Best Food Writing 2013

by Holly Hughes

  They weren’t following a recipe. They weren’t even cooking the way they had seen me do it. It was their own thing, all intuition and senses—sight and smell, the sound of eggs sizzling in butter, the sight of edges crisping up. It’s exactly the way I had hoped they’d learn to cook.

  I notice they defer to me when I’m in the kitchen. They ask me questions about doneness, when food is ready to be turned, flipped or stirred. Sometimes they just hand the egg to me because they might break the yolk, but they know I won’t. I’m the sure bet.

  It’s easy to take over and have them do less.

  But when they are alone, and there is no one to defer to, they have to figure it out themselves. I cannot hog the process. There is no safety net, so they simply depend on themselves to make decisions about the cooking.

  David, unsure of why I was peeking through a crack in the door, came over to mock me, but ended up hooked on the action.

  When they could tell the whites were not like jelly anymore, and the yolks were still a jiggly molten orange, they grabbed the spatulas from the jar on the counter. Lucy worked her eggs and mine onto plates.

  Edie got her eggs on the spatula but couldn’t quite negotiate the flipping. Lucy stepped in—all hurt feelings forgotten—positioning her spatula on the other side of Edie’s eggs. The omelette flipped up and landed sort of lopsided in the pan.

  Close enough.

  They let it sit for a moment and then, they each put a spatula under a side of the omelette. They were already moving when they realized the plate was not on the counter where it should be. So they carried the omelette, balanced across two spatulas, as if it were a hurt kitten on a pillow, cautious step after cautious step, across the kitchen. It was like watching a high wire act.

  No one took a breath until the omelette made it unscathed onto the plate.

  David and I both realized Edie had forgotten to shut off the gas, but we refrained from saying anything. Although it was killing me. I had this thought that maybe we’d be gassed to death. I felt the urge to cough a little.

  That’s when I heard Lucy, rummaging for forks and napkins.

  “Dude, turn off the gas.”

  Edie ran over, switched off the knob. And like her neurotic mother, (apple meet tree, tree meet apple) Lucy walked over and worked the knob again to make sure it was off.

  Ah yes, a family tradition of OCD.

  David, seeing an opportunity, went out for coffee refills. They frowned at him a little, but he assured them he was simply on a coffee run. Lucy said he should cover the left side of his face, so he couldn’t see her eggs. He obliged and poured us more coffee, one-handed, shielding one whole side of his face.

  I got back into bed. I pretended to read my Kindle. I waited to be called for breakfast.

  But the call never came.

  I expected a beautifully-calibrated table setting, maybe a cloth napkin, a wilted, hand-picked dandelion in a glass milk bottle, a hand-drawn card with hearts. What I got was much less refined. The girls brought their masterpieces to the bedroom. They shoved plates and forks into our hands and plopped themselves on the bed. Lucy flipped on the TV with the remote and Edie settled into my lap.

  “Eat Mama,” was all she said.

  This was it. Mother’s Day.

  Eggs and iCarly.

  We ate our eggs, all lumped up on the bed together, watching bad kids TV. Edie ate nothing.

  My eggs were lovely, a little over-salty (in a good way) with runny yolks that puddled neon-yellow, a mad scattering of chives and melted cheese. Lucy has a heavy hand, so there was never any hope for a light dusting. The omelette must have been pretty good because David inhaled it before I could get a taste of it.

  Edie wanted to know if I was planning on licking the plate. I was, so I did.

  It was Mother’s Day. I could lick the plate if I wanted to.

  This made Lucy smile.

  Is there anything better for a little kid? To cook something, completely by themselves, and watch their parent love it so much they throw all manners to the wind and lick the plate spotless?

  David cleaned the kitchen, washed the dishes. The girls jumped on the trampoline in the back yard. I could hear them laughing as I started to read the New Yorker Fiction. I knew I wouldn’t finish it, but even the start of it was good, freeing. A few minutes for Mom.

  It was a good Mother’s Day.

  Which makes me wonder what they’ll make this year.

  Maybe I’ll finish the Fiction this year. Maybe I’ll relax and enjoy the sounds of them in my kitchen—our kitchen—making something for me with their own sweet hands.

  Yes, that’s it.

  Still, I’m keeping the fire extinguisher by the bed/prison. Just in case.

