My goodness, what a treat to read of your hearty soup. Such goodness, such heart, such delight. I could smell the aromas and taste the garlic and thyme. Thank you Padraig for your story, Amanda's poem and the prompt.
Last night, I had my two grandsons stay over. A few days ago, I found a cookbook of 'easy to make foods' in the local street library. They flipped through the pages in the back seat of the car as I drove them to my home. The 10 year old made a shopping list of ingredients and, as we unpacked the groceries onto the bench they confidently declared, 'we don't need the recipe, we know how to make this'. So it was we made the pastry with flour dusting the floor and their t-shirts, and the 7 year old asking, with his hands mixing the flour and butter, 'is this like breadcrumbs?' The older one broke half a dozen eggs into a bowl and picked out the errant shell. I chopped the spinach and parsley from the garden and we sang it all together. Three small pies sung into the hot oven. Next came the lemon delight dessert. Soft butter, castor sugar, egg yolks and grated zest of lemons picked fresh from the tree. I took out the old egg whisk, like the one that my mum, and her mum had in their kitchens. Like the one I used in my year 8 home economic cooking class five decades ago. 'Wow, they both marvelled, this is old fashioned.' and both wanted a go. They watched the peaks arise like snow crested mountains. They snuck a finger in to taste. Their faces wrinkled up and they laughed and beat it some more until it was smooth and shiny. Gently folding the whites into the mix, our cake was ready to bake. Out came the spinach pie and in went the cake into a 'bain-marie' a tray of hot water. The boys thought this strange and wanted to know why and what happens to the water.
We set the fire-pit in the garden, served the pie and sat under the new moon and ate dinner watching the flames reach up into the dark as two kangaroos sat in the shadows.
Lemon delight was served with ice cream. Yum.
Cooking with my grandsons, a recipe of love and connection, creativity and confidence.
It’s so rewarding to see the new generation, normally attached to instants, become enamored with the process of baking to the point where they look forward to creating something new themselves.
My mother, a complex yet affectionate soul who I lost only weeks after becoming a mother myself, recorded recipes on index cards. Sometimes she would mail them to friends, young wives & mothers themselves, think 1950s early 60s, before hardship knocked at her door, and theirs.
When she passed I took a handful.
One records her hand-written recipe for Yorkshire Pudding, comfort food with a roast on any gloomy Sunday through Autumn & Winter.
My Yorkshire mother in law gave me the recipe for her smashing Yorkshire pudding, but her daughters upon seeing it said, “Tha’s never her recipe. She’s given you the mickey” and that’s when I learnt that every Yorkshire granny has her own recipe and many are loathe to share or it. But here is a poem and recipe I love. I’m not sure where I learnt this poem — perhaps from Pádraig. By Ian MacMillan in his collection To Fold the Evening Star.
Yorkshire Pudding Rules
The tin must not gleam. Must never be new.
If there is dried sweat somewhere in its metal
It must be your mother’s. The flour must be strong
And white as the face of Uncle Jack
When he came back from the desert. The eggs
Must come from an allotment. The allotment
Must belong to your father-in-law.
The eggs have to be broken
With one swift movement over the bowl.
If there is dried sweat somewhere in its Pyrex
It must be your mother’s. The milk
Must have been delivered by Colin Leech
At 0430. The fork has to be an old one. The wrist
Must, simply must, ache after the mixing.
The flour must introduce itself to the yolk of the egg.
The egg has to be allowed to talk to the flour.
The milk must dance with them both: foxtrot, then quickstep.
Really loved this. Funny how the simplest of ingredients make our dearest dishes, and the simpler the ingredients, the more skill needed to bring them together just so
That would have been very difficult becoming a mother and grieving the loss of your own mum. I hear it was complex yet I honour the journey you have had with mothering ... and in this story, food.
My mum also had a box of index cards... a colour set purchased from say, Women's Weekly maybe and amongst them her handwritten ones in her lovely neat writing. I loved looking through those colour photos of dishes. Yorkshire puddings... we would love the Sunday Roast and had these regardless of the type of meat on the plate! Thank you for sharing your story.
