by Ruth Reichl
“I know,” I said, “but I don’t have the energy for this. I haven’t even given this one a name.”
“What credit card are you using?” she asked.
“Toni Newman,” I said. “I just got it. Toni’s short for Antoinette.”
“Well, be Toni,” she said. “Make an effort. At least go put some lipstick on.”
I went reluctantly back to the bathroom and worked on my face. I put a little wisp of a hat over the wig. “Better,” said Carol when I reemerged, “but far from fabulous.”
Walking to the subway, I tried to imagine who this Toni might be. An unmarried woman who worked in advertising? That would do. I considered her life and decided that she was in the throes of a middle-aged mid-career crisis, trying to figure out whether it was time to quit her job and move on.
As the subway came roaring into the station it occurred to me that any sane person would want to live somewhere quieter, prettier, less stressful. Maybe Toni was going to use her life savings to open a bakery in some clean little New England town, or someplace warm and friendly like Berkeley.
I was still lost in this dream as I climbed out of the subway, up from the subterranean noise and grime into the open space of Columbus Circle. The sky was blue and as I mounted the steps to the restaurant, Trump’s gaudy brass doors flashed in the sunlight. They glided silently open and I walked in. Two pairs of eyes looked up simultaneously, surveying me from behind a desk. The skinny young woman examined me dubiously, swinging her long black hair suspiciously back from her shoulder as my hand went to the wig in an involuntary, self-conscious motion. I said Toni’s name and the woman hesitated, searching in her book, reluctant to allow me access to the restaurant. But while she was considering her next move the glamorous black man came gliding around the desk and started to lead me into the dining room. She made a motion, as if to protest, but he stilled her. “Right this way,” he said, executing a little bow.
The dining room opened into a whoosh of cool light that had a clean, severe purity. It was so churchlike that I found myself sniffing, half expecting the smell of old stones and melting wax. But this was a different aroma—wild leaves and red wine with hints of hazelnuts, and somewhere, deep in the background, peppered caramel. There were tropical notes too, as if a gentle rain had wafted through the room, leaving behind the promise of coconut palms and mango trees. As I followed the maître d’ I inhaled so deeply that by the time I sank into my seat I was intoxicated and the deep purple anemones in the vase seemed to stretch toward me, nodding their velvet heads in welcome.
I ordered the tasting menu, and when the sommelier offered to bring appropriate wines for each course, I thought, Why not? The first wine arrived and I took a sip, holding the cool pale liquid in my mouth until I could feel the weight of the sugar on my tongue. I let it run down the back of my throat, appreciating its smoothness, and wriggled into my chair.
“A little amuse bouche as a gift from the chef,” murmured the waiter, setting down a minuscule porcini tart framed by a delicate salad of tiny herbs. I ate slowly, first the lacy licorice-flavored chervil, then sturdy, spicy wild parsley, and finally the aggressive little fronds of dill. Poring through them I discovered a single leaf of lamb’s quarter, bits of sorrel, dandelion, chickweed. I followed the flavors in my mind until the walls vanished and I emerged into a deep glade that grew more distinct with each bite.
It was disappointing to come out of the woods, and for a moment I resented the luxurious modern room and the city visible beyond the windows. Then the waiter set a bowl of tiny lavender blossoms at my place and once again I forgot where I was. He dipped a ladle into a tureen and spilled the contents into the bowl, releasing a torrent of garlic that cascaded, a waterfall of scent, just beneath my nose. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, taking in the round sweetness of the garlic, the sharp mintiness of chives, and then, something else. What? I opened my eyes to find that the waiter had set a little plate of sautéed frog’s legs on the table.
The soup was not like anything I’d tried before—garlic gone green, racy, oddly elegant. The chive blossoms rang out sharply when you took the first bite and then began to fade, teasing, until you took another.
I inhaled the soup, ate the frog’s legs with my fingers, dreamily tearing them with my teeth and dabbling my fingers in the lemon-laden bowl of luxuriously warm water.
