Pink of Perfection

The Sunday meal, taken together, is a time-honored tradition I’m especially fond of. Growing up we sat around the Irish wake table in chinoiserie-papered dining room for a multi-course meal at the punctuating holidays. Our ritual on a ordinary Sunday evening was a drive downtown to a nondescript Mexican restaurant across the street from a toweringly fancy hotel. I remember gold foil-wrapped pats of soft butter spread on hot corn tortillas that were pulled out of plastic containers like rabbits out of a hat and the ketchup my dad ordered for the kids to dip their chips in. Sunday nights can be achingly sad — the work week looms, the fun is over, and somehow, it seems the sun sets earlier than any other night of the week. But in the Mexican restaurant where old-fashioned vaquero music played on the juke box, traditional striped blankets hung on the wall, and each meal ended with the ceremonial choosing of a Dum-Dum from the bowl at the cash register, we were happy, and the week seemed held at bay for awhile longer.

Later, when I was in Italy for a few months during college, my board did not include Sunday dinner. This was especially inconvenient given that Sundays saw the rattling metal grates firmly shut over the front doors of cafes and trattorias, barring the way to wild boar sausage and cannellini bean soup. At the breakfast table that first Sunday, over the strong coffee that made me happier than any other part of the morning spread, my host mother invited my roommate and I for dinner that afternoon. She made it clear that the meal was not one we had paid for (ahem), but that she would be happy to have us join her family. Their table, a long wooden farmhouse table with a fruit bowl at one end, was in the kitchen. During that meal, the 2 o’clock sunshine would slant through the window and we ate homemade pasta excitedly, its one appearance for the week. For me, aching with a loneliness for what (or rather, who) I’d left behind in Minnesota, Sunday dinner at that table with the sealed pockets of ravioli and a surrogate family was heaven.

Soon after I came back from Florence, my dear friend hosted a Sunday dinner of her own. I sat on the green bar stool at the high ledge in her kitchen alternately sipping coffee and wine as she made a great Caesar salad and two fat roast chickens. She fed eight of us that day, and we crowded around a table pulled out into the middle of her living room floor. I remember being happy then, too, and also, feeling at home.

If I had more pals in this neighborhood I love so much, I’d like to think I’d be cooking up Sunday dinner with them to stave off the Sunday blues. Then again, maybe there’s a bit of Field of Dreams at play here: if I cook, will they come? Because there is no better day than Sunday, especially when you do not have a couple hundred pages of Hawthorne to read, or are not walking around a foreign city, addicted to your own melancholy, or are not still heartbreakingly young, completely at the whims of the adults in your life, to sit down with some people you happen to like, even just a bit, and toast one last time to the weekend.

Provençal Roast Chicken
Serves 4, adapted from Gourmet March 2008

1 1/2 pound tomatoes, cut into wedges
2 large onion, cut into wedges, leaving root ends intact
1/2 cup drained brine-cured black olives, pitted if desired
5 large garlic cloves, sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons herbes de Provence, divided
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 whole chicken (about 3 1/2 pound), washed and patted dry

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Toss the tomatoes, onion, olives, garlic, fennel, and 1 teaspoon herbes de Provence with the olive oil. Push to one side of roasting pan. Nestle the chicken in next to the vegetables and season with the remaining teaspoon herbes de Provence, as well as plenty of salt and pepper. Roast in oven until the juices from the chicken run clear with no traces of pink, about 1 1/2 hours. Let the chicken rest for 10-15 minutes. Serve chicken with vegetables, pan juices, and some crusty bread to soak up every bit of juice.

Mondays have a tendency to chew me up and spit me out, so that when I arrive home, tired and worse for wear, I want life to feel easy. Soup, with its bare requirement of casual stirring, and its gentle steam bringing the flush back to your cheeks when you finally lean over a bowl, spoon poised, fits the bill quite nicely.

This is not only my favorite soup but my favorite kind of recipe. I call it Alchemy Cooking. The list of ingredients is so humble that I am always somewhat astonished at the flavors that burst forth in the end. Better still, the satisfaction of making something is only magnified when its beginnings are so unassuming and its final form so great.

A couple Mondays back I decided to take the the subway to the far reaches of my neighborhood. I thought some French-style exercise would do me good, and few things put me more at peace than a chance to enjoy the charms of Brooklyn. It was the perfect night for it, as this was the last sigh of mild night air before a fast descent into winter. That is, all seemed perfect as I was peeping into undraped windows when all of a sudden the sky opened up and began to rain fat drops on me and my tote filled with the ingredients for this soup.

Had this been a typical Monday, the next part of this story would involve me cursing under my breath and having thoughts that sound more than a little like violins playing. I can’t say what it was exactly that prompted me instead to put up the hood of my jacket and laugh a little at my luck and wet toes. Perhaps it was knowing I had a bottle of wine at home to warm up with, or that I knew I would soon be eating this soup, or maybe it was the burst of endorphins from scurrying along the slick residential streets. Whatever the reason, what would have been an annoying inconvenience became a serendipitous delight, and I wish I knew how to make that happen more often.

White Beans and Greens Soup
Serves 4-6
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 bunch dark, leafy greens, such as collard greens, kale, or Swiss chard, stemmed and roughly chopped
1 15.5 ounce can white beans
6 cups chicken stock
salt, plenty of pepper, and grated parmesan

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large pot over medium heat, and sauté onion and garlic until soft and translucent. Stir in greens and cook, uncovered, until wilted. Add chicken stock and white beans, and raise the heat to bring soup to a gentle boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for 5 minutes. Add salt, lots of freshly ground black pepper, and serve topped with grated parmesan.