A Homemade Life (15 page)

S
ometimes I worry that with all I've written about my father, you might get the wrong impression. He was a real character, a very kind person, and even sort of a sap, but he could also be very difficult. He was not some mythic figure sent from on high. He and my mother almost separated when I was ten. The night before I left for college, when I was overwhelmed and scared and wanted his sympathy, he told me coldly, “You'd better get used to it, because this is the way life is.” I hated him for saying that, though I don't think he really believed it. No one who lived as large, or ate as many croissants, as he did could possibly believe that life is cruel. But he could be gruff and hard all the same.

The thing is, now that he's gone, I don't really remember the bad things. When someone dies, we tend to tell the same stories over and over: the happy ones, or the funny ones, or, at the very least, the poignant ones. We turn those stories this way and that, studying them like diamonds or ancient scrolls, taking note of every detail. We don't tell the sad stories, or the ugly, warted ones. After a while, they fade like old newsprint, and we start to forget.

Part of what I love about writing is that it helps me to remember things. A computer or a scrap of paper is about eight million times more reliable than my brain. But sometimes, when I sit down to write, the
stories are already half-gone. This happens especially often with the ugly ones, the ones I hid away behind something prettier or more important. When I go to look for them, they aren't there anymore. So it's hard for me to show you exactly who my father was, because I don't know anymore. And, to be perfectly honest, I don't want to. I'm not interested in wrapping him up in a box with a tidy bow. He would hate that.

One of the details I remember about my father is that he loved cream. In retrospect, it's kind of an endearing quality, I think, and very illustrative of his priorities, but at the time, it was an ongoing source of tension. He always had that big gut, that sagging shelf above his skinny birdlike legs, and he didn't seem the least bit interested in doing anything about it. It looked precarious, like a glass of water balanced atop a teetering stack of papers, and given his substantial back problems, it was. It's not uncommon, I understand, for doctors to be bad at taking care of themselves, and my father certainly was. Both he and that gut of his were maddeningly stubborn. My mother and I used to struggle to hold our tongues when he took a third scoop of ice cream or, late at night, sneaked into the kitchen to eat a bowl of cereal doused in heavy cream.

Of course, none of that, not his belly or any amount of cream, is what killed him. The cancer had its own plans, and it didn't need any help. And in light of that, I'm actually sort of glad he didn't listen to us.

Until a couple of years ago, I used to be a little scared of cream. It was probably a reaction, now that I think about it, to my father's decadent tastes, although at the time, I thought I was just being sensible. Once, at a bistro in Paris, I ordered a
velouté de potimarron,
a velvety pumpkin soup, and when it arrived at the table, my stomach did a flip-flop. It coated the spoon like crème anglaise, and its color tended more toward white than any shade of winter squash I'd ever seen. I only took three bites, though I had to admit, it was delicious. Of the remainder of the evening, the only thing I remember is the man sitting next to me, who leaned into my ear and breathed lustily,
“Ma cherie,
tonight you are Cleopatra.”
I was going through a smoky eye makeup phase.

But if ever there were a reason to change my tune, creamwise, it's winter. The cold months make us all feel a little hungrier, I find, and a little more generous with ourselves and our measuring cups. A couple of winters ago, I discovered that I like to be especially generous with cabbage. I like to give it the better part of a cup of cream.

I first tried braising vegetables in cream because of food writer Molly Stevens, who wrote an entire book about braising. She has a recipe for cream-braised Brussels sprouts, which is insanely good, but I think green cabbage is even better. Cabbages may be homely, hard-headed things, but with a little braising, they're bewitching. Cut into wedges and cooked slowly in a Jacuzzi bath of cream, they wind up completely relaxed, their bitter pungency washed away and replaced with a rich, nutty sweetness. My stomach coos like a baby at the thought of it.

My father would have loved cream-braised cabbage. I'll bet he would have served it with one of his roasted chickens and some boiled, buttered potatoes. Just thinking about it makes me want to go fix myself a bowl of cereal with cream on top. I just might.

