Eating

by Jason Epstein

  Since we’re on the subject of pasta, I should mention the irresistible Bolognese ragù from the great Mario Batali’s Babbo Cookbook, which I have somewhat modified.

  BOLOGNESE SAUCE

  This is one of the all-time great ragùs, and easy to make after a little trial and error. Again, you will need a pot large enough for the rather substantial sauce and a pound of imported tagliatelle, Spinosi brand if you can find it. Batali uses pappardelle, and you may, too. In the pot, heat a little olive oil and soften a few chopped garlic cloves with some diced onion, carrot, and celery. Then cube a quarter-pound of pancetta (unsmoked Italian bacon) or, preferably, guanciale, cured from hog cheeks but not smoked, if you can find it in your Italian specialty store, and spin the cubes for a few seconds in a food processor. Scrape the pancetta or guanciale into the pot, and stir until it begins to melt. Then crumble a pound each of ground veal and pork into the pot and over a medium-hot flame brown the meats. Then toss in a small handful of dried oregano leaves, and mix everything together. Batali calls for a small can of tomato paste at this point, or use three generous tablespoons of strattu instead.

  STRATTU If you can find in your Italian market an infinitely more fragrant tomato concentrate called strattu (that is, extract) get it. It’s expensive and not easy to find—Di Palo stocks it—but strattu will send your ragù directly to the empyrean.

  Now add a cup of milk and another of white wine, reduce the flame to a simmer, cover the pot loosely, and let it simmer over the lowest flame for an hour or so, checking from time to time that the sauce hasn’t dried out and begun to burn. Add more milk and wine as necessary. Add sea salt and fresh-ground pepper to taste carefully. Then sprinkle a good handful of very fragrant fresh thyme leaves, from the garden if you have one, into the ragù. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, cook a pound of tagliatelle until it’s al dente, and transfer the pasta with tongs to the ragù and mix thoroughly, saving the pasta water if you’re not planning to serve the ragù immediately. Drop a tong-full into each large pasta bowl, sprinkle with grated parmigiana, and serve while hot. The dish is even better the second day, as leftovers.

  In childhood, I became interested in cooking as I watched my grandmother Ida bake pies, preserve peaches and applesauce from her own trees, and roast chickens that she had fattened herself in the cellar when it was too cold for them outdoors. My grandparents’ old house, atop a steep hill in Auburn, Maine, had a primitive coal-burning furnace which kept the cellar warm but didn’t do much on icy days for the big, drafty parlors, despite heavy wood-framed storm windows. Ida was tall, handsome, and amiable. She carried herself with dignity and smiled often and easily. She was not a great cook and not always even a very good one, but she tried. Her grandchildren respected and loved her and went along with the pretense that her food was delicious. Or perhaps, being children, they didn’t know any better. At the age of ten, I did know better, for my parents would often take me with them when they dined out with friends on Sundays at country inns—including the Toll House, with its famous cookies—around Boston, where we lived when we were not visiting my grandparents in Maine.

  My grandmother was from Russia and said she liked cold houses with warm kitchens. Her husband, my grandfather, was born prematurely and kept in a shoe box wrapped in fur until he was old enough to survive, or so I was told. When I knew him in old age, he wore in winter what was called a pelt, a stiff canvas coat lined with a sheepskin, an echo, I thought, of his primitive incubator. On bitter winter days when the frost formed peaks on the storm windows in the unheated parlor, my cousins and I sat in the kitchen warmed by the big woodstove with its nickel trim and the words “Model: Home Fireside” in raised letters above a temperature gauge on the oven door.

  Prospect Hill, where my grandparents lived, was almost perpendicular, and with my friend Raymond Begin, who was smart and funny and spoke French—he would become a Roman Catholic priest in Canada—I skied down it on heavy wooden Norwegian skis with knobs at the tip. Then, with sealskins attached to our skis, we would herringbone back up. Afterward we would go across South Main Street to Cloutier’s store (pronounced “Cloochies”) for frozen Milky Ways and root beer.

