The Art of Purveying, Part 4

After a six month hiatus, I recently saw a couple of big ticket Broadway shows. One was Brief Encounter, based on Noel Coward’s film of the same name. The other was the current revival of the Jerry Herman/Harvey Fierstein musical La Cage aux Folles.

First of all, let me say that my standards for a theatrical experience are completely unpredictable and idiosyncratic. The best show I ever saw was The Fantasticks, about seven or eight years into its original run. Before you clap your hands to your face and open your mouth to shriek in terror and dismay, let me add that I was thirteen at the time, and had never seen a really well done show in a tiny theater, so close to the actors, accompanied only by a piano. Revolutionary! Like walking into Our Town without knowing about the “no scenery” stage direction.

 I’d never heard the cast album, and since I didn’t know who Luisa was until I walked into the theatre, I wasn’t wishing with all my heart to play her in my high school’s revival of the show. When I left the theatre, I was surrounded by a golden glow, and walked on air. For several blocks. Or maybe it was several days.

That is a pretty high experiential bar to meet.

So, about these latest Broadway offerings I just saw. I left the theatre in both cases feeling that my heart had been touched, but, really not so much because of the actual show for which I’d bought a ticket. Brief Encounter is extremely well done, and if you’ve seen the recent production of 39 Steps, you have some idea what to expect—lots of inside jokes that are much funnier if you are very familiar with the source material, and incredibly ingenious use of costumes, props, media, and low tech, to represent film settings, angles, atmospheres, and effects. Obviously the creative team gets an A for ingeniousness; unfortunately, ingeniousness starts to seem like nothing more than a party trick when one is over-exposed to it.

The different between 39 Steps and Brief Encounter, though, is that 39 Steps plays it pretty much for laughs, while Brief Encounter goes for the laughs, but at the same time reaches for the romance and the bitter-sweetness of the original movie. It’s not entirely unsuccessful, but, amidst all the technical prowess, it feels kind of. . . dispassionate? Calculated?

What touched my heart was that at the end of the show the cast announced from the stage that they would be collecting money for Broadway Cares as we were leaving the theater. As a special treat, all the actors and musicians (most of whom did double duty) would hang out in the back of the orchestra and play some tunes. And they did. This ensemble, who had just finished one strenuous performance, and were slated for at least another seven that week, on their own time, dragged their instruments to the back of the house, and played an energetic and hilarious set of blue-grassy/bluesy/klezmery arrangements of disco and hair band songs. That is what touched me.

La Cage aux Folles is a rather silly show, with not terribly memorable book, music, or lyrics. Watching it did make me think about how, when you’re a young actor, you really wish that you were pretty enough to be cast as all the juveniles or the ingénues, and you’re so bummed out when all you get is old ladies and character parts instead, but then when you go back and watch the pretty people in a show like this—and here they are dressed in 1970s clothes, rendering them ludicrous, even if they are pretty—you realize that the pretty people are sticks! And the people really having fun are the character folks.

There are two reasons to see this show. One, the boys playing Les Cagelles, the drag chorus at the Saint-Tropez nightclub owned by the main characters. This is the Broadway debut for most of them, and the dance, acrobatic, and musical talent (okay, and cross-dressing) on display is impressive. As is the humorous ensemble interaction. Two, Douglas Hodge. He plays Albin, the aging transvestite chanteuse who is at the center of this show. Certainly this part offers any actor the opportunity to paint his role with broad brushstrokes, which Mr. Hodge does, but he also has this incredibly expressive physicality. Even when he is embodying the completely over-the-top reactions of this overripe diva, his physicality reveals the real human fear and fragility that are at the heart of the character. And his voice really does anything he asks it to do! Perhaps I was more touched with envy than I was touched at the heart.

And yet, these were not the elements of the show that really touched me. Or perhaps touched my heart isn’t the right description in the case of La Cage. Maybe. . . goosed me?  This show has a warm-up act, and she/he greets Broadway patrons out on the street, well over a half hour before curtain, as they are gathering and checking their purses for tickets. She/he was wearing a plaid shirt, leggings, high heels, and a bomber jacket the night I attended. A longish brunette wig styled in a flip, plus dangling earrings, and a clutch purse completed the ensemble. This personage calls herself Lily Whiteass, and alternately charms, comforts, and insults the audience with blue jokes, as needed. I know, I know, it’s Broadway, and the rawness of this--essentially, this clown--was calculated, and yet, still, I found this to be the most touching element of the show.

