A Homemade Life (21 page)

I
love the concept of routines. For some people, like skydivers and storm chasers, it may sound like torture, but to me, it's reassuring. I love having a routine, even if it's just the order in which I wash my face and brush my teeth at night. It makes me feel human. It's a reminder that I am still alive and still me, because depending on the day, it can be hard to keep track. Anyway, there are enough things to think about in this world. The beauty of having routines and habits lies in letting my hands and feet think for me, and in giving my brain a break. My predilection for routine may make me a little boring, but it does keep my teeth nice and clean.

I've never been very good at change. Just ask my mother. During college, I called her at the beginning of every quarter, crying, whimpering incoherently about my new schedule, my new classes, and the end of life as I knew it. Each time, she 'd remind me, with the sort of patience that only saints and mothers have, that this happened last quarter, and the quarter before it, and that it was just “the change thing, Moll. You'll find a new routine.” I'd nod and blow my nose and feel much better for approximately three months, until the next quarter came around.

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. Someday, after I'm gone, people will gather to study my tongue. They'll peer hopefully into my mouth, the way I look under the bed when I've lost something, and they'll cluck approvingly, noting that my teeth were indeed very clean.

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. Plus, all that crying got kind of exhausting. 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. When Lucas and I lived together, I was so uptight that when I came home from grocery shopping, I would sit down with the calculator and make an itemized list of what he owed me, every last cent. It seemed very important at the time, although I have since thought about sending him a thank-you note for not killing me.

When I met Brandon, I didn't want to be that person anymore. I didn't want to mistake accounting for intimacy. I wanted things to be easier. Which meant, I knew, that
I
had to be easier—about everything. It has taken some practice, admittedly, but I am making progress. Just the other day, for example, I didn't even flinch when he used the last of my peanut butter for one of his soba noodle salads. That's how I know we're going to be all right. Because being the person I want to be feels easier when he is around.

But I do still love my routines. I'm not an entirely new person. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I often put my taste buds to the test of
boredom. I can't help it. When I like something, I want to eat it all the time. Nearly every morning, I sit down to the same breakfast—some whole grain cereal, a few spoonfuls of granola, and either plain yogurt or milk—in the same red glass bowl, and nearly every morning, it makes me irrationally happy. That carries me through to lunch, when I sit down, usually, to a bowl of soup, a hunk of bread, and a few slices of cheese. The formula changes with the seasons, but as a general principle, it holds true for most weekdays, if not the occasional Saturday, too. Sometimes Brandon even joins me.

Soup is a perfect lunch food. It's filling, but unlike a salami sandwich with provolone and sautéed peppers (which would be my second choice), it never makes you want to unbutton your pants or sleep for the rest of the day. My favorite take on the theme is a tomato soup with slices of sweet fennel, fennel seeds, and a few sprigs from our thyme plant on the side stoop. When I was fifteen, I wrote a poem about wanting to immerse myself in a vat of marshmallow fluff, but today I'd much rather take a warm soak in gently simmering tomato soup, preferably with an eye pillow. I'd be happy, in fact, to do it every day. I doubt it would ever get old.

TOMATO SOUP WITH TWO FENNELS

t
his rustic, chunky soup is quick to make, and a single batch yields a good amount, so you'll have lunch to last all week. And, like most soups, it only gets better with time, as the flavors meld.

When it comes to serving it, you have a number of options. You can serve it plain. You can drizzle it with olive oil. You can crumble a little fresh goat cheese into the bowl, or you can top it with some grated Parmesan. Or, for an adult version of old grilled cheese-and-tomato soup combination, try smearing a piece of toasted baguette with goat cheese, and dunk it in the bowl as you go.

