Food fantasy

"I have a food fantasy.

"When Iris is six, I'm going to take her to Tokyo. Just the two of us, dad and daughter, in the big city, kickin' it Japanese-style.

"Laurie will stay home, because - this is her only fault - she doesn't like Japanese food. Sometimes she comes along for sushi, but she says it makes her feel like a philistine, because she only eats the easy bits, like tempura.

"So, while Laurie eats whatever it is she eats when we're not around, Iris and I will eat at a skeezy yakitori joint and enjoy char-grilled chicken parts on a stick. We'll go to an eel restaurant and eat several courses of eel, my favorite fish. Iris's favorite is mackerel, so we'll also eat plenty of salt-broiled mackerel, saba shioyaki, tearing off fatty bits with our chopsticks. We will eat our weight in rice..."

Matthew Amster-Burton in "Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater"

Old-school

Bring us some figgy pudding and bring it right here...

Figgy Pudding

from Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell's "The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Dessert Cookbook"

softened butter for the pan
1 1/2 cups water
3/4 pound plump, dried figs, stems removed, cut into small bits
3 Tbsp. orange liqueur
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned into cup and leveled off)
1 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
2 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
3 large eggs
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
8 Tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups fresh bread crumbs (white or whole wheat)
ice cream or whipped cream, for serving (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Generously butter an 8- to 10-cup tube pan or metal steamed pudding mold with a top.

In a small saucepan, combine the water and figs. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce to a bare simmer, cover, and cook for 20 minutes, or until the figs are very tender. Remove from the heat, but don't drain. Stir in the orange liqueur.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt.

In a bowl, with an electric mixer, beat together the eggs and granulated and brown sugars until well combined. Beat in the butter and bread crumbs. Stir in the figs and soaking liquid. Fold in the flour mixture. Scrape the batter into the pan. If using a tube pan, cover the top with a double thickness of foil and place a pot lid that will fit snugly on top. If using a steamed pudding mold, close the top.

Place the pan in a roasting pan and pour hot water to come halfway up the sides of the pan. Bake for 2 hours, or until the pudding is firm and starts to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Remove the pan from the water bath and cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Run a spatula around the sides and center tube and invert the pudding onto a serving platter. Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream, if desired. Makes 12 servings.

Priorities

"And I had but one penny in the world. Thou should'st have it to buy gingerbread."

William Shakespeare in "Love's Labours Lost"

Winter white chocolate

White Chocolate-Cherry-Carrot Cookies

from Michelle Obama's "American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America"

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups (packed) light brown sugar
1 Tbsp. mild honey
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup dried cherries
1/4 cup toasted chopped macadamia nuts (optional)
2 ounces white chocolate, chopped into small pieces, or white chocolate chips
1 cup finely grated carrots

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the rack in the center of the oven.

Sift together the flour with the baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the butter, brown sugar, honey and vanilla until smooth. Add the eggs and mix until well combined. Scrape down the bowl.

On low speed, add the cherries, nuts and chocolate. Scrape down the bowl.

Stop the mixer and add one-third of the flour mixture. Turn to low speed and combine. Stop the mixer again, add the rest of the flour mixture, and combine on low speed.

Add the carrots, and mix on low speed until incorporated. The batter will be stiff.

Using a standard ice cream scoop or a heaped tablespoon, drop batter in mounds, 2 inches apart, onto a parchment-covered cookie sheet.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, remove from the oven and allow the cookies to cool completely before removing them from the cookie sheet. Makes approximately 24 cookies.

Sweet ginger

Because it is apparently National Cupcake Day.

Beyond gold

"There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

J.R.R. Tolkien in "The Hobbit"

Soup is good food

When people in the Northwest talk about the incessant rain, I look out my window and curse the blue sky. More sun in California. I long for wet winters in Oregon and the afternoons I spent years ago in my studio apartment cooking soup. A pot would last a week.

I am reminded of the energizing chill in that corner of the country, the smell of the air outside after a night of hard rain and the red scarf that helped to keep me warm. Soft and thick, it was one of my favorite items of clothing. It now sits neatly folded near the bottom of a dresser drawer, mostly untouched.

When friends in New England speak of the biting cold, I sympathize. They grumble about the low temperatures and slick pavements; I worry about their health and safety. But I envy them as well. When they describe the icy weather, I think of the small, cozy kitchens to which they will eventually return.

I imagine the steam rising from the bowls of soup they will undoubtedly enjoy: hearty chowders prepared with russet potatoes, chopped clams and heavy cream, spicy gumbos simmered with chunks of seafood, meat and vegetables. I get nostalgic for places I am not.

On cold days in the Bay Area, when close friends and neighbors complain about falling temperatures and increasingly wet roads, I smile surreptitiously. Deep down, I welcome the wild weather. Finally, there is an excuse to make soup. Craving things like split pea and barley, I eagerly dig into recipes collected from books and magazines.

One rainy afternoon, I consider making a pea and ham soup by Australian food writer Donna Hay or a squash, parma ham hock, sage, onion and barley broth from British chef Jamie Oliver. In the end, I settle on hamburger barley soup, made from a recipe given to me years ago by an older sister. It promises to be easy and satisfying, tasty and comforting.

First, I brown the beef. Ground turkey could substitute well, too; I make a mental note for the future. Using a pot instead of a frying pan helps to facilitate cleanup. Into that large pot, I add chopped tomatoes, tomato juice, water, vegetables, seasonings and barley, saving the carrots and potatoes for later. When things come to a boil, the heat gets turned down.