I am sad to say that Mark is dealing with the height of the Christmas season at Macy’s and was unable to attend either of these performances.

We did, however, go to Terhune Orchards  together at the beginning of this month. Terhune’s is one of the favorite purveying places that I wanted to write about in this series. However, the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, it was kind of ghostly; no pumpkins or gourds outside, the door to the garage-like store area half open, and the lights flickering.

“You think they are open?” I asked Mark.

Just then an athletic looking blonde woman came striding down the hill. “Hi!” she said, seemingly very glad to see us.

“Are you open?” Mark asked.

“Oh, it’s open,” she replied, preceding us into the space. “It’s on the honor system now, though.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Yeah. I been working here all Fall, but they told us last Wednesday that it’s on the honor system from now on. You just leave your money in the box.” she replied.

“And here I thought you were coming down to greet us,” Mark joked.

“Well, I can take your money, if you want,” she said, eagerly, stepping behind the counter. “I was actually just walking down to see what was going on. You get so used to coming down here, it’s hard not to come down and say hello.”

Mark paid her for a half gallon of cider, one of the few things Terhune’s is still selling at this time of year. It’s very good cider, too. Unpasteurized.

The Art of Purveying, 3



At sometime in the dead of night this past weekend, whoever does this sort of thing went around and did it. I am talking about the festooning of the streets. When I went about my workaday business on Friday and Saturday morning, I don’t remember seeing golden stars arcing over my head on every thoroughfare. But when we walked around Brooklyn yesterday, there they were. And this morning when I went looking for a new toothbrush, I found that my neighborhood had not been spared.

In August, I was indignant when merchants busted out the Halloween decorations before the pools and beaches were closed, but when I look at the calendar, sadly, I have to admit that this time “they” may be within their rights, declaring “open shopping season.” Already Mark is rising at the crack of dawn to cover “the biggest one-day sale ever.” (“You mean the biggest one-day sale since last week?” I sneer. “No, it’s the biggest sale of the year!” he rejoins, quite earnestly.)

            There are, after all, only 39 shopping days left before Christmas! As is my wont, as the Giving Season kicks into gear I feel myself becoming more and more stingy. Especially this year. It’s probably time for an intervention from those Ghosts who helped Scrooge so much.

            But, I still like food. Even if I can’t face those one-day sales, I still like shopping for comestibles.

Sahadi’s, 187 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY,  http://sahadis.com/. I thought I’d stay in Brooklyn, since I was just talking about yesterday’s visit there. Our friends Nick and Joseph live just off Smith Street, which, I have already told you, is rife with restaurants, but there’s not much point in going to a restaurant when you have friends who prepare fabulous French food, which they serve beautifully and accompany with great drinks and conversation. It was on our post-prandial stroll on Court Street that I noticed the municipal Christmas decorations. If you keep on going down Court Street you’ll hit Atlantic Avenue (Trader Joe’s is right on the corner of Atlantic and Court) and if you walk down Atlantic toward the water, you will pass one of my all-time favorite stores, Sahadi’s. But never go on a Sunday, because it isn’t open. Whoever heard of that, in an age when Mark’s store is open 24/7 at Christmas, for those who might like to shop at 3 am? But there it is; Sahadi’s is closed on Sundays, so don’t try to go. 

            But if you go on any other day, between 9 am and 7 pm, you are in for a treat. Sahadi’s, which has been in the New York area for over 100 years (although not always in the same storefront), has a great collection of imported Middle Eastern delicacies. They carry a wide variety of oils, spreads, vinegars, crackers. They have a pretty good cheese counter, always a few bargains. Their store-prepared food is really tasty. I happen to be very fond of their store-made hummus. It’s very smooth, almost unctuous, but it has a nice kick of tahini and spice. I also love the lebany with garlic, which they don’t always have. It’s a thick yogurt, thoroughly infused with garlic. Great by itself, with a cut-up raw vegetable salad, on top of a baked potato, or as an unusual sandwich spread.

