New routines and a cake recipe

I have met a hundred people this week and cannot remember anyone's name.  I gave thirty-eight cents to a homeless man and didn't look him in the eyes.  I think I am coming down with a cold, my body is achy.  I slept for fourteen hours and made biscuits in a skillet my sister got me for Christmas.  I haven't kissed anyone in ten days. This week has been distinctively marked for me.  One night, I had decaf coffee for dinner.  Another, a bowl of white rice.  My body doesn't need sustenance the way it used to.  Instead, I listen to the small taptaptap's of the dog in the apartment next to mine and that is enough for the night.  I have nightmares about bugs crawling in my mouth and on my skin and I take two showers a day, because I do not pay for water at my new place.  I am always thirsty and I cried reading an old poem I wrote to a boy once.  I notice my oven is gas range and I can smell it strongly when I first preheat it.  I am scared of the ice on the roads, of cancer, of losing the last vestiges of my good, good life that I had before I decided to pursue independence.

This week was my first week of my new job as an administrative manager for a hotel down in San Antonio.  Meeting upon meeting, I was told how I can improve the site, how many granola bars we need to order, how to increase revenue and profits for in the next quarter.   I saw the words, the business idioms, but they are hollow.  In the back of my head, i think about how all I want to do is write, bake, sleep.  When I get home, I look at the wilting flowers that stood erect a day before, and I trim them to be used later for decoration somewhere else.  Nothing can be wasted right now, everything preserved, so I don't have a reason to leave the house.  Eggs used for meringues will make a custard with the yolks.  Scrambled eggs, give the embryos to the stray dog that scratches at houses in search of leftovers.  I used old parchment paper as scratch paper, a quick drawing I did of a logo I want for packaging.  I used some lip balm on my cold and dry hands.  It's been raining here, cold at nights.  The space heater next to my bed runs and squeaks all night.  I am just not used to this sort of life yet.

But I have time to think now, to bake and to write.  I find inspiration in those half-dead and cut flowers.  They were beautiful in their youth and I wanted to lay them on a pillow of buttercream.  I put them on a vanilla cake,  poked their stems into the meringue, and served them to my employees in an effort to show I cared.  When I came home, the flowers had wilted, and my record player was still spinning from when I forgot to flip it over that morning.  Noiselessly, it ran and I laid down on my bed, mouthing the words to a song that wasn't playing.  It rained that night and in the morning there was ice, but at least I made something beautiful.  I have time for beauty now.

Vanilla Cake with Italian Meringue Buttercream

For the cake: Use Molly Yeh's Vanilla Cake recipe to make a two layer 8" cake

For the Italian Meringue Icing:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/8 cup water
• 3 egg whites, room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon white vinegar
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 1 cup butter, room temperature and cut into tablespoons
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla (alternatively, use any other extracts, floral essences, or zests --or coffee!--that you may want to try.  I just went with the basics here)

Directions:

1. In a mixer (i suggest stand mixer here, but that is not to say a hand mixer would not work), beat eggs with sugar until stiff peaks begin to form and the white triple or quadruple in volume.
2. Add vinegar to stabilize the meringue.  Add the vanilla.
3. Continue to beat.  Set aside while you work on the simple syrup
4. For the simple syrup necessary to cook the egg whites and create the meringue, Place 1/2 cup sugar and water into small saucepan and put on medium-high heat.  Be mindful that it does not start to burn, due to the small surface area of so little sugar and water
5. When the temperature on an instant read thermometer reaches 238 degrees Fahrenheit (or, if it becomes really tacky as it bubbles, or if you do the water drop test), the syrup is ready
6. Turn the mixer back on and slowly drizzle in the syrup, making sure to take your time.  Keep beating the mixture for a few minutes until it has cooled down (if you add the butter too soon after the hot simple syrup, you risk the butter just melting and clotting and your meringue to be oily)
7. Once the mixture is cool enough to touch (you can tell by touching the bowl), start adding the butter one tablespoon at a time.  Have the mixer on and make sure the last tablespoon is full incorporated before adding a new one.  It may start to curdle and separate as you add them, but it will reconstitute once it works into an emulsified state
8. When the last tablespoon of butter goes in, mix to incorporate and you should have a beautiful, not-too-sweet and silky buttercream that is elegant and simplistic.
9. Assembly:  As Molly's cakes cool, put on on the plate, add a layer of buttercream, put other cake on top.  Slather cake in buttercream, decorate, enjoy!

