To me, the most poignant, character-exposing food scene in the novel comes at the end of the narrator’s trip to Monte Carlo, when Maxim de Winter proposes marriage over toast and marmalade. Without even a hello, Maxim barks at the waiter, “Bring me coffee, a boiled egg, toast, marmalade, and a tangerine,” all the while filing his nails with an emery board that was stashed in his pocket. The narrator misinterprets his vague invitation to come back with him to Manderley, thinking that perhaps he needs a new servant. He snaps at her, saying, “I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool.” In the confusion that follows, the narrator watches a fly settle on the marmalade, which Maxim brushes away from the jam impatiently before digging into it to spread thickly on his toast. This has to be the least romantic proposal in the history of literature, maybe in the history of history, and it is made infinitely more grotesque by Maxim’s food etiquette.
I was a young, brokenhearted girl, and this scene screamed at me. I had been wondering endlessly in those weeks what warning signs I had missed, overanalyzing every past conversation and trying to recall body language in the hopes that I could find the one shining clue that I had overlooked, the thing that should have told me to run, the fly in the marmalade. It is true what our unnamed narrator says, that first love “is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.” Thankfully, for both me and our narrator, “it cannot happen twice, that fever of first love.” I have been loved and hurt a thousand times since, but none stung so much as the first.
REBECCA
Blood Orange Marmalade
I hope the fly hasn’t put you off the idea of marmalade. This recipe is made with blood oranges, but if they aren’t in season you can easily make it with any kind of orange available.
Makes about 2 cups
3 blood oranges
4 cups water
2 cups sugar
2½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon grated fresh lemon zest
Using a small, sharp knife, cut the rind and pith away from the blood oranges. Discard the pith and slice the rind into ⅛-inch-thick strips. Slice the peeled oranges into thin rounds and place them, along with the peel strips, in a heavy-bottomed pot. Cover with the water and allow them to sit at room temperature overnight, or at least 8 hours, to help the peels begin to soften.
After the peels have soaked, place the pot on the stove and bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer until the peels have softened and the liquid has reduced significantly, about 1½ hours.
Stir in the sugar, whisking to incorporate, and continue to cook until the mixture reaches 220°F. (If you don’t have a candy or deep-fry thermometer, place a plate in the refrigerator before you start this process to get it thoroughly chilled. Once you think the jam is thick enough, test it by spooning a small amount onto the chilled plate and waiting about 5 minutes. If the marmalade firms up and forms a skin, it’s ready; if not, keep boiling.)
Once the marmalade reaches temperature, stir in the lemon juice and zest and pour the mixture into two sterilized 1-cup canning jars. Process them according to the canning jar instructions, or store the marmalade in unprocessed jars in the refrigerator for up to 2 months.
Les Misérables
BLACK RYE BREAD
When people talk about Les Misérables, it’s rare that they’re referring to Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel. Embarrassingly enough, until I was fifteen, I didn’t know that it was a book at all. I did, however, know a good bit about the musical from Julia, one of my childhood best friends, because her parents took her to New York City every year to see it.
Julia was the ultimate girly-girl, and her bedroom was absolutely fascinating to me—all floral country bedding and lacy bed skirts. It was nothing like the bedroom I shared with my sisters, my corner of which was covered in reproductions of antique baseball cards that I had bought at Bop City Comics and stuck to the wall with my older sister’s orthodontic wax. The centerpiece of Julia’s bedroom was her prized possession: a dome-shaped glass music box filled with fiber-optic flowers that spit light like some kind of deep-sea amoeba and swayed to “Castle on a Cloud” when she turned the dome’s big iron crank. I hated that thing and wanted it, needed it, in equal measure. It tortured me.
Years later, my aunt gave me a beautiful copy of Les Misérables as a fifteenth birthday gift, and I learned for the first time that it wasn’t just a musical, but an enormous and very serious-looking book—one that looked nothing like the inspiration for Julia’s dome of flowers or the precious song that emanated from it. I tore through it in a week and a half, staying up late and neglecting my freshman-year assigned reading to find out whom Marius would end up with. I loved Jean Valjean through all of his transformations and missteps, going so far as to scribble his name inside a heart in the bathroom stall at school where every girl wrote the initials of her crush in ragged ballpoint pen. I feel very raw admitting this, even now.
Despite my love of the book, I still have yet to see the musical, or the film version either. It could be that these adaptations will always be too much associated with Julia’s girliness, or that in general I despise musicals (which could also be Julia’s doing), but I just can’t get myself excited about either rendition. The constant loop of the trailers on TV and the barrage of posters in every subway did fill me with the desire to read the book again, though—a decision that immediately thwarted my New Year’s resolution to eat less bread in 2013.