CREAM-BRAISED GREEN CABBAGE

t
his recipe calls for a fairly small cabbage. I like to use small ones because they're often sweeter and more tender than their big-headed siblings. If, however, you can only find a larger cabbage, you can certainly use it. Just be sure to use only as many wedges as fit in a single layer in the pan, and take care that each wedge is no thicker than 2 inches at its outer edge. Otherwise, the cabbage won't cook properly.

You can also try this method on halved or quartered Brussels sprouts.

 

1 small green cabbage (about 1½ pounds)

3 tablespoons (1½ ounces) unsalted butter

¼ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

²
/
₃
cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

 

First, prepare the cabbage. Pull away any bruised leaves, and trim its root end to remove any dirt. Cut the cabbage into quarters, and then cut each quarter in half lengthwise, taking care to keep a little bit of the core in each wedge. (The core will help to hold the wedge intact, so that it doesn't fall apart in the pan.) You should wind up with 8 wedges of equal size.

In a large (12-inch) skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the cabbage wedges, arranging them in a single crowded layer with one of the cut sides down. Allow them to cook, undisturbed, until the downward facing side is nicely browned, 5 to 8 minutes. I like mine to get some good color here, so that they have a sweetly caramelized flavor. Then, using a pair of tongs, gently turn the wedges onto their other cut side. When the second side has browned, sprinkle the salt over the wedges, and add the cream. Cover the pan with a tight-fitting lid, and reduce the heat so that the liquid stays at a slow, gentle simmer. Cook for 20 minutes, then remove the lid and gently, using tongs, flip
the wedges. Cook for another 20 minutes, or until the cabbage is very tender and yields easily when pierced with a thin, sharp knife. Add the lemon juice, and shake the pan to distribute it evenly.

Simmer, uncovered, for a few minutes more to thicken the cream to a glaze that loosely coats the cabbage. Serve immediately, with additional salt at the table.

 

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

T
he word
happiness
has many definitions. For some, it involves cotton candy and peonies and babies that coo. For others, it involves ice cream, reruns of
Law & Order: Criminal Intent,
and warm sun on your face in early March. I'm quite certain, though, that if you looked it up in one of those visual dictionaries, what you'd see is a pan of slow-roasted tomatoes.

I first tasted slow-roasted tomatoes one hot summer several years ago, the summer after I returned from working in Paris and before I moved to Seattle. I was in Oklahoma, staying with my parents for a few months, and one day, a glut of tomatoes from the garden sent us running for the cookbook shelf. Each spring, my father used to start tomato plants in tiny pots in the laundry room, and by mid-July, they were so big, so top-heavy, that they would droop over the driveway until he tied them to the fence. That summer was an especially good one. The fruits were sweet and fat, coming ripe by the dozen. We needed to get rid of a bunch of them all at once, so we set out for ideas. We'd scoured two shelves of cookbooks when we stumbled upon a technique called slow roasting. It called for the tomatoes to be halved lengthwise and put into a low oven for several hours, so that their juices went thick and syrupy and their flavor climbed to a fevered pitch.

Following the loose guidelines, we sent two pans of tomatoes into
the oven, and six hours later, we opened the door to find them entirely transformed. They were fleshy and deep red, with edges that crinkled like smocking on a child's dress. When we bit into them, they shot rich, vermilion juice across the table. We were sold.

Over the course of those few months, we must have roasted a half-dozen sheet pans' worth. We ate them plain, straight from the pan, or with mozzarella and basil. We put them into sandwiches. We used them to sauce fresh pasta that my father had flattened with a rolling pin and cut into small, rustic rags. It was a very good summer. Which is a good thing, as it turns out, because it was his last.

One day that fall, when he was lying in the hospital bed in the den, he had a dream about the tomatoes.

“There were so many,” he told me sleepily, staring out the window. “We must have grown ten
thousand.”

I followed his eyes to the spindly patch outside. One could do much worse, I decided, than to go out that way, on a swan song of ten thousand tomatoes.

I think of Burg now every time I see a flush of those red fruits. In honor of that summer, I try to slow-roast them whenever I can.