But all of these items are only a teaser. The real strengths of this store are in the bulk department. Here you can get every variety of dried fruit and nut, in as large or small a quantity as you wish, without spending an arm and a leg. You can also get bulk olives and pickles of various kinds, and they are consistently superior to most other purveyors (perhaps Zabar’s is the exception, but it is more expensive). And the surrounding shelves are piled high with a wide variety of coffees, grains, and common and exotic herbs and spices, which you can purchase either in bulk or pre-packed.

            It’s really a great place to shop, but be warned: you are definitely NOT going to make it out of there without impulse buys. Oh, look, lavash, we haven’t had that in a while. .  . I wonder what pomegranate molasses tastes like? . . . look at the deal on phyllo!

Know what I’m saying?    

The Art of Purveying 2

This is going to be a lengthy series, because Mark and I really like our food and beverage purveyors.
         This post is for those who are into meat eating. If you’ve read Mrs. Talling’s Pig before, you know that I have some trepidation and some moral qualms, but I do enjoy seeing somebody enjoying their food, even if it is the charred flesh of a fellow creature. Maybe I should change the name of this blog to “The Biggest Hypocrite in the World.”

Here are a couple of places out in Brooklyn, our late, lamented home borough. Not in Park Slope, which was our neighborhood until it got so genteel we couldn’t afford to live there anymore, but in one of the neighborhoods we had to bike through in order to get to the Brooklyn Bridge. I guess these markets fall on either side of the Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens divide.

Paisanos Meat Market, 162 Smith Street Brooklyn, NY 11201.  Paisanos sits on Brooklyn’s “restaurant row,” which is what Smith Street came to be known as after William Grimes deemed Grocery a serious restaurant back in 2000. Now, when I walk down Smith Street from Carroll Gardens to Cobble Hill, especially on a Monday night, I always think, there can’t possibly be enough people eating dinner in the entire city of New York to keep all these bars and restaurants afloat. I’m sure I’m showing my age; by now the real, cutting edge “restaurant row” is probably in Bushwick, Canarsie, or East New York.

Paisanos pre-dates them all, having been in business for nearly half a century. Once again, the posts of some Yelpers and Chowhounders have been disdainful, insisting that the butchers in this shop have not all mastered their craft, but I am thrilled by this place, principally because they cut the meat to order. You tell them how thick you want the steak, and they take that big ole hunk of cow over to the bandsaw, and, voila, your two-inch steak, madam. They also sell a nice selection of sausages. Of course, Mrs. Talling’s Pig likes it when I bring back a brown paper package from this place (although, sadly, it’s not tied up with string). He likes the steak; I like the sizzle.

G Esposito’s and Sons Pork Store, 357 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231. Speaking of pigs. . . . so, you hopped on your bike, took the 9^th Street Bridge across the Gowanus and you’re tooling down Court, feeling a little peckish, when you see this giant, kind-of-sinister-looking pig wearing a chef’s hat, beckoning to you from a storefront. Actually, I’m thinking you probably shouldn’t be tooling down Court Street FROM the 9^th Street Bridge, because I think it’s a one-way street that goes in the opposite direction. . . .but I digress. At any rate, you’re feeling hungry and like you deserve to be because you’re biking, and the Pig is strangely compelling. So, you go into his store—which, 5 seconds of painstaking research reveals, has been around since 1922—and you get the prosciutto bread. It’s a heavy loaf, studded with nubbins of pork. That’s for now. You think you’re not going to eat the whole thing, but by the time the bike ride is over, so is the bread. You also get store-made hot soppresseta. That's for later. It’s spicy and chewy, and it tastes like an animal. But, in a good way! If you’re going to be a meat eater, this is an honest way to do it.