Any discussion about food in Les Misérables (or really any discussion about Les Misérables at all) would be incomplete without the mention of bread. The entire plot of the novel is driven by Jean Valjean’s nineteen-year imprisonment for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. The French Revolution is always quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) present in the novel, which mostly takes place in 1815, just fifteen years after Marie Antoinette reportedly declared “Let them eat cake” upon hearing that the peasants had no bread to eat. Throughout the novel, people’s stations and the direness of their situations are often described in relation to whether or not they have bread or, more often, what kind of bread they do have.
When we first meet Jean Valjean he has just been released from prison, and he is wandering through Digne starving after being turned away from every inn and household for being an ex-prisoner. Finally, he is sent to Bishop Myriel’s house, where he is given one of my favorite literary meals, “a piece of mutton, figs, a fresh cheese, and a loaf of rye bread,” as well as a bottle of old Mauves wine. The meal is beautiful in its simplicity, and especially satisfying after reading pages and pages describing Valjean’s desperate hunger.
Black rye bread was prevalent throughout France at the time Les Misérables was written. It was a staple for lower- and middle-class people alike, and was one of the main foods provided in prisons like the one Valjean lived in for nineteen years. This black rye is nothing like what Valjean would have eaten in prison—it is sweet and bitter and complex and incredibly delicious.
LES MISÉRABLES
Black Rye Bread
This bread would be great topped with cream cheese and lox, or honey and butter, or almond butter—or, of course, a piece of mutton, figs, and a fresh cheese.
Makes 1 loaf
1⅓ cups warm water (110°F)
2¼ teaspoons active dry yeast (1 packet)
1 teaspoon dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons instant espresso powder
¼ cup unsulphured molasses
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons caraway seeds, plus more for topping
2 teaspoons fine sea salt
3¼ cups bread flour
1⅓ cups rye flour
Olive oil, for brushing
Flaky sea salt (such as Maldon), for sprinkling on top
Combine the warm water, yeast, and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment,
but don’t turn on the mixer. Within about 10 minutes the yeast should be foamy—if it isn’t, toss it and start again (you had a dud yeast packet).
Meanwhile, combine the cocoa powder, espresso powder, molasses, butter, caraway seeds, and salt in a small saucepan and stir constantly over medium heat until the butter is melted and the ingredients are well combined. Remove the molasses mixture from the heat and let it sit for a minute so that it is not scorching hot, and add it to the active yeast mixture in the mixer bowl.
In a separate bowl combine the flours and, with the mixer on medium, slowly add the flours to the molasses-yeast mixture. Once everything comes together, knead the dough until it is pulling away from the sides of the bowl and hugging the dough hook, about 5 minutes. The dough should spring back when you poke your thumb into it. If it is too dry, add more water; if it is too wet, add more bread flour, until you get the desired consistency. Shape the dough into a ball and place it, seam-side down, in an oiled bowl. Cover loosely with a towel and let it rise in a warm place for 2 hours.
After 2 hours, gently punch down the risen dough and turn it out onto a floured work surface. Shape the dough into your desired shape, place it in a Dutch oven (or any heavy-bottomed, oven-safe dish or pot with a lid), and allow it to rise until doubled in size, another 1 or 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Brush the bread with olive oil and sprinkle it with caraway seeds and flaky sea salt. When the oven is up to temperature, put the lid on the Dutch oven and bake for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes remove the lid and turn the heat down to 350°F. Continue baking until the bread sounds hollow when it is tapped, another 20 to 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack before slicing.
Great Expectations
PORK PIE
Pity the pork pie in Great Expectations—it is always upstaged by Miss Havisham’s rotten “bride-cake.” It’s hard to talk about any food other than Miss Havisham’s vermin-infested wedding cake when Great Expectations is mentioned, and I am certainly guilty of this habit. I have been trying to re-create that cake in all of its decrepit glory ever since I read the book in high school and became completely obsessed with Miss Havisham. As far as driving the plot of the novel, though, that bride-cake doesn’t do half as much as the pilfered pork pie. I think it’s high time that we give it its due.
When we first meet Pip, he is only six years old, sitting in a church graveyard surveying the graves of his father, mother, and five siblings, who “gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle.” He is attempting to imagine what his family members looked like based on their gravestones when an escaped convict named Abel Magwitch, “a fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his legs,” sneaks up and seizes Pip by the chin. Magwitch is “soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints and stung by nettles, and torn by briars,” and above all, he is starving. He threatens to tear out Pip’s heart and liver, or worse, eat his “fat cheeks,” unless he brings him food and a file to cut the iron from his legs. Pip promises he will bring him both things the next day and rushes home to his sister’s house, where more terror awaits him.
Pip’s sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, is a “tall and bony” nightmarish figure, “with black hair and eyes, [and] such a prevailing redness of skin that [Pip] sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap.” Feeding her husband and Pip is not an act of love for Mrs. Gargery, but rather something that she holds against them, reminding them always of how often she is forced to wear her apron. She cuts their bread in “a trenchant way” and spreads the butter with “a slapping dexterity.” It’s no wonder Pip is absolutely terrified of stealing any food from her.