All around me waiters were carving ducks fragrant with five-spice powder and drizzling caramel sauce over slices of poached foie gras. They were spooning creamed morels over asparagus the color of newly sprouted grass and dolloping roasted apricot tarts with just-churned ice cream. The smells swirled around me; in this symphony of scent I felt as if I were smelling with my skin. My body began to tingle, as if I had been frozen and was now, slowly, starting to thaw.
The sommelier offered glasses of icy Gewürztraminer that smelled like perfumed blossoms until you took a sip and discovered the elegantly astringent flavor. In front of me the waiter was covering a plate with a pristine square of halibut, blinding in its whiteness, and strewing pure red tomato confit on one side, pale green ribbons of zucchini on the other. The sauce, with its nutlike aroma, was the color of faded golden taffeta. “Château-Chalon,” he whispered and I thought yes, only the Jura wine, dried on beds of straw, could have this jeweled fragrance.
Dessert was a shower of treats descending slowly on the table. First a chocolate napoleon of such restrained sweetness that it formed a bridge to the warm raspberries and vanilla cream that followed. Next a dense confit of apples, laden with orange peel. Then homemade marshmal lows, great rolls of them cut with scissors, and candied shiso, and little macaroons in a box.
I had fooled no one in that disguise, but it was worth it; after that, everything tasted better to me. The following week I stumbled into a sweet little Neapolitan restaurant, Da Rosa, where the owner’s mother stood in the kitchen turning out hand-made ribbons of pasta and fluffy little gnocchi while he lovingly poured one local wine after another, extolling the virtues of ancient grapes like Aglianico. I went to Canal House and rediscovered the joy of macaroni and cheese when it has enough crust. Maya opened, and I was suddenly excited about the possibility of great Mexican food. Then came Molyvos, where I ate dolmades and tyro pites and grilled fish, remembering what it was like to sit on a hillside in Crete with the oregano-scented breezes blowing across your face as you looked at the wine-dark sea down below. It was a wonderful few months.
“You’re on a roll,” said Carol. “You’re fun to read again.”
“Everything’s better,” I said. “Michael’s in a great mood. He and Rita Braver went out to Rocky Flats and got some great video. The whistle blowers are going on air and Dan Rather loves the piece. It’s going to be important. And I’m about to review a new restaurant opened by an incredibly talented young chef.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Rocco DiSpirito,” I said. “The food he served at his last place, Dava, was amazing. The new one’s Union Pacific; you have to come with me.”
“Maybe after the operation,” she replied.
“Operation?” I cried. “What operation?”
“It’s nothing,” she said. “But you know these stomach problems I’ve been having?”
“Yes?” I said.
“They’ve decided it’s probably endometriosis. They’re going to take a look. I’ll only be out a couple of days. Really, it’s nothing.”
“Okay,” I said. “When you get back we’ll celebrate at Union Pacific.”
The celebration had to be postponed: Carol had ovarian cancer. She refused to be gloomy about it. “I’m going to beat this,” she said as she started on the first round of chemotherapy. “My doctor thinks my chances are excellent. And I’ve been researching this new treatment they’ve been doing in California. I’m going to be fine.”
She was so convincing that I stopped worrying. But I missed her deeply. In the office or out, Carol was fun. She was also the only person I knew willing to go out on the
spur of the moment, the only one who didn’t care if I took her to a big-deal meal or some little dump around the corner. After she left the paper, everything changed.
The lovable, capable Trish Hall, editor of the Living Section, designed the new Dining In/Dining Out section and then deserted us to become the editor of Martha Stewart Living. Eric Asimov was still writing the $25 or Under column, but after a brief stint editing an early incarnation of Sunday Styles, he’d been reassigned and was now downstairs in Metro. Molly O’Neill had moved on to start her own dot-com business and Marian Burros was spending most of her time working out of the Washington bureau, despite the fact that she and the bureau chief, Johnny Apple, didn’t get along very well. Faced with all their empty desks, it was hard to sit at my own and feel jolly.