 

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 large yellow onion, quartered and thinly sliced

2 medium fennel bulbs (about 1 ¼ pounds), trimmed, quartered from root to stalk, and thinly sliced

4 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves

2 teaspoons fennel seeds

Two 28-ounce cans whole peeled tomatoes

Water

¾ teaspoon salt, or to taste

Sugar, to taste

Red wine vinegar, to taste

 

In a large (5-quart) pot or Dutch oven, warm the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and fennel, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion just starts to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring frequently—garlic has a tendency to burn—until the onion is translucent and very soft, 5 to 8 minutes more. Add the thyme and fennel seeds and cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes.

Using your hand to hold back the tomatoes, pour the liquid from the tomato cans into the pot. Stir well. Crush the tomatoes in their cans, using your hands or a potato masher to tear and mash them into small chunks. Add the tomatoes to the pot. Then fill 1 empty tomato can with cold water and pour it in, too. Bring to a boil. Then adjust
the heat to maintain a gentle simmer, and cook, uncovered, for about 45 minutes.

The soup is ready when the fennel is very tender and a spoonful of the tomatoey broth tastes like a good, full-bodied soup. (If it hasn't cooked long enough, it will taste watery and raw, like tomatoes straight from the can.) Add the salt. Taste and adjust as needed. If the tomatoes need a little sweetness, add a pinch or two of sugar. If the soup tastes a little bland, add a small splash of vinegar. I often add a bit of both.

Serve hot.

 

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

I
love traveling with my mother. I don't mean any offense to Brandon, of course. It's just that my mother and I have had decades to sync up our priorities. They are as follows: eat, walk, eat, walk, window shop, window shop, and then walk to dinner. As you might guess, we do especially well in France.

My mother speaks barely a word of French, but she laces up one of her tiny, adorable pairs of Pumas and hits the streets with the air of someone who knows. She is not afraid. She can tackle the Parisian Métro. She can decipher the majority of a restaurant menu. She can go into Monoprix with a grocery list and come out at least somewhat victorious. She plays the part so well that Parisians have even been known to stop her on the street for directions. That's got to be satisfying, although I wouldn't know, because they never stop me. They always think I'm English or Irish, because of my red hair.

My mother believes that language barriers were made for overcoming. She has a good grasp on the essentials, like the requisite “Bonjour, Madame” when entering a store and “Merci, au revoir” upon leaving. If need be, she 'll even mime. For a while, she was determined to learn how to order her own coffee in a café, which is tricky, since what she wants is not a simple café, but a double espresso with a pitcher of warm milk on the side. Nevertheless, she really tried. She braved my drills
with only a minimal amount of giggling. But when push came to shove, she could never remember which word came first. She may be a go-getter, but
“un double café avec un petit pot de lait chaud”
was a bit much to ask. So I order for both of us, and that's okay. Once the coffee is securely in her hands, she sits on a café terrace like a true, seasoned
Parisienne.

You can imagine, then, how quickly I said yes when she offered, as a pre-wedding gift, to take me to France for ten days. It seemed intuitive to go back to the country that had, so many times, been my incubator and my catalyst. Every girl needs a little incubating from time to time, especially when she's about to become someone's wife. She needs ten days with her mother, a solid supply of baguette sandwiches, some well-aged cheese, a lot of chocolate, and some old-fashioned, fat-rippled, devil-may-care eating, which, for future reference, is immensely fortifying.

Not long ago, I exchanged letters with a friend who was preparing for his first visit to Paris. Without intending to, he said something that sums up pretty much everything I could possibly want to tell you about my own travels, and especially that trip with my mother.

“The only reason I travel,” he wrote, “is for an excuse to eat more than usual.”

I love that. I mean, it's not like I
need
an excuse, but France is certainly a convincing one. It's basically a cheese cellar the size of Texas. That's a part of why I love it so much. I couldn't tell you what the inside of Notre Dame looks like, but I do know how to get from the greengrocer on rue Oberkampf, the one with the green awning, to that terrific
fromagerie
way down in the 7th, near Le Bon Marché. I also know a word that you might want to remember, if your priorities are anything like mine. The word is
bouchon
.