The Art of Purveying, Part I

To purvey: To furnish or supply (esp. food or provisions) ---pur-vey-or n. (New World Dictionary of the American Language)

I first encountered the word “purveyor” in reading about the Crimean War, specifically about Florence Nightingale’s heroic battle to improve the hospital care for the wounded at Scutari. In the tangled bureaucracy of the British military, the Commissariat comprised the cooks, carters, and shop keepers who were responsible for filling the stomachs of the troops—whether they were in the field or in the hospital. However, once men were too ill to eat regular food (and if they ended up at the hospital in Scutari, they were likely to become too ill to eat regular food, even if they were only slightly damaged when they entered its portals), the job of supplying the “invalid food” became the purview of the Purveyor. However, the Purveyor only cooked and disseminated the beef broth, puddings, port wine, and other Victorian comfort foods. It was still the Commissariat who made the budget for the food, picked the merchants who supplied it, and decided if the quality was suitable. And it was the doctor who chose which patients should receive the special diet.

Do not think the Purveyor powerless, for, although the doctor could order specific foods for the patient, his order could easily be countermanded by the whim of the Purveyor. If you think this set up sounds confusing, you’re right. The administrators of this institution were also confused. But what kind of order do you expect in a hospital that had a city of whores living in the basement?

But I digress. . .

Ever since then, I have been a fan of the word Purveyor. I like it capitalized like that, like the Terminator, or The Grand Inquisitor. I like the fact that Mark and I can spend his days off purveying, going from one shop to another to pick up our provisions for the week, and that the merchants we patronize are also purveying when they supply us with said delicacies.

So, without further ado, here are some of our favorites.

East Village Cheese, 40 3^rd Avenue, New York, NY. Okay, some Yelpers may complain that East Village’s supplies are not always the freshest. Yes, it’s true, I have bought the odd pound of port salut there that was almost too pungent to eat by the time we got it home, and no amount of telling ourselves that it was supposed to taste like that and that we would grow to love it, could make it palatable. Yes, sadly, sometimes East Village Cheese’s specials are past their prime. But to my mind if you can pay 2.99 a pound for port salut, St. Andre’s, and other cheeses that normally retail for 14 bucks a pound, it is worth the occasional dud. A pound of port salut in the garbage is a small price to pay for the entire kilo of Castello we got for two bucks that was so delicious we ate it in a week! Actually, our arteries are probably thankful.

East Village Cheese is really big on atmosphere, too. The specials are hand-printed on butcher’s paper, and taped the windows. The long, narrow store is nearly impossible to navigate any time a holiday is approaching. When they say that they’re closing at 6:30, they mean they’re locking the doors at 6:30, so you’d better be finished. And they have this old European way of charging you for items, which I have not encountered anywhere else in the United States. You get on one, long serpentine line, and when you finally get to the counter, you tell the guy what you want and he gathers it, cuts it, weighs it, and wraps it. He then uses an old fashioned adding machine to assess the damages. He hands you the tape, and you walk across the store (about three feet away), hand your slip to the cashier, and pay. After that, the cheese counter guy will hand over your groceries. Not sure why they keep this system in place, but it does add to the experience.

What’s in Your Wallet (er, fridge) Curry?

I have always thought of myself as very single-mindedly driven. I wanted to be an actress, a Person of the Theatre--that was it. So, imagine my surprise a few years ago, when my mother and my husband both agreed that I was a person of intense, but capricious, passions. 

How could they misunderstand me so thoroughly? Sure, I might develop a mania for learning about Florence Nightingale, or set forth on a ceaseless quest to find a particular wig, knitting needle, corset, dagger, mannequin, or artificial Calla lily, but this was all in the service of whatever theatrical venture engaged me at the moment.

However, unbidden thoughts of other fierce but fleeting interests were summoned—the mini-trampoline I could not live without, the karaoke machine bought on sale, the miniature sewing machine—as seen on TV--and the specialized cake decorating tips that were absolutely necessary. Man, I so hate thinking of myself as a dilettante.

Today I had to incarcerate myself, because I am working on a writing project that has an extremely tight deadline. I envisioned myself working through the night, and directing poor Mark to go the Piper’s Kilt if he wanted any dinner. Of course, that isn’t how it went down.

Following a lengthy interview for my project, with a famously crusty character, my brain was famished. I decided to cook. I was, as usual, in the position of making up a meal based on what was already in the refrigerator and the pantry. Here’s the result.

