Recently I spent the day in the kitchen, putting together a dinner for my husband's colleagues. We had just returned from Poland, and I was happy to be back in my big Ohio kitchen with its warm orange walls and smooth black concrete countertops. We love to entertain, and yet between the complications of daily life, unfamiliar ingredients, and minimal kitchen gear we had actually not had anyone over at all during our months in Warsaw.
So there I was, and once I got started I went a little crazy. I remembered a fantastic, elegant dinner last summer at my friend Bruce's in Swarthmore when he served a Tuna-Lemon-Oregano mousse. I was also remembering Warsaw, and the wonderful evening our friend Gabrielle put together -- wine, warm conversation, and flatbreads with cheese and asparagus spears, among other dishes, including cucumber rounds with mackerel filling... As we wended our way back to the States we had shared a meal with friends in Copenhagen, who had put spring roll fixings out on the table and we all -- grownups and kids alike -- stuffed and rolled them into delicious pseudo-Vietnamese treats (until the little ones moved on to bowls of cereal...).
In short, as I ran the Cuisinart, chopped and diced, I eventually assembled a mixed up meal composed of love and memories. Perhaps the flatbreads didn't quite go with the spring rolls, and I made one into a true pizza in anticipation of our colleagues' small children (trying to avoid the cereal route). But every stroke of the knife, every stir of the spoon brought me memories of meals consumed in the past. I couldn't figure out how Gabrielle kept the halved grape tomatoes from rolling around on the plate (maybe hers were cherry tomatoes?), so I couldn't fill mine with the sour cream concoction I had invented, but they added color on the square green ceramic plate our friends Noriko and Allan gave us for our wedding. In search of more color combinations, I whipped up deviled eggs (thinking all the time of summer meals with my parents and grandparents) and arranged some of them on the gold-rimmed egg plate I bought at a yard sale somewhere, while others were interspersed with the mousse-filled cucumber rounds on the blue and white Delft platter Ubli bought me in Holland.
Love and food. When we renovated the Ohio kitchen Steve started teasing me that it was like being married to someone completely new. For the first time since he'd known me, I began to cook up a storm -- Indian cauliflower, curried spinach, even chicken biryani; pizzas of all kinds; eggplant caviar, cabbage pirogs and borscht; plus the expected baked goods: pies and cookies and muffins and soft pretzels and Georgian cheese breads.
Every dish takes me back to a memorable meal or a long lost loved one. Oatmeal muffins? My great-aunt Em. Potato salad? I remember my grandmother throwing an extra hard-boiled egg in whole, on top, as we headed off to the family reunion. Peach pie? I remember my sister calling to confer: what's the best way to peel fresh peaches? Banana cream pie? again my gramma. Canning tomato and apple sauce? the other grandmother...
Yesterday I found in my PA kitchen a recipe box my mother gave me. Apparently I left a few recipe cards here in the pantry the last time I transported my cookbooks back to Ohio. Among the recipes I haven't used in ages -- Thai Garlic Soup, which I made all the time in graduate school to ward off colds and infections, and Chango Bars, copied down from a dessert the kids made in daycare -- was one called "Can't Be Beet Cake," in my Aunt Jane's distinctive handwriting.
Memories came flooding back. When my daughter was little, she and I made a chocolate log cake with cream cheese frosting for her second birthday, and I went out and bought little plastic turtles to decorate it. We made it again the next year, but just before her 4th birthday she told me she wanted a "red cake." I thought about Aunt Em's Red Velvet cake, which she made us once a year as a special treat when we visited her in Florida. In retrospect that may have even been a box cake, given that it was the 1970s, but I started looking for a recipe to make it from scratch, and called Aunt Jane, who couldn't find it either. Instead she sent me Em's Oatmeal Muffin recipe (fantastically moist and delicious, really the best and quickest morning muffins I've ever made, even when I reduce the sugar by about 1/2) and the "Can't Be Beet Cake."
Yesterday I began to put together dinner and got the idea that even more relatives might come, so I made potato salad (which looked much fancier than my grandmother's, since I made it with four different colored heirloom potatoes), green salad with fresh corn and red peppers, and sausages and veggie burgers for the grill. And I made a cake, the "Can't Be Beet Cake."
My daughter loves beets, and she requested that we get some with the CSA farm share we're collecting while our friends are out of town. What could be better -- her beloved beets, a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting, and a recipe that I enabled me to stir and sift, thinking all the while of my beloved aunt who copied it out for us almost ten years ago.
Alas, the relatives didn't make it out to West Philly, and the family was not enthused. "What are these chunks in the cake? Beets? You've got to be kidding." One child even scraped off the cream cheese frosting and left the cake on the plate.