When my mother and I first started planning our trip, Paris wasn't even in the picture. To tell you the truth, it was sort of an afterthought. My first priority was Lyon. I'm not sure how I got this particular bee in my bonnet (and it's shocking, really, given my feelings for Paris), but somewhere, sometime, someone told me that the best food in France
could be found in Lyon, churned out of kitchens that haven't changed for decades and served up by sturdy proprietresses who shuffle around in their slippers. Someone told me about
bouchons.

The
bouchon,
simply put, is a Lyonnais twist on the classic French bistro. It's similar, but louder, more communal, and with ruddier cheeks. I've read a few different explanations of the
bouchon
's origins and history, but most agree that the concept is a very old one, dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when silk workers passing through town would be fed and watered in rustic local inns. The term derives from the word
bousche,
an old-fashioned name for a bundle of straw, which would be hung outside an inn to indicate that food and wine were served inside. By extension, the establishments themselves came to be called
bouchons.
The word
bouchon
also means “cork,” as in the thing you yank from a bottle of wine, but apparently that comes from a different linguistic root.

Tucked away in the narrow streets of Lyon, an ancient city split by two rivers, modern-day
bouchons
still dish out the same sort of humble food that was served centuries ago. They're famous for a type of cooking called
cuisine de bonne femme,
a particularly generous and hearty style that operates by the motto, “Waste not, want not.” They serve lots of pork, lots of offal, and lots of wine, all on red-checked tablecloths with lace curtains in the windows, wooden chairs and wobbly tables, and worn, dented flatware. They're the kind of place where you make friends with the table next to yours, where you eavesdrop to hear what's been ordered and trade oohs and ahhs as dishes are delivered. They're my kind of place.

If you've read this far, you know that I prefer home cooking over restaurant fare almost any day. But
bouchons,
bless them, are the best of both. They serve the kind of rustic, heartening food that I dream of making, and I don't even have to lift a finger.

Just imagine this: you and your dining companion (your mother, let's say) sit down at a checker-top table and order a carafe of (cheap!) Côtes du Rhône. With it comes complimentary pork cracklings, enough to fill a basket as big as a newborn baby. This alone is worth the train
ticket from Paris. Did I mention, too, that they are crisp and prettily browned, the color and shape of walnuts, and that on your tongue, they melt dead away? You will have to warn your mother, twice, not to spoil her dinner.

Next comes the first course, served family style to every table, whether you ask for it or not. The waitress comes by with four dishes, which she sets down with a businesslike clunk. One might be a platter of local salami and cornichons, another a white ramekin packed with housemade boar terrine. You might also get a bowl of lentils with shallots and vinaigrette, or a frisée salad that the two of you will talk about for days, spotted with bits of salty ham and hard-boiled egg and sauced with a mustard dressing. There's no fussy presentation to besmirch with your fork, nor is there any gnashing of teeth over what to order. You eat what you're given. The well-starched businessmen across the room toast and loosen their ties, and the middle-aged Frenchwoman next to you pulls her knees up to sit cross-legged in her chair.

Next might come
oeufs en meurette,
eggs poached in red wine and served in a beefy, brothy sauce spiked with
lardons.
Your mother will scold you for scraping the bowl too loudly, but ten seconds later, she'll do the same. You can swat her hand if you want to.

When it comes time to order the main course, the waitress will recite the options at tableside and wait patiently while you translate for your mother, who only understood about half of her spiel, which, come to think of it, is actually a lot. You hem and haw. You could have the chicken liver, or
tablier de sapeur,
a local specialty of breaded, fried tripe. Or there's a rich, inky stew of pork cheeks, or maybe
tête de veau,
bits of meat from a calf 's head that—just warning you—sometimes jiggle like Jell-O on the plate. You will be tempted by the chicken liver, and your mother will consider the breaded tripe, but you both settle on
quenelles de brochet
, pike dumplings served in
sauce Nantua
, a creamy slurry infused with crayfish. When you love crayfish sauce, you make sacrifices.

