Stir

by Jessica Fechtor

  When we’d visit, we’d come in through the garage, usually late at night. I’d squint into the fluorescent light and step into the kitchen. It was our landing pad. The Formica counters and metal cabinets were blue, the walls and floor were white, and the ceilings were the highest I’d ever seen in a house. On the island across from the sink there would always be a basket of fruit with a Post-it note stuck to one of the plums that said, “Washed.” My grandmother would be standing next to it, and I’d run to her and press my forehead against her cheek while she’d hum-grunt into my ear, the same sound she’d make when eating sweet corn. “Hi, pussycat,” she’d whisper. I’d breathe her in, and when she let me go, I’d inhale again and smell something else. It was the scent of arrival, the way our noses tell us, even in the absence of a scent we can name, that we’ve walked through a door and are now someplace new. Because even without a cake in the oven or flowers on the table, there’s skin and dust, the faint aromatic echoes of everyone and everything that’s passed through, a scent that’s nondescript but for the precision with which you can remember it in your own nostrils.

  My grandma was terrific in the kitchen. She made a killer zucchini bread, applesauce by the gallon, and jammy little cookies called coconut walnut delights all from scratch. She could cook. But she also knew how not to, and when not to so that she could get to the eating part sooner and with less fuss, and generally have more fun.

  My grandmother was a big believer in the kitchen shortcut. That doesn’t sound like the most flattering way to describe a woman who was serious about food, but it all depends on how you understand the word “shortcut.” It’s easy to think that shortcuts are for lazy people or people who can’t do any better or are okay with second best, but that wasn’t my grandmother at all. There’s an artistry to cutting corners, to knowing which ones are dispensable and which ones have to stay. Call it intuition or very good taste (I think the two are related), my grandmother had it. Her shortcuts were about being smart, efficient, and direct, exactly as she was in any case, and not only in her kitchen.

  Shopping meant going in with a list of precisely what she was after. I never saw her browse. The summer before my junior year of high school, she marched me into a small clothing store and announced, “We’re looking for a pair of jeans with plenty of room in the rear.” I fought back tears that night as I told Amy what had happened, but when I walked into school the following month wearing the best-fitting jeans I’d ever had, I felt like a million bucks.

  This was why my grandmother loved to shop. It wasn’t materialism that drove her, at least not in the shallow sense. It was the awareness that whether we like it or not, the physical objects that we surround ourselves with, the clothes on our bodies, the crackers in our pantries, the art on our walls, are an extension of who we are.

  Some people might have a usual sandwich, something they order again and again so that, although all they’ve done is to consume what’s on their plate, they become known for it. Grandma Louise was that way with a lot of things. She had a habit of finding something in a store or a restaurant or a grocery aisle and making it her own. The chocolate mint candies in the crystal jar by the piano, the sugar cubes with delicate flowers made of frosting painted on. She got her corn from a woman known as Mrs. Shmutz. Shmutz means “dirt” in Yiddish, and I’d say that my grandmother liked buying her corn from a woman whose hands bore evidence of the farm where it was picked, but honestly, I think what she really liked was how the Mrs. Shmutz moniker made that corn a “thing,” something special and, by way of her profound appreciation of the kernels on those cobs, hers. Everything else was cow corn, she said.

  All of this is to say that my grandmother took as much pride in the products she purchased as she did in what came out of her own oven. She knew that something didn’t have to be homemade to help make a home.

  So I don’t think she would have minded that when I think of her kitchen, I remember mostly what she bought. Like the mini pecan rolls in white boxes, tied with string in the way that forms a plus sign across the lid. If the string was loose I could squeeze my hand into the box and slide one out, scraping my wrist against the box’s edge. I knew that my grandmother didn’t make those pecan rolls, but I thought of them as hers. They were more crust than crumb, burnished, caramel-candied knobs that fit in the palm of my hand. These rolls, my grandmother’s rolls, were from William Greenberg’s bakery on the Upper East Side. She had discovered them once on a trip to New York City, and since then she would bring them back several dozen at a time for herself and her friends, who were hooked on them, too. The pecan rolls, the mint candies, the whitefish salad she bought for Sunday brunch—the affection I felt for all these things taught me to never underestimate the power of a well-purchased edible.

  Years later as a freshman in college, I’d think of her while shopping for student potluck meals. I’d stand in front of the refrigerated case, scanning the rows of hummus, baba ghanoush, and vegetarian chopped liver. The handles of my plastic basket would cut into my hand as I contemplated the relative merits of each tub. I had no kitchen, not a fork or a knife to my name, but when I pulled something of my own choosing off the shelf, a little piece of that dinner became mine.

  My grandmother was nineteen years old when my father was born and forty-eight years old when I was. As a kid, those numbers thrilled me. I had the youngest grandmother of all my friends, and I was constantly doing the math. When I graduate from high school, she’ll be sixty-six! When I graduate from college, she’ll be seventy! I could have a kid before she’s eighty. And because in our family people live on and on, she’ll have another decade or two to go! I knew four of my great-grandparents, and three of them lived until I was in high school and college. That was normal, to me. But when I was twenty-three years old, and my grandmother was seventy-one, she died. It was all wrong. In my family, you’re supposed to get more time. I thought Grandma Louise was the kind of person who lived until a hundred, as if that were a “kind of person” at all. I thought I was, too.