  COKE AND PEANUTS

  By Carol Penn-Romine

  From Leite’s Culinaria

  From her home base in Los Angeles, food writer and cooking teacher Carol Penn-Romine roams the globe, leading culinary tours and blogging about world cuisine at HungryPassport.com. But she’s also a native Tennessean—and scratch a Southerner, you’ll always find a hankering for Southern food.

  Back when I was a preschooler in the ‘60s, I’d beg my daddy to let me tag along with him on his weekly trips to the farmers’ co-op in town. Okay, I didn’t so much beg as I did scurry into his truck and wait with the certainty that he couldn’t possibly say no. The reasons behind my insistence on going along on this excursion were twofold. It was an escape from our quiet Tennessee farm for a taste of the city (Kenton, population 1,495 at the time), an outing I otherwise made only on Sunday mornings, when we went to church and everything else in town was closed. It also meant I got to indulge in my Coke-and-peanuts habit.

  Daddy and I would pull into the gravel lot of the co-op, park alongside the other dirt-encrusted pickup trucks, and make our way to the low building with a dull corrugated-metal roof and walls that smelled of burlap and old wood. There we’d find a handful of farmers sitting around, their tractor allegiances displayed on their caps. (My daddy was a John Deere man.) Aside from selling seed and fertilizer, the co-op constituted the only social outlet most farmers had outside of church. We usually found them discussing crops, either mourning the lack of rain or lamenting its excess. It wasn’t a place to linger all afternoon. Just a place to sit for a spell.

  But before taking a seat on the odd chair or packing crate, my daddy, just like every other farmer, would first drop 15 cents into the cigar box on the counter. He’d pull a glass bottle of Coke from the chest-style vending machine that’d forgotten how to accept change and grab a pack of Lance’s Spanish-Roasted Peanuts from the rack on the wall. Then he’d lean back and luxuriate in the break from the vagaries of an occupation that relied on the good graces of the Lord, all while taking part in one of the South’s true culinary eccentricities.

  The ritual, a sweet Southern tradition, is simple: Open the bottle of Coke and take a couple of swigs. Tear off the corner of the cellophane sleeve—one of those single serving-size packages that contain no more than a handful of peanuts, the ones with the rusty skins still attached—and shake some nuts into the bottle. Then drink. The first few sips are the best, when the Coke is at its coldest and the peanuts at their salty crunchiest. If you linger, the Coke gets warm, the peanuts turn soggy, and the whole thing is about as appealing as drinking from an old bottle that’s been dredged from the bottom of a pond. This treasured custom is, to us Southerners born before LBJ took office, what the tea ceremony is to the Japanese.

  Somewhere around the age of six, I decided I was big enough to quit sharing with my daddy, who, I’m quite certain, was happy to be free of my backwashing ways. My first try, I grabbed both sides of the bag and ripped the top completely open, which left me with no way to corral the peanuts into the narrow bottle opening. Most of the nuts missed their mark, bouncing off my legs and onto the rough wooden floor, where they remained—the three-second rule not being applicable in a place where people wear the same boots they used to tromp th
rough pig droppings. Sacrificing those few peanuts was just as well, seeing as I hadn’t yet figured out that I had to first sip some of the soda so as to make room in the bottle for the nuts. Still, enough of the nuts made it in for me to succumb to this early experience of mixing sweet and salty.

  Witness to this first feeble attempt was our sometimes farmhand Kinch (Mr. Kinch, to me). The next time my daddy and I came in, Mr. Kinch bought me a Coke and a pack of peanuts, squatted down alongside me, and sat me on his knee. “This here’s how you do it, Sister,” he said, taking my tiny hands into his large, roughened ones and gently guiding me through the requisite steps.

  It wasn’t long before I became adept at assembling this Southern-bred cocktail. Bottle in hand, I’d lean back against a mound of seed corn or cottonseed sacks, propping the rear legs of my chair the way I’d seen the men do. I’d take a languid swig and pick at the rusty red peanut skins that clung to my mouth in a studied fashion with my thumb and ring finger, imitating the grown-ups I’d seen picking bits of tobacco from their lips while smoking unfiltered cigarettes.