Then comes the cheese. Every table gets their own platter, which is roughly the size of a dinner plate. If you're in the first seating of the
night, the plate will be pristine: six or seven creamy rounds, blocks, or pyramids, utterly perfect and untouched, all for your pleasure. It's good to be prepared for this, or else you might squeal with glee when the waitress sets it down. If you're in a later seating, the platter might be slightly picked over, but it's still beautiful in its way, like a well-worn shoe.

And then, just when you think it can't get any better, it's time to place your dessert order. I highly recommend a wedge of lemon tart or, even better, the chocolate mousse, which comes messily crammed into a small cup with a spoon stuck bolt upright in its center. But watch for your mother's wandering hand. She's out of control when there's chocolate around.

The whole thing will top out somewhere around twenty-five euros per person, which will make your heart pound with gratitude. Just make sure you have a place nearby to sleep it off, because that's going to be important. In a pinch, try one of those cheap hotels by the train station. That's what we did. It took every ounce of fortitude I had (which, by this point, after so much hearty eating, was really quite a bit) to board the train back to Paris the next day. The
bouchon
changed everything.

Suddenly all I want in life is a checkered tablecloth and a pair of fuzzy slippers, and a
bouchon
to shuffle around in. Sometimes I lie awake at night, wondering how Seattle might take to
la cuisine de bonne femme,
and how communal cheese platters and a hostess in house shoes might sit with the health department. I am still trying to come up with a proper way to thank my mother, although I have a hunch that a recipe for that frisée salad might be a good way to start. That, and a big bowl of chocolate mousse.

FRISÉE WITH HAM, EGGS, AND MUSTARD VINAIGRETTE

y
ou can get a great mustard vinaigrette in almost any kitchen in France, but making one in the States is a little trickier. Different brands of Dijon mustard taste remarkably dissimilar, which is a real problem when you're trying to replicate a specific, and specifically French, flavor. I have tried many different brands, and my favorite is called Roland Extra Strong Dijon Mustard. It has a wonderful flavor, strong and insistent, but without too much acidity or bitterness. It can be a little tricky to find, but it's worth the trouble. If your local store doesn't carry it, ask if it will. Or ask for a slightly more common brand, Beaufor, which is very similar. In a pinch, I also like Maille brand, which is even easier to find. I do not, however, recommend Grey Poupon for this vinaigrette recipe. It tends to have a harsh, bitter flavor.

For a vegetarian version of this salad, substitute shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano for the ham.

 

2 large eggs

1 medium head frisée (4 to 6 ounces)

²
/
₃
cup cubed cooked ham

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard (see headnote)

1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

3 tablespoons olive oil

 

First, cook the eggs. Put them in a small saucepan, and add cold water to cover. Put the pan over medium-high heat, and bring to a boil. When the water boils, remove the pan from the heat, cover it, and let it sit for exactly 12 minutes.

While the eggs cook, prepare the frisée. Remove any bruised leaves, and trim away and discard the stem end. Using your hands, separate the leaves. If any of them are more than about 4 inches long, tear them in half; otherwise, leave them alone. Put the frisée in the basket of a salad spinner. Place the basket inside its bowl, and fill it with cold water.
Swish the leaves around a bit, and then let soak for a minute or two. This will allow any dirt to fall to the bottom of the bowl. Pull the basket from the bowl, and shake it to remove excess water. Dump the water from the bowl, replace the basket, and spin until the leaves are dry. Turn them out into a serving bowl.

When the eggs are ready, drain off the hot water immediately, and rinse with plenty of cold water. When they are cool, crack their shells and peel them. Coarsely chop them, and add them to the frisée, along with the ham.

In a small bowl, whisk together the mustard and vinegar. Add the oil, and whisk well to emulsify. Drizzle a large spoonful or two over the frisée, and toss well. Taste, and add more dressing as needed.

 

NOTE:
Leftover vinaigrette will keep for up to a week in the refrigerator and is also very good on Bibb lettuce, especially with toasted walnuts.

 

Yield: 2 large servings or 4 side-dish servings