A Homemade Life (10 page)

I
guess this would be a good time to admit that despite all that Parisian drama, my dating history is a brief one. Compared to most people I know, I didn't date much. This was not intentional, I assure you. I certainly tried, but it didn't come easily. I have since been told that my tendency to sit in the front row in class and raise my hand at every question, not to mention the leather dog collar I took to wearing for a while, were possibly at fault, but I can't be sure.

No one asked me out in high school. The one person who professed a crush, my best friend Billy, who wore seersucker shorts and kept his blond hair in a handsome Ken doll cut, was too polite to do much about it. We went to our senior prom together, and he gamely took to the dance floor with me when I requested Michael Jackson's “Beat It,” but that was as racy as our romance got. I think my four-pronged, Statue-of-Libertyesque updo was a bit much for him, although I have never asked. Sometimes I used to think about what it would be like to kiss him, but I had never kissed anyone before, and I didn't want to make the first move. I remember reading, around that time, a “Dear Abby” letter from a thirty-three-year-old woman who had never been touched by a man. I was terrified. I was certain that she was me, writing from the future.

You can well imagine my relief, then, when my first kiss came along, three months before my nineteenth birthday. His name was
Warren, but he went by Puffer. (It's a long story, and disappointingly innocent.) It happened in the foyer of my parents' house, and just when things were getting good, I accidentally bit him. I would have to wait another year, until I was twenty, to have my second kiss, with a graduate student I met in college. I was so grateful and relieved that as a thank-you gift, I gave him my virginity as well—not on a silver platter, but close: on a twin bed in student housing, with the regrettable film
Niagara, Niagara
in the VCR.

Over the eight years between that harrowing night and my wedding day, I had my heart broken by Guillaume; spent one night engaged in heavy petting rituals with a future rabbi; spent three years of my early twenties with Lucas, the guy I took to the museum concert when we were kids; dated a blond Minnesotan named Karma and a well-read arborist with a dog called Index; and, finally, blessedly, met my husband. Given that I didn't have a lot of time to work with, and that I spent several years of it in monogamous situations, I think I did pretty well. I hit all the high points.

Plus, I learned some important lessons. I learned that some things, like whether or not a man makes the bed, aren't that important. I learned that men who like to dance are, in general, more fun than their non-dancing counterparts. I learned that kissing a man while leaning against a warm dishwasher is a lovely,
lovely
experience. (Go ahead! Try it! I'll wait.) I also learned—although I suppose I could have told you this years ago, even before my first date—that hell hath no fury like a woman starved.

When I was in college, I worked for two summers, as I've mentioned before, at a grocery store in northern California. My job consisted of standing behind the case of prepared salads and spooning things into to-go containers, making sandwiches, and serving rotisserie chickens from the hot case. We had several regular dinner customers, mainly single men who would come in each night for roasted chicken and grilled vegetables. I developed a friendly banter with a few—as is wont to happen when it is your job to ask people if they would prefer a breast or a thigh—and one evening, while I scooped his brown rice, one
of them invited me to dinner. He seemed relatively harmless: soft-spoken, smiley, a New Age music producer in his mid-thirties with dirty blond hair and a cabin-cum-tree house on the side of nearby Mount Tamalpais. I accepted.

He invited me up to his house, where he would make dinner. It was a beautiful space, a loft of sorts with lots of bare wood and big windows, a Japanese tatami table surrounded by cushions at one end and a sprawling leather sofa and fireplace at the other. He put Van Morrison's
Astral Weeks
on the stereo—a dreamy, magical album, by the way, if you aren't familiar with it—and ushered me into the kitchen. Then he announced proudly that he'd gone to the farmers' market that morning and had come home with seven kinds of sprouts.

“Isn't that awesome?” he said.
“Seven!”

I stared in silence as he retrieved seven small plastic bags from the refrigerator drawer. What is a person supposed to say to that? SEVEN kinds of
sprouts.
I like alfalfa sprouts, sort of, on a sandwich with provolone, tomato, and avocado. I did not, however, and still do not, have any interest in widening my sprout experience—and certainly not sevenfold. Plus, I was
hungry.
There had to be more to dinner. There had to. I smiled and leaned against the counter.