I tried to get to know the replacements, but the new editor of the Dining section, Rick Flaste, was nothing like Trish. He was a gruff man and the least politic person on earth. Tall, gangly, and strangely ascetic looking for someone who loves to eat, he displayed an utter contempt for fashion. He had the air of some biblical prophet intent on predicting doom. His clothes looked as if he slept in them, and his long face and large forehead were framed by lanky strands of hair. His ideas were smart and original, but he was either too busy or too brusque to bother with charm. Even when he asked nicely, it felt as if he was barking commands. The new young reporter, on the other hand, was just the opposite; Amanda Hesser was terrifyingly sweet. She was pale, pretty, and petite, but she seemed so frighteningly ambitious that we all kept our distance. Before long I stopped going into the office. I was supposed to be sitting at my computer, writing from home, but the truth is that I had disappeared into the kitchen.
Every kitchen is filled with flames and shards, fire and glass, boiling liquids and sharp objects eager to attack you. Cooking is too dangerous to permit distraction. If you step into that arena without the proper respect, you will certainly get hurt.
“Blood!” screamed a sign over the stove in my first professional kitchen. Beneath, spelled out in large letters, were the appropriate steps to be taken in case of severed appendages, injured limbs, or major burns. Peril pounces on the careless cook, and for me this lurking menace is part of the attraction. I have found that meditation at the edge of the knife makes everything seem better.
But while cooking demands your entire attention, it also rewards you with endlessly sensual pleasures. The sound of water skittering across leaves of lettuce. The thump of the knife against watermelon, and the cool summer scent the fruit releases as it falls open to reveal its deep red heart. The seductive softness of chocolate beginning to melt from solid to liquid. The tug of sauce against the spoon when it thickens in the pan, and the lovely lightness of Parmesan drifting from the grater in gossamer flakes. Time slows down in the kitchen, offering up an entire universe of small satisfactions.
That fall, worried about Carol and wondering about my work, I spent weeks standing at the counter, chopping onions, peeling apples, and rolling dough. I made complicated soups and stews, and I began baking bread every day, as I had done when Michael and I first lived together.
In the end I came to realize that a restaurant critic’s job is more about eating than writing, and every time I cancelled a reservation I grew more seriously behind. I was having a secret affair with cooking, and I knew it could not continue. But every morning, after walking Nicky to school, I’d go home and sit in the kitchen, sifting through my recipes. A jumble of handwritten pages, they were gathered into an ancient, torn manila folder filled with memories. Tomorrow, I’d think, tomorrow I’ll go out to eat, tomorrow I’ll go back to the restaurants. And then I’d turn over another page and a long-gone meal would come tumbling out, more evocative than any photograph could ever be.
Here was apricot upside-down cake, written in my mother-in-law’s neat, careful script. Here was Aunt Birdie’s potato salad, scratched in her feathery penmanship and signed with her funny little bird. My own recipes for six different pie crusts were carefully printed for the students at my cooking classes. Serafina’s scrawled instructions for coconut cake were almost illegible, as if she had not quite wanted to part with the recipe. My mother’s thick, bold writing danced exuberantly across a page torn from the New York Times in the mid-sixties. “Sounds like you!” she’d written across a recipe called “Minetry’s Miracle.” I looked it over; it required a pound of butter, a dozen eggs, a pint of cream, and a cup of bourbon (not to mention chocolate, pecans, ladyfingers, and macaroons). Indeed.
Then a recipe written on blue-lined paper leapt into my hand. The writing was not familiar. “Aushak,” I whispered, and suddenly it came to me. An Afghan exchange student had given it to me when I was an undergraduate with a reputation as a cook. At the time these scallion dumplings had seemed too strange, too exotic, too time-consuming, and I had never attempted them. Now, studying the ingredients, I was curious. The dumplings sounded delicious. Yes, I thought, writing out a grocery list, this is my recipe for today.
