A Homemade Life (19 page)

I
guess it's a product of our time, or a generational thing. Or maybe it's just a matter of pheromones. Whatever the reason, I keep falling in love with vegetarians. Lucas was one, and a vegan, even. He had the bumper stickers to show for it. We used to share pints of soy ice cream on his corduroy couch, and for his birthday I baked him an entirely dairy-and egg-free chocolate cake. And before he came along, I had a wicked crush on a vegetarian rock star, which isn't quite love, but it still counts. And once, in college, I asked out an outspoken vegetarian in one of my classes. He was very handsome, with chiseled cheekbones and wavy auburn hair. I told him about a bar I knew and asked if he wanted to have a beer. He was too busy, he replied, but could I remind him in a couple of weeks? Remind him. Can you imagine? I really needed a beer after that, and a lobotomy. So that counts, too.

I spent nine years in the vegetarian camp, from age sixteen to shortly before my twenty-fifth birthday, so I guess I'm predisposed. I have dated a couple of meat-and-potatoes types, just to see what it was like, but fate has it that my love is meant for herbivores only. One could argue that my sample size is too small for statistical significance, but now that I've met Brandon, I don't intend to make it any bigger. It's significant enough for me. In the nearly three decades since his birth, Brandon has not once eaten meat, but his palate has ventured further
than that of many omnivores, mine included. If push came to shove, I'd take Brandon over a plate of sausage any day, and I love sausage more than almost anything.

Maybe it's a result of my own years as a vegetarian, but when we eat together, I don't feel as though anything is missing. We eat a lot of eggs, and interesting cheeses, and those tiny French lentils, the green ones that are good with vinaigrette. I do occasionally wish there were another meat-eater around when I make a roasted chicken, but it's a relatively minor problem, as these things go.

Plus, Brandon once showed up at my door with a quarter pound of a very rare type of cured pork, and nothing makes a girl feel googly-eyed like getting pork from a vegetarian. Especially if he's just visiting, only for ten days, so the gesture is especially poignant. And even more if, over the span of those ten days, he makes her a batch of pita, a vat of hot sauce, ten
canelés,
two lunches of Thai green papaya salad, rocky road candy with homemade marshmallows, a quart of milk chocolate ice cream with cocoa nibs, cilantro chutney, sticky tamarind sauce, and the finest chana masala ever to flirt with her lips. There's no reason to ever look elsewhere. Or to leave the house again, except for groceries. It would be a shame to squander precious time on things like seeing friends, eating in restaurants, and fresh air. Brandon is all a person ever needs. That, and his chana masala.

Brandon is certainly not the first person to make chana masala, and he doesn't have any particular pedigree, ethnic or otherwise, to lend him an air of authority in Indian cookery. But he does have a very precise palate, and that carries him a long way. I may be the more orderly of our couple, but next to his palate, mine is a proverbial bull in a china shop, rubbing clumsily against a rabble of spices. I chew and swallow, but he
concentrates,
teasing apart layers of flavor. He claims it has to do with his training in music: that learning to listen closely for notes, to parse a piece of music, gave him a fine-tuned ear that, apparently, had a trickle-down effect on his tongue. I don't know. I just know that when he starts surveying the spice rack, I set the table, sit down, and watch.

What happens is a kind of dance, I guess you could say. He hops
around, cabinet to stove to cutting board to cabinet, tasting and tweaking and tasting again. It's all very cute, as long as you don't interfere. In the case of the chana masala, the dance begins with a pot of onions, cooked until they teeter on the edge of burnt. I've heard that my father's mother, when describing how to make one of her recipes, would always start by saying, “First, you brown an onion,” and if that's true, she and Brandon would have been fast friends. After the onion comes a small but spirited parade of spices, a tin of tomatoes, and some cilantro, cayenne, and chickpeas. Then things simmer for a little while, during which time you can safely enter the kitchen to do some dishes or kiss the cook, which will cause him to wrinkle his brow and mumble about cumin. It's a show worth paying admission for.