He pulled a plate down from the cabinet, set it on the countertop, and, with a delicate pinch, lifted a tuft of sprouts from one of the bags. He deposited it in the center of the plate. Then he repeated the motion with the other six bags, lifting and—slowly, gently, with enormous care—placing small mounds of sprouts around the rim of the plate. They looked like loosely formed gaseous planets in some sort of sprout galaxy, orbiting a larger sprout sun in the center. He then cut three cherry tomatoes in half and strewed them around the plate. Then he reached into the cabinet and retrieved a bottle of olive oil and another of balsamic vinegar, sprinkled them over the salad, if you can call it that, and, with a triumphant smile, handed the plate to me. I stood quietly, smiling numbly, while he assembled his own plate: much less carefully this time, just sprouts tossed haphazardly here and there. I'd had the deluxe treatment. He hadn't even saved himself a tomato. He
grabbed two sets of chopsticks from a jar by the sink, nodded toward the tatami table, and dinner was served.

We were in California, so I guess I should have known what I was in for. I tried to be grateful. I knew he only wanted to impress. And he was so sweet! How can you fault anyone who takes that much care with your dinner, and who plays “The Way Young Lovers Do” on the stereo? Really, you can't.

You also, however, can't disguise the sound of an angry stomach when it growls under a tatami table. Not even the Chinese stringed instrument he kept in the corner, the one he played for me after dinner, could muffle its roar. I didn't want to seem ungrateful, but I had to go. I thanked him profusely and drove home, where I made a peanut butter sandwich and ate it at the kitchen counter, vowing silently that in my home, salad would never be a swear word.

The recipe that follows, a hearty jumble of toasted, garlic-rubbed bread, arugula, and ripe cherries, sauced with good doses of olive oil and sweet balsamic, is anything but. It's a mealtime salad, a spot-on lunch or light dinner, especially if you add goat cheese. It's handsome, delicious, and a little messy, like most good things in this life.

BREAD SALAD WITH CHERRIES, ARUGULA, AND GOAT CHEESE

t
his isn't so much a recipe as a formula. It's the kind of thing you bang together on a summer day when you happen to have some ripe cherries and a hunk of chewy, day-old artisan bread. It's so simple that you don't really need precise quantities, although I will give you some to start with. From there, just taste and tweak to your own palate.

 

6 ounces rustic white bread, preferably day-old

Olive oil

½ pound cherries, preferably Bing, halved and pitted

¹
/
₈
teaspoon pressed or crushed garlic

Balsamic vinegar

Salt

Arugula

Fresh goat cheese, such as Laura Chenel, coarsely crumbled

Black pepper

 

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Using a sharp knife, trim the crust from the bread, and discard the crust. Tear the bread into rough bite-sized pieces. You should have about 4 loosely packed cups' worth. Dump the bread out onto a rimmed baking sheet, and drizzle it with olive oil. Toss to coat. Don't worry if the pieces aren't evenly oiled; that's okay. Bake until crispy and golden in spots, shaking the pan once, 8 to 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, put about one-third of the cherries in a small bowl, and crush them lightly with a fork, so that they release their juices. You don't want to mash them completely; just smash them a bit.

When the bread is nicely toasted, turn it out into a large bowl. While it is still hot, add the garlic, and toss well. Set aside to cool for a minute or two. Then add the cherries, both the smashed ones and the not-smashed ones, and toss. Add 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar and toss again. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil and a pinch or two of salt and
toss again. Taste, and adjust the vinegar, oil, and salt as needed: if you taste the bread and the cherries separately, they each should taste good alone. When you're satisfied with the flavor, add about 2 handfuls of arugula and toss one last time. Finish with a generous amount of crumbled goat cheese and a few grinds of the pepper mill, and serve.

 

Yield: 4 first-course servings or a light meal for 2

O
nce upon a time, not so long ago (though it feels like centuries), I lived alone in a studio apartment in Paris. It had a front door that closed only when slammed, a tiny terrace guarded by a ceramic gnome, and an almost-kitchen in an alcove in the hallway, with a two-burner electric stove, a pint-sized refrigerator, and a microwave that I could reach only when I stood on tiptoe. It was humble, but it was sweet. Moreover, it was
in France
. It could have been a shoebox and still, I would have been charmed. It was a petite (
Parisienne
-size, you could say) piece of paradise. I was twenty-two, fresh out of college, and it was my first apartment.