I make mine the same way that we did back then, but in recent years, I have begun to add a few pinches of ground coriander. It's an idea I borrowed from a sandwich shop in Paris called Cosí, where one of the offerings is
tomates confites à la coriandre.
I used to ask for them fanned atop a smear of fresh ricotta or goat cheese, and the bright fragrance of the coriander always seemed to give the tomatoes a subtle boost.

Slow-roasting tomatoes may take time and planning, but straight from the oven, it's instant gratification. It's almost impossible to keep stray fingers out of them. They're like rubies in fruit form. And though they're delicious plain, their sweet acidity also plays remarkably well with other flavors, especially those dishes at the rich, robust end of the spectrum. I've served them alongside cheese soufflés and plates of pasta with pesto. When teamed up with fresh goat cheese, basil, and arugula, they make for a delicious, if drippy, sandwich, and laid over the top of a
burger, they're like ketchup for adults. You can whirl them in the food processor with some basil and Parmesan and turn them into a pesto of sorts. You can even make them into a pasta sauce. Just slice a handful into a bowl with some capers, slivered basil, and sea salt, and add splashes of balsamic and olive oil. It's the sauce we ate all those summers ago atop Burg's fresh pasta, and it works on pretty much any noodle that happens to land in the pot. And on nights when the stove is too much to consider, few things make for a happier picnic than a hunk of crusty bread, a wedge of blue cheese, and some slow-roasted tomatoes. You don't even need a patch of grass. I can tell you from experience that the living room floor works fine.

With a little foresight, you can have them always in the refrigerator, ready and waiting. I've never been one to believe, anyway, that happiness can't be planned. I think my father would agree.

SLOW-ROASTED TOMATOES WITH CORIANDER

t
his formula is loose enough that it can hardly be called a recipe. I've tried it in many permutations, and with good results every time. Sometimes I've roasted the tomatoes for 6 hours; other times, I've roasted them for 4. (You could even try 8 or 10 hours, if you want. What's the worst that could happen?) Sometimes I've set the oven to 200°F; other times I've set it to 250°F. I've roasted 10 tomatoes one day and 28 the next. I've even carried my experimentation into winter, when the tomatoes are far from ideal, and have come away with summery results.

The quantities listed here are intended to be a starting point. I like to use Roma tomatoes, but you could use almost any. Romas have very little juice and dense, meaty flesh, meaning that they roast very nicely. And unlike their more delicate, juicy cousins, decent Romas can be found almost year-round. That's good to remember, should you find yourself with a midwinter tomato craving.

 

3½ pounds ripe Roma tomatoes (about 20 tomatoes)

1 tablespoon olive oil

Salt

Ground coriander

 

Preheat the oven to 200°F.

Wash and dry the tomatoes, trim away the stem end, and halve them lengthwise. Place them in a large bowl, and, using your hands, toss them gently with the oil. Arrange them cut side up on a large baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and ground coriander, about a pinch of each for every 4 to 6 tomato halves.

Bake until the tomatoes crinkle at the edges and shrink to about half of their original size, 4 to 6 hours. They should still be juicy in their centers. Remove from the oven, and set aside to cool to room temperature.

Put them in an airtight container, and store them in the refrigerator for up to a week.

 

Yield: about 40 tomato halves

SLOW-ROASTED TOMATO PESTO

a
plain slow-roasted tomato is hard to beat, but should you want to take yours a step further, try this riff on pesto. It makes a great spread for a sandwich, especially when there is goat cheese or fresh mozzarella involved. It's also good as a condiment for pan-fried polenta. And like the slow-roasted tomatoes themselves, you can use it as a sauce for pasta. Just thin it with a splash of olive oil and some water from the pasta pot, and it's ready.

 

½ cup olive oil

1 teaspoon lemon juice

¼ teaspoon salt

2 medium cloves garlic, peeled and trimmed

2 cups packed basil leaves

3 cups slow-roasted tomatoes (about 36 halves; see preceding recipe)

½ cup tightly packed finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

 

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and garlic. Pulse until the garlic is finely chopped. Add the basil leaves and process until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Add the tomatoes and process well. Add the Parmigiano-Reggiano and pulse to combine. Taste, and adjust the seasoning as necessary.

Stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator, this pesto will keep for up to a week.

 

Yield: about 2½ cups