That request was not unlike the bell ringing in the zendo at the end of a zazen session. I stretched my legs, stood, then brought in the cocktail tray from the dining room, readied with the ice bucket, glasses, bitters, whiskey, vermouth, and canapés. This was my—and Dan’s—first experience with a cocktail hour, and while it wasn’t exactly assuming the cross-legged posture, it was a calming period. The main problem with this form of meditation was following those Manhattans with a trip to the kitchen to make dinner, followed by another trip to tidy up. Trying to get by drinking club soda and bitters, or tonic water without the gin come summer, wasn’t acceptable.
“You kids are going through an awful lot of tonic water,” Nancy grumbled when we switched to gin and tonics.
* * *
—
Nancy’s food tastes were very much those of the 1950s. Sometimes she pulled out a recipe card from her file and gave it to me to figure out, or she showed me how to make a favorite dish. One was a butter that was seasoned with garlic, anchovies, and mustard, which one spread over toast followed by a little cheese. Actually this butter was good on, over, or in just about everything savory. She was fond of slices of ham wrapped around asparagus, floury cream-based chicken soups and chowders, linguine with clams, roast chicken with paprika, and sole wrapped around a filling of creamed spinach then cooked in clarified butter until golden. Spinach soufflés and hearts of palm salads with canned baby shrimp were also on her list of favorites. I relied a lot on James Beard for guidance and found that cooking these retro dishes was like learning a new language. Except for the soufflé, Nancy made no requests for vegetarian meals.
There was a camp in the Adirondacks that Nancy talked about frequently. We would be there from May until September and we would have to row a boat across the end of the lake to get to her place. That was all we knew. Dan and I, who were both from Northern California and knew about camping in the Sierras, were sent out to buy such things as a new record player, cases of wine, and other supplies that neither of us associated in the least with camping and backpacking. We thought that maybe her tent was on a platform and therefore more houselike, but somehow camping in any form didn’t seem at all Nancy’s style. We were mystified.
When we finally did arrive at the lake, there was the flat-bottomed boat as described; we loaded it, then rowed across the lake to the camp, then returned for a second load. The “camp”—which we were now beginning to get—consisted of a handsome large building hidden among the trees with several guest cottages connected by mossy paths. All around there were green woods. The main house had a stone fireplace almost big enough to walk inside. There was a tin-lined cedar closet for the blankets and, best of all, there were two elegant guide boats set up on the dock waiting for us to use them. The camp finally made sense of all those L.L. Bean catalog covers I’d seen for years, even though they referred to Maine and not upstate New York, canoes and not guide boats.
The shore of the lake was lined with camps, but they were invisible from the water so you felt as if you were alone in your guide boat. No motorboats were allowed, which meant there were loons. The first time Dan and I heard a loon it was just before dawn and we were swimming in the dark waters of the lake. When the bird cried we were sure that someone was being murdered in a nearby camp. (They weren’t.) Soon we became accustomed to the loons’ manic screams and looked forward to hearing them.
During our months at the lake Nancy wrote; I helped her with office details, massaged her stiff shoulders, and cooked. Dan worked outside doing manly things, and at the end of the day we all worked in the woods together, clearing dead trees and shaping the forest into a rock and moss garden. Come evening we had cocktails, a slow dinner in front of the fire, and hours of conversation.
It was not a happy period in Nancy’s life. She missed her husband, and her daily reading of The New York Times told her of friends who had passed. Nonetheless, each night she dressed up in a cotton Chinese shirt and pants outfit, wrapped a cloth around her head to fashion a turban, put on bright pink lipstick and some dazzling jewelry, and came downstairs for cocktails and dinner. She did not allow herself to succumb to gloom and depression, at least in front of us. When a depressed student showed up for a visit, she told him firmly to go upstairs and take off his lead suit. One had to make the effort.