I had come to the end of my senior year of college with absolutely no idea what to do next. I'd majored in human biology, but I didn't want to be a doctor. I did, however, have a French minor, and that at least was something. Given the circumstances, France seemed as good an idea as any. In retrospect, I'm sure my unresolved heartache over Guillaume had something to do with it, but I tried not to think about it. I just wanted to be in Paris again. One afternoon, a girl in my French literature class told me about a program offered by the French Ministry of Education, a program through which native English speakers were sometimes hired to teach in French public schools. I applied, and a few weeks later I was assigned a post as a part-time English conversation
teacher at a high school in the suburbs west of Paris. I searched around, found a furnished apartment available for monthly rentals, and that fall, I went.

It was heaven. After four years on plastic-covered university-issued twin-sized mattresses, I took to sleeping squarely in the middle of my Parisian double bed, sprawled out like a snow angel. I recorded an outgoing message on my answering machine in both English and French, finding surprising pleasure in saying my name in both languages. Because my kitchen was so small, I used the top of my dresser as a de facto countertop. I had no table to speak of, but the foot of my bed made a decent stand-in. I gave over one entire shelf of my refrigerator to cheese, each wrapped in wax paper and ripe with promise, and I was so greedy about them that I took to licking my knife to get every last nub and smear. I decided that French television, being in a foreign language and all, was instructive, so I watched as much as I could. Did you know that the French have a game show in which purple animated bloblike creatures dance around on stage with the host? And that he calls them his
“pots,”
which is French for “pals,” and talks to them as though they were real? It's true. It airs every day at lunchtime, and it was my greatest weakness. On weeknights, I ate dinner with Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, also known as PPDA, the handsome anchor of the 8:00 p.m. news on TF1. Sometimes on Sundays, I dined with his weekend counterpart Claire Chazal, a distinguished blond anchor with whom he once allegedly had an affair. (And a son! The French are so good at scandal.) I had all this, right there in my little apartment. I had to break myself in half to shave my legs in the pocket-sized shower stall, but otherwise, that place was paradise.

I learned so much that year, and I don't only mean that a dinner knife, no matter how dull, can cut your tongue. I learned that I love to cook for one. I know not everyone feels this way, but here's how I see it: it's my chance, my inviolable opportunity, to eat whatever I want to. It is one of the few moments when I can be perfectly selfish without feeling guilty. No one is going to tell me that blanched green beans, three slices of fresh mozzarella doused in olive oil, and two pieces of
chocolate cake are not an acceptable dinner. (They are, I promise.) What's more, if I want to, I can just sit and stare out the window. Just
tra la la
, stare out the window. I don't have to say a word. I can sink into my seat, slow down, and zone out. Or, if zoning out is not what I need, I can choose instead to focus, really
focus
, for a while. I can pay attention to only my plate. Even now that I am married, I still feel this way sometimes. Maybe it's the only child in me, but to really feel like myself, and to keep from killing anyone, I need an evening alone at the table every now and then. Food is, of course, a social thing, one of the most positive, primal ways of spending time with people, but eating alone is also an affirmation. It's a way of enjoying me.

Cooking for one could feel fruitless sometimes—it's a lot of effort for little applause—but I tried not to let that stop me. It helps that I like leftovers. I'm happy to eat the same thing, day in and day out, for a whole week. No matter how big the batch, nothing goes to waste with me around. This is a trait that would have served me well during the Great Depression, though it also comes in handy nowadays, too, especially at the end of the month, right before rent is due, during the Great Depression of my wallet. I will eat the same soup for days. Ditto for braises and stews. Some of my finest solo meals have been the simplest ones, like ratatouille, the Provençal stew of eggplant, zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, onion, garlic, and herbs. When you're living in a glorified shoebox, it's very handy to have a one-pot meal in your back pocket, and ratatouille was mine.

My studio in Paris was situated in the eleventh arrondissement, not too far from a market street called rue Oberkampf, a name that, when spoken aloud, makes you sound like you've got an endearingly fat lip. Gently curving up an ever-so-slight slope, it is lined with all sorts of shops and stands: a cheese shop here, a cheese shop there, a wine shop, a
boulangerie,
a
pâtisserie,
a butcher with a rotisserie full of chickens. But my favorite shop on Oberkampf was a greengrocer on a corner, under a myrtle green awning. Behind boxes of wares stood the shopkeeper, a man in something akin to a doctor's coat, meting out the pick of the day. He was chatty but serious, almost professorial, and liked to make
small talk about carrots and politics. On my first visit, he gave me half an apricot, plump and rosy around the shoulders, to eat while I shopped. I wound up buying a dozen of them and, over the months that followed, came back for tomatoes, lettuce, cauliflower, and soft green pears. One day in mid-October, he had an especially nice display of eggplant. I bought two fat, shiny ones and, my thoughts running ahead to ratatouille, a couple of zucchini and a red pepper. Then I went home and, in my largest pot, on one of my two burners, made dinner.