My mom had the task of feeding a family of eleven each day for close to twenty years. I recall one of her dinners of spaghetti and meatballs (usually a favorite of mine). On this evening, mom had no jar of tomato sauce in the cupboard and improvised by using a can of tomato soup instead. “Yuck”, was the reaction from me and my siblings. But my dad was perfectly content and slurped down the meal with delight. Hmmm.
In thinking about my mom, she left us with a simple recipe for living: “just love, love, love.”
I often cook biscuits (cookies) with my 3 year old granddaughter. She is an expert egg cracker. But I don’t use recipes because I know after decades of cooking what the consistency should be. And I just go with whatever is in the cupboard or fridge anyway. I’ve noticed the richness of the language I use to describe what we’re adding - a dash of this, a sprinkle of that, a dollop, a spoonful, a splash, a pinch, a square, a handful and then the standard descriptors - teaspoonful, tablespoon, cupful, half a cup, or just whatever is left in the jar. Then we mix and mash and beat and stir and mould and knead and roll and cut and spoon onto the tray and into the oven.
I love your attention to the imagistic descriptions of amounts. A few years ago I volunteered to write out the recipes a good friend of mine made and then photograph the results. After listening to “a dash” of this, or a sprinkle of that, we finally decided to forgo trying to capture her recipes and stick with the photos of the results. The lyricism of the way my friend cooks just needed to live on without being pinned like butterflies to a board. Your response brought this memory to mind. Thank you.
Fun poem! It captures the spirit of playful no -measurement! I especially like the last line -almost tempted to leave out one ingredient, but at the last minute…. Joyous!
An overnight poolish - equal weights white flour and water and just a couple pinches of yeast - bubbly and earthy, sweaty by morning. More flours - white, whole wheat, maybe some rye, wheat germ, bran, don't forget the salt, and a little more yeast, all mixed and set to rise, folded twice, formed into a round for a last proof, finally into a hot Dutch oven within the oven. Delicious smells morphing over the hours, out of the oven 18 hours after the poolish started, half an hour to cool. Butter the first slice and words fail. (Harvest Bread, Ken Forkish in "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast).
We chilly autumnal New Hampshirites are surrounded by historic, pick-your-own fruit farms, so lucky! Apple picking extends for months and our favorite recipe after the bumpety bump wagon pulled by hand, the metal ladders, the goat petting, the round twist and tug and clear-your-conscience box, is this: scrub, chop, fry in butter, sprinkle with cinnamon, last few seconds a generous local maple syrup bath. Be sure to scoot it all around with a spatula until your heart, nose and gathering teenagers tell you it’s ready. Eat as is, hot, gooey, or over vanilla ice cream, waffles, pancakes. You get the idea.
I love making bread. I love kneading dough, the aroma of the dough as it rises in a warm place. The place of rising dough used to be on top of the steam heat radiator that kept us warm even in the middle of a North Dakota winter.
Flour (half whole wheat, half high protein bread flour), water, yeast, salt, butter, an egg, and honey. I get to think of my old friend John K who shared his recipe with me each time I make it. Stir ingredients with the sturdy worn-smooth wooden spoon that was your mother-in-law’s. Stir until the spoon no longer can move the dough in the pan. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Delicious to feel this sticky dough texture between and stuck to fingers. Incorporate more flour as you knead, spreading it onto the wooden table ahead of the dough; always a trick to add enough, but not too much. Knead to music on the radio; wonder if the songs playing affect the outcome of the loaves. Knead in a rhythm- push out, fold, turn. Knead until the dough becomes “smooth as a baby’s bottom.”
Spread a thin layer of butter of butter across the interior of an orange mottled melamine bowl. Let it rest in a warm place on top of the radiator while the yeast grows the mass until double in size (a miracle, really). Scrape the dough flour mess off the table. Prepare the pans.
When the dough is double-dough, punch it! gently down. Cut it in half with the dough scraper. “Form into a loaf” is what the recipes will tell you, and I never have found the best way to do that, but it turns out anyway. Place dough in pans, back to the radiator, cover with a damp cotton dish towel, and let it rise again.
