zest to the walnut custard, to add a little brightness to the sweet earthiness of the nuts. A walnut custard is nice, soft underneath, slightly crispy on top. We need to come up with a new name for these new nut concoctions! We’ve created a committee, and we’d like report their findings, and to tell you the general consensus about the deliciousness of this tart, but the squirrels have taken all of their pieces to the tops of the trees, and won’t come back down to file their reports.

Here are the Squirrel Nut Zippers channelling Cab Calloway in The Ghost of Stephen Foster.

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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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Walnut, roasted mushroom and french lentil soup

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Walnut, roasted mushroom, french lentil soup

We’re going to try something new, here at The Ordinary. In my imagination, actual ordinaries, in which people ate meals hundreds of years ago, had newspapers lying around the tables for patrons to read as they ate. People frequented the ordinaries as they travelled, and they shared tables with strangers. I imagine that they caught up on the news of the day as they paused in their travels, and they engaged in heated discussions about the news with their tablemates. Maybe they enjoyed a serial story in one of the newspapers and looked forward to reading the next installment at their next port of call – combining the pleasures of a warm fire, nourishing food, and a good read. At least that’s how I imagine it! So I’m going to try posting a serial story, right here in the virtual pages of The Ordinary. It’s actually a story I started some time ago, and that I got stalled on. So part of the motivation is that week-to-week, I’ll keep writing. It was inspired by the story of Florence Nightingale and her pet owl Athena, but it’s not really about them. It’s a story I would have liked when I was little, but I think I’d still like to read it now. It’s about every kind of Claire-y thing…secret pockets, boxes with little bottles in them, ship journeys, warm comforting food on cold days. My plan is to post a few pages every week, after the jump. Feel free to skip to the recipe, if you like!

The recipe for today’s installment is one of the better soups I’ve ever made! I love roasted mushrooms, I love french lentils, I love them together, but I’ve never combined them quite like this. I pureed the mushrooms with walnuts to make a lovely savory, meaty sort of bisque, with sage and rosemary, and I added the lentils and their broth just before serving.

Here’s A Wee Bird Cam’ Tae My Apron by Jean Redpath.

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Pear/hazelnut/chocolate crisp and ginger ice cream

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Hazelnut chocolate pear crisp and ginger ice cream

I had a hard time taking this picture, because of the fading light. In the summertime I could take pictures of my food outside, in perfect light, just before we ate it. Lately it’s been harder and harder. It’s often dark by the time we eat our meal, and I have to save some to photograph the next day, which reminds me of last winter (and makes me feel a little crazy! Who photographs their food? Who does? Well, everyone lately, it seems.) For some reason this simple fact – that I can’t take a photograph before dinner – makes me feel almost anxious. It drives home the fact that days are getting shorter and that winter is coming, in an oddly concrete way. I love the long days of summer – so generous and expansive. There’s time for anything that you might want to do. Evenings this time of year always make me feel melancholy. The darkness is closing in on you, and you can feel time passing. In the summer we have gloaming, a warm glowing beautiful hour, when all the golden heat of the day collects on the edges of the world and holds the bright clouds. In the winter we have dusk, full of chilly shadows and dark spaces. It all goes so fast – it all slips right by you, as you’re caught up in the worries of the day.

You know what makes autumn evenings pleasurable? Cooking! Being in a warm, cozy kitchen, no matter how dark and cold it is outside, making something warm and comforting is what it’s all about this time of year! This dessert is one of the best I have ever made. Ever!! David suggested the ginger ice cream, and he suggested making something with apples to go with it. So I made this crisp. It has apples and pears, it has a sprinkling of bittersweet chocolate, and it has a crispy hazelnut brown sugar crust. I can’t stop eating it! And the ginger ice cream has a little salty bite to it, and a little gingery bite to it, and it’s so smooth and creamy. The contrast in warm crisp and cold ice cream is just like this time of year, when seasons and temperatures melt into each other.

Here’s Evening Time and Autumn Sounds from Jackie Mittoo. I’ve probably played them both beofre, but they’re just so perfect!

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