Food at the lake was much like it was on Long Island except that it now included potatoes and squash (from the gardens of town residents who were willing to sell us their vegetables) and Nancy’s “barbecued” chicken. She made this dish with the help of a magical pot called a Swedish steamer. This was a great pot; someone could make a fortune developing one like it today. It looked like a short angel food cake pan from the outside, but under its lid were five metal wells that fit into a rack. You put your chicken pieces into the wells, put water in the bottom, then added the top and steamed the chicken until it was done. The steam dropped onto the meat and created a thick gelatin in the cups, which I later used to make one of Nancy’s floury-creamy chicken curry soups. The cooked chicken was covered with the barbecue sauce, then grilled. You never ended up with raw chicken, and it was utterly good.
The sauce was a secret, as are all barbecue sauces, but it started with something in a jar to which Nancy added her own touch. She didn’t share her tricks. This was the summer dish for all occasions—Saturday night, company, starbursts, birthdays, Tuesdays—it was good all the time. We served it with the vegetables that Dan and I found in town. There wasn’t a lot of variety but when those good New York State apples arrived later in the summer we frequently turned them into crisps and Betties.
Garlic was impossible, though. It was still sold in little boxes with cellophane windows exposing the two small heads that were invariably too old to use. One could not imagine then that a trip to any farmers’ market in the country would offer countless varieties of garlic with fresh, hard cloves. No wonder cans of garlic powder were preferred then. Nancy’s stove was lined with them.
* * *
—
As engrossing as life at Nancy’s camp was there came a point in the summer when we had all grown restive with our routines. To sweeten our collective darkening mood, Nancy decided that we’d take a drive, so we set off for a small town where we spent a few hours picking around antiques stores, admiring old barns, and having lunch. We had just turned back toward the lake when we passed a table on the side of the road. A sign on the table read: STRAWBERRIES.
“Stop!” Might this be something special? The table stood under a grove of white pines, which provided shade for the berries. Some of the pines’ long green needles had fallen over the fruit. There was a jar for money. I tasted a berry. It was uncommonly good. I tasted another and it too was good. I put five dollars in the jar and returned to the car with two quarts of strawberries.
These strawberries were little and dark red throughout, nothing at all like the giant white-centered and even hollow strawberries we were used to seeing from California. They didn’t have that familiar pointed shape but were round and a bit lumpy. It was warm in the car and after a while a sweet scent started to rise off the berries, gradually filling the car with an immense perfume. I started thinking about what I might do with the berries and after considering this and that dessert, I would decide to make a strawberry tart with pastry cream. Then I’d get another waft of that perfume, fall back into the seat, inhale, and think, No, maybe a sorbet. Or strawberry ice cream. The scent became increasingly intoxicating as we drove onward until all at once it occurred to me that I was, just maybe, finally having a “gourmet” experience! This was definitely a big experience in the realm of the senses, one that surpassed any notion I had ever had of a strawberry. Surely this must be what people like Caroline Bates were experiencing and sharing with the readers of Gourmet.
It was too late to make a tart that night so we just sliced some berries, sprinkled a tiny bit of brown sugar over them,
and poured on some cream. None of us had ever tasted strawberries like these. They were more like a tropical fruit than what we think of as strawberries. There were still enough left to make a tart the next night and while it too was extraordinary, the crust and the pastry cream actually detracted from the purity of the fruit. In the end, it was really enough just to put one berry at a time on my tongue, bite off the stem with my teeth, and slowly crush the fruit in my mouth.
Years later a young man from Portland, Oregon, sent me a note. “It’s strawberry season here and our very special Hood variety are the sweetest, softest berries, and red all the way through. Squishing a soft berry in the mouth is like eating the best strawberry jam you’ve ever tasted. They are so soft that there is no way to ship them to other parts of the country. A great reason to visit Portland in the late spring sometime!”
And I have, during the season of the Mount Hood strawberries, and they are delicious in the same way those New York berries were.