Very often, I find, restaurant renditions of chana masala are evidence of alchemy gone astray. They pound your tongue with a ton of tomato or smother your taste buds under a slick of oil. Brandon's does neither of these things, and I don't say that only because he bribes me with milk chocolate ice cream or because, in moments of weakness, I like to watch him sleep. His chana masala is a beautiful thing. It's worth keeping around, as is the man who made it.

CHANA MASALA

w
hen I'm not hovering next to him with a pen and paper, Brandon makes his chana masala entirely by feel and taste. The recipe that follows is our joint effort to make it reproducible for those who, like me, love a reliable recipe. You should feel free, however, to tweak as you see fit. It's The Brandon Way.

This chana masala can be served in two different styles: with some whole milk yogurt to smooth and soften the flavors, or
sans
yogurt, served with a squeeze of lemon. I prefer the former, but Brandon leans toward the latter. Either way, this dish is better the second day, or even the third.

 

¼ cup olive oil

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

2 medium cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

½ teaspoon ground coriander

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon garam masala, plus more for serving

3 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed under the side of a knife

1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

Water

One 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes

1 tablespoon coarsely chopped cilantro leaves, plus more for serving

Pinch of cayenne or red pepper flakes, or more to taste

Two 15-ounce cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed

¹
/
₃
to ½ cup plain yogurt (not low fat or nonfat; optional)

A few lemon wedges (optional), for serving

 

Pour the olive oil into a Dutch oven and warm it over medium heat. Add the onion, and cook, stirring occasionally, until it is deeply caramelized. It's okay if it's even charred in spots. Be patient. The more color, the more full-flavored the final dish will be.

Reduce the heat to low. Add the garlic, cumin seeds, coriander, ginger, garam masala, cardamom pods, and salt and cook, stirring con
stantly, until fragrant and toasty, about 30 seconds. Add ¼ cup water and stir to scrape up any brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Cook until the water has evaporated completely. Pour in the juice from the can of tomatoes, followed by the tomatoes themselves, using your hands to break them apart as you add them. (Alternatively, add them whole and crush them in the pot with a potato masher.)

Raise the heat to medium, and bring the pot to a gentle boil. Adjust the heat to maintain a simmer, add the cilantro and cayenne, and continue to cook gently, stirring occasionally, until the mixture reduces a bit and begins to thicken, about 5 minutes. Add the chickpeas, stirring well, and cook over low heat for 5 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons water and cook for another 5 minutes. Add another 2 tablespoons water and cook until it is absorbed, a few minutes more. This process of adding and cooking off water helps to concentrate the sauce's flavor and makes the chickpeas more tender and toothsome. Taste, and adjust the seasoning as necessary.

Stir in the yogurt, if you like. Or leave it out, and serve instead with a lemon wedge on the side. Either way, sprinkle it with a pinch or two of garam masala and some chopped cilantro.

 

Yield: 4 servings

E
very now and then, Brandon and I like to play a special game. It has no real name, but if I were to give it one, it might be called the “Your Partner Has No Past” game. It goes something like this: whenever one of us mentions a previous boyfriend or girlfriend, the other feigns complete incomprehension. For example:

 

MOLLY:
Oooh! I love this song! Turn it up! [
Ex-boyfriend
] put it on a mix tape for me when we first met.

BRANDON:
What? Who did? You mean I did? I did, right?

 

It's not so much that we dislike knowing about each other's previous significant others. In fact, I take a real interest in the topic. Who doesn't want to know all her predecessors' faults and shortcomings, or the story of the foolish English girl who broke his heart at age sixteen? (Hannah Baldry was her name, although you have to pronounce it “Hannah
Bowwwldry,”
with a British accent.) It's just that it's fun to pretend that your partner sprang from the ether, pure and wise and perfectly formed, the way Athena emerged from Zeus's head. Pretending that we have no past makes us look very talented and precocious, like minor geniuses in the romance department. To wit:

 

MOLLY
(
breathily
): You're such a good kisser. It's really amazing, since I was your first kiss.

BRANDON:
Isn't it? And
you
, I have to say, are so good at spooning. It's kind of crazy how good you are, especially when you've never done this before.