The Ingredients

• 2 boneless chicken thighs (about ¾ of a pound)
• 1 tblsp tandoori masala spice mix
• 1 tblsp candied ginger
• 4 cloves garlic
• ½ large white onion
• ½ red pepper
• 1 stalk celery
• 1 inch portion of fresh ginger
• 1 small zucchini
• 1 ½ tblsp mild Jamaican style curry powder
• 1 Knorr chicken bouillon cube
• 2 or 3 kefir lime leaves, dried
• 1 lime
• 1 large sweet potato
• ½ cup fresh (or fresh frozen) cranberries
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 3 tblsp of peanut oil
• 1 tsp (or more) of cayenne pepper
• ½ cup frozen peas

The Plan

1. Cut the raw, boneless chicken thighs into bite sized pieces. Cut the candied ginger into tiny bits. Put the chicken and the ginger into a bowl with the tandoori masala spice, and mix it up.
2. Wash the cutting board you used for the previous step really well, or else relegate it to the dish washer and take out another cutting board for the veggies.
3. Chop garlic kind of fine, but don’t go crazy.
4. Chop fresh ginger a bit finer than that.
5. Chop onion, red pepper, celery and zucchini into bite sized bits.
6. Put 1 ½ tblsp of peanut oil into, a large frying pan or Dutch oven and heat it up. It should sizzle when you add something to the pan, but not smoke. Add the onions, garlic, ginger, and celery, and turn down the heat a bit. Let it cook up for a minute or two, then add the red pepper. Put the top on the pan and let this mixture sweat for five minutes. Take off the top, add the zucchini. Let this cook until zucchini is sautéed, about six or seven more minutes. Remove the veggies from the pan. Reserve on a plate.
7. In the meantime, put the kefir lime leafs, the bouillon cube, and the lime juice in a 16 oz Pyrex measuring cup. Put the kettle on to boil with a couple of cups of water. When the kettle starts to whistle, pour the water into the measuring cup, to about 12 ounces. Agitate the liquid to help the bouillon cube dissolve. Then let it steep.
8. Add the rest of the peanut oil to your pan, and reheat. Add another tblsp of the curry powder to the bottom of the pan. Put in your chicken pieces. Cook until they start to brown.
9. Add the cooked veggies back to the pan.
10. Add the sweet potato to the mixture.
11. Mix it around to get it all covered with spice and oil.
12. Add the bouillon mixture and let it come to a boil.
13. Add the cranberries.
14. Add a tsp of cayenne.
15. Cover the pan. Cook for around half an hour, checking frequently to make sure the mixture is not sticking.
16. Taste. Adjust seasonings (it probably needs to be hotter). Cook a 5 to 15 minutes longer if it still doesn’t seem like it’s melding.
17. Taste again. If it seems like it’s getting there, add the peas, and cover for a few moments.
18. Serve, over rice if you like, with plain yogurt or sour cream mixed with fresh dill, cucumbers, olives, or whatever interesting mixture of aromatics and preserved things you have in your fridge. If you happen to have some kind of chutney on the side, like mango ginger, or rhubarb, so much the better.

Food Alchemy, Part II

I was going to call this Food Alchemy, Part I, but then I realized that this is a common theme in my writing. If you want to read what is, essentially, Food Alchemy, Part I, see Croquettes and the Kitchen Sink.

I like to cook. In fact, I have a not-entirely-healthy fascination with cooking—it’s a comfort, a screen between me and the real world, and a major distraction. Dare I say it’s an addiction?

    There are three key things about me and cooking. One, I am not a minimalist. I believe that more is more. If I might serve something with two sides, why not four? If the dessert could have sauce or frosting, why not both? Two, I find it difficult to follow directions. I read the title of a recipe and get giddy with anticipation and inspiration. I have to take a deep breath and force myself to read all of the ingredients and steps decreed by the recipe’s author, and even then I most likely will bushwhack rather than follow the trail marks.

     And three, I am a re-purposer of food. If something wasn’t well liked, or wasn’t finished in one form, I will always try to save it by turning it into something else. Just last week I took the Asian cole slaw (fennel, carrots, cabbage, cilantro, ginger, rice wine vinegar, peanut oil, soy sauce) that was languishing in the refrigerator and transformed it into a stir fry. Sometime a food goes through a series of transmogrifications before I declare victory (every last drop finished) or defeat (down the garbage chute). Which is how we happened to have Super Nachos during the football game last night.