As the soup simmers, I work on other things. I write. I wander through the house, tidying up the living room and bedroom. I flip on the radio. I surf the Internet.

Roughly 45 minutes later, back in the kitchen, now warm and fragrant, the colors in the pot are impressive: deep reds, dark and light greens, sprinkles of black. Carrots and potatoes go in next, giving the dish additional colors and textures.

While the ingredients continue to cook, I grab my keys, my coat and my red scarf, and head for the front door. I go for a walk around the neighborhood. The chill in the air outside keeps me alert. Life is good, I tell myself, wiping a raindrop from my forehead. When I return, there will be soup.

(A version of this essay appeared originally on www.npr.org.)

Turkey Day

Because it is silly and so over the top.

Taking it slow

"You're living a slow life when you gather seashells along the shore, feed a campfire, visit a nearly empty museum on a weekday morning, talk late into the night, read an ink-on-paper book cover to cover without stopping to do much else, and, I would say, if you take the time to be bored. 

"Part of being civilized is not just being slow but occasionally coming to a stop, establishing a point of reference for the moment when you start moving again. When you stop you aren't really stopping, of course, because that's often when good ideas rise to the surface..."

Edward Behr in "Slow Cooking, Slow Eating" from "Best Food Writing 2013"

Ramen done right

"In Japan, ramen is much more than a tasty bowl of noodles - it borders on an obsession. Forget that cheapo 'cup ramen' you downed to fuel college all-nighters. What we're talking about is perfection in a bowl: a rich broth labored over for hours; fresh, springy wheat noodles; savory, mouthwatering seasonings; and toppings like slices of tender braised meat and creamy soft-boiled egg. 

"But ramen isn't some high-concept cuisine, and that's the beauty of it. These noodles can be one of the most amazing things you've ever tasted, but this dish is about as down-home and down-to-earth as it gets." 

Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat in "Japanese Soul Cooking: Ramen, Tonkatsu, Tempura, and More from the Streets and Kitchens of Tokyo and Beyond"

Frightful

Because we couldn't resist.

Noodle pull

"I knew that I wanted a bright, modern place, but it had to be unmistakable as a ramen shop. I was a gaijin trying to break into the highly scrutinized, carefully documented, publicly policed world capital of noodle shops. There would be people ready to harp on every missed detail. 

"We ultimately decided to keep the bones of the old shop, but jazzed up the counter with a dark wood-grain laminate, squared off the corners, and added steel trim. We added lighting above and below the bar.

"Most ramen shops have stools for seating, and generally they're the most uncomfortable stools you can find. Ramen shops are all about fast turnover, and owners don't want customers to feel like they can hang around.

"But I wanted my business to be focused on service, just like Lutece had been all those years earlier. I bought nice comfortable stools with backs and decided to worry about shooing customers out the door later."

Ivan Orkin in "Ivan Ramen: Love, Obsession, and Recipes from Tokyo's Most Unlikely Noodle Joint"

Mac and cheese 2.0

Point Reyes Original Blue with Pecans, Figs and Shells

from Stephanie Stiavetti and Garrett McCord's "Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese"

1/2 cup pecans
3 Tbsp. butter
12 ounces whole wheat shell pasta
4 ounces Point Reyes Original Blue, coarsely crumbled
3/4 cup chopped mission figs
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

Place the pecans in a single layer on a baking sheet. Roast in a 350-degree F oven for 7 minutes. Set aside to cool. Once they're cooled, chop the pecans coarsely.

Heat a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat. Add the butter and cook. The butter will foam and then subside. Eventually, lightly browned specks will form on the bottom of the pan. The butter will turn a light brown and begin to smell nutty. Be sure to keep an eye on it, as it can go from brown to black in an instant. Remove from the heat immediately and pour into a bowl.

Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water until al dente. Drain through a colander. Place back in the pot with the heat still on. Combine the noodles with the brown butter and Point Reyes Original Blue and gently toss until the cheese has softened and melted a little. Add the pecans and figs and continue tossing. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve. Makes 4 servings.

Provence

"It was the question of France that loomed largest, and meant the most, for all of them. The very idea of transcendent cooking, of cooking as an art form, the rituals of haute cuisine, the luxury and decadence of a bearnaise sauce or mille-feuille pastry, the wit of the seminal gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the knowledge of chefs Marie-Antoine Careme and Auguste Escoffier - that was all French, and always had been.

"But a seismic shift was in the offing. And there was no better place to see it coming, to feel the looming, moving fault lines, than in the steep, rocky hills of Provence in late 1970."

Luke Barr in "Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste"

How sweet

Because the morning - cold and hazy and moody - calls for something sweet.

Autumn apples

Low-hanging fruit.

Shocking

Shocking Pink Pasta

from Clotilde Dusoulier's "The French Market Cookbook: Vegetarian Recipes from My Parisian Kitchen"

12 ounces beets, peeled and diced
1 cup light whipping cream or unsweetened non-dairy cream alternative, such as soy or rice
1 clove garlic
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. whole cumin seeds or 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1 pound pasta, such as spaghetti, bucatini or linguine
freshly ground black pepper
1 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
2/3 cup almonds, toasted and roughly chopped

In a food processor or blender, combine the beets, cream, garlic, salt and cumin. Process until smooth.

Bring salted water to a boil in a large pot. Add the pasta and cook until it's a minute shy of al dente. Drain, return the pasta to the pot, and fold in the sauce. Return to medium heat and cook until heated through and al dente, about 1 minute.