 

Quite fun, as you can see. You should really try it, so long as both players are in on the plan. Otherwise, it could get messy.

But all that said, I have to admit that I am actually quite grateful for Brandon's ex-girlfriends, and one of them in particular. Her name is Gillian. Without her wise tutelage, he tells me, he would be “a terrible hippie,” whatever that means. He would never have done any homework or made it through college, and he would douse all edibles with inedible amounts of vinegar. I owe her a lot. But more than anything else, I owe her, or, technically, her parents, for teaching Brandon about shaved fennel salads.

Back when Brandon and Gillian were together, her parents owned—and perhaps they still own—a CD-ROM of Julia Child's series
Cooking with Master Chefs.
In one of the episodes, Alice Waters teaches Julia how to make a salad of shaved fennel, mushroom, and Parmesan. Gillian's parents were quite taken with the idea, and it quickly became a regular in their repertoire. They once served it to Brandon, and today, one breakup and several years later, it is a regular in our repertoire, too.

After summer's lettuces are gone and before winter's red cabbage arrives, fennel is our early fall standby. It's crisp and fragrant and cheering for the jaw. Shaved into slivers and layered on a platter, drizzled with olive oil and lemon and scattered with curls of Parmesan, it's what salad looks like when it wears white after Labor Day.

We often serve it with slivered mushrooms, à la Alice, but as we discovered on a whim one October afternoon, we like it even better with Asian pears. We stumbled upon the idea when we happened to finish off a Sunday lunch of fennel salad with some slices of an Asian pear. Much to our surprise, the juicy, perfumed crunch of the pear was
delicious with the clean, aniselike flavor of the fennel, and a new salad was born. It makes a handsome lunch for two, along with a baguette, a pat of butter, and some chocolate for dessert.

If you're anything like us, it might even inspire a special game, something involving forks, stealth, and the last bite of salad.

FENNEL SALAD WITH ASIAN PEAR AND PARMESAN

a
s you may have noticed, Brandon and I eat a lot of salad. Between the two of us, we could keep a small farm in business. Much of the time, in fact, we don't so much cook as
assemble
. It's sometimes a little disconcerting, given that we supposedly like to cook, but it's nice to eat simply. A good salad is nothing to scoff at.

As salads go, this one is especially elegant, with its layered presentation. But if you're short on time, you can certainly toss it. As for variations, you might try substituting aged Gouda for the Parmesan, or replacing the Asian pear with thin shavings of cremini mushroom.

 

1 medium fennel bulb, about 10 ounces

1 small Asian pear

Olive oil

Lemon

Crunchy salt, such as Maldon or fleur de sel

Wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Freshly ground black pepper

 

First, prepare the fennel. If it still has long stalks and fronds, cut them off and discard them. (Or use them for something else, like a homemade stock.) Using a vegetable peeler or small knife, trim away any bruises or brown spots on the bulb's outermost layer of “skin.” Cut it in half from root to stalk, and trim the root end. Using a sharp knife or a mandoline and working with one-half of the bulb at a time, slice the fennel very thinly,
¹
/
₈
to ¼ inch thick. You're not going for
quite
paperthin—that's almost too fine and will tend to make the fennel watery—but you want it to be close. Set aside.

Next, prepare the Asian pear. Using an apple corer, remove and discard the core. Then cut the pear in half from top to bottom. Using a sharp knife or a mandoline, slice it very thinly, just like the fennel. Set aside.

Assemble the salad in layers on a large platter. First, make a wide
layer of fennel slices. Drizzle lightly with olive oil. Then place a layer of Asian pear on top of the fennel. Drizzle lightly with lemon juice, and season with salt. Using a vegetable peeler, shave thin ribbons of cheese on top of the pear. Add another layer of fennel, followed by a light drizzle of oil, and then another layer of pear, lemon juice, salt, and cheese. Repeat until you run out of ingredients. You might have two layers, or you might have many more; it doesn't matter. Finish the salad with a good drizzle of lemon juice and a hearty splash of oil, and garnish with a few shavings of cheese.

Serve immediately, with salt and pepper to taste.

 

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