  On stormy winter mornings, you could see from my grandmother’s kitchen windows the windswept snow swirl against the blackness of Mr. Jackson’s open barn doors across the road. Pete, my grandparents’ old English bulldog, slept on a braided rug in front of the stove, so that my grandmother had to pirouette awkwardly around him as she lifted her roasts and pies from the oven. From my perch next to the stove, atop the big box painted blue with a slanted top, like a saltbox, where the firewood was kept, I effortlessly absorbed from my beaming grandmother, with her Oxford glasses on their gold chain, the ambience of warmth and safety from which the desires of a lifetime were formed, including the desire that persists long after her death to help her improve her cooking. Like the walls and ceiling of my New York kitchen today, hers were wainscoted, but the varnish was older and mellower than mine. The copper plumbing must have been added after the house was built, since it was bracketed to the walls rather than embedded in them, and it rattled and groaned whenever the brass faucets were opened over the heavy slate sink.

  In summertime, when the kitchen became uncomfortably warm and the fumes of melting tar rising from the street clutched at our throats, I would retreat with a book to a cool pantry just off the kitchen which my grandmother called her “shed,” its walls lined with her preserves in gleaming jars: crab apples, peaches, cucumbers, pie fillings, hot peppers, eggplant, green tomatoes. Since I don’t recall ever being served any of these preserves, I assume the handsome jars were meant for display. My grandmother had an eye for décor. The floor was covered with old patchwork quilts where Pete slept in the summer, and where, under a single dim bulb hanging from a wire, I read the novels of R. L. Stevenson and E. Nesbit, and, with difficulty, The Pickwick Papers and A Tale of Two Cities in an edition given to subscribers to the local newspaper. I still associate these novels of Dickens with my grandmother’s shed and Pete the bulldog growling softly in his dreams beside me.

  My grandmother was born to a prosperous family of Odessa grain merchants who later fell on hard times. She was not meant to be a cook, or a gardener, either. Instead of arranging her plants in rows, she grew them wherever it suited her and them: rhubarb beside the barn, dill by the front door, cabbages beside the hydrangea, rutabaga in the orchard. Her family in the Crimea had been able to keep servants, educate their children, and move in style, first to Argentina and then to the United States, where her father, a grim, bearded presence in an oval frame in the front parlor, speculated in ostrich feathers and lost everything in the Panic of ’07. His wife hung beside him in the parlor, scowling, almond-eyed, and padded like an old samurai.

  My grandmother was a brave and cheerful soul and did her best to maintain a certain tone, particularly at mealtime. But some of her special dishes I recall to this day with dismay, especially her chicken pot pie made from a worn-out laying hen. The crust, shiny on top, was gummy underneath, the broth was thin, and the chicken itself overcooked, dry, stringy, and tasteless. Yet our family romance declared her chicken pie a favorite, and my cousins and I dutifully cheered when my dear, beaming grandmother brought the pie in from the kitchen. She had an infectious gift for conviviality. So when the family gathered around her big, round golden-oak dining-room table there was joy despite the pie. She wanted us to be happy, and we were eager to accommodate her belief that the pie made us so.

  Over the years, with the help of Fannie Farmer and The Settlement Cook Book, her repertory improved. I remember in summertime bowls of coleslaw, beet soup, platters of fried or roasted chicken, peach, apple, and blueberry pies; in winter, double brisket and braised parsnips, breast of veal stuffed with Swiss chard, lamb shank and shoulder braised slowly for hours, caramelized, falling off the bone, and ginger cookies. My grandparents were ethnically Jewish but unobservant freethinkers who spoke a Yankee-inflected Yiddis
h with a few French Canadian exclamations among themselves, and a Yiddish-inflected Yankee to us. “I reckon,” my grandfather, who wore fireman’s suspenders and canvas trousers, would say when he meant “yes.” On Jewish holidays, my grandmother cooked for the synagogue, having convinced her neighbors, as she had convinced herself, that she was a superior cook. On those occasions, her chickens had to be killed and dressed according to Jewish ritual. It was my job to stuff three or four of her plump fowl into burlap bags and carry them live down Prospect Hill to the ritual butcher, who, in dim light under a low ceiling in a windowless cellar, slit their throats, left them to bleed into a funnel, and handed them over to be plucked by a hunched figure all but invisible in a dark corner, as in a Rembrandt etching. Some years later, I helped my older cousin Leon, who was enrolled in Columbia College, where I would later study, carry a set of Macaulay’s History of England, which he had found in a secondhand bookshop, up the hill. The books were heavier than the chickens. Climbing up Prospect Hill with chickens and books—a prelude to my life.

