by Cathy Erway
Kale, Radicchio, and Sausage Pizza
Whether you’re using unbaked store-bought pizza dough or your own, lots of fresh, chunky toppings are always a refreshing alternative. The flavorful combination and bright colors of this pie make it especially appealing; if your crowd has vegetarians, try this out with smoked mozzarella, and leave out the sausage.
(MAKES 1 APPROXIMATELY 9-INCH PIE)
4 tablespoons olive oil
1-2 Italian pork sausage links
2-3 oz. fresh mozzarella
Uncooked dough for one 16-inch pizza from a pizza shop
1 small head radicchio, shredded
4 large kale leaves, thick ribs trimmed, and chopped
2 oz. grated pecorino romano, or another firm, aged cheese such as Parmigiano-Reggiano
Pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)
Heat a heavy skillet over medium-high heat with 1 tablespoon of the oil. Lightly brown sausages on all sides until just firm, about 5 minutes. Transfer sausages to a cutting board and let cool. Once cooled for 5 minutes, slice links diagonally into ovals no more than ½-inch thick.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spread pizza dough onto a pizza pan or cookie sheet and brush top with olive oil. Break the mozzarella into thumb-sized pieces and scatter across top of dough. Arrange sausages evenly across top, and top with radicchio, kale, and red pepper flakes. Sprinkle with the grated pecorino romano. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until edges of the crust are lightly browned. Remove from oven, and add an optional drizzle of good olive oil for garnish.
CHAPTER 8
Giving Thanks
COMMUNAL FEASTING WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY
Dining with one’s friends and beloved family is certainly one of life’s primal and most innocent delights, one that is both soul-satisfying and eternal.
-Julia Child, The Way to Cook
For me, summer officially begins when the first backyard barbecue is thrown. It’s the smell of charcoal and hamburger grease wafting down a residential block, mingling from various backyard grills. My first summer after beginning the blog, I took advantage of as many barbecue invitations as I could, held in friends’ yards or on rooftop patios. As a guest, all you had to do was bring your share of beer and a side dish perhaps, and sit back as a long evening unfolded under the starless sky, which popped with the occasional illegal firework on any given night.
Not eating out in New York feels like a more natural thing to do in summer. Ben and I would pack a picnic and ride our bikes to a nearby park for an afternoon. I lived a short walk from my local farmers’ market, and every Saturday when it was open, I would pick through the plentiful baskets, choosing what to make for the week’s feasts, amid the bustling crowd of neighbors doing just the same. I’d ride laps around Prospect Park on weekends and pass massive family barbecues taking place on the lawn one after another, catching waves of jerk seasoning and clouds of hibachi smoke from the track. Block parties serving full trays of barbecued chicken, mac and cheese, and collard greens would clog up an entire block, at least somewhere, on any weekend of the summer, it seemed. A handful of girlfriends and I planned an elaborate picnic at a waterfront park in Brooklyn, and convinced some local acoustic musician friends to entertain along the rocks, before a backdrop of the Manhattan skyline.
Then, almost as soon as I could get into the swing of things, summer faded into fall. My work schedule went back into full throttle, with no more half-day Fridays. It got cooler. My bike spent more and more days against the wall of my bedroom, unused. The fresh fruits and ripe Jersey tomatoes at the farmers’ markets dwindled. And then the forgotten hunger pangs for quick and convenient or long and languid restaurant meals came creeping back.
September marked the one-year anniversary of my blog and my not eating out. That summer, I had cooked up a storm. From picnic lunches to more elaborate projects, like a chilled watermelon soup served in a hollowed watermelon bowl I brought to one barbecue, I felt like there was no stopping my eating-in mission. I was only just getting warmed up, it seemed. So when I posted the twelfth “Reason for Not Eating Out” essay on my blog (each month, I wrote a post making one argument on the topic). I announced the one-year anniversary and the fact that I was going to push on with not eating out and blogging about it.
Ben seemed a little less jubilant about this decision than I was. He didn’t complain outwardly, but I could tell he was tiring of my nightly typing ritual and my insistence on bringing homemade food along with me whenever I was going to be out for a long period of time, instead of joining him for a bite at a restaurant. As a consequence, I craved occasions when I could be around like-minded cooking enthusiasts, and my friend Karol and I went to some of our first local amateur cook-offs that summer and fall.
Then came my favorite occasion to cook with others: If there was ever a time of the year when it was inappropriate to eat out, it was Thanksgiving.
My friend Matt decided he couldn’t wait to get into the spirit.
“A Fall Harvest Feast,” he wrote in an e-mail. The idea was, since so many of our friends left town for Thanksgiving, we would throw an early Thanksgiving-like dinner party for a handful of close friends. Matt was Karol’s best friend, and until then we had never really hung out when she wasn’t around. But lately we’d discovered that we shared a common passion for food. Although he worked as a barista at a popular restaurant in Brooklyn, I hadn’t realized before that he, perhaps even more so than Karol, was such an avid foodie. We’d get into heated discussions over the respective merits of peeling vegetables versus leaving the skins on, or oversalting (Matt was a proponent of using as little salt as possible).