Simple Homemade Noodles

It's Italy, 2010.  I stayed up before a midterm to make macaroni with a woman named Claire.  Her daughter was my classmate, her daughter was in a coma.  She flew all the way from Philadelphia to be with her, and said she was starving when she landed.  Everything was closed, so I helped her make mac and cheese.  It seems surreal now, to think the only way I knew to comfort her, a stranger, was to make such an American classic.  By the time we added the cheddar, her daughter could have been hemorrhaging.  But that's the beauty of it--how we ate the pasta out of the pot and she told me about her Christina.  How simple it all was.  How it distracted her, how we reverted to childhood staples and how she told me Christina would live and how lucky it was that the pope was only a mile away.  It was comfort food, and we both savored the moment in our own form of silence. She left one day without saying goodbye.  She lived on the other side of the convent I stayed at, on the nun's side.  Closer to the chapel.  She said it helped her sleep at night.  She dropped off almond cookies before she went, a note that said, "Thank you" and nothing else.  The script was curly, feminine, concise.  Not a single drop of ink was wasted, all of it conserved for future birthday cards for her dear, dear Christina.  I was just a replacement, and I was content in that knowledge.

But now, I am not content at all.  I am not content in this house with more square footage.  Not content to be making the money I make.  Not content in being lonely, or the fear of being lonely.  And in those efforts to feel normal, I make comfort food myself. I made a food to challenge myself, to know I could do it.  To thank the smaller gods, to have just one triumph in this haystack of a million failures.  Every cook has a dish they don't think they could make, couldn't muster the technique to create the magical. For some, it might be a soufflé.  My mother never thought she'd make caramel until she had to work after the recession in that "hell hole" town of ours.  For me, it was pasta.  It was a dish done right.  We had eggs and flour in that convent kitchen, but we both just knew how to boil water and add some cheese.  And if I could go back, I'd show that stranger how much I cared by making her a dish like this.  Simple, quiet in its own way, tender and soft like a scrawled "thank you."  Comfort food.

Simple Homemade Noodles

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 6 whole eggs
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a bowl, measure and pour flour.  Use a wooden spoon and create a well in center
2. Crack eggs into well and stir with wooden spoon until starting to become crumbly
3. Turn out onto a floured working surface and, with floured hands, knead for several minutes until dough is a pale yellow, springy and firm.
4. Cut dough into 6 equal parts and flour work surface again, as well as rolling pin and dough
5. Roll equal section of cut dough as thin as possible, working from the center outwards.  When dough is at desired thickness and cannot extend any further, dust lightly with flour
6. Roll dough back into itself like a pinwheel, creating a tight chiffonade or cigar-shape
7. Cut off small strips of dough, place cut pieces onto a floured baking sheet
8. When complete, bring water to a boil and salt
9. Add pasta dough to boiling water and let boil for 2 minutes or until tender and just beyond al dente
10. Drain and serve with preferred sauce

(Of course, you can use a pasta maker.  Of course you can use these noodles for other things.  But it's so therapeutic and rewarding to know you made it by hand.  To know you have the luxury to create and learn and grow as a chef in every way you can think.  Be that person, and take it slow.  Make it by hand, eat it simple.  You won't regret how comforting it can be.)

 

Pestare.

