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.