Though it may sound funny to say so as a girl from the smack-dab center of America, I grew up eating ratatouille. My parents made it for dinner once a month or so, and then we'd eat the leftovers for lunches or snacks. Some nights, if they were out and I was home alone, I'd eat it over boiled Yukon gold potatoes crushed with the back of a fork. That might be how I came to like eating alone. It's hard not to when you're eating like that.

My parents had very different methods for making ratatouille. My mother's was pretty standard—a jumble of vegetables together in a pot, with olive oil for moistening—but my father, true to form, mixed things up a little. Before he put the cubed vegetables in the pot, he'd dump them into a paper grocery bag, add a couple spoonfuls of flour, fold over the top, and shake the whole thing like some sort of awkward, vegetal maraca. I guess the flour was supposed to thicken the soupier parts, but it didn't do much besides make a mess on the countertop. My mother and I used to tell him how silly it was. It didn't occur to me until now, but it must have been hard for him sometimes, being the odd man out. He and I were close, but my mother and I were even closer. Between the two of us—opinionated, critical, so similar—it must have been hard to get a word in edgewise. We had a tendency to team up to nag him about his round, low-hanging belly or his ice cream consumption, or to razz him about his ratatouille. Although in truth, it really was good.

My method for ratatouille, though, is different from either of my parents'. I like to cook the vegetables separately at first, so that each is perfectly cooked on its own, and then combine them at the end. Recently I've started taking the added but easy step of roasting the egg
plant in the oven rather than cooking it on the stovetop, where it sometimes winds up spongy and weird. In the oven, it gets wonderfully silky and tender. I think it's my best version yet. When I'm home alone, it's often the only thing I want to make. I tuck a napkin onto my lap and sit down by the window, and when it's all gone, I lick my knife until it sparkles, because there's no one there to catch me.

ROASTED EGGPLANT RATATOUILLE

r
atatouille is a good accompaniment for any kind of meat, but I like to serve it on its own, as a light meal, with a poached or fried egg on top. Be sure to have some crusty bread on hand for sopping up the slurry at the bottom of the bowl.

 

1 pound eggplant, sliced crosswise into 1-inch-thick rounds

Olive oil

1 pound zucchini, trimmed, halved lengthwise, and sliced into ½-inch-thick half-moons

1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 large red bell pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped

4 large cloves garlic, thinly sliced

5 Roma tomatoes, seeded and chopped

¾ teaspoon salt

3 sprigs fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

¼ cup finely chopped fresh basil

 

Position a rack in the middle of the oven, and preheat the oven to 400°F.

Arrange the eggplant rounds in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Pour 2 tablespoons olive oil in a small bowl, and brush onto the eggplant. Flip the slices and brush the second sides as well, taking care that each has a thin coating of oil. Bake for 30 minutes, flipping the slices halfway through, until soft and lightly browned on each side. Remove from the oven and cool. Cut into rough 1-inch pieces. Set aside. (You can do this a day or two ahead, refrigerating the eggplant until you're ready to use it. It'll make the final dish a little quicker to prepare.)

Warm 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat in a Dutch oven or large, deep skillet. Add the zucchini and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden and just tender, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove it from the pan, taking care to leave behind any excess oil, and set it aside.

If there is no oil left in the pan, add about 1 tablespoon; if there is still some remaining, proceed to the next step. Reduce the heat to medium, and add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until slightly softened, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the bell pepper and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until just tender but not browned, about 6 minutes. Add the tomatoes, salt, thyme, and bay leaf and stir to combine. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for 5 minutes. Add the eggplant and zucchini, stir to incorporate, and cook until everything is very tender, 15 to 20 minutes more. Taste, and adjust the seasonings as necessary. Discard the bay leaf, and stir in the basil.

Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature, with additional salt for sprinkling.

 

NOTE:
Ratatouille is even better on the second day or the third. If you can, plan to make it ahead of time, so that the flavors have time to meld and ripen.

 

Yield: 4 servings