Sometimes when you want to be alone, you have to find solitude in the crowd.  To watch the crows lined like gargoyles on the stoplight lit green, waiting for the cars to come, to swoop down and steal the children.  Watching the young crippled girl sing her lovely song, but no one leaves a dollar in the outstretched woven basket.  The vendors remind you of your nine-to-five, their chapped hands and grey-wrinkled eyes remind you of winter, of your mom, of home.  Each vendor has an antidote, each more conscious of buzzwords like "sustainability" than the last.  I find myself smelling small baskets of grape tomatoes, setting them down and promising to be back.  Going to the nearest ATM and paying a $3.25 surcharge to go back and buy those tomatoes.  Asking if they're heirloom, not knowing what that means exactly.  I find myself emboldened by the knowledge of a meal to come, the way it creeps into my mind like nerve-friction.  How I can sense something creative, and each greengrocer and fishmonger in Little Italy lays out the totems of inspiration.  I brush against a vendor selling caramel sauce, ask someone about culinary school.  He says he's against it, but I don't believe him for a second.  That night, I google Le Cordon Bleu tuition.  I help a seller sharpen a knife and say I'm partial to Japanese knives (I'm not).

I lied to everyone, said I'd come back before I left for eggs and ox and hummus.  I didn't.  I pretended.  It was free to pretend until I knew what I was looking for.  And I found it in the plastic bin like the kind my mother keeps Christmas ornaments in, hidden in the corner of a ruddy, earthen woman's stand.  She spoke no English.  I asked her how much the zanahorias were.  Two dollars.   I smiled and picked the most exotic of the root vegetables.  The ones that were twisted, mangled sensually.  The kinds that had curves and humps, small Venuses of Willendorfs in the crisper bin in the fridge.  Purple, orange, and tan, the color of spider veins.  The color of the earths.

I picked up bread, cheese.  Green beans and sea salt.  I picked it up and carried it home in a brown paper bag.  I felt legitimized by my purchases and want to keep my promise to the farmer, that I'll come back in April when he'll have quail eggs for me.  But, until then, I'll keep making this verdant green pesto, and I'll welcome Spring with open arms.

Carrot Greens Pesto

Ingredients:

• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4 cup almonds (dry toasted in skillet for five minutes)
• 2 cup carrot greens
• Scant 3/4 light olive oil
• 1/4 cup freshly-grated parmesan

Directions:

1. Put almonds in a skillet and toast over medium heat for about five minutes until begin to brown and become fragrant
2. In a food processor, process almonds and garlic until finely ground
3. Add greens and pulse for two minutes, or until a paste forms
4. Add parmesan, pulse until incorporated
5. While the motor is running, slowly pour oil into feeding tube and continue to run until full incorporated
6. Store in container for at least two hours for flavors to incorporate, use as you would basil-based pesto

A City of Wolves

I've lived so many lives in four years, it's hard to count on one hand.  It's grains of sand on a beach.  There are not enough of them to account for every person I've been in these last handfuls of years.  And some of those sand-kernels get stuck in your teeth, crunching down at night, grinding at the enamel of the strongest material in the human body.  So many lives, so many losses along the way.  In four years, there have been hurricanes and oil spills, president elections and a nephew born here and there.  Lives have started, ended, and stagnated in the rich greenery of Western Pennsylvania, the only life I knew and identified as such for twelve years prior. I lived in Italy for a period of time, when I was turning 19.  It happened four years ago today.  I was so young then.  It was when I had no one and didn't shave often.  When I still had a child's face and the innocence of a madame at a brothel.  When I was malleable and agreeable to everyone I met.  How I flirted, how I would enchant people to get a few euros or a cigarette.  I wore all black because I was supposed to, and I revert to that same color palette when the time seems right, when I want to be someone else.  I danced at a discotheque called Coyote and never told anyone that my uncle had just died in Afghanistan the day before.  I was whatever I was needed to be, and it broke me in a way smiles break--around the edges at first, then quickly towards the center.

