How to Cook a Moose (33 page)

“Is that how do you feel when you walk in here every morning?”

“No, I feel anxious!”

We both laughed.

“I have twenty-eight employees. Every morning I think, Okay, what is the issue du jour? Today, thank God, we had no major issues other than that we're understaffed. But yesterday, they forgot to put the potatoes in the dough. Four batches had to be thrown out. We make them all by hand. They're not perfect; we're not a factory. I have
no control over human error, humidity, the variations in the potatoes. Every batch is slightly different.”

She pointed to the opposite wall.

“That's the Holy Donut mascot over there, the goddess of compassion, Quan Yin. I also think of her as the goddess of allowing yourself pleasure, to eat what you want. I attribute the success of this place to the gods of pleasure, to that original feeling I had right after my divorce. I was on a kick, a pleasure kick, and this is where it led me.”

A few minutes later, I said good-bye to Leigh and walked home through the golden, sweet Maine summer morning, my stomach happily satiated, “Love and Happiness” playing in my inner ear.

The next night, in a potato-celebrating mood, I threw together a Maine niçoise. While Brendan fed Dingo and opened a bottle of cold Orvieto, I washed four large Aroostook County potatoes and put them on to boil and trimmed a bunch of asparagus and put it on to steam, feeding a few of the ends to Dingo, who considers them delicacies on a par with anything in the world. I chopped the quarter head of radicchio and the endive that were in the fridge and put them into a big salad bowl with a handful each of pea shoots and arugula, then tossed this crisp salad in a mustard vinaigrette.

When the asparagus was just steamed, I cut it coarsely into bite-size pieces and let them cool on the cutting board. When the potatoes were just tender, I quartered them lengthwise and tossed them in a bath of equal parts apple cider vinegar and white wine vinegar and let them marinate and cool in the fridge for fifteen minutes. Then I made the sauce: two generous tablespoons of Hain mayonnaise plus the juice of one juicy lemon, a big handful of minced chives, three garlic
cloves, minced, white wine vinegar, olive oil, and a lot of black pepper.

I divided the asparagus between two plates, then opened a can of wild Alaskan pink salmon and divided it likewise, then drizzled the fish and the asparagus in some of the chive-lemon-garlic-mayonnaise dressing. I drained the vinegar-soaked, cooled potatoes and tossed them in the rest of the mayonnaise dressing with two minced celery stalks and dished it out, threw a handful of capers over the potatoes and the fish, dusted the potato salad with smoked paprika, then put the dressed salad alongside everything else.

We sat at the counter, a little sunburned, relaxed from the long walk we'd taken earlier in the fresh clean air. We listened to Edith Piaf and ate every scrap of everything while we sipped the crisp, barely fruity wine, all the tastes still lingering on my tongue—garlic and fish and asparagus and potato and capers—Dingo sprawled at our feet, too sacked out to beg.

Strangely, given that we were in the middle of what passes for a heat wave up here, this meal kicked off a week of steady potato-eating. The next night, we made a pilgrimage to the steak frites at our local bistro; their fries are addictive—crisp, thin, and drizzled with aioli. The sliced steak is tender and savory and cooked to perfection, charred outside, pink inside. It's a dangerous addiction to tempt, a splurge we can only afford every so often, so whenever we do, we enjoy the hell out of it and eat every scrap.

The next night, I made a clam chowder with two dozen littlenecks, onion, pancetta, two cobs' worth of corn, and a large diced Yukon Gold that turned tender and mealy in the clam-liquor broth and soaked up the brininess. Clams and potatoes and pork are an unbeatable combination, especially with corn and onion, especially in a savory soup.

The night after that, to continue our impromptu potato festival, I served boiled new red potatoes and steamed asparagus alongside thick, fresh organic pork chops marinated in orange and lemon juices, olive oil, ginger, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, smoked coriander, and rosemary.

Then, the next night, to cap off this decadent, gluttonous, gourmandesque Potato Week, we made thick, juicy, lean, flavorful burgers, ground bison mixed with chopped onion and Worcestershire sauce and fried in butter in a cast-iron skillet, on toasted gluten-free buns. And, of course, we made oven fries: thin-wedge-sliced Yukon Golds and matchstick sweet potatoes baked in peanut oil in a hot oven, well salted. We dredged them in a ketchup-mayonnaise dipping sauce. Alongside, we made a salad of tomato, red onion, and avocado. As we ate this meal, or rather, shoved it into our mouths, we asked ourselves how it was possible to drool and eat at the same time.

Potato, potahto, potato, potahto! They're so good in hot weather, any way you slice, dice, bake, or boil them. They have a cooling property in the summer, although they're equally warming in winter. They're magical that way, like a Thermos.

Around the winter solstice, when the days are short and dark, I can't stop sleeping. I seem to have been infected by a seasonal parasite, a sleep tapeworm or zombie virus that awakens at dark and renders me unconscious so it can wreak its insidious takeover of my person while I'm zonked out. Every day, I try not to give in, but I'm unable to resist. I start to nod off when the sun goes down, in mid-afternoon, no matter how much sleep I've had the night before (sometimes, in that season, ten hours). I have no choice but to stop what I'm doing, get into bed, and conk out, sometimes for an hour, sometimes two. It
doesn't matter what deadline is looming before me or how long my to-do list is. The parasite doesn't care about my life at all beyond its wish to take it over.