  Today, with fair-quality farm-raised chicken breasts, skinned and boned, in the supermarket, and inexpensive chicken parts to enrich the organic broth sold in cartons, there is no excuse for a dry and tasteless chicken pot pie.

  CHICKEN POT PIE

  First I bake separately a puff-pastry disk a little bigger than the circumference of the cocotte in which I make the filling. I bake the pastry between two sheet pans to form a crunchy, buttery, waferlike crust barely a quarter-inch thick.

  I begin with two and a half cups of all-purpose flour, a pinch of salt, and half a stick of cold, unsalted butter, roughly chopped in chunks, all whirled together in a food processor until the butter is incorporated into the flour but still a little lumpy.

  Then I add a scant half-cup or so of cold water a little at a time and pulse off and on quickly until the dough begins to form a firm, crumbly paste, which I scoop from the processor, form into a ball, and flatten into a rectangle. You may want to wrap the dough in foil and let it rest for twenty minutes in the refrigerator, long enough for the gluten to relax, but I don’t bother with this step. If the dough is too crumbly, I add a little water and knead it into the dough. If it’s too wet, I knead in a little flour. Next I roll this dough out on a cool marble slab into an oblong about an eighth of an inch thick, and cut and shape a quarter-pound of unsalted butter into a somewhat smaller and thinner oblong, which I center atop the pastry. Then I fold the dough in thirds—like a letter—around the butter, crimping the edges so that the butter is completely enclosed.

  PUFF PASTRY Many supermarkets carry ready-made frozen puffpastry, and it’s important, unless you decide to make your own, to find a brand made with butter rather than vegetable shortening. I like to make my own puffpastry, but when I’m in a hurry I look for the Dufour brand in the supermarket freezer. Be careful, however: it doesn’t always keep well in your home freezer. Making your own, on the other hand, is not as difficult as you may think.

  Now I turn the dough with its butter filling ninety degrees, roll it out again as an oblong, and fold and repeat the process for six turns, being careful at each turn to keep the butter tightly sealed. You can keep track of the turns by marking each with a thumbprint. You must work quickly, in a cool kitchen, or the butter will melt. To avoid this, chill the dough in the refrigerator after each turn. This will keep the butter firm and give the gluten a chance to relax, so that the dough won’t spring back when you roll it out. I use an old-fashioned glass rolling pin, actually a bottle that can be filled with ice water, with a glass handle at either end. Finally, with a very sharp knife (or a pizza wheel), I cut the dough into a round whose circumference is slightly larger than that of the pot in which I will make the pie filling, being sure to crimp the edges to keep the butter from leaking out. With the oven at 425 degrees, I then cut a circle of parchment paper the size of the pastry circle and lay it on a baking sheet and lay the pastry atop the paper, pricking a few holes in it here and there. Then I lay another round of parchment paper atop the pastry, place a second baking sheet atop the second parchment, and bake the pastry for about fifteen minutes, until crisp and beginning to brown. Next I reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake for another fifteen minutes, being careful not to let the crust burn. I roll out and bake the scraps in ornamental shapes. This is less complicated than it sounds;nevertheless, you may prefer Dufour or another brand made with butter, in which case follow the instructions in the package.

  For the filling, you will need two approximately sixteen-ounce skinless and boneless organic chicken breasts, cut into one-inch cubes. Pat the cubes dry with a paper towel and toss them in two tablespoons of heated but not smoking vegetable oil in a heavy Dutch oven or cocotte until light brown but not cooked through, and set aside. Clean the pot, melt two tablespoons of butter in the clean pot, and add a dozen or so pearl onions. (You can peel them easily by trimming the stem end and placing them in a lightly oiled pan in a 400-degree oven for ten minutes until soft and lightly browned. When they are cool, slip off the skins.) Set the onions aside with the chicken cubes and add to the pot a cup of diced carrots, a cup of diced celery, a sweet onion neatly diced, and a half-pound of bite-size cremini or other interesting mushrooms. Small chanterelles or morels, if you can find them, are ideal. Or use small white mushrooms.