  Coke and peanuts wasn’t something we indulged in at home. Sipping “Co-Cola,” as it was called in the South—we Southerners never having met a syllable we wouldn’t lop off to conserve energy—to quench one’s thirst was considered wasteful. My mother actually kept a couple of bottles on hand at all times, but they were strictly for medicinal purposes, much like aspirin, calamine lotion, and Merthiolate. If you had an upset stomach, Coke was the cure. Despite this, I never connected it with being sick, but rather with the promise of feeling better.

  I once tried substituting canned Coke, but it was patently absurd–it’s nigh unto impossible to make peanuts flow out of a can. I’d never even consider diminishing the tradition by pouring Coke and peanuts into a glass. I don’t think people outside the South understand unless they are, in fact, displaced Southerners, but there’s something about gripping that curvy green glass bottle and tilting it just so, at that perfect 40° angle that offers up a trickle of Coke with an attendant peanut or two in each swig, that makes for one of the most satisfying sensations imaginable.

  I still approach the Coke-and-peanuts ritual with reverence, though I consider myself a Californian these days. It takes me straight back to those excursions into town with my daddy, when the two of us shared a little together time riding in the pickup with the windows down, watching for wildlife along the roadside, the clean Tennessee air wafting through the cabin. Completing these trips with Coke and peanuts was ritual. Sacramental, even.

  EATING THE HYPHEN

  By Lily Wong

  From Gastronomica

  A recent graduate of Williams College who majored in Asian Studies, Boston native Lily Wong now teaches English in Hong Kong, where she explores the mysteries of dim sum. It’s all part of piecing together a cultural identity that makes sense.

  Fork? Check. Knife? Check. Chopsticks? Check. It may seem odd to have all three of these eating utensils side by side for the consumption of a single meal, but for me, there’s just no other way. Oh, and ketchup, that’s key. Definitely need to have the ketchup, pre-shaken to avoid an awkward first squirt of pale red water. There’s no place for that on my plate, not when I’m eating dumplings. Yes, that is what I said: I need a fork, a knife, a pair of chopsticks, and ketchup before I eat my dumplings.

  Now I’ve just looked up “dumpling” on the online Oxford English Dictionary and discovered that it is “a kind of pudding consisting of a mass of paste or dough, more or less globular in form, either plain and boiled, or enclosing fruit and boiled or baked.” I am definitely not talking about whatever unappetizing-sounding food that dumpling is supposed to be. I’m talking about Chinese dumplings, pot stickers, Peking ravioli, jiaozi, whatever you want to call them. Do you know what I mean yet? Maybe you’ve gotten a vague idea, but let me explain, because I am very picky about my dumplings.

  To begin with, the skin has to be thick. I mean really thick. Thick and chewy and starchy and the bottom should be a bit burnt and dark golden brown from the pan-frying. Have you ever had gyoza, the Japanese dumplings? Yes, those thin, almost translucent skins just won’t do it for me. Hands-down, no question, until my dying day, I will vouch that the skin is the make-or-break feature of a dumpling. Bad skin equals bad dumpling. Those boiled dumplings that are also a type of Chinese dumplings? The skin is too thin, too soggy, and frankly, rather flavorless. If I had to call it names, I’d say it was limp and weak and characterless. The thick-skinned dumplings that I know and love absorb more of the meaty-flavored goodness inside the dumplings. Also, because they are pan-fried (a key aspect of delicious dumplings), the bottom gets its own texture—a slightly charred crispiness to add that perfect smidgen of crunch. So, if you were to eat just the skin of the dumpling, it would be simultaneously chewy and crispy, with a bit of savory meat flavor mixed in with a burnt taste off the bottom—a wonderfulness that the words of the English language are hard-pressed to capture.

  But what about the filling? To me, it’s a bit peripheral. The dumplings I’m talking about have a standard pork filling with “Chinese vegetables.” I’ve never been entirely sure what these elusively named Chinese vegetables actually are, but I imagine that they are some combination of leeks and Chinese cabbage. They’re not too salty and they don’t have cilantro. These dumplings also have enough savory broth secretly sequestered inside the skin so that when you cut them open, you get some oil spatterings, pretty much all over your clothes, plate, and table. That’s the sign of a good, moist, and juicy meat section.