When I return gradually to wakefulness from my dream-filled nap, at five o'clock or thereabouts, it's pitch-dark night already, and I've accomplished exactly nothing since I fell asleep. I shake myself awake, stagger back to my desk, sit down, and try to pick up where I left off, to reconstruct whatever it was I was doing before I blacked out. As I start typing again, my brain slowly coming back up to speed, I can feel the parasite curling into its lair somewhere in my skull, sated for now with whatever part of my brain it feeds on while I'm out.

Eventually, it's time to cook dinner.

Down in the kitchen, I foggily survey the contents of the fridge and cupboards. There are polenta, pine nuts, Savoy cabbage, a package of chicken breasts, red peppers, leeks . . . I yawn and blink, lose my train of thought. I know I'll be asleep again by ten p.m., but it feels so far away.

“What do you feel like eating?” I ask Brendan, who blinks at me from his computer, where he's been fighting his own sleep parasite all afternoon, working away.

“I'll cook,” he says. “What do you want?”

“I don't know,” I say. “What would you make?”

“I don't know,” says Brendan, who as usual seems to be in the same mood I'm in. “What do you feel like?”

The truth is that there's really nothing I actively feel like eating. I can't even think about cooking or eating anything enterprising or challenging or surprising or difficult. My stomach wants carbohydrates. My palate craves nursery food. My soul wants warmth and quiet.

“How about baked potatoes?” I say.

“Perfect,” says Brendan.

During sleep season, there is nothing, nothing at all, like a baked potato for dinner, or lunch, or even—in theory, anyway—breakfast. It's the easiest thing in the world to make, for one thing: wash a potato, prick it, cover it in oil and salt if you prefer, or not, and stick it into a hot oven for fifty minutes or so till the skin is crackling and the inside is soft. You can put anything you like on top: sour cream and chopped chives, or a fried or scrambled or poached egg with steamed chopped spinach if you want something green, or nothing at all but a little butter, salt, and pepper. A baked potato is starchy and hearty but not too big. It's nourishing and comforting, but not filling or heavy. And it's cheap.

Russets are traditionally the best for baking, but I'm partial to Yukon Golds. Their skin doesn't give chewily between the teeth like russets', but their buttery-yellow insides taste richly of the essence of potato and are denser, whereas russets' innards are white, fluffy, a little bland. And a Yukon Gold can stand up to baking; its skin is thinner, but it crackles.

One bleak, frigid day, I reached into the cheese case at the supermarket and yanked out a small brick of something called “bacon cheddar” and put it into the basket without even thinking about it. Its ingredients were unfathomably decadent: the usual full-fat cheese stuff, plus bacon and hickory smoke. I had never bought or eaten or even noticed its existence before, but I neither resisted nor questioned the sudden urge to possess it.

At home, near lunchtime, without consulting Brendan, I stuck two scrubbed, pricked large Yukon Gold potatoes into the oven. While they baked, I sautéed a large minced yellow onion in olive oil and plenty of Worcestershire sauce, slowly, on low heat, so the onion softened and started to brown and caramelize but didn't burn.

When the potatoes were done, I cut them in half, slid them onto a cookie sheet, and smothered them in grated bacon cheddar. I stuck them back in to broil until the cheese was melted and bubbling and the whole kitchen was fragrant with fake smoke flavor, along with the smell of browned onions.

I pulled them out and covered them in the onions and served them with a small bowl of kosher salt and the pepper grinder. We sat at the table and ate our lunch without speaking. The sun was already beginning to set. I could feel the zombie virus awakening in my head, turning sinuously with sinister velvet lullaby rhythms. The baked potato felt like an amulet, an antidote that would protect me while I slept.

Potato Salad

There are approximately 18,987,998 recipes for potato salad in this country, and many more in other countries, especially Germany. But mine, I say without humility, is a good one, maybe even better than average.

Feel free to adjust all the amounts; they're only guidelines, and everyone has favorite proportions that may differ from mine.

Boil 2 lbs. of new red potatoes till the flesh is still firm and their skins just begin to split; be careful not to overcook them. Drain them, cut them in halves or quarters while they're still hot, put them in a bowl, douse them in apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper them, and chill them, covered.

When they're cold, add to them 3 minced celery ribs, 3 chopped hard-boiled eggs, 1 minced medium red onion, and, if you like, some capers, fresh dill, and anchovies. Some people love apple in
their potato salad; I am not one of them. But go ahead if you must.

Make a dressing of 1/2 cup mayonnaise, 2 T of mustard, 1 tsp paprika, and 2 minced garlic cloves.

Mix everything together and eat right away, or chill and eat later. Very good with hot fried chicken, barbecued chicken, or cold leftover chicken of any kind. Serves 6 as a side dish.