He keeps his promise to Magwitch, though, and as soon as “the great black velvet pall outside my little window was shot with gray,” he sneaks downstairs and into the pantry. Despite having promised Magwitch only to get him “what broken bits of food” he could, Pip steals “some bread, some rind of cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up in my pocket-handkerchief with my last night’s slice), some brandy from a stone bottle… a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful round compact pork pie.” The pie is up on a high shelf, “put away so carefully in a covered earthenware dish in a corner.” He takes it “in the hope that it was not intended for early use, and would not be missed for some time.”
At dawn the next day, Pip runs through the marshes toward the graveyard, imagining the whole way that the “gates and dikes and banks” were screaming, “A boy with Somebody-else’s pork pie! Stop him!” Pip gives the food and brandy to Magwitch and watches sympathetically as he gobbles it all down. “Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled down upon the pie, [Pip] made bold to say, ‘I am glad you enjoy it.’”
Pip’s kindness and generosity toward Magwitch change the course of both of their lives. Magwitch goes on to become a successful sheep farmer and stockbreeder, and puts all of his money away to send to Pip. It is Magwitch, not Miss Havisham, who makes it possible for Pip to become an educated gentleman, eventually worthy of Estella’s love—all as a thank-you for that humble pork pie.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Pork Pie
Pork pies have a long and proud history in England. They are usually eaten cold, with cornichons, grainy mustard, a slice of cheese, and a good ale. You can get leaf lard from your butcher, or substitute vegetable shortening. (Do not buy the hydrogenated lard on supermarket shelves.)
Serves 8 to 10
Dough
½ cup rendered leaf lard, cubed and frozen
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cubed and frozen
4½ cups pastry flour
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup ice-cold water
1 large egg
1 teaspoon cream
Filling
1 pound fresh pork trotters
8 ounces pork bones
2 yellow onions, quartered
2 carrots, halved
2 celery ribs, halved
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
3 quarts water
2 pounds boneless pork shoulder, cut into ¼-inch cubes
8 ounces skinless pork belly, cut into ¼-inch cubes
8 ounces mild slab bacon, cut into ¼-inch cubes
1½ teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon ground sage
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon pink curing salt (optional)
Make the Dough:
Combine the frozen lard and butter, pastry flour, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until pea-sized meal forms. Transfer the meal to a large bowl and mix in the ice-cold water until a dough forms (you may not need the full 1 cup). Bring the dough together, being careful not to overwork it. Separate out two-thirds of the dough, flatten it into a disk, and wrap it in plastic. Do the same for the remaining one-third of the dough. Refrigerate both dough disks for at least 2 hours.
Make the Filling:
Combine the pork trotters, pork bones, onions, carrots, celery, bay leaf, and peppercorns in a large, heavy-bottomed stockpot and cover with the water. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 1½ hours.
After 1½ hours, strain the stock through a fine-mesh sieve into a smaller pot, discard the cooked ingredients, and bring the stock to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil gently until it has reduced to 2 cups, about 30 minutes. Strain the reduced stock through a double layer of cheesecloth into a bowl, let it cool a bit, and then cover the bowl and place it in the refrigerator to chill completely.
In a large bowl, toss together the pork shoulder, pork belly, bacon, salt, pepper, sage, nutmeg, and pink curing salt (if using—it will help preserve the meat’s pink color).
Assemble the Pie:
Preheat the oven to 350�
�F.
Take the larger dough disk from the refrigerator and turn it out onto a well-floured surface. Roll it into a circle ¼ inch thick. Line the bottom and sides of an 8-inch springform pan with the dough and fill the crust with the meat and spice filling.
Roll the smaller dough disk into a circle ¼ inch thick, and cut out a 1½-inch circle from the center. Place the top crust over the filling and crimp the edges of the top and bottom crusts together until they are fully sealed.
Beat the egg and cream together and brush the crust with the egg wash. Bake for 30 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 325°F and bake for an additional 1½ hours.
Place the pie on a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes. Once the pie has cooled slightly, reheat your cooled trotter stock to liquid (it will have set to a gel in the refrigerator). Use a turkey baster to begin filling the pie with the stock through the hole you cut in the top crust. Allow the pie to absorb the stock in between each addition, tapping it very gently and moving it around to let the stock soak into all the crevices. Once all of the stock is added, allow the pie to cool to room temperature before transferring it to the refrigerator to chill for at least 4 hours or preferably overnight, as you want the stock to gel. Slice and serve cold.
Moby-Dick
CLAM CHOWDER
In the early 1970s my dad’s parents bought a house on a tree-lined stretch of Hussey Street on Nantucket. Like most of the houses nearby, it had once been the house of a ship’s captain. This one in particular supposedly belonged to a famous whaling captain. My grandparents converted it into an inn that they called the Grey Goose, where they spent many of their happiest years. My dad would spend summers there, working as a garbage man and picking up odd handyman jobs.
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