Make sure to move anything you have stored in the oven out, and move the oven racks to the center of the oven. Remove the damp towel from covering the loaves; pray the towel doesn’t stick to the loaves.
Bake at 350, or is it 375 degrees F?, until the bread is a golden color. Remove pans from oven and place them on their sides onto a cooling rack. Take the bread from the pans and set loaves upright to cool. (Ha! It smells so wonderful that you take a serrated knife to the bread while still hot, hack off a large slice, and eat it!)
I really liked how I was able to imagine your family connections and kitchen through the recipe. It reminded me of the well handled ordinary tools that have been with us for years that are hand me downs from relatives, our inheritance from them
When our daughter Madelaine was about eight and perhaps starting to take notice of little boys - she asked me how her Papa and I met. Oh, dear, I thought, I knew this day would come. "Papa came for dinner and he never left." There was a long pause, then in a voice ethereal with wonder, she asked, "What did you cook?" What indeed. Cream cheese slathered in king crab, topped with sauce of some kind and served on crackers, whole leg of lamb smothered in garlic, olive oil and fresh rosemary, roasted potatoes, french flageolets in all the drippings, lots of wine, I am sure, and somehow or another a five inch high homemade New York Cheesecake with fresh raspberries. January 1st, 1978. No wonder he never left.
But what I still wonder is how was all that food in the fridge of my little third floor walk up when I had only agreed to a New Year's Eve dinner date? A great snow storm descends. His flight home hours late. Me drunk on another man's champagne - well, what is a girl to do all dressed up and stranded at home with a large magnum staring her in the face - driving out to the airport at 4 in the morning - yes, that is correct, driving along a completely closed due to snow storm highway - not sober - he no doubt drunk too as the airlines tried to keep everyone happy, both exhausted and this fridge full of astonishments - and me, well, newly arrived home from living in France, so, I can cook. And I do.
Do angels work overtime on New Year's Eve? I think they lay aside their cards and Cosmopolitans, play nurse maid to our madness, and sprinkle fairy dust on our brave endeavors, which you must know truly, is the secret ingredient to all culinary adventures be it soup or leg of lamb......
Thank you for the prompt, Pádraig. Salteñas are the first thing that pop into my head- the delicious Bolivian version of an empanada- but special in its simplicity. It was the food offered at most households/ restaurants, in my first out of country experience right out of high school, working with the National Health organization in a rural childhood inoculation campaign with Amigos de las Americas. Salteñas were the beautiful centerpieces on the table- standing upright, not lying down- usually baked, sometimes fried- spicy filling of sweet-savory meat, potatoes, peas, an olive with a pit, raisins, parsley and a 1/4 of a hard boiled egg. I made many attempts at replicating the recipe- the hardest part was the dough- texture and taste- and even when I got it ‘right’ I had to adjust the recipe for those not experienced with Salteñas— turn down the spice (my favorite part, but too much for many) as well as take out the olive with pit- to save teeth and, well the egg was a lot of work and not appreciated… That’s the continued joy of travel, returning home and attempting to make a dish that was core to the travel memory… a way to recall and sustain the essence and ambiance of a time and place- to share that back at home. And somehow, in the efforts, however close you come to the recipe- it’s never quite the same… people, event, moment, which keeps those memories quite apart yet close
My grandmother’s handwriting on the recipe card…that’s the IT thing for me. I can barely make out the ingredients in her old-fashioned, loopy cursive but the ingredients don’t matter. Thinking of her taking her pen to her recipe card and saving the recipe for her future generations…that’s what matters.
I have recipes from my grandmother too. I think my most tangible memories of her are food memories...how she used a fork to make the pattern on the top of peanut butter cookies...her garden grown tomatoes (especially the small yellow pear tomatoes)...the way she always put ice in our water and used fancy crystal glasses that let the water form little rivers of condensation on the sides...the dried gravy on her fancy tablecloths that never seemed to bother her...the way she made made green beans and endive into wondrous things...measuring salt (or was it sugar?) in the palm of her hand...and her gigantic dining table which I loved to camp out underneath (I thought nobody knew I was there, though they surely did) when I was little...it seems nearly sacramental to me now. Thank you Aimee for bringing this all back to me.