“I really want you in on this,” he went on. “We’ll plan the menu early, so nobody will bring the same things. There should be lots of variety, like a Thanksgiving spread, only better.” I wrote back, letting him know I was definitely in.
The Fall Harvest Feast would be held at Matt’s friend Maia’s apartment. Maia’s specialty was Southern fare, and she planned to make biscuits and pie for dessert. Karol was also bringing pie, and when one other friend insisted on bringing her famous sour cream apple pie, it was clear that my pie-making expertise, passed down from Dad, wouldn’t be needed. Instead, the general consensus among my friends had my name on the turkey
We all agreed that the meal wouldn’t be complete without a roast turkey But no one knew the first thing about what to do with a whole, dead bird-actually, everyone else was frightened stiff about the notion of transforming it into a stuffed, thoroughly cooked main course. In their eyes, I was the only one qualified for the job.
How hard could it be, I thought? At Thanksgivings with my family, my dad was the designated turkey handler, from stuffing to carving. To feed a houseful of our extended family, and often guests, and have enough for leftovers for the next day, he generally cooked a thirty-pound bird. In recent years, he’d picked up the habit of brining the bird the night before, and this required a massive bucket and the space to keep it cool throughout the night. I had neither of those elements. But then, we weren’t going to roast that big a bird.
“How big should it be?” I asked Matt a few weeks before the feast.
“I’d say at least twenty pounds,” he said. Our guest list was still a little uncertain at this point, and besides, it was always better to have more than less. Plus, we had a huge advantage on our side: The restaurant where Matt worked prided itself on serving only free-range, pastured, grass-fed meats and poultry from upstate farms. Since he was friendly enough with the staff and their suppliers, he could order a bird wholesale, for the same price the restaurant would pay Not only were we all thrilled about getting a free-range whole turkey for the first time, but it would be at a bargain price. We placed an order for the bird two weeks in advance, settling on a twenty-pounder.
At the same time my friends and I were planning the Fall Harvest Feast, my own family was figuring out what to do for our “real” Thanksgiving dinner, which would happen about a week later. Every Than
ksgiving since I had been born, my father and his three siblings brought their families to their parents’ home in upstate New York. Two years before, my grandmother had passed away, and earlier that spring, my grandfather had also passed, at ninety-two. Their big house in a sleepy suburb was on the market, and the four siblings were spread among three states. Between the funeral and taking care of the estate, they had seen each other several times that year already. So my parents decided to host Thanksgiving dinner at their house, in New Jersey. My aunt Ellen and cousin Phoebe, who lived in Connecticut, would come to our dinner. The New York contingent of the family would spend the holiday together at one of their homes. So this year’s dinner would be a smaller-scale affair. But I didn’t expect it to be any less extravagant a feast, since my parents always held court as the chefs of the family.
There would be another missing piece to our Thanksgiving that year. My uncle, whom I’ve always simply called Jo-Jo, the Chinese name for a mother’s younger brother, always attended family events with us. He was very close to us; he had even lived in my parents’ home until I was about five, before moving to his own apartment in Queens. This year, however, had brought another downturn for my aging senior relatives. My maternal grandfather, or Gong-Gong to me and my brother, had grown too frail to care for himself. He moved in with Jo-Jo that fall, and my uncle was doing his best to look after him with the aid of a social worker a few days a week. There was no way my grandfather could travel to New Jersey anymore, and since the social worker was off on Thanksgiving, Jo-Jo needed to stay with him in Queens. Of course, we planned to go see them the day after.
It is said that the act of cooking and eating together was the catalyst of civilization. The need to prepare food and to consume it is what tamed humans into living in interdependent societies instead of individually as hunter-gatherers. Agriculture centered us as home-dwelling beings rather than as members of nomadic herds. People settled down, built cities, and began taking up certain skills to fulfill various needs of the community-many of which, at least in the beginning, were related to eating.
Not only did communal supping forge communities and play a large role in defining cultures, but it also offered people something a little more than plain sustenance. Coming to the table for an unquestionably enjoyable act-eating-allowed for human interaction either meaningful or mundane—essentially, the opportunity to commune.
It’s often lamented that in today’s eat-on-the-go culture, so increasingly prevalent in urban areas like New York, we are missing out on something very valuable. We have yet to see what will become of us if the trend continues. But forecasts have been portentous: “Americans will once again become a lonely race of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers prowling the darkened city streets, wallets honed and sharpened, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting pint of pasta primavera and snare the slow-footed slice of pâté de campagne,” Jeffrey Steingarten wrote with comic melodrama in 1988. Just think of it: When you sit at your desk eating alone, or eat as you drive alone in your car, you’re chipping away at eons of development in human civilization!
I had a growing number of friends and acquaintances in Brooklyn, however, who were excited about cooking and feasting with one another. Potlucks and food parties that involved gathering together for anything from full dinners to just hors d’oeuvres were all the rage—even put together on the fly. Staying in and eating something delicious had become, to my great fortune, a common way of hanging out.