Rome is a palimpsest of a city, handwritten over and over again by the people who write those kinds of histories.  I drank out of a water bottle where Octavia gave lunches.  I saw the graves of children who died in a fire started by a mad emperor.  I craned my neck and felt dizzy when I saw the hand that made man draw in realism yards above my head.  I never felt the sense of wonder, I never felt the connectivity to the Why's of life.  I faked it.  I would be a palimpsest to myself, too.  I would write over who I was at 19 again and again, sometimes scrawled quickly and sometimes in the perfect cursive my mother uses to sign checks.  I would feel God in every doorway, and breath a sigh of relief when I saw how the Church glorified death.  Or, at least I could hope. I didn't know any better but to seek approval.  To carry conversations for the face-value I gave them, to take the minimal amount of credits to still be a full-time student so I could have a four-day weekend, and to still complain about my classes at 8 in the morning.  I had to buy metro cards and lost two of them.  I phoned my parents for money three times and ignored their emails until the money hit my bank account.  I was ruthless in my need for identity, and molted friends and selves and childhood memories at the chance of living up to a standard I could not identify just then. And so, because nothing fulfilled me at that period of my life, that dark in-between of adolescent and undergraduate, I crawled to the comfort of my bed.  I sat and read my Renaissance art books instead of using my student pass and seeing them myself. I felt foolish to go alone.  And the one time I did go anywhere myself, I met up with a guy and, after growing bored around midnight, wore his shirt home and deleted his number.  I was living through others, and even the majesty of Rome, with all of her womanly hills and curves, were not enough for me.  It was during this period that my friend of ten years, with whom I planned our Italian lives with, decided I was no longer good, no longer purely hers.  She told lies, and they devastated me to my core.  And it was in bed, in men, in other people that I found redemption. And, it was because I was so distracted with my small insignificancies of myself.  How I tried myself into believing that the first person you come out to is supposed to be the most influential.  How this travesty was somehow supposed to outweigh my uncle's death, a country's loss.  How watching movies in the common room of the convent I stayed at, avoiding eye contact with the nuns who fed us prodigal students, was a better idea that the Borghese on a Monday afternoon.  I was childish and took the lazy route and it's because of that experience that I never tried to live in New York, where I would surely hole myself up if anything ever went wrong. I regret it all in Italy.  How I left things with Sam.  How I never tried octopus. How I meant to give the twenty euro I borrowed from a girl named Elizabeth back, but bought condoms and a pistachio gelato instead.  How I wore a necklace made from a mink's foot, given to me by an ex, to the holiest of holy kingdoms.  How I was kicked out of a church for being drunk.  How I smoked weed on the Spanish Steps with boys whose names I stumbled over.  How I drank my espresso with milk and sugar.  How I took the wrong metro and ended up at the beach and, instead of just sitting there for an hour, I cursed Italy and all of Europe.  How I didn't call my mom enough and got an AIDS test on my dad's birthday.  How I took a total of 170 pictures, and most of them were of myself.  How I didn't know the exchange rate when I went abroad and only took half of what I thought I would need.  How everything meant so much to me for all the wrong reasons.  And now, four years too late, I can come to terms with this failure of failures. When people ask if I know Italian, I'll often lie and say I used to.  When people ask how long I lived there, I'll often lie and say, "A year or two."   And it's funny to me how easy it is to lie about the experience instead of just doing it, and I've tried to learn how to handle my fatigued motivation and really begin to do something.  I make lists now to overcome this ennui.  List after list of useless suggestions, but I wish I would have done that four years ago, and I could have crossed each off every weekend. I would have said my prayers at dinner with my eyes closed, instead of one eye open at my friends and giggling.  I would have read my homework more closely, remember the dates in my longterm memory to pull up now.  I would have bought the souvenirs and have the trinkets, because sense memory is stronger than the fictive pseudo-recollection I do to assure myself I was really ever there.  I would have dropped more coins into the Trevi and I would have made the promise to others to meet at that very spot, on the meridian of hill to fallen palazzo, year after year.  I would have learned to say words carefully and not to cry so much.  I would have sat on the roof of the convent and looked at the city I lived in, a city that wasn't Bedford, Pennsylvania.  A city founded by wolves, built by warriors, and nurtured by intellectuals for years and years and years. It should have been my pride that fell, but instead it was the Roman Empire.  Because time has no place in a city of antiqued buildings, and both could have happened at the same moment, but I just can't seem to remember.  And maybe I purposefully forgot.  But I hope, by the grace of some power--whether it's my will or God's--to return to that fabled city just one more time and do the things on my "Would Have" list.  And the image I have of myself in Rome is one that many romantics do, but I would give everything to be 19 and in love with the city, a scarf tied around my neck to keep the witch's breath away, holding a bouquet of flowers, and riding on a bicycle, taking the trail that runs parallel to the banks of the Tiber.  And for each petal that fell off that windswept bouquet, it would be another part of me that was grounded in others and it would have gladly fell to the ground.  I could have found myself during those days of being alone.  And if I ended up at the beach every again, I would stay there for another hour or two, even if I didn't bring anything with me but myself.  It would have been enough. So I want to share my gastronomic memories of Rome, so few and far between.  This was before I knew how deeply I loved food, when my palate was content with vending machine biscotti and fast food meatballs.  Because I used to think the generic was as good as the original--better, even, because of the money I was saving.  But, here is the first food I had in Italy, during orientation.  Two staples I picked up at the buffet line that was catered for the 37 of us, which now have been tailored to my ever-evolving palate.  I give to you Heirloom Tomato and Chèvre Pizza and Lemon-Buttermilk Panna Cotta.