Gracie, first generation American raised in Manhattan amongst newly arrived Germans Theresa Minck, bone thin stood at her kitchen table rolling pastry, quietly. Clock ticking sun rise glowing through the window where I “showed the birdies” my empty plate, she welcomed me with her quiet acceptance and unconditional love offered while stirring apple slices with butter and brown sugar patted into her pie shell then blanketed with another layer of her mysterious mixture of flour and water fashioned into dough, carefully crimped and placed in the oven. Love was given generously in this spare kitchen by a spare woman who had spare language. Her love, acceptance and approval is my steadfastness. No words needed here, you are welcome, but Gracie told me with her presence as unforgettable as her apple pie.
My goodness, what a treat to read of your hearty soup. Such goodness, such heart, such delight. I could smell the aromas and taste the garlic and thyme. Thank you Padraig for your story, Amanda's poem and the prompt.
Last night, I had my two grandsons stay over. A few days ago, I found a cookbook of 'easy to make foods' in the local street library. They flipped through the pages in the back seat of the car as I drove them to my home. The 10 year old made a shopping list of ingredients and, as we unpacked the groceries onto the bench they confidently declared, 'we don't need the recipe, we know how to make this'. So it was we made the pastry with flour dusting the floor and their t-shirts, and the 7 year old asking, with his hands mixing the flour and butter, 'is this like breadcrumbs?' The older one broke half a dozen eggs into a bowl and picked out the errant shell. I chopped the spinach and parsley from the garden and we sang it all together. Three small pies sung into the hot oven. Next came the lemon delight dessert. Soft butter, castor sugar, egg yolks and grated zest of lemons picked fresh from the tree. I took out the old egg whisk, like the one that my mum, and her mum had in their kitchens. Like the one I used in my year 8 home economic cooking class five decades ago. 'Wow, they both marvelled, this is old fashioned.' and both wanted a go. They watched the peaks arise like snow crested mountains. They snuck a finger in to taste. Their faces wrinkled up and they laughed and beat it some more until it was smooth and shiny. Gently folding the whites into the mix, our cake was ready to bake. Out came the spinach pie and in went the cake into a 'bain-marie' a tray of hot water. The boys thought this strange and wanted to know why and what happens to the water.
We set the fire-pit in the garden, served the pie and sat under the new moon and ate dinner watching the flames reach up into the dark as two kangaroos sat in the shadows.
Lemon delight was served with ice cream. Yum.
Cooking with my grandsons, a recipe of love and connection, creativity and confidence.
What a moving account of love embodied! Thank you Wendy.
You are the best
What a delightful story
It’s so rewarding to see the new generation, normally attached to instants, become enamored with the process of baking to the point where they look forward to creating something new themselves.
A total delight to read from beginning to end. Thank you Wendy!
Thanksgiving Mashed Potatoes
-1 bag of potatoes, hastily peeled
-1 son in law given a knowing nod to fix them, quietly
-bring to a boil, percolate tension in the kitchen, strain
-Some butter, a splash of milk, salt, cracked pepper
-1 cup of debate, honor grandpa or please the kids?
-Honor tradition, add the sour cream.
My mother, a complex yet affectionate soul who I lost only weeks after becoming a mother myself, recorded recipes on index cards. Sometimes she would mail them to friends, young wives & mothers themselves, think 1950s early 60s, before hardship knocked at her door, and theirs.
When she passed I took a handful.
One records her hand-written recipe for Yorkshire Pudding, comfort food with a roast on any gloomy Sunday through Autumn & Winter.
My mother's last embrace.
My Yorkshire mother in law gave me the recipe for her smashing Yorkshire pudding, but her daughters upon seeing it said, “Tha’s never her recipe. She’s given you the mickey” and that’s when I learnt that every Yorkshire granny has her own recipe and many are loathe to share or it. But here is a poem and recipe I love. I’m not sure where I learnt this poem — perhaps from Pádraig. By Ian MacMillan in his collection To Fold the Evening Star.
Yorkshire Pudding Rules
The tin must not gleam. Must never be new.