Earlier that fall, my friend Becca and I paid a visit to a monthly communal dinner buffet called GRUB. It was housed in an industrial warehouse loft in Brooklyn called Rubulad, inhabited by a loose collective that often hosted parties, music shows, and other events in the space. Much of the food prepared at GRUB dinners was freeganed, too.
Becca was running late, so I arrived at the building before her. Once I climbed up the long staircase to the loft, the first thing that greeted me was a rocking horse dressed up in carnivalesque beads and brightly colored Christmas tree lights hanging from a wall at the top of the landing. In the windowless first room there was a small stage with a sequined purple curtain, empty in the half darkness. I had been to Rubulad once before, to see a music show at night. Then, the place was so bustling with bodies and I had walked through so many twisting, pitch-black hallways and separate rooms to get to the area where the band was playing that I had no idea what it really looked like. In the daytime, it bore a resemblance to an abandoned funhouse ride.
I went ahead into the main living room. Several people were standing around, talking, and in the spacious but ramshackle-looking kitchen, there were about ten or so people busy cooking. Each one seemed hard at work in his or her own station—some were chopping, others sautéing, some kneading dough. Several people were standing to the side and talking. I didn’t see anyone I knew, so after a quick walk-through, I headed for the fire escape, where I saw some folks standing outside. After calling Becca, who assured me she was five minutes away, I was feeling a bit awkward, so I lingered on the far side of the spacious fire escape while pretending to be sending text messages on my phone. The pair that had been standing outside moments ago had dashed down the staircase to what looked like a puppet theater in the courtyard. A minute later, two more people stepped out onto the fire escape. I recognized one as a well-known graffiti artist I had met a couple of times, and the other as a photographer. The photographer looked my way and smiled.
“Cool shoes,” he said, nodding at my pink Keds.
I smiled and thanked him. After a brief pause, he went back inside. I realized that if there had ever been a good opportunity to mingle with this crowd, I had just missed it.
Things didn’t get much better once Becca arrived. We struck up a conversation with one of the girls cooking in the kitchen, but as it was her first time cooking for the event, she didn’t have much to say about it. At one point Becca was rudely shrugged off when she asked another girl if she could take pictures.
Once the food was all prepared and set on a table in the living room, everyone lined up to fill their plates. Becca and I sat down on a couch to eat. My plate had four dishes, squashed together: a potato gnocchi covered in tomato sauce, a tofu dish with a sweet-and-sour sauce, a heap of salad heavy on the shredded carrots and fennel fronds, and a mixed veggie side that resembled ratatouille. We were told in a brief announcement before dinner was served that most of it had been freeganed, except for some purchased ingredients like spices or flour, and all of it was vegan.
There were at least forty people at the dinner that night, in various rooms and even on the rooftop. Though Becca and I enjoyed watching the meal being cooked and eating it, we left without making any lasting contacts. This was mostly our faults, but we sensed an exclusive vibe from some of the characters there. When we were finished eating, we turned our attention to a commotion in the center of the room. A girl clad only in a bra and jeans was wrestling with a guy, and they stumbled into the room laughing and squealing. They suddenly crashed onto the floor in a heap and then continued to roll around on their backs, cackling. Becca and I looked at each other and silently agreed it was time to go.
The bigger a dinner gets, the less intimate the experience, I left the event thinking. I always preferred smaller gatherings to big ones anyway, at least as long as good people and good food were involved.
As the Fall Harvest Feast approached, Matt, Karol, Maia, and I realized we were looking at about twelve to thirteen guests in all. It seemed like an easy number of mouths to feed. Twenty pounds, once you subtracted the bones and entrails, might not be a huge amount of bird. But we were planning to pull out all the stops with the side dishes and desserts. Matt had a pumpkin succotash in mind, in addition to a vegetarian stuffing prepared outside the bird. Karol wanted to make some healthy sauteed greens along with her decadent dessert pie. Aside from some obligatory potatoes, which Maia would prepare, we needed more sides to fill out the spread. So Matt called on me to whip up another dish, three days before the event.
; I couldn’t promise one, I told him. I was already making the bird, my own stuffing, and the gravy with the turkey drippings. I didn’t see how I was going to manage something else in the same day What’s more, there wasn’t enough room in Maia’s oven for a twenty-pound turkey, not by a long shot. She also needed it to bake her biscuits and dessert. I would have to roast the turkey in my own home kitchen, and then cab it over to Maia’s for the dinner. The cooking part for me sounded pretty lonely.
I also had a technical glitch or two. I didn’t have a roasting pan that could possibly fit the bird, nor any basters, brushes, or kitchen twine for trussing it. Also, my hopes of brining the turkey overnight had evaporated, as Matt would be picking up the bird from the restaurant the morning of the dinner and delivering it to my door right away. I began hitting the cookbooks and Internet sources on turkey roasting, and I called my parents for some general advice on what I’d need to keep in mind.