Pork for the Pig

My husband, Mark, is an unapologetic carnivore. I am an apologetic carnivore. I don’t eat meat. That much. I like the flavor, I admit. But I don’t like the concept. At least, I don’t really think I should eat meat. But I do. Sometimes. You see, I’m quite wishy washy, and can stand in the butcher aisle at the supermarket prevaricating about buying flesh for so long that I have to leave so that the manager won’t think I’m a homeless person loitering there.

    But Mark likes most meat, and this fall a type of pork roast that we hadn’t seen before found its way into our favorite store, Adams. It’s a roast called a porchetta, and we liked it because it was flavorful and tender, and not monotonous in texture. It wasn’t difficult to roast it to a crispy tender brown and pink perfection, with the aid of our trusty but ancient meat thermometer.

    Alas, on Thursday night, when the latest porchetta was about to be roasted, the meat thermometer was suddenly nowhere to be found. Both Mark and I know where this implement should live, and each responsibly places it there when it is his or her turn to empty the dishwasher, but it was just gone. Not in its home drawer, nor anywhere else. (As is always the way with such things, it magically reappeared, one drawer over, several days later, but only after I’d replaced it with a digital model endorsed by the ubiquitous Martha Stewart.) Without a meat thermometer to guide us, we miscalculated, and cooked the beastlet until it was nearly white, a disappointingly tough and monochromatic eating experience.

When Life Gives You a Lemon (Or an Orange)

We ate a bit of it, and I sliced it very thin for Mark’s sandwich on Friday, and dressed it with peppadew, home-pickled carrots, butter lettuce, and General Tsao Stir Fry Sauce from Trader Joe’s. But there was still lots of the none-too-flavorful meal left. On Saturday, when I was sitting at my desk, re-re-re-re-writing my resume, I started to think about what I was going to make for dinner, and, the next thing I knew I was in the kitchen, checking my supplies. I was in a musing sort of a trance as I perused the contents of the cabinet over the sink, when the bottle of Dinosaur Barbecue Sauce caught my attention.

I wonder what I could do with that? I wondered.

    Visions of fire pits and smokers, totally impractical in a five-by-ten kitchen on the fifth floor. Wait. Couldn’t I cut up the remaining porchetta, toss it in a baking dish with barbecue sauce, vinegar, orange juice, and a little hot sauce, cook it real slow in a 325 degree oven, until it gets so tender I can shred it with a fork, and call it pulled pork?

    So I did. And Mark ate it for a late supper over the last two slices of that Tuscan Bread (Trader Joe’s, two weeks ago. Don’t worry, we froze it.)

Then on Sunday, after we returned from the New York Botanical Gardens, where we’d attended the last Edible Garden event of the season (gourmet food vendors, outdoor cooking demonstrations by TV star chefs), Mark sat down to watch The Game. I guess it’s football season, then. Or it could be pre-season, or something, I don’t keep up with this stuff. But it occurred to me as I stood in the back of the living room, reading the unimportant parts of the Sunday Times and vaguely watching the incomprehensible scrimmages, that Super Nachos are something that people eat while watching football games. And that got me really excited, because I believed I was in possession of all the ingredients necessary to make something Nacho like.

Out of the Ashes Super Nachos

• I half eaten bag of blue corn tortilla chips
• 1 small container of leftover pulled pork
• 2 scallions (farmers’ market)
• 1 15 ounce can black beans
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 Tblsp peanut oil
• 4 ounces of havarti with jalapenos (I know, sounds weird, on sale at East Village Cheese)
• 1 small container of homemade salsa, with tomatoes, cilantro, pepitas, garlic, and lime juice

1. Get the aluminum tray out of the toaster oven and make sure it’s relatively clean. Line with silver foil.
2. Rinse and chop the scallions.
3. Pour oil into a small frying pan. Add the can of beans, partially drained, and the garlic and chili powders. Smoosh it up with a fork as you heat it over the burner. Make a semi-mash of it, but stir it around as it heats so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan too much.
4. Shred the cheese with a box grater.
5. Make sure that the pork is pliable enough to spread. If it’s coagulated, add a bit of orange juice and heat in the microwave for 20 or 30 seconds.
6. Put a layer of chips down on the silver foil.
7. Cover with a few spoons of black beans, some scallions, a bit of the pork, some salsa, and a handful of cheese. Heap some more chips on top.
8. Repeat this, ending up with three or four layers, or however many your ingredients hold up for. Make sure you top with cheese and salsa.
9. Put this in the toaster oven, with the oven set for 375 degrees. Cook for ten to fifteen minutes, until the cheese is nice and melty and starting to crust on the edges.