If there is dried sweat somewhere in its metal
It must be your mother’s. The flour must be strong
And white as the face of Uncle Jack
When he came back from the desert. The eggs
Must come from an allotment. The allotment
Must belong to your father-in-law.
The eggs have to be broken
With one swift movement over the bowl.
If there is dried sweat somewhere in its Pyrex
It must be your mother’s. The milk
Must have been delivered by Colin Leech
At 0430. The fork has to be an old one. The wrist
Must, simply must, ache after the mixing.
The flour must introduce itself to the yolk of the egg.
The egg has to be allowed to talk to the flour.
The milk must dance with them both: foxtrot, then quickstep.
The pepper must be scattered, black on off-white.
The oven has to be hotter than ever.
The lard has to come in a tight white pack.
The lard must almost catch fire in the oven.
The oven door must open and you must shout
JESUS CHRIST as the heat smacks you in the chops.
Follow these rules
And the puddings will rise to heaven
And far beyond.
Really loved this. Funny how the simplest of ingredients make our dearest dishes, and the simpler the ingredients, the more skill needed to bring them together just so
That would have been very difficult becoming a mother and grieving the loss of your own mum. I hear it was complex yet I honour the journey you have had with mothering ... and in this story, food.
My mum also had a box of index cards... a colour set purchased from say, Women's Weekly maybe and amongst them her handwritten ones in her lovely neat writing. I loved looking through those colour photos of dishes. Yorkshire puddings... we would love the Sunday Roast and had these regardless of the type of meat on the plate! Thank you for sharing your story.
We need the recipe!
My mom had the task of feeding a family of eleven each day for close to twenty years. I recall one of her dinners of spaghetti and meatballs (usually a favorite of mine). On this evening, mom had no jar of tomato sauce in the cupboard and improvised by using a can of tomato soup instead. “Yuck”, was the reaction from me and my siblings. But my dad was perfectly content and slurped down the meal with delight. Hmmm.
In thinking about my mom, she left us with a simple recipe for living: “just love, love, love.”
I often cook biscuits (cookies) with my 3 year old granddaughter. She is an expert egg cracker. But I don’t use recipes because I know after decades of cooking what the consistency should be. And I just go with whatever is in the cupboard or fridge anyway. I’ve noticed the richness of the language I use to describe what we’re adding - a dash of this, a sprinkle of that, a dollop, a spoonful, a splash, a pinch, a square, a handful and then the standard descriptors - teaspoonful, tablespoon, cupful, half a cup, or just whatever is left in the jar. Then we mix and mash and beat and stir and mould and knead and roll and cut and spoon onto the tray and into the oven.
So, no recipe, just fun with language.
I love your attention to the imagistic descriptions of amounts. A few years ago I volunteered to write out the recipes a good friend of mine made and then photograph the results. After listening to “a dash” of this, or a sprinkle of that, we finally decided to forgo trying to capture her recipes and stick with the photos of the results. The lyricism of the way my friend cooks just needed to live on without being pinned like butterflies to a board. Your response brought this memory to mind. Thank you.
Lovely words! So playful!
I love that you have gathered all those words in one place!
Okay, here's a go. :-) This is a great prompt. Looking forward to playing with it some more. Thanks, Padraigh.
Oscar Meyer on a stick
over sticks gathered
from the bounty of
forest
turned into flame and
roasting tools
and burnt marshmallows,
melting chocolate
and lightning bugs, whirring crickets,
the comfort of down
and being a child in the
magic of the woods
and then
the magic of my children
eating from sticks
and sleeping in piles all around me.
Brings alive so many memories!
❤️ “piles”
i can feel the warm skin of the magic children
I can taste the sweetness of the marshmallow on my tongue!
Bright as the sun
this perfect quadrilateral
sits on a plate
having been dusted with white snowy powder
with no boundaries
A tangy scent of citrus
rises to meet your tongue’s waiting drippy palate
(It’s not a recipe, but I LOVE Lemon Squares! 🍋)
How many people, if two
Two fillet of catfish
Mix equal parts lime and olive oil
Massage fillets, both sides
Mix ingredients for
Sumac rub, to be
Slathered onto fillet
Just before disappearing
Into the pre-heated oven
As the fish cooks
Build up the green sauce
Leafy and well
Seasoned
To be dolloped
Unto fish on your plate
Just before you open your mouth
And chew.