Divide among warm bowls, sprinkle with pepper, and top with the parsley and almonds. Serve immediately. Makes 4 servings.

"Notes" from Nigel

"We can either treat food as nothing more than fuel or relish its every quality. We can think of preparing it as something to get done as quickly and effortlessly as possible or as something to find pleasure in, something to enrich our everyday life, to have fun with...

"I am not a chef and never have been. I am a home cook who writes about food. Not even a passionate cook (whatever one of those is), just a quietly enthusiastic and slightly greedy one. But, I like to think, a thoughtful one. Someone who cares about what they feed themselves and others, where the ingredients come from, when and why they are at their best, and how to use them to give everyone, including the cook, the most pleasure..."

Nigel Slater in "Notes from the Larder: A Kitchen Diary with Recipes"

Autumn linguine

Linguine with Mushroom Bacon Sauce

from Michelle Obama's "American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America"

1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
4 slices bacon, cut into small pieces
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, chopped
1 1/2 pounds shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, sliced 1/4-inch thick
1 cup half-and-half
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken stock
1 14-1/2-ounce box whole-wheat linguine
zest and juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
salt
freshly ground black pepper

In a large saucepan over medium heat, drizzle in the olive oil and add the butter. Add the bacon and cook for about 2 minutes. Add the garlic and onion and cook until translucent, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes, until fragrant, stirring occasionally.

Add the half-and-half and chicken stock and let simmer for about 10 minutes.

While the sauce is cooking, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the pasta for about 8 minutes, until al dente.

Drain the pasta and add it to the saucepan. Add the lemon zest and juice, parsley and Parmesan. Toss the pasta with the sauce until thoroughly coated. Season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately on a warmed platter. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Making meat

"On the shelves of the Fatted Calf charcuterie, you'll find buckets brimming with salt and stacked containers crammed with whole spices. Tubs of garlic, onions and shallots are stored underneath trays of drying lavender, thyme and oregano.

"Baskets of chanterelles and bins of herbs and citrus are kept in the cooler. Stashes of dried apricots and porcini sit alongside jars of dried arbols and cayennes. Meat makes up the core of the charcuterie, but our pantry provides us with a palette of flavors with which to work."

Taylor Boetticher and Toponia Miller in their book "In the Charcuterie: The Fatted Calf's Guide to Making Sausage, Salumi, Pates, Roasts, Confits and Other Meaty Goods"

What we eat

"A certain logic dictates why we eat three meals a day, not two or four; why table manners are standard at dinner when hardly any social rules apply to breakfast; why we consume orange juice in the morning and sandwiches at lunch; why people snack on peanuts at circuses and hot dogs at baseball parks.

"There are even reasons for garnishing casseroles with potato chips and calling TV dinners 'TV dinners,' even though manufacturers did not originally intend for consumers to eat them in front of a TV. This book is about those reasons."

Abigail Carroll in "Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal"

The cheesiest

Homeroom in junior high school was a bust, from what I remember. But Homeroom, the mac and cheese place in Oakland, is a little gem of a restaurant. Co-owners Allison Arevalo and Erin Wade have put out a little gem of a cookbook, too, with tons of recipes.
 
Tuna Mac
 
from Allison Arevalo and Erin Wade's "The Mac + Cheese Cookbook: 50 Simple Recipes from Homeroom, America's Favorite Mac and Cheese Restaurant"
 
for the pasta: 

1/2 pound dried elbow pasta

Cook the pasta in salted boiling water until a little less than al dente. Drain, rinse the pasta with cold water, and drain it again.

for the tuna salad:
 
16 ounces canned tuna in water, drained
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
2 Tbsp. drained capers
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
2 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 to 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper  

To make the salad: 

In a bowl, combine all the ingredients until they are incorporated and evenly distributed. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

for the Mac Sauce:

3 cups whole milk
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp. kosher salt or 1 tsp. table salt  

To make the sauce: 

Heat the milk in a pot over medium heat until it just starts to bubble, but is not boiling, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from the heat.  

Heat the butter over medium heat in a separate, heavy-bottomed pot. When the butter has just melted, add the flour and whisk constantly until the mixture turns light brown, about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Slowly pour the warm milk, about 1 cup at a time, into the butter-flour mixture, whisking constantly. It will get very thick when you first add the milk, and thinner as you slowly pour in the entire 3 cups. This is normal.  

Once all the milk has been added, set the pot back over medium-high heat, and continue to whisk constantly. In the next 2 to 3 minutes the sauce should come together and become silky and thick. Add the salt.

The Mac Sauce is ready to use immediately and does not need to cool. Store it in the fridge for a day or two if you want to make it ahead of time. It will get a lot thicker when put in the fridge, so it may need a little milk to thin it out a bit when it comes time to melt in the cheese. Try melting the cheese into the sauce first, and if it is too thick, then add milk as needed. Makes 3 cups.
 
for the Mac:

2 cups of Mac Sauce 
2 cups grated Havarti cheese
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
1 cup crushed potato chips or crushed oyster crackers, for topping (optional)
 
To make the Mac: 

Add the sauce, the Havarti, 1 cup of the tuna salad (save the rest for a sandwich or whatever else you'd like), and the peas to a large, heavy-bottomed pot and cook over medium heat. Stir until the cheese is barely melted, about 3 minutes. Slowly add the cooked pasta, stir, and continue cooking while stirring continuously until the dish is nice and hot, another 5 minutes.