Remove tray from the toaster oven, using pot holders. Carefully transfer the silver foil under-layer to a plate, without disturbing the Super Nachos.

Enough to feed two to three football watchers, with beer and many napkins.

    
This may have been the best rendition of the porchetta.

Happy Columbus Day! And No Sea Monster for You!

Back in grade school the art teacher, Mrs. Gardner, used to come into our classroom on Tuesdays, and teach us how to make art. Each week, the definition of art was pretty narrowly proscribed. If Mrs. Gardner was demonstrating how to make a plaster cast of your hand and spray paint it gold, for example, you can bet that the definition of art did not include, say, a plaster cast of your foot. If it was snowflake cut-out day, you’d better believe that none of those snowflakes was going to be any color other than white.

            This approach kind of went against what I was taught at home. There, my mixed media “think-outside-the-box” creations were not discouraged, in fact, they were applauded. You made a collage on a piece of newsprint, using modeling clay, ketchup, and toothpaste? How fabulous! (Well, maybe not the toothpaste part, because of the expense of that particular medium.)  And you’re calling it “The Angry Piano”? How brilliant! How creative! Never mind that the unsuitable media are too fragile to last, or that the picture itself looks nothing like a piano. My uncle had been a famous Abstract Expressionist and he started much the same way.

Angry Piano

            But back to second grade, a century ago. Almost. It was October, and Mrs. Gardner was getting us revved for Columbus Day. The project was “Columbus’s Ships,” the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. These were to be rendered in tempera on oak tag. Mrs. Gardner showed us how to create three masted ships sailing on a blue blue sea, using only the colors in our poster paint set: brown, black, white, yellow, red, blue, green. I always enjoyed it when Mrs. Gardner demonstrated a technique, because she would become very involved in what she was doing, and she would talk the whole time, but it wouldn’t make any sense. It was like her mouth was jabbering along its merry way, powered by the old dinosaur brain, while her cerebral cortex was focused on the demo. In this way, she gave me an unintentional introduction to the theater of the absurd.

            Anyway, we all started to paint, guided by Mrs. Gardner’s masterpiece, which she’d left tacked to the blackboard. Mrs. Gardner passed among us, offering words of encouragement. Until she got to the desk of Joel Perlmutter, where she gasped and clutched her chest. We looked up.

            “What is this?” she asked Joel, striving to be severe, but actually sounding more astonished. “Where are the ships?” She held up the offending painting. “Class, look at this. Do you see any ships?”

            We looked. The bottom of the page was engorged with a large swirling pool of blue and green. Across the top of the page was a dripping, turbulent purple mass—meaning that Joel had mixed his paints, which we were NOT supposed to do.

            “It’s a sea monster,” Joel explained, his face having gone slightly red. “After it ate Columbus’s ships.”

            Mrs. Gardner closed her eyes and shook her head. She looked the very picture of despair. “Oh, honey,” she moaned, slowly, “What a mess!”

            And she made him start over.

            Well, I was incensed. Clearly, this was an example of the bourgeoisie stifling the cutting-edge thinking of proletariat youth. Or something. I mean, that’s what I felt, although I wouldn’t have expressed it in those words in second grade.

And yet. . .  Now when I think about what Mrs. Gardner was up to, I have more respect for her. What was she striving for, in forcing us to color inside the lines? Her job wasn’t really to teach us art, was it? Yes she was a bit silly, and I still think she was part of the plot to get us to endure boredom so that we’d be able to grow up and tolerate employment.  But she was also teaching us things like motor skills, control of media, patience, and how to take on the perspectives of others. Perhaps if I’d been a more cooperative student in Mrs. Gardner’s art class, my handwriting wouldn’t be so lousy, I’d have learned to play the piano, and my language skills would extend beyond a comprehension of American English.