Did I say quinoa too.🏮
Fun poem! It captures the spirit of playful no -measurement! I especially like the last line -almost tempted to leave out one ingredient, but at the last minute…. Joyous!
superbly done!
An overnight poolish - equal weights white flour and water and just a couple pinches of yeast - bubbly and earthy, sweaty by morning. More flours - white, whole wheat, maybe some rye, wheat germ, bran, don't forget the salt, and a little more yeast, all mixed and set to rise, folded twice, formed into a round for a last proof, finally into a hot Dutch oven within the oven. Delicious smells morphing over the hours, out of the oven 18 hours after the poolish started, half an hour to cool. Butter the first slice and words fail. (Harvest Bread, Ken Forkish in "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast).
We chilly autumnal New Hampshirites are surrounded by historic, pick-your-own fruit farms, so lucky! Apple picking extends for months and our favorite recipe after the bumpety bump wagon pulled by hand, the metal ladders, the goat petting, the round twist and tug and clear-your-conscience box, is this: scrub, chop, fry in butter, sprinkle with cinnamon, last few seconds a generous local maple syrup bath. Be sure to scoot it all around with a spatula until your heart, nose and gathering teenagers tell you it’s ready. Eat as is, hot, gooey, or over vanilla ice cream, waffles, pancakes. You get the idea.
I can taste that gooey goodness! I live in NH too.
And how about Apple cider doughnuts! We pick our freedom apples off our trees and make Apple coder doughnut muffins. Yum!
Divine!
Delicious!
I love making bread. I love kneading dough, the aroma of the dough as it rises in a warm place. The place of rising dough used to be on top of the steam heat radiator that kept us warm even in the middle of a North Dakota winter.
Flour (half whole wheat, half high protein bread flour), water, yeast, salt, butter, an egg, and honey. I get to think of my old friend John K who shared his recipe with me each time I make it. Stir ingredients with the sturdy worn-smooth wooden spoon that was your mother-in-law’s. Stir until the spoon no longer can move the dough in the pan. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Delicious to feel this sticky dough texture between and stuck to fingers. Incorporate more flour as you knead, spreading it onto the wooden table ahead of the dough; always a trick to add enough, but not too much. Knead to music on the radio; wonder if the songs playing affect the outcome of the loaves. Knead in a rhythm- push out, fold, turn. Knead until the dough becomes “smooth as a baby’s bottom.”
Spread a thin layer of butter of butter across the interior of an orange mottled melamine bowl. Let it rest in a warm place on top of the radiator while the yeast grows the mass until double in size (a miracle, really). Scrape the dough flour mess off the table. Prepare the pans.
When the dough is double-dough, punch it! gently down. Cut it in half with the dough scraper. “Form into a loaf” is what the recipes will tell you, and I never have found the best way to do that, but it turns out anyway. Place dough in pans, back to the radiator, cover with a damp cotton dish towel, and let it rise again.
Make sure to move anything you have stored in the oven out, and move the oven racks to the center of the oven. Remove the damp towel from covering the loaves; pray the towel doesn’t stick to the loaves.
Bake at 350, or is it 375 degrees F?, until the bread is a golden color. Remove pans from oven and place them on their sides onto a cooling rack. Take the bread from the pans and set loaves upright to cool. (Ha! It smells so wonderful that you take a serrated knife to the bread while still hot, hack off a large slice, and eat it!)
I really liked how I was able to imagine your family connections and kitchen through the recipe. It reminded me of the well handled ordinary tools that have been with us for years that are hand me downs from relatives, our inheritance from them
can we also talk about that glorious sandwich from Wo Chan’s “the smiley barista”?! love the red thread of sensuality of things sweating in butter
When our daughter Madelaine was about eight and perhaps starting to take notice of little boys - she asked me how her Papa and I met. Oh, dear, I thought, I knew this day would come. "Papa came for dinner and he never left." There was a long pause, then in a voice ethereal with wonder, she asked, "What did you cook?" What indeed. Cream cheese slathered in king crab, topped with sauce of some kind and served on crackers, whole leg of lamb smothered in garlic, olive oil and fresh rosemary, roasted potatoes, french flageolets in all the drippings, lots of wine, I am sure, and somehow or another a five inch high homemade New York Cheesecake with fresh raspberries. January 1st, 1978. No wonder he never left.