Spoon into bowls, top with crushed potato chips or crushed crackers, and serve. Makes 4 servings.

On change

"I'm also the girl who took the same lunch to school every single day for the first fourteen years of her life. Every single day. The contents of the brown bag were as follows: carrot sticks, two cookies, and Peter Pan creamy peanut butter on whole wheat bread. There was no jam, no jelly, no crunchy peanut butter, no natural peanut butter, no white bread, no seeded bread, and no change.

"Sometimes I think my taste buds may be the eighth wonder of the world. How they survived such monotony is one of the great mysteries of our time...

"I am happy to report, though, that in recent years, I've been working on getting friendlier with change, and with its cousin, flexibility. Growing up has helped a lot... It's a lot more fun this way. No one ever got laid because they wrote it into their day planner.

"Which, I guess, brings me to a larger, more serious point: that it's hard to love someone, I've found, when you're preoccupied with holding your entire world firmly in place. Loving someone requires a certain amount of malleability, a willingness to be pulled along, at least occasionally, by another person's will..."

Molly Wizenberg in "A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table"

For keeps

"Cooking should be fun, empowering even, at least some of the time. 

"Put on your favorite music, pour a glass of wine, admire how a sharp knife slices through a ripe tomato, savor the aroma of a roasting chicken, congratulate yourself on how evenly you seared the salmon, dip some bread into simmering tomato sauce. 

"When you start to enjoy the process of cooking, not just the result, everything else gets easier, too."

Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion in "Keepers: Two Home Cooks Share Their Tried-and-True Weeknight Recipes and the Secrets to Happiness in the Kitchen"

Piece of cake

If only it was that easy...

Curly corn

Fusilli with Corn Sauce

from Joe Yonan's "Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook"

3 ounces whole wheat fusilli, farfalle or other curly pasta
2 ears fresh corn
1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 large onion, chopped (about 3/4 cup)
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
2 Tbsp. freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese
salt
freshly ground black pepper
4 fresh basil leaves, stacked, rolled and thinly sliced

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the pasta until it is al dente.

While the pasta is cooking, shuck the corn and rinse it under running water, removing as many of the silks as you can with your hands. Rub one of the ears over a coarse grater set over a bowl to catch the milk and pulp. Cut the kernels off the other cob with a knife; keep the whole kernels separate from the milk and pulp.

Pour the oil into a large skillet set over medium heat. When the oil starts to shimmer, add the onion and garlic and saute until tender. Add the corn kernels and saute for just a few minutes, until the corn softens slightly and brightens in color. Stir in the corn milk and pulp and turn off the heat. Cover to keep warm.

When the pasta is al dente, drain it (reserving 1/2 cup of the pasta water) and add it to the skillet with the corn sauce. Toss to combine, adding a little pasta water if the sauce needs loosening. Stir in the cheese, then taste and add salt as needed and grind in plenty of fresh black pepper. Stir in the basil, scoop everything into a bowl, and eat. Makes 1 serving.

Just because

Besides, it is too pretty to not photograph.

Apron strings

Back in the day, cooks at home — my mother among them — wore aprons.

She wore one in the kitchen when she peeled and chopped vegetables, prepped fish in the sink, and stir-fried meats in a well-seasoned wok, the ventilation fan whirling overhead. She wore one outside the kitchen when she brought plates of food to the dining table and cleared the dishes afterward.

My mother put on an apron automatically, like a second layer of clothing. She picked up a knife or a spatula with one hand, an apron with the other. She protected her dresses from spills and splatters. She alternated among four or five aprons and washed them in the machine with the rest of our laundry.

She wore floral prints in reds and yellows, and styles with flat fronts and decorative hems. In the pockets, my mother stashed Kleenex. She sewed her own aprons, customizing them to suit her small frame. (Back in the day, people at home sewed.)

These days, it seems, cooks at home seldom wear aprons. Not the ladies on the Food Network. Not when they chop onions on a board or grill meats on the stovetop. In front of cameras, under the lights, they hardly worry about spills or splatters.

Sandra Lee, Ingrid Hoffmann and the incessantly perky Rachael Ray tend to wear form-fitting V-neck or scoop-neck tops and tees in their television kitchens. They never get flour in their impeccably styled hair. They never spill a thing on their undeniably fashionable outfits. It is, of course, make-believe.

In my local newspaper a short while back, I learn of a great-grandmother in an Oakland suburb with a remarkable collection of more than 200 aprons.

The oldest, the reporter noted, is a flour-sack apron from a century ago. (I'm not sure what that is, really, but it doesn't sound entirely flattering.) One of the newest is a full-length barbecue apron with large pockets and the words "Sexy Senior Citizen."

"Put on an apron and tie it," the collector told the reporter, as gently and sweetly as a great-grandmother would. "The tighter you tie it, the bigger the hug."

But the article doesn't tell me everything. I do not know, for instance, how the woman acquires her aprons. Does she shop actively for them or receive them as presents? (Both perhaps.) Where does she keep them? How does she sort them? By color? Fabric? Which ones does she actually wear? Most of all, what does she cook?

Aprons, I realize, have long been synonymous with domesticity. They have been linked inevitably to physical work on farms and in kitchens.

"Homesteading alongside the men," Ellyn Anne Geisel writes in "The Apron Book: Making, Wearing and Sharing a Bit of Cloth and Comfort," "women tucked their dresses into apron waistbands to clear and plow the fields, then unfurled the aprons to carry grain to the chickens, gather eggs and harvest vegetables from the garden."