Heirloom Tomato and Chèvre Pizza

Julia Child (according to Ina Garten) once said that Italian cooking wasn't cooking at all, but assembling.  Due to this paraphrased fact, the portions for the toppings of this pizza are entirely your own.  I took what I was craving and made it into a pretty amazing pizza (fits a standard baking sheet).  

For the crust

• 1 packet rapid rise yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons honey
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

For the toppings

• 2-3 medium-sized heirloom tomatoes, preferably different varieties or colors for contrast
• 6 TB pesto
• 2/3 cup chèvre
• Basil for topping

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 (my oven is kind of permanently on the fritz, so I do this first)
2. In a large bowl, mix water and yeast with a whisk until combined
3. Sift dry ingredients into bowl and add remaining honey and olive oil.  Stir with a wooden spoon until combined.
4. Oil or flour hands and knead dough onto board for a good 4-7 minutes, until gluten begins to get elastic
5. Form into a ball and let rest for 10 minutes
6. While dough is resting, prepare whatever pan or pizza stone you'll be using.  I just greased a baking sheet for convenience and it worked great.
7. After ten minutes, roll out dough and brush olive oil onto dough to brown crust. Bake for 7-9 minutes until just golden and stiffening from heat.
8. While pre-baking dough, cut up tomato and basil.
9. Once dough is pre-baked, take out of oven and assemble pizza toppings.  Brush pesto, then layer tomatoes and dot top and bare spaces between tomatoes with goat cheese.  Drizzle a little more olive oil.  Season if you wish.
10. Place back in oven for an additional 12 minutes.
11. Take out of oven, allow to cool slightly.  Sprinkle fresh basil on top.  Maybe even a little minced garlic.
12. Buon Appetito!

Lemon-Buttermilk Panna Cotta

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Pour 2 tablespoons water into small bowl
2. Sprinkle gelatin over. Let stand until gelatin softens, about 10 minutes.
3. Lightly spray six 3/4-cup ramekins or custard cups with nonstick spray.
4. Heat cream, lemon peel, and sugar in medium saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring constantly until sugar dissolves.
5. Increase heat and bring just to low boil, stirring occasionally.
6. Add gelatin mixture; remove from heat.
7. Stir until gelatin dissolves.
8. Cool mixture to lukewarm, stirring often.
9. Stir in buttermilk and vanilla; divide mixture among prepared ramekins.
10. Refrigerate panna cotta until set, about 4 hours.
11. Serve with fresh or thawed berries and a little honey and lemon juice.

“She had always been fond of history, and here in Rome was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine.” - Henry James