But what I still wonder is how was all that food in the fridge of my little third floor walk up when I had only agreed to a New Year's Eve dinner date? A great snow storm descends. His flight home hours late. Me drunk on another man's champagne - well, what is a girl to do all dressed up and stranded at home with a large magnum staring her in the face - driving out to the airport at 4 in the morning - yes, that is correct, driving along a completely closed due to snow storm highway - not sober - he no doubt drunk too as the airlines tried to keep everyone happy, both exhausted and this fridge full of astonishments - and me, well, newly arrived home from living in France, so, I can cook. And I do.
Do angels work overtime on New Year's Eve? I think they lay aside their cards and Cosmopolitans, play nurse maid to our madness, and sprinkle fairy dust on our brave endeavors, which you must know truly, is the secret ingredient to all culinary adventures be it soup or leg of lamb......
Thank you for the prompt, Pádraig. Salteñas are the first thing that pop into my head- the delicious Bolivian version of an empanada- but special in its simplicity. It was the food offered at most households/ restaurants, in my first out of country experience right out of high school, working with the National Health organization in a rural childhood inoculation campaign with Amigos de las Americas. Salteñas were the beautiful centerpieces on the table- standing upright, not lying down- usually baked, sometimes fried- spicy filling of sweet-savory meat, potatoes, peas, an olive with a pit, raisins, parsley and a 1/4 of a hard boiled egg. I made many attempts at replicating the recipe- the hardest part was the dough- texture and taste- and even when I got it ‘right’ I had to adjust the recipe for those not experienced with Salteñas— turn down the spice (my favorite part, but too much for many) as well as take out the olive with pit- to save teeth and, well the egg was a lot of work and not appreciated… That’s the continued joy of travel, returning home and attempting to make a dish that was core to the travel memory… a way to recall and sustain the essence and ambiance of a time and place- to share that back at home. And somehow, in the efforts, however close you come to the recipe- it’s never quite the same… people, event, moment, which keeps those memories quite apart yet close
My grandmother’s handwriting on the recipe card…that’s the IT thing for me. I can barely make out the ingredients in her old-fashioned, loopy cursive but the ingredients don’t matter. Thinking of her taking her pen to her recipe card and saving the recipe for her future generations…that’s what matters.
I love hand-written recipes; how we can connect with the hands (and heart) of the writer.
I have recipes from my grandmother too. I think my most tangible memories of her are food memories...how she used a fork to make the pattern on the top of peanut butter cookies...her garden grown tomatoes (especially the small yellow pear tomatoes)...the way she always put ice in our water and used fancy crystal glasses that let the water form little rivers of condensation on the sides...the dried gravy on her fancy tablecloths that never seemed to bother her...the way she made made green beans and endive into wondrous things...measuring salt (or was it sugar?) in the palm of her hand...and her gigantic dining table which I loved to camp out underneath (I thought nobody knew I was there, though they surely did) when I was little...it seems nearly sacramental to me now. Thank you Aimee for bringing this all back to me.
Gracie, first generation American raised in Manhattan amongst newly arrived Germans Theresa Minck, bone thin stood at her kitchen table rolling pastry, quietly. Clock ticking sun rise glowing through the window where I “showed the birdies” my empty plate, she welcomed me with her quiet acceptance and unconditional love offered while stirring apple slices with butter and brown sugar patted into her pie shell then blanketed with another layer of her mysterious mixture of flour and water fashioned into dough, carefully crimped and placed in the oven. Love was given generously in this spare kitchen by a spare woman who had spare language. Her love, acceptance and approval is my steadfastness. No words needed here, you are welcome, but Gracie told me with her presence as unforgettable as her apple pie.