In the years following World War II, the garments grew increasingly popular among middle-class housewives, Geisel notes. The designs at that time reflected "their aspirations to be modern, social and stylish. Fabrics were bold with color, and adornments became more playful."

Eventually, there were theme aprons and holiday aprons, and aprons that matched potholders or tablecloths. There were aprons that sported cartoon graphics or witty phrases. There were casual aprons made of cotton and fancy aprons made of silk, organza or taffeta. There were practical aprons, like my mother's, and not-so-practical aprons.

Most home cooks these days, I suspect, prefer function to form. They would do without trims or ruffles, selecting comfortable, straightforward bib aprons in a range of colors.

I take an informal poll among friends my age. Some have aprons, others don't. Some wear aprons, others don't.

Sunah, for example, bought a cute apron a short while ago, but seldom uses it. She doesn't want to get it dirty, she says. I laugh. It is black and white with illustrations of fish, fruits and condiments. The creases of the original folds are still visible.

Cynthia owns a couple of aprons. On a trip to Italy last fall, she says, she bought another one as a souvenir. It has different breads across the front. But alas, she seldom wears any of them.

(This from a woman who collects recipes and cookbooks religiously, who has been known to make cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning, and rugelach, brownies and chocolate-chip cookies for various potlucks — from scratch. Surely, she must put on an apron then, right?)

Jamie, for his part, says he doesn't wear a thing when he, ahem, cooks in the kitchen. He's got a wicked sense of humor, I remind myself. He tries to take the conversation to a whole other place. But I don't let him.

Do many my age eschew aprons? I wonder. Is it an either/or? Do we pride ourselves on not wearing aprons, occasionally not even owning one, as if domesticity was something to be frowned upon? As if our education and experience ought to keep us away from the stove?

Our hectic lives take us inside courtrooms and conference rooms. They chain us to our desks and chairs. They make us stay in front of our computers. Work we do now is often unlike work our mothers did, and work our grandmothers and great-grandmothers did before them.

Perhaps we don't need aprons in the kitchen if we're simply taking delivery pizzas out of cardboard boxes and putting them onto plates. We don't need them if we're moving plastic containers from freezers into microwaves. We don't need them if we're eating cereal for supper.

I, for one, like to think I can have it both ways.

Like my friends, I spend decent chunks of time at a computer, reading, researching, writing and editing, working. My mind is often preoccupied. I can't be bothered with food.

On the other hand, I am like my mother. Is this what I have secretly feared? In the kitchen, when I make it there, I do my best to not be wasteful. I reuse pieces of aluminum foil if I can and takeout containers when possible.

In front of the stove, at the chopping board, I wear an apron. Always. Not the floral prints or decorative hems my mother favored, but the simple patterns and solid colors I prefer. I reach for an apron on Wednesday nights, for instance, when I carve out time to try new recipes. I rinse my hands quickly and wipe them on my hips. I turn on the radio for company.

I pull one on over my pajamas bright and early Sunday mornings, before I've even washed the sleep from my eyes or brushed my teeth, to measure flour and sugar for cobbler or coffeecake. The anticipation builds. I reward myself at the end of a busy week and the beginning of another.

I make a mess on the counter without making a mess on myself. I tie the apron tight.

(A version of this essay appeared originally at www.culinate.com.)

On breakfast

The hobbits had it right all along, Heather Arndt Anderson says. Their lives in the shire afforded them six meals a day, "three of which (occurred) before lunch: breakfast, second breakfast, and elevenses..." J.R.R. Tolkien was onto something. 

In her literary paean to the morning meal, "Breakfast: A History," Anderson provides historical, social and cultural perspectives on breakfast consumption. She occasionally references foods traditionally eaten in other countries, looking at jook (rice porridge) in China, for example, and platters of "fresh-baked flatbread with spreadable yogurt cheese called labneh or crumbly feta cheese, olives, figs and cucumbers" in the Middle East.

For the most part, however, the author focuses on matutinal meals in the United States and by extension England. 

She gives beverages such as coffee, tea and orange juice their due. Coffee "as it is known today," for example, became popular in "Europe and the Americas by the mid-17th century."

She provides significant background on the cold-cereal industry and major players like Kellogg and Post, and describes many of the ways people like to eat their eggs in the morning, whether scrambled, fried or soft-boiled...

Further talk of where people actually have their breakfasts sometimes – in B&Bs, for example, coffeehouses, diners, mess halls and school cafeterias – enliven the narrative as well. They help to round out her well-researched but not overwhelming discussion, a nice addition to the ever-growing food-studies field.

(A version of this review appeared originally at Publishers Weekly.) 

Peachy keen

Usually a ripe peach in and of itself is perfect enough. Sometimes, though, a little dressing-up is equally fine.

One-Peach Crisp with Cardamom and Honey

from Joe Yonan's "Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook"

1 large ripe peach, halved and pitted
1 to 2 tsp. honey
1/8 tsp. ground cardamom
1/3 cup granola, preferably one with nuts and dried fruit
ice cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Put the peach halves, cut sides up, in a small baking dish. Drizzle with 1 teaspoon of the honey and sprinkle with the cardamom.

If the granola includes dried fruit, pick out the fruit pieces and reserve them. Pack the granola onto the peach halves. If your granola isn't on the sweet side, feel free to drizzle on the remaining 1 teaspoon of honey.