  When I was visiting my grandfather a few years later, right after Eli and I were engaged, I found her wedding dress in the basement and put it on. It fit perfectly, as though it had been tailored precisely for my body—for my slender wrists and waist, for my bony shoulders and small breasts. There was plenty of room in the rear.

  • • •

  My doctor had said that my sense of smell would not recover, and I believed him. That was before I knew that doctors sometimes say things like that when actually, they don’t really know. It’s rare, but olfactory nerves do sometimes recover.

  I suspected as much one day, sometime in November, when I walked into the lobby of our building with Eli and felt a rush of something curl up through my nose. I didn’t smell it as much as I felt it swirling in my nostrils, pressing against my sinuses, and I had no idea what “it” was. I froze. I asked Eli if there was something in the air, if he smelled anything. “Yes,” he said, “wet paint.”

  A few weeks later, Eli came home with sushi, and when he opened the bag, I said, “Oooh, smells cucumbery,” as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I didn’t even realize what I was saying until the words spilled out of my mouth. I was getting better. My sense of smell was coming back.

  Louise’s Apple Pie

  I like to use two or three different kinds of apples in this pie, some tart and crisp, like Granny Smith, Honeycrisp, or Macoun, and one or two of a juicier, sweeter variety, like McIntosh. That way the filling is pleasingly fluid, without oozing all over your plate. The crackly sugar shell here is adapted from a recipe in Ruth Reichl’s Comfort Me with Apples.

  Now, let’s talk piecrust.

  It’s simple, in theory. Cut butter into flour and add just enough water to form a cohesive dough. That’s how I did it for years, making sure to follow the rules: cold butter cut into pea-sized chunks, large enough to visibly marble the dough when flattened beneath a rolling pin. That butter wo
uld melt in the oven, leaving air pockets between layers of flour to form a nice, flaky crust. Mindful of gluten development—too much means a tough crust—I’d add as little water as possible and take care not to overwork the dough. It all made sense to me.

  But cutting butter into flour is imprecise. Every time you do it, there’s variation in how much dry flour, completely loose from butter, remains in the mixture. That means variation, too, in how much water you’ll need for the dough to come together. Most piecrust recipes list a range of water amounts because it depends. You learn to adjust the water by a tablespoon here and there, and with a little practice, your piecrusts turn out great.

  What if you’re new at this, though, and you’d like to get it right on your very first try? For this book, I wanted a recipe with exact measurements that would lead to a perfect flakey, buttery piecrust every time. Even if you’ve never made a piecrust in your life.

  I found exactly that in J. Kenji López-Alt’s column “The Food Lab” on the website Serious Eats. Kenji’s secret lies in a “fat-flour paste,” as he calls it, which eliminates variation in the flour-butter mixture. You make the paste by incorporating the butter into just two-thirds of the flour, processing it in a food processor or cutting, rubbing, and squeezing it by hand until the mixture is the consistency of Play-Doh. (You don’t have to worry about too much gluten developing from overmixing at this stage. The proteins in flour need water to form gluten, and you haven’t yet added any.) This fat-flour paste—essentially flour particles completely coated in fat—functions completely as fat. You then add the remaining bit of flour and a set amount of water that no longer varies batch to batch because you know exactly how much flour you’re dealing with. It’s brilliant and produces the best piecrusts I’ve ever made.

  I always recommend measuring by weight instead of volume when baking. Here especially, since the volume measurements are a little fussy. Note that a scant ½ cup in this case means removing only about a teaspoon or so from the cup.

  For the pie dough:

  ¾ cup plus 3 tablespoons (118 grams) + a scant ½ cup (59 grams) all-purpose flour, divided

  1 tablespoon granulated sugar

  ½ teaspoon fine sea salt

  10 tablespoons (142 grams) unsalted butter, cut into ¼-inch cubes

  3 tablespoons cold water

  For the filling:

  2½ pounds (5 to 7 medium) apples (see headnote)

  ¼ packed cup (50 grams) dark brown sugar

  1 tablespoon cornstarch

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

  1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

  2 tablespoons apple brandy, like Calvados

  For the topping:

  ½ cup (1 stick; 113 grams) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

  ¾ cup (150 grams) granulated sugar

  ¾ cup (94 grams) all-purpose flour

  ½ teaspoon nutmeg

  Make the pie dough:

  Stir together the ¾ cup plus 3 tablespoons (118 grams) flour, sugar, and salt in a medium-sized bowl. Add the cubed butter to the bowl. Use your hands to rub, squeeze, and squish the butter together with the dry ingredients to form a homogenous, not-at-all-sandy fat-flour paste with the consistency of Play-Doh. It will take a few minutes. Cover with plastic and chill in the freezer for 10 minutes.