Even so. I do love to have all my friends and relatives with me in the kitchen as I cook. I may never use that recipe again, but it goes right back in the recipe box so that I can pull it out and think about Aunt Jane every year or so.
So there I was, and once I got started I went a little crazy. I remembered a fantastic, elegant dinner last summer at my friend Bruce's in Swarthmore when he served a Tuna-Lemon-Oregano mousse. I was also remembering Warsaw, and the wonderful evening our friend Gabrielle put together -- wine, warm conversation, and flatbreads with cheese and asparagus spears, among other dishes, including cucumber rounds with mackerel filling... As we wended our way back to the States we had shared a meal with friends in Copenhagen, who had put spring roll fixings out on the table and we all -- grownups and kids alike -- stuffed and rolled them into delicious pseudo-Vietnamese treats (until the little ones moved on to bowls of cereal...).
In short, as I ran the Cuisinart, chopped and diced, I eventually assembled a mixed up meal composed of love and memories. Perhaps the flatbreads didn't quite go with the spring rolls, and I made one into a true pizza in anticipation of our colleagues' small children (trying to avoid the cereal route). But every stroke of the knife, every stir of the spoon brought me memories of meals consumed in the past. I couldn't figure out how Gabrielle kept the halved grape tomatoes from rolling around on the plate (maybe hers were cherry tomatoes?), so I couldn't fill mine with the sour cream concoction I had invented, but they added color on the square green ceramic plate our friends Noriko and Allan gave us for our wedding. In search of more color combinations, I whipped up deviled eggs (thinking all the time of summer meals with my parents and grandparents) and arranged some of them on the gold-rimmed egg plate I bought at a yard sale somewhere, while others were interspersed with the mousse-filled cucumber rounds on the blue and white Delft platter Ubli bought me in Holland.
Love and food. When we renovated the Ohio kitchen Steve started teasing me that it was like being married to someone completely new. For the first time since he'd known me, I began to cook up a storm -- Indian cauliflower, curried spinach, even chicken biryani; pizzas of all kinds; eggplant caviar, cabbage pirogs and borscht; plus the expected baked goods: pies and cookies and muffins and soft pretzels and Georgian cheese breads.
Every dish takes me back to a memorable meal or a long lost loved one. Oatmeal muffins? My great-aunt Em. Potato salad? I remember my grandmother throwing an extra hard-boiled egg in whole, on top, as we headed off to the family reunion. Peach pie? I remember my sister calling to confer: what's the best way to peel fresh peaches? Banana cream pie? again my gramma. Canning tomato and apple sauce? the other grandmother...
Yesterday I found in my PA kitchen a recipe box my mother gave me. Apparently I left a few recipe cards here in the pantry the last time I transported my cookbooks back to Ohio. Among the recipes I haven't used in ages -- Thai Garlic Soup, which I made all the time in graduate school to ward off colds and infections, and Chango Bars, copied down from a dessert the kids made in daycare -- was one called "Can't Be Beet Cake," in my Aunt Jane's distinctive handwriting.
Memories came flooding back. When my daughter was little, she and I made a chocolate log cake with cream cheese frosting for her second birthday, and I went out and bought little plastic turtles to decorate it. We made it again the next year, but just before her 4th birthday she told me she wanted a "red cake." I thought about Aunt Em's Red Velvet cake, which she made us once a year as a special treat when we visited her in Florida. In retrospect that may have even been a box cake, given that it was the 1970s, but I started looking for a recipe to make it from scratch, and called Aunt Jane, who couldn't find it either. Instead she sent me Em's Oatmeal Muffin recipe (fantastically moist and delicious, really the best and quickest morning muffins I've ever made, even when I reduce the sugar by about 1/2) and the "Can't Be Beet Cake."
Yesterday I began to put together dinner and got the idea that even more relatives might come, so I made potato salad (which looked much fancier than my grandmother's, since I made it with four different colored heirloom potatoes), green salad with fresh corn and red peppers, and sausages and veggie burgers for the grill. And I made a cake, the "Can't Be Beet Cake."
My daughter loves beets, and she requested that we get some with the CSA farm share we're collecting while our friends are out of town. What could be better -- her beloved beets, a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting, and a recipe that I enabled me to stir and sift, thinking all the while of my beloved aunt who copied it out for us almost ten years ago.
Alas, the relatives didn't make it out to West Philly, and the family was not enthused. "What are these chunks in the cake? Beets? You've got to be kidding." One child even scraped off the cream cheese frosting and left the cake on the plate.
Even so. I do love to have all my friends and relatives with me in the kitchen as I cook. I may never use that recipe again, but it goes right back in the recipe box so that I can pull it out and think about Aunt Jane every year or so.
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