Bake the peach until it is soft when you pierce it with a fork, about 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from the oven, let cool for a few minutes, then sprinkle with the dried fruit reserved from the granola. Add the scoop of ice cream and eat it while it's warm. Makes 1 serving. 

Plum perfect

It is a plum polenta upside-down cake from Sweet Bar Bakery. It is sweet indeed. Plum perfect.

Love and pasta

"I'd heard that snacking and small dishes called meze were a big part of Turkish cuisine, but I hadn't expected the diversity. 

"Bites of seafood ranged from fried mussels bathed in a sauce of lemon, bread crumbs and ground walnuts to pickled herring stuffed with olives and bell peppers.

"The intense sweets included fried balls of dough basted in thick honey to chewy squares of Turkish delight dusted with powdered sugar and infused with different fruits or exotic flavorings, such as mastic, a tree sap that tasted like earthy spearmint. 

"And there were heavenly slices of flaky baklava crammed with pistachios and drenched in syrup, in a shop that smelled of warm butter."

Jen Lin-Liu in "On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta"

Summer pie

There is nothing like hours of Garrison Keillor live on stage to inspire strawberry and rhubarb pie days later. And so strawberry and rhubarb pie it is.

Food positive

Food blogger and neuroscientist Darya Pino Rose maintains her weight, she says proudly and sheepishly, by eating whatever she wants. And what she wants is "healthy food most of the time." She seldom craves sweets. 

In her food-positive self-help volume "Foodist: Using Real Food and Real Science to Lose Weight Without Dieting," Rose rejects deprivation: "Shouldn't there be more to life than constantly denying yourself the things you enjoy?" She bemoans regimens such as Atkins and Weight Watchers. 

Instead, in addition to what we eat, she encourages readers to pay attention to how and why we eat. These elements can significantly impact long-term health. 

She coins cringe-worthy terms like "foodist" and "healthstyle." Her discussion can get awkward amid amateurish writing. And she pulls quotes from random places (Yoda, for one).

For the most part, however, Rose does a decent job laying out a good-food plan. She offers advice on shopping and cooking, provides workable lists for well-stocked pantries and gathers key points into occasional sidebars: "Nine Surefire Ways to Sabotage Your Weight Loss," "The Top 10 Most Underrated Health Foods," "Forty-Two Code Words for Sugar." 

Although nothing in Rose's book is earth-shattering news, the enthusiasm with which she delivers it remains accessible and encouraging. 

(A version of this review appeared originally at Publishers Weekly.)

Summer corn

Corn Soup with Summer Vegetables

from Michelle Obama's "American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America"

4 to 6 ears of fresh corn, shucked and silk removed
2 sprigs fresh thyme
juice of 1/2 lemon (about 1 Tbsp.)
salt
olive oil
grilled vegetables of your choice: zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, mushrooms

Cut the corn off the cobs and set aside.

Place the cobs in a large pot and just barely cover with water. Bring to a boil; then lower the heat and simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the stock has a rich corn flavor. Strain the stock and set aside.

Reserve 3/4 cup of the corn kernels and place the remaining corn in a blender. Blend, starting on low speed and increasing the speed as the corn purees. You can add a little of the corn stock to get the corn started. Blend on high for 45 seconds to a minute.

Pour the pureed corn into a medium saucepan through a fine-mesh strainer to remove the bits of skin. Add the thyme and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently. You do not want the soup to boil.

As the soup heats, the natural starch will begin to thicken the soup. Once the soup has thickened, add the lemon juice and the reserved corn stock little by little until the soup reaches the desired thickness. You should have 4 to 6 cups of soup. Add salt to taste.

Heat a small frying pan over medium heat; add enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan. When the oil begins to smoke, add the reserved corn kernels and do not stir until the corn has a nice brown color. Stir the corn and then remove it from the heat.

Add the seared corn and any other grilled vegetable of your choice on top of the soup and serve. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Pineapple popsicles

"All day long I can look forward to a popsicle.

"The persistent anxiety that fills the rest of my life is calmed for as long as I have the flavor of something good in my mouth.

"And though it's true that when the flavor is finished the anxiety returns, we do not have so many reliable sources of pleasure in this life as to turn our nose up at one that is so readily available, especially here in America.

"A pineapple popsicle. Even the great anxiety of writing can be stilled for the eight minutes it takes to eat a pineapple popsicle."

Zadie Smith in "Joy" from The New York Review of Books

Peach fever

"We catch it. It invades our logic, overriding rational thought, disrupting our best-laid plans. It spreads and settles in our psyche, our emotions swell, the heart races. We call it peach fever, a love of our work and the land that burdens us with a sense of responsibility and caring. Peach fever curses us, especially when weather disasters challenge our spirit and bad prices inject a cold reality into our love affair. Peach fever can destroy and transform and lives on our farm throughout the year."

David Mas Masumoto in "The Perfect Peach: Recipes and Stories from the Masumoto Family Farm"

Blue on blue

It is blueberry and peach sour cream cobbler, courtesy of Nigel Slater and "The Kitchen Diaries." It is the epitome of summer.

Coffeecake

The addition of instant Folgers, Nescafe or some such makes this a different kind of coffeecake. It is a recipe for something promising. 

Mocha Loaf
from Donna Egan's "Ice Cream Sandwiches: 65 Recipes for Incredibly Cool Treats"

1 Tbsp. instant coffee powder
1/4 cup boiling water
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for the pan
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
2 extra-large eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
scant 2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour an 8 1/2- by 4 1/2- by 2 1/2-inch loaf pan.