  I should mention before you envision me slaving away in a kitchen to create the perfect dumplings that the ones I like come out of the freezer. In plastic bags of fifty each. Imported to my house from Boston’s Chinatown. It’s strange, considering that most days I like the homegrown version of foods more than the store-bought version, but these are the exception. Even though I know they’re handmade by a small company, so you get that same small-batch feel as if you made them at home, they’re still store-bought and frozen rather than fresh.

  But enough about finding the right dumplings; you’re probably still confused as to why it’s so imperative that I have a fork, knife, chopsticks, and ketchup. Here is your step-by-step guide to an entirely new dumpling eating experience:

  1. On a large white plate, place six or seven dumplings (or more if you’re particularly ravenous) and add some broccoli or beans for color and nutrition.

  2. Squirt a glop of ketchup in one of the empty white spaces on your plate (as in not touching the broccoli or the dumplings). This is where it’s key that the ketchup has been shaken a bit, otherwise that red ketchup juice runs all over your plate ruining everything.

  3. Take that fork and knife on the side and cut each dumpling in half width-wise. Make sure to cut completely through the skin and meat.

  4. Take the backside of your fork and push down on the top of each dumpling half until the meat abruptly pops out in a pool of brothy juice.

  5. Once you’ve finished systematically cutting and squishing, you’ll have lots of skins and meat pieces separated and you can put that knife and fork away. Grab the chopsticks.

  6. Pick up a piece of the meat (just the meat now, no trying to get some skin in on this too) and dip it into the ketchup. Eat and repeat. If at any point you want to indulge in that steamed broccoli, it’s a good idea. You wouldn’t want to leave it all to the end. But don’t dip it in ketchup. That’s weird.

  7. Now this is the best part. Use your chopsticks to one-by-one eat every last half dumpling’s worth of skin. Savor every part because this is what it’s all really been about. No ketchup or meat to obscure the flavor and chewiness, just pure starchy goodness.

  And that’s how it goes. Every single time. Confused? So was I the first time I really sat down to think about how I eat dumplings. It sounds a little like a grand mutilation of how a dumpling should be eaten for it to be “authentic” (using only chopsticks and with the dumpling left whole
and dipped in black vinegar, no ketchup in sight). And I have unabashedly criticized and ridiculed Americanized Chinese food for being fake and something of a disgrace to “authentic” Chinese food. Yet here I am, still eating my dumplings with ketchup and a fork, unceremoniously and quite literally butchering my dumplings before I eat them. My grandmother meanwhile takes small bites out of whole dumplings, careful not to lose any of that broth from inside (with a face only three-quarters filled with disgust as I rush from the table to grab my ketchup from the fridge).

  Bottled up in this entirely strange ritual is my status as a Chinese American. It is unclear to me where I ever came up with the idea that dumplings should be cut in half, or that the meat would taste better with ketchup (particularly since this is literally the only time that I use ketchup). Perhaps this combination has something to do with the fact that since both my parents grew up in the States, we’ve embraced many American traditions while abandoning or significantly modifying many Chinese ones. But even so, I have always embraced my Chinese culture and heritage. It gives me something larger to cling to when I’m feeling ostracized by American culture for looking “different.” The suburb I grew up in is mostly white, but it’s not as if I didn’t have Chinese people around me; after all, there was always Chinatown. But Chinatown was full of people who spoke the language—whether Cantonese or Mandarin—who somehow just seemed so much more Chinese than I ever could be. And perhaps that’s true. Maybe that’s why I feel so gosh-darned American when I eat my dumplings with ketchup while holding my chopsticks “incorrectly.” The notion that this somehow takes away from my ability to identify with Chinese culture is, I rationally understand, flawed. But in my pursuit to try and discover who I am, it’s taken an oddly large place.

  I’m not sure why I often think that to be a Chinese American means that you relish authentic Chinese food—and by authentic I mostly mean strictly what your grandmother cooks for you—but I do. I’ve told friends that they don’t know what real Chinese food is because all they know is Panda Express. I pride myself on my Cantonese background, which leads me to look favorably on pig’s ears and fungus of all shapes and sizes. My innate territorialism regarding my particular definition of what Chinese food is makes the choice to continue eating my dumplings in such a strange fashion slightly fraught. I’m not even sure that anyone besides my family knows that this is how I eat dumplings. In part, I think my reticence derives precisely from a fear that it would make me “less” Chinese.