  Remove the fat-flour paste from the freezer and spread the dough around the bowl with a rubber spatula. Add the scant ½ cup (59 grams) flour and work it in with your hands until it’s just incorporated. Sprinkle with the water, then fold and press the dough with the rubber spatula until it comes together into a ball. Form the dough into a 4-inch disk, wrap tightly in plastic, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

  Alternatively, you can make the dough in a food processor. (It’s faster, but you end up with more dishes to clean.) Combine the ¾ cup plus 3 tablespoons (118 grams) flour in the bowl of a food processor and pulse twice. Add the cubed butter, and pulse until the flour is fully incorporated and the dough begins to clump around the blades (25 to 30 pulses). Spread the dough around the bowl with a rubber spatula, sprinkle with the scant ½ cup (59 grams) flour, and give it 3 to 5 short pulses. Transfer the dough to a large bowl, sprinkle with the water, and continue with the by-hand directions above.

  Prepare the filling:

  Rub together the dark brown sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and salt in a large bowl. Wash, dry, but do not peel the apples, and cut them into ½-inch slices. Pile the apples into the bowl on top of the sugar mixture, sprinkle with the lemon juice and brandy, and mix gently with your hands.

  Assemble the pie:

  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

  Remove the pie dough from the fridge, and let sit until rollable but still cold. Flour your counter, and roll out the dough with a rolling pin into an 11-inch circle. Transfer the dough to a 9-inch pie plate. Crimp or flute the edges, if you’d like. Pile the apple filling into the shell—you’ll have a huge heaping mound, but it will shrink down in the oven—and put into the fridge while you make the topping.

  Make the topping:

  Melt the cut-up stick of unsalted butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the sugar and stir well. Turn the heat down to low and add the nutmeg and flour, stirring to form a thick paste. Remove from the heat, grab the filled pie from the fridge and, using a rubber spatula, spread the paste over the apples. You don’t want to cover the apples completely; they should peek out here and there. This “venting” keeps the apples from steaming and turning to mush.

  Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 350 degrees and bake for another 35 to 40 minutes, until the pie is golden brown on top and bubbling. Let cool to room temperature, or just above, before slicing to give the filling a chance to set up.

  Serves 8 or more.

  CHAPTER 23

  They Cooked

  The day before I left the hospital in Burlington, I’d spoken with my friend Hila on the phone. “Jess, my darling,” she said, in her thick Israeli accent, “when you get home, we will take care of you. Whether you like it or not, we will. This is what is going to happen.”

  Poor Hila had no idea what she was getting herself into. Nor did any of my other friends who, like Hila, were dead set on figuring out what I needed and how to give it to me. They took mornings off from work to escort me to doctors’ appointments and held my hand during needle sticks and ultrasounds. Hila drove me to the hospital one morning with a big orange jug of my own urine, carried it inside, then took me out for lunch, cracking jokes the whole way. Sunny stopped by with books on tape. Caroline sent crystals. David and Amy came over on Halloween Eve with their three little girls, the five of them dressed as Iron Maiden, and rocked out in our living room on invisible guitars. Faraway friends wrote letters, sent mix CDs, and a subscription to Netflix. They told me their news. Sarah was falling in love. Sarit was pregnant. With twins! Mary walked me around and around the block, then sat rubbing my shins and the back of my head where I still had all the feeling.

  And, of course, they cooked.

  Every night, someone and something would show up at our door. There were Lila’s chocolate truffles and Elisha’s cookies. Rachel made vegetable croquettes and Liba a pot of her curry. I didn’t have a taste for much of it, but I was relieved to know that Eli had something to eat, and that it was good.

  Then sometimes, my own hunger would surprise me. I’d be curled up on the love seat in my usual unhungry state, hear a knock at the door, and some food would appear that would wake my appetite right up. It happened first with bean soup. My friend Jonathan dropped it by one day, just something he’d thrown together, he said. It smelled wonderful. I spotted kidney beans and navy beans. They were perfectly cooked, with delicate skins stretched tightly around plump, tender middles. I took a bite. The soup tasted of meat despite not containing a scrap of it. The broth was thick and sm
ooth like gravy, and the beans were creamy inside, like chicken liver mousse. I could feel my body rushing to accept it, my hunger spurred on by the consumption of food, and not the other way around.

  Hummus from our neighbor David had the same effect. He once told me how he made it, soaking and cooking the chickpeas, then peeling every last one before blending them with sesame paste into the smoothest purée. He’d fill two wide, shallow bowls with the still-warm hummus, nestle hard-boiled eggs, olives, and pickles into the drifts, and carry them down the hall to us on a wooden tray. We’d scoop it into our mouths with oven-warmed pita from David’s favorite Armenian bakery and, when the bread was gone, eat the rest of the hummus off spoons, like leftover frosting.

  I was a guest in my own home those days, eating other people’s food off plates that belonged to me. Once I was strong enough, I was a guest outside my home, too. Friday nights with our friends were back on.

  We went to Eitan and Julia’s, as before, but now we brought only ourselves. In this and many respects, I was a terrible guest. I’d spit food into napkins and push vegetables around on my plate. My taste buds were still up to no good. Yet Julia made feasts. A buttery mushroom soup flecked with thyme, salads with olives and feta, giant potato pancakes sliced like pizzas, bird after bird after bird. When she hit upon something I enjoyed, she’d pack up the rest to go.