* * *
—
Since that ride, I’ve had other car-filling perfume experiences, like riding around Italy with a white truffle tucked safely in the back seat, or driving in the heat of a southwest summer with a cargo of quinces, a ristra of chiles, and a branch of tridentata sage—all filling my car with a flurry of scents that inspired not only pure pleasure but recipes. Today I stop when I see that big silvery sage covering a plain and break off a piece. It’s an Artemesia, not a Salvia, so it’s too bitter to cook with. Rather, it’s tied into sage bundles that are lit and then used to purify a place with fragrant smoke. It can do the same for your spirit simply sitting on the dashboard, absorbing heat and imbuing the air with miracles of sweet fragrance.
* * *
—
While Nancy’s camp didn’t involve camping as Dan and I knew it, like Tassajara, it was something like camping and food still tasted best whether eaten by a rushing stream or by a fire while looking out at a silent lake. As Labor Day approached, people started leaving their camps and the weather turned nippy. The woods grew more hushed and we saw the leaves on the trees turn color, then break off and glide, dipping from side to side, to the forest floor. Mist now rose off the lake in the morning and it was too cold to swim. Nature seemed to be gathering herself for winter, and we did as well. We hauled in the boats, put the woolen blankets in the cedar closet, and had a last barbecued chicken dinner with a special bottle of wine before packing up the boat, rowing across the lake, and turning to say goodbye.
ALICE, LINDSEY, AND CHEZ PANISSE
Green Gulch was a long property in Marin County that ended at Muir Beach. When I was a child, I remembered passing it on our way to Stinson Beach to escape the valley heat, but in 1972 it was acquired as another place for students in the growing Zen Center community to practice. Today its farm supplies many Bay Area homes and restaurants with beautiful produce sold at the Ferry Plaza market.
Soon after I returned from Nancy’s, the same abbot of Zen Center who had sent me to live in New York invited Alice Waters and Lindsey Shere of Chez Panisse fame to take a tour of Green Gulch. Knowing that I was interested in food and cooking, he generously asked me to show them around. I really had no idea who they were, and unlike the abbot, who had eaten at their restaurant many times, I had never been to Chez Panisse, though I think I had heard the name. Maybe.
As we walked down the fields I noticed Alice’s eyes traveling to the rows of lettuce. Deer Tongue. Marvel of Four Seasons. Tender butterheads. She wanted lettuces like these for her restaurant. She asked a lot of questions about the farm and what else we grew—herbs? Fingerling potatoes? Golden beets? Greens? A cow lowed, and she asked about cream. Lindsey was quieter. As a pastry chef, she would be more interested in fruit or nuts, neither of which we had. It was too foggy and cold. After a while I started asking them questions. Had they ever heard of Richard Olney? (He had just been at the restaurant that past week.) Did Lindsey make tarte tatin? (Indeed!) What about Elizabeth David? (Yes, they knew her, too, and had, in fact, just seen her.) After a few more questions in this vein, Alice turned to me and asked, “Have you never been to the restaurant?” That, it seemed, would explain a great deal. But on a fifty-dollar-a-month stipend and with no car, I hadn’t been to Chez Panisse.
“You must come!” she gushed. “Come tomorrow and bring friends!”
During our stroll Alice had made Chez Panisse sound like a funky, modest little place with picnic tables for furniture. At least that’s how I imagined it, so when three of us arrived the next night in a borrowed car and pushed back the plush velvet curtain we were astonished at how beautiful the dining room was, the tables with their thick linens and little French lamps, the enormous bouquet of flowers, even printed matchbooks. Suddenly we were a bit unsure of ourselves, our strange clothes, our lack of experience, but we were welcomed warmly and put at our ease. Immediately we ate two baskets of bread and the extra butter the waiter brought us. It was just so good!
Dinner unfolded. I still recall a ragout of green-lipped mussels and other shellfish in a saffron and tomato broth, a plate of tender lamb with a creamy turnip gratin, a salad of very tiny lettuce leaves, our first taste of goat cheese, and an array of desserts, especially Lindsey’s raspberry tart. The waiter kept bringing us desserts and we kept eating them, picking up every last crumb with our fingers until we had to stop. When we finally left, I experienced heartburn for the first (and only) time in my life. The food had been so astounding, so good, so beautiful, and, of course, it was nothing at all like Zen Center food. It was as if I were on another planet and I realized finally that this was the food I’d always wanted to eat and that it was right here, in the Bay Area, just across the Bay Bridge from the Zen Center, in Berkeley.