Add the coffee powder to the boiling water and stir until dissolved. Let cool. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder, and set aside.

With an electric mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add one-third of the flour mixture, mixing on low speed just until combined. Add half the milk, half the coffee and all of the vanilla extract, mixing until combined. Repeat with the flour, milk and coffee, ending with the last third of the flour mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips and pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan.

Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before removing and allowing to cool fully. Use as required or store in an airtight container. Makes 10 servings.

The art of health

When Art Smith "tipped the scales at 325 pounds" several years ago, he signed on with a health coach who got him "walking, biking and eating right." The man "made me sweat, made me curb my out-of-control appetite, and taught me the value of a healthful lifestyle."

In his self-help-cookbook hybrid "Art Smith's Healthy Comfort: How America's Favorite Celebrity Chef Got It Together, Lost Weight, and Reclaimed His Health," the slimmed-down restaurateur describes recent shifts in his personal diet. 

He reminds us to eat "foods as close to their whole and most natural states" as possible, offering ideas and recipes for dishes that are delicious and nutritious.

Breakfast might mean steel-cut oats with Greek yogurt and blueberries, for example, or soft-poached eggs with a root vegetable hash. Lunch could be a bowl of yellow tomato gazpacho, three-bean turkey chili or miso corn chowder. Salads and seafood feature prominently among his choices as well.

Smith ("Back to the Table: The Reunion of Food and Family") includes brief sections on everyday habits, too, giving common-sense advice on cooking oils and such.

And though name-dropping in the narrative (Oprah Winfrey is a client, President Obama is a neighbor in Chicago) occasionally gets annoying, it detracts little from Smith's overall goal: to provide a practical framework for good, healthful eating. 

(A version of this review appeared originally at Publishers Weekly.)

Bliss

Fruit bliss.

Rhubarb love

Rhubarb. In any language, in any farmers market, it is a personal favorite.

Back in the kitchen

"Tony explained to the cooks the types of ingredients he was using and why he had chosen to have them cooked in certain combinations. He talked about the seasons, his choice of purveyors, the differences between types of oysters, how kitchen equipment worked, and how to create balance in a dish. Throughout the time that they met, the cooks handed him tiny white plastic spoons to taste the food. It was a hushed atmosphere punctuated by nervous laughter.

"The cooks, all of whom were fifteen to twenty years younger than Tony, were in awe of him, and for good reason. They were years away from acquiring his knowledge and might never be able to do so."

Scott Haas in "Back of the House: The Secret Life of a Restaurant"

For the food

"It was a very odd sight, especially in a country as tightly controlled as Vietnam, and I wanted to ask someone - anyone - about it. Was the man a gangster? A cop? This was a mystery that needed solving.

"Then my food arrived. I hadn't known quite what to order, but something on the menu caught my attention: lu'o'n nu'o'ng mia. A variation on chao tom nu'o'ng, the popular dish of shrimp paste wrapped around sugarcane and grilled over charcoal, this was made instead with freshwater eel - held in place with a chive tied into a bow - and as I bit in, I fell in love.

"The eel was rich and oily, caramelized from the charcoal heat, infused with garlic, fish sauce, and the raw sweetness of the cane. And the cane itself, when I gnawed it, released a burst of sugary juice tinged with the meaty slick of the eel.

"This, I knew, was what I couldn't get back at Chez Trinh, the only Vietnamese restaurant in Williamsburg. This was why I'd picked up stakes and moved to Vietnam - for the food. The eel, in fact, was so great that I wanted to tell strangers about it, to turn to my neighbors and tell them - in English if they were tourists, in pidgin Vietnamese if not - that it justified everything."

Matt Gross in "The Turk Who Loved Apples and Other Tales of Losing My Way Around the World"

Girl hunter

"They say you always remember your first time. For me it was that turkey hunt four years ago, early on a Saturday morning deep in the Arkansas Delta, in a place they call the Village. It was after a spring night spent drinking aged Scotch and smoking cigars on a wide veranda with some of the most gregarious and unpretentious Southerners I had ever encountered. 

"They were well-heeled country folk who liked to live large and take no prisoners when it came to what they stood for and the life they prized. Good food was a huge part of that life, and on that particular evening before the hunt, there were rows of silver-haired men smoking cigars, mud caked to their leather boots, before a granite table bearing endless stacks of cheese and freshly baked bread, and a mound of salad that could feed a regiment.

"Meats - cacciatorini, salami, ham, pork belly, catfish, and other delectables, too - were piled high on platters, and, of course, we had collard greens with white macaroni, and chips and dips. 

"And there was plenty to wash it all down: red wine, beers in large tubs with ice spilling out over the edges, and then the whiskey before the meal and after, too, when everyone moved gradually into the smoking room by the fireplace and the guitars emerged, and the loose, hard notes of the blues drifted beautifully overhead in a haze of Cuban cigar smoke, a sort of bacchanal to welcome in the warmth of spring and summer and, more important, the start of turkey season."

Georgia Pellegrini in "Girl Hunter: Revolutionizing the Way We Eat, One Hunt at a Time"

Fundamentalists

"I come from a family of cake fundamentalists.

"We are people of the Cake. A baby is born and welcomed with cake; there's cake for anniversaries, cake for graduating high school or college; cake for passing the bar or the CPA exam, cake for winning Second Runner-Up in the Miss Peanut pageant; cake for getting out of prison, cake for visiting kinfolk, cake for Christmas and Easter and the Fourth of July; cake when you marry, when you're sick, when you die."