           But enough of that. Here’s a recipe for Mark’s Columbus Day Dinner.

Crispy Ginger, Beet, and Carrot Salad

• 2 raw, whole beets (farmers’ market)
• 2 raw, whole heirloom carrots, one yellow, one red (farmers’ market)
• A handful of parsley (farmers’ market)
• A knob of fresh ginger
• 3 tablespoons of peanut oil
• 2 tablespoons of lime juice
• 1 teaspoon of dijon mustard
• 2 teaspoons of soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons of orange juice
• Several squirts of Sriracha sauce
• 1/8 teaspoon of garlic powder
• ¼  to ½ teaspoons of cumin powder

1. Wash and peel the beets. Then use the coarse side of a box grater to shred them up (the coarse side, not the slicing side).
2. Do the same with the carrots.
3. Rough chop the parsley.
4. Mix the previous three things together in a bowl.
5. Peel the ginger then shred up about a tablespoon, using the finer side of the box grater.
6. Find a small container with a top (a one cup Ball jar would be good), so that you combine stuff in it and shake it around. Put the ginger in there.
7. Add the next 8 ingredients to the jar and shake them all about. After they’ve been shook, and appear to be well mixed together, pour over the shredded veggies.
8. Mix well and chill. A vibrant fall salad will result.

And, no scurvy!

What I Fed Mark Yesterday

Breakfast

• Onion bagel (from the Bagel Hole, Park Slope, Brooklyn) that was going stale in the fridge, but perked right up when toasted and slathered with butter
• 3 eggs, whipped up with a fork, poured into melted butter in a cast iron pan. Stirred constantly until softly scrambled, then covered with a scattering of scallions from the farmers' market (Inwood)
• Apple cider (sold by Breezy Hill Orchard, at the farmers' market)

Lunch (brown bagged for work)

• Tuna salad, made from canned tuna in water (Bumble bee), with chopped homemade dill pickle, celery, red onion, mayo, and black pepper. On Tuscan bread (Trader Joe's, Brooklyn) with butter lettuce (also TJ's) and tomato slices (my garden)
• Half a linzer torte leftover from last weekend's visit to the Pastry Garden (Poughkeepsie)

Dinner (midnight, because he was on the late shift)

• Tomatoes (my garden) pitted Provencal olives (Sahadi's, Brooklyn), home pickled jalepeno, red onions and a drizzle of olive oil
• Corn on the cob (farmers' market), which was husked, buttered while raw, wrapped in saran wrap, and microwaved for 2 minutes
• Cheesy Cauliflower and Swiss Chard Casserole
• And Chardonnay

Recipe for Cheesy Cauliflower and Swiss Chard Casserole

1. Get a big bunch of swiss chard and a cauliflower or maybe a couple of small cauliflowers (maybe the cute ones from the farmers' market--the purple ones, or the yellow ones, or the gaudi-esque green ones)
2. Wash both vegetables well. Trim the chard and cut apart the stems from the leaves so that it will fit into a pot. Core the cauliflower(s) then break them into chunks.
3. Steam the vegetables in separate pots, until leaves of chard are wilted, and stems (and cauliflower) are starting to get tender. Let them cool, then cut them up into mouth-manageable pieces.
4. Mix the veggies together in a large baking dish (like a lasagne pan)
5. Preheat the over to 375 degrees
6. Make the cheese sauce. Use 2 cups of heavy cream, 4 ounces of cream cheese, 8 ounces of shredded cheddar cheese, a tablespoon and a half of dijon mustard, and fresh ground black pepper.
7. Heat the cream until it just starts to simmer. Add the mustard and the cream cheese, and stir until melted and thoroughly mixed. Add 3/4 of the cheddar cheese and the black pepper. Mix the gently bubbling sauce until it is completely smooth.
8. Pour the sauce over the vegetables
9. Put the pan into the oven, and bake for at least half an hour, maybe 45 minutes would be better. You can probably cover it with silver foil for the first 15 minutes so it doesn't dry out. It should be brown and bubbly when you take it out.
10. This is a very forgiving dish. It tastes good hot out of the oven, but is still fine at room temperature, if, say, Mark is much MUCH later coming home than he said he was going to be. Great leftovers, too.