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.

For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to treehouses, deeply-cushioned reading chairs, down comforters–hell, let’s call a spade a spade–bed, sunny nooks on cold afternoons, and stews. What do all these things have in common? They are cozy, and I, my friends, am an unabashed fan of cozy.

Sure, I love sexy, and also adventurous, and certainly a taste of glamour from time to time. But give me a wisp of a nightgown, a blue and white teacup filled with hot chocolate, and a battered paperback and I will know just what to do.

Which is why last Sunday night I got into my head that I wanted to make a garlicky beef daube and have it simmering on the stove for an hour while I puttered around the newly-clean apartment, flipping through a magazine and tucking-in hospital corners. That is Sunday Night Cozy, a quiet and delicate mix of hands-off cooking and gentle productivity about the house.

But then I realized I am a complete dope: Sebastian would be drinking Mexican beer and cheering on the Giants in a bar on a divey drag of 4th Avenue, and my Sunday night would not see us lingering over glasses of cabernet and pretending we were in an old French farmhouse. Ah, reality. Instead, I decided to let the daube bubble away while I chomped loudly on another favorite meal (chips and salsa) while watching the Law & Order SVU marathon, blissfully alone. I’m telling you, sometimes life turns out even better than you expect.

But back to the daube. As I reluctantly pulled myself away from the television Sunday night, the daube was ready, wonderfully aromatic with thyme, garlic, red wine, and vegetables, and the meat was tender. I let it cool, then stowed it in the fridge before it would reappear on Monday night as a quick supper. And here we have yet another lesson learned in the book of “How to Eat a Decent Supper Most Nights”: let something cook slowly on the stovetop or in the oven while you have time to amble languorously about your home and admire the late afternoon light. And then stow it away for later in the week when you will have burst through the door, harried and hungry, looking for something wholesome to eat. Something that will restore your humanity when the world has taken it out of you. Something cozy. This is it.

Why does it take so long to learn the simplest lessons?

Garlicky Beef Daube
Serves 4-6, adapted from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything

Here’s what I love about this recipe: you don’t have to brown the meat. You get to skip that whole troublesome, splattery step. And while I find beef bourguignon to be quite a pain in the rear and perhaps not worth the time and effort (though I’m glad I tried), this is marvelously simple. Just chop everything up, let it marinate for a good long while, and then let it simmer a good long while more.

8 garlic cloves
2-3 pounds beef chuck or round, cut into 1-1 1/2 inch cubes
1 large onion, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch thick rounds
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 1/2 cup dry red wine
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley

In a large dutch oven, combine six peeled and minced garlic cloves, beef, onion, carrots, vinegar, wine, thyme, and bay leaf. Stir, cover, and refrigerate for 1-24 hours.

After the desired period of marination, place dutch oven over moderate heat and bring to to a boil. Then lower the heat, cover, and let simmer for 1-1 1/2 hours, until the meat is tender. Remove cover and reduce liquid slightly, if necessary.

Peel and mince the two remaining garlic cloves, and add to the daube. Simmer for another five minutes and scatter parley over top. Serve with buttered egg noodles and something green, like green beans with caramelized shallots.

Somewhere between “throw-a-frozen-pizza-in-the-oven” and “something-fancy” is the perfect weeknight meal. It should involve one pot, preferably, and it never hurts if it’s comprised entirely of pantry staples. And sometimes, through some kind of magic, you turn the page in one of your most beloved cookbooks to find something that doesn’t sound too hard or too time consuming and doesn’t have an ingredients list as long as your arm. In fact, it sounds elegant. It was there all along, and it sounds like what you’d like to have for dinner on a Thursday.

In case I haven’t told you this about me, I think of myself as descended from farmer stock. My mother grew up on one of the oldest dairy farms in New England. This means not only that I am genetically unfit for cubicle work, but that literary descriptions of wide-open spaces appeal to me for a reason. Clean air, gardens, farmhouse kitchens — they’re in my bones.

I found The Farmhouse Cookbook one rainy day in one of my favorite creaky used bookshops. Susan Hermann Loomis wrote this cookbook after two years of driving around the U.S. visiting farms and peeking over the shoulder of farmhouse cooks. The recipes are from the cooks I most respect; not fancy pants chefs but cooks, serving good, honest food, three times a day to people who have worked hard and are hungry. To me, a woman who can barely eke out two home-cooked dinners a week, this is damn near a feat of grace.

I have a semi-permanent house guest right now. Though we can’t offer him even a modicum of privacy in our little one bedroom apartment, I want him to feel welcomed. I want him to feel a sense of, dare I say it?, abundance living with us for these weeks, despite the fact he is cramped onto an uncomfortable futon with a thin, scratchy blanket. I can bring him a beer when he looks tired, and let him keep the game on through dinner, but my biggest gesture, the best gesture I can make to say to someone is, here, I took some time and threw some things together. I hope you like it.

Lamb and Lentils
adapted from The Farmhouse Cookbook

2 teaspoons olive oil
1 pound boneless lamb cut into 1/2 inch chunks
2 cups water
1 cup lentils
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 teaspoon salt
10 peppercorns
4 springs fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried
4 large fresh sage leaves, or 1/2 teaspoon crumbled dried
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
zest of 1/2 lemon
2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch rounds
2 cups coarsely chopped green cabbage

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat and cook lamb until brown on all sides, about 3-4 minutes a side. Stir in the water, lentils, onion, garlic, salt, peppercorns, and herbs. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium, cooking until the lentils are tender but still slightly firm to the bite. Lentils can vary widely in cooking times depending on their age, so this could take anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes. Add lemon juice, zest, carrots cabbage, and cook until the cabbage is wilted and the carrots are tender, about 15 minutes. Dinner is served, and only one pot to clean.

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Who wouldn’t want to be a French girl? Whether true or not, we all imagine she looks great in skinny jeans and ballet flats, totes baguettes in her bicycle basket, doesn’t get fat, and brings a graceful touch to everyday living. Sadly, I am not French. But I did get to spend a week in Paris, and I can tell you that an ordinary American girl can quickly feel sublime and in her element among all that foie gras.

Continue reading “On the Road: Paris” »