When we got back to San Francisco I noticed the abbot’s light was still on and although students didn’t normally do things like this—say what they wanted to do—I knocked on his door and announced that I had to work at Chez Panisse. Amazingly, he agreed. I suspect now that he was thinking about Zen Center opening a restaurant and having me involved in the kitchen somehow. In any case, Alice had invited me to work there and I started the next day.
* * *
—
The F bus to Berkeley stopped practically in front of Chez Panisse. I picked my way to the back door through hoses and cartons and cases of produce and started my day around nine, after zazen, service, breakfast, and the commute. It was a busy time at the restaurant. Deliveries were being wheeled to the back door and checked in. Grates and knobs were plucked from the stoves and run through the dishwasher. Stripped of their thick white tablecloths and little French lamps, the dining room tables looked dowdy, and the floor was littered with petals and branches as Carrie Wright arranged the flowers. These were the restaurant activities that customers don’t see and shouldn’t have to think about. The atmosphere was hopelessly chaotic for most of the morning and it never ceased to amaze me that somehow everything was tidied up and resolved by the time the first customers arrived and were led into a spotless, welcoming room that looked as if it had been waiting for them forever. Even today when being led to a table in a restaurant, I often feel as if this very table has been waiting for just our party and for no one else’s. Yet as we get our coats and glance back before leaving, we see that what was our table has already been reset and is once again looking virginal and expectant as another party takes our place. But this is the magic of restaurants: to make every diner feel as if she has walked onto her own stage, which has been waiting just for her.
There was no set menu to work from for lunch, and Alice would show up and start going through the walk-in to figure out what to cook. A few days after I began working there, Judy Rodgers graduated from Stanford and came to work, setting Alice free. I worked with Lindsey in pastry and as she sketched out her day, I collected butter, chocolate, nuts, eggs, and tart pans. In the midst of the planning and organizing bustle, a moment wou
ld arrive when Kathleen Stewart glided into the kitchen with her cheerful good morning, a tray of café lattes, a warm baguette that had just arrived from the baker, and ramekins of butter and jam. I assumed that all restaurants had a Kathleen who happily brought trays of coffee and warm bread to the kitchen. This was something I would incorporate in the Greens kitchen.
I worked with Lindsey through lunch, then took a break and walked around North Berkeley for an hour before returning for the dinner shift. My place was on the end of the line, where I peeled onions and garlic, chopped parsley, and watched everything. I usually stood next to Mark Miller, who always had a lot of interesting things to say about anything, really. During service I put together appetizers and salads, the two courses I’ve always liked the most, then switched to desserts as those orders came in. Today the dessert people don’t make salads or first courses—just desserts.
Lunches rolled along rather smoothly, but dinners were another matter. Nearly always chaotic, they were of course adventures. Alice frequently had to figure out how to make something she had never made before, and there were times that it didn’t quite work as she had hoped and some grappling was needed to pull it off. On other occasions—many in fact—a special ingredient was too hard to find or to count on, so the words “if available” appeared quite often on the weekly menus to prepare the customers for possible disappointment. Or the ingredient showed up, but there wasn’t enough of it for both sittings. Or Alice generously gave extra portions of something special to special customers during the first half, leaving the kitchen short for the second half. The half-hour break between sittings was a time to recoup losses and make menu changes. All the while music was playing—opera and Clifton Chenier’s “Black Snake Blues” were favorites then—and everyone was working hard. It was fast and intense and utterly different from the Zen Center kitchens, where people worked in silence as they tried to be mindful of what they were doing, taking mindfulness to an absurd point of slowness. Here conversation, music, and enjoyment didn’t get in the way of concentration and attention to detail. It was hard work that was also focused, fast, and fun.
An Onion in My Pocket Page 13