Diane Roberts in "People of the Cake" in the book "Best Food Writing 2010"

"Consider the Fork"

In the cabinets, there are chopping boards and mixing bowls, a colander and a salad spinner. Drawers contain wooden spoons, slotted spoons and spatulas. There are knives, measuring cups and can openers.

There is a bowl I like to use for breakfast, whether I am having cereal or oatmeal or yogurt. There is a mug I like to use for coffee in the late afternoon. And a spoon with which I like to stir that coffee. There just is.

I have favorites – pans and pots, bowls, cups and utensils I pick up often and prefer over others for certain foods. We all do.

In "Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat," well-researched and thoroughly engaging, British food writer Bee Wilson looks at relationships between the tools we have and the things we make. She explores the ways in which "the implements we use in the kitchen affect what we eat, how we eat, and what we feel about what we eat."

She compares old-school diets with modern-day sensibilities. She gives us a highly accessible yet comprehensive assessment of the evolution of our cooking habits, tracing, for example, our integration over the years of fire and ice.

Wilson ("Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud, from Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee") delineates in broad terms our great reliance on heat.

Once upon a time, a single fire from an open hearth "served to warm a house, heat water for washing, and cook dinner. For millennia, all cooking was roasting in one form or another. In the developing world, the heat of an open fire remains the way that the very poorest cook."

To work effectively with that fire, we forged "a host of related tools," including spits, spit-jacks to rotate meat, tongs, pot hooks, drip pans, trivets, and flesh-forks for pulling pieces of meat out of a pot. These usually had long handles and were made of heavy metal.

If we tried using short-handled stainless steel tongs or nonstick silicone spatulas - staples in our 21^st-century kitchens - in that environment, she suggests cheekily, we "wouldn't stand a chance. The utensils would melt. I would fry. The children would howl. Dinner would burn." Her wit is subtle but wonderful.

These days, we are able to utilize different heat sources. We can control fire more easily. I can adjust the flame on my stovetop with a knob, for instance, turning the temperature up to boil a kettle of water or down to effect a slow braise. Inside ovens, "vast communal chambers" in ancient and medieval Europe used to bake bread for entire villages, we make cookies and cakes for ourselves.

We also now have microwave ovens. Invented by Raytheon engineers working originally on military radar systems, they were first sold in the 1950s. They did not hit mainstream markets, however, until about 1967 when manufacturers got the price of a unit below $500.

By the '80s and '90s, microwaves had become indispensable. We use them to reheat leftovers or to avoid food prep altogether, popping in store-bought frozen entrées when we eat alone or cannot cook. What we gain in convenience we lose unfortunately in connectedness.

Like fire, ice matters, the author says. "The efficient home refrigerator entirely changed the way food - getting it, cooking it, eating it - fitted into people's lives."

It changed what we ate. Rather than rely on salted meats or preserves because we had to, we could enjoy fresh meat, milk and green vegetables whenever we wanted to. It changed how we bought food. "Without refrigeration, there could be no supermarkets, no 'weekly shopping,' no stocking up the freezer for emergencies."

And it affected other industries, giving rise to products such as Tupperware, first sold in 1946, and Saran Wrap, introduced in 1953, as well as frozen foods and beverages. Orange juice concentrate, for example, was the most successful commercially frozen product in post-war America, selling 9 million gallons in 1948-1949. We increased our eating and drinking options.

What sets Wilson's discussion apart from those of her contemporaries, though, is her additional focus on simple hand-held tools. Like Steve Gdula ("The Warmest Room in the House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century American Home"), she examines the overall design of our cooking spaces. But to her credit, she details seemingly ordinary items, too, making her book all the more appealing.

She pays significant attention to smaller things, what we generally would not even think twice about, what we have on dish racks or countertops and pick up mindlessly every day.

Take, for example, the wooden spoon. It is at heart a low-tech gadget. "It does not switch on and off or make funny noises," Wilson writes. "It has no patent or guarantee. There is nothing futuristic or shiny or clever about it." Yet it is amazingly versatile.

Study it. What is it made of? Beech or a denser maple? How is it shaped? Is it oval or round? Cupped or flat? Has it got a pointy part on one edge "to get at the lumpy bits in the corner of the pan"? Is the handle short, for children first learning to cook perhaps, or longer for adults to keep spatters at bay?

Wood, she tells us, is a nonabrasive material, too, gentle enough on pots and pans. It is nonreactive and won't leave a metallic taste in our food. "It is also a poor conductor of heat, which is why you can stir hot soup with a wooden spoon without burning your hand." Above all, it is familiar. We cook with wooden spoons because we always have.

That our workspaces contain mishmashes of old and new tools should not surprise us, Wilson says. On the contrary, eclectic collections reflect our changing personalities. Chopping boards sit alongside food processors. Melon ballers can be popular one year, handheld blenders all the rage another.

We don't necessarily want to reinvent cooking; we only want to make it easier. We learn to adapt and improve our skills over time. In most cases, "whisks, fire, and saucepans still do the job pretty well. All we want is better whisks, better fire, and better saucepans."

We might inherit some things from parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles, and receive some from friends. Others could be gifts to ourselves. As it is with the utensils in my kitchen. As it is, I suspect, in all our kitchens. So the food we make is not only a combination of ingredients, she reminds us. "It is the product of technologies, past and present." It is the result of a compendium.

(A version of this review appeared originally on www.culinate.com.)