Aushak
MEAT SAUCE
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
½ pound ground beef
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon diced or grated fresh ginger
½ cup water
2 tablespoons tomato paste
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
YOGURT SAUCE
1 cup full-fat yogurt
1 tablespoon minced garlic
½ teaspoon salt
DUMPLINGS
2 bunches scallions, white part discarded, green tops finely
chopped (about 2 cups)
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
1teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon minced garlic
25 to 30 wonton or Gyoza wrappers, preferably round
GARNISH
2 teaspoons chopped fresh mint
Make the meat sauce: Heat the oil in a small skillet. Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes, until golden. Add the beef, garlic, coriander, and ginger, and cook, stirring, until the meat is no longer red, about 3 minutes.
Add the water and cook, stirring often, until it is reduced by half, about 5 minutes. Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes. Season with the salt and pepper, and set aside.
Make the yogurt sauce: Blend the yogurt, garlic, and salt in a bowl, and set it aside.
Make the dumplings: Combine the chopped scallion tops, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, and garlic in a bowl. Toss to mix.
Lay a wonton wrapper on a flat surface and brush the edges with water. Spoon 1 teaspoon of the scallion mixture onto the center, fold the wrapper in half, and press the edges to make a semicircle. Repeat with the remaining wrappers. (If you do not have round wrappers, fold them into triangles.)
Heat 3 quarts salted water in a 6- or 8-quart pot. When it is boiling, add the filled dumplings and cook for 5 minutes. Drain in a colander.
Assemble the dish: Spoon ¼ cup yogurt sauce into a serving dish, and cover it with the dumplings. Spoon the remaining yogurt sauce on top, and sprinkle with the mint. Spoon the meat sauce all around, and serve at once.
Serves 4
I walked to the market, strolling past Citarella, where the man who decorates the windows with fish was contemplating his latest creation. He added a few oysters to the design, stood back to observe the effect, and waved at me. Next door at Fairway the bins were filled with six kinds of local apples, the last of the deep-blue prune plums, the first of the pumpkins. There was some sad-looking corn and some fine-looking tomatoes. I grabbed a basket and walked in. People were sliding through the sawdust, pushing, tugging, shoving past the raucous dairy counter and the shiny dried fruits, eager to get to the deli counter and jockey for position in the smoked salmon line.
I gathered mint, scallions, and fresh garlic into my cart and went off to find the wonton wrappers. As I pa
ssed the bread a baguette called to me, and as I reached for it a voice said, “Not that one.”
Looking up, I found a man with a boyish face staring at me. His warm brown eyes and mischievous grin seemed surprised to find themselves attached to such an oversized and awkward body. With one hand the man dangled a baguette before me; with the other he stopped my reaching arm. “Take this,” he said. “It’s baked later and delivered earlier.”
“Hi Ed,” I said.
I barely knew Ed Levine, but he had a reputation as the ultimate connoisseur of New York food. For years well-intentioned friends had been telling me that I should cultivate his friendship. Nobody, they assured me, knew more about the city’s edible landscape. There was apparently not a pizzeria in the city that Ed hadn’t sampled. If I wanted to meet the jerk chicken king of Brooklyn or the tofu man of Flushing, Ed could introduce me, and he was one of the few people who knew where to find the last women in the city still stretching strudel dough by hand. The best fried chicken in Harlem? Ed could lead me to it. SoHo’s finest sandwiches? Ed was on to that as well. But although we had been introduced any number of times, neither of us had pursued the acquaintance.
“Have you tried the donuts they’ve been getting from Georgie’s?” Ed asked now, drawing me over to the bakery counter. “Well, you should.”
Ed was full of opinions: I should be buying this olive oil instead of that, my coffee should come from next door, and he did not approve my choice of smoked salmon. But his enthusiasm was so infectious that I couldn’t be annoyed. When he said that my Afghan dumplings would surely be better with yogurt from the Middle Eastern store in Bay Ridge, I suspected he was right.
“I could take you there,” he offered. He stopped himself, eyes gleaming. “In fact, why don’t you let me take you on a food tour of Brooklyn?” He ran his fingers through his short red-blond hair and added, “You’ll meet some amazing people. Bakers and butchers are undervalued in our culture, and they’re so happy when you recognize what they do. We’ll have a great time. Please come.”