  Add butter as needed. Sauté carrots and celery with the onions and mushrooms until soft and slightly colored, and set aside with the pearl onions and chicken.

  Meanwhile, in a separate pot, bring four cups of strong, defatted homemade chicken broth to a boil, or reduce six cups of organic stock from a carton, enriched with chicken parts and defatted, to four cups. Clean the cocotte once more, and in it melt six tablespoons of butter. Whisk in three tablespoons or so of Wondra instant-blending flour or arrowroot, and cook, stirring, until just turning light brown, then whisk in the boiling stock, smoothing out the lumps, and one and a half cups of half and half, three or four tablespoons to taste of dry sherry, chopped leaves from a stem of fresh rosemary, and a tablespoon each of fragrant fresh thyme and Italian parsley. Add sea salt and fresh-ground pepper to taste and the juice of two lemons. Bring to a slow boil, reduce, and simmer until the sauce is thick enough to coat a spoon. If it’s too thick, thin it with more stock and/or half and half. Cover the pot with parchment or plastic wrap until ready to serve. If using fresh peas, cook them first over a low flame in a small pot with a few lettuce leaves and a little butter, but do not add water. When they begin to soften, remove and discard the lettuce leaves and add the peas to the reserved chicken and vegetables. Otherwise, defrost and add a box of frozen peas. When ready to serve, remove the parchment or plastic wrap. Stir in the chicken and vegetables, and heat gently over moderate heat, being careful not to overcook the chicken or burn the sauce. When the chicken is just cooked through and firm to the touch, taste the sauce, correct the sherry, lemon juice, salt, and pepper, and turn off the flame. Return the pastry to a moderate oven until warm. Then cut it with a sharp knife into as many wedges as there are guests. Use the scraps for seconds. Serve the pie, which will serve six for dinner or eight for lunch, sprinkled with flat parsley, coarsely chopped, in large, warm pasta bowls, with the puff-pastry wedge pointed down into the sauce. I myself plate the pie with the puff-pastry wedges already in place, but others might bring the whole pie to table with the wedges on a separate platter.

  When I was asked by a magazine editor some years ago to describe my kitchen, it struck me for the first time that I had unconsciously re-created my grandmother’s wainscoted and varnished walls and ceilings, big black stove, cherrywood countertops, yellow pine floors, willow-ware platters, and bright copper pots. This cannot have been accidental, for I have two kitchens—one in Manhattan, where I have a shelf for preserves, and the other in Sag Harbor on Long Island, and each is a collage of the other. In the Sag Harbor kitchen, my favorite perch is a blue armchair. My chicken pot pie is homage to my indomitable grandmother.

  I have never tak
en much stock in psychoanalysis, with its contribution to narcissism and its emphasis on repressed memory. I believe that the important roots of human suffering are to be found within the shared failings of the species itself—in the human condition—modified by personal genetic determinants, rather than in the accidental encounters of one’s childhood. Yet my preference for varnished wainscoting, for the robin’s-egg-blue kitchen armchair where I like to read, and my choice of the kitchen as a place in which not only to cook and eat but also to read, write, and contemplate the world, as well as my reflexive association to this day of England’s great Whig historian with a plucked chicken wrapped in a Yiddish newspaper, suggest that I have been too quick to dismiss Dr. Freud’s talking cure. My lifelong interest in re-creating the cuisine of my childhood is proof of the persistence of memory and its power to shape one’s days.

  TWO

  THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

  When William Wordsworth wrote “The Child is father of the Man,” he knew what he was talking about. The warmth of my grandmother’s stove on snowbound days, and the summer days when I read Dickens in her shed with its gleaming jars of pickled beets and applesauce determined the life to come. To these shaping memories was added a few years later a simple hamburger, barely a half-inch thick, charred at the edges, on a toasted bun, and eaten with a slice of sweet onion by a lakeside shack in Winthrop, Maine, at dusk, amid the August hum of crickets. Macnamara’s stand, with its fragrant raw-pine walls and neat hand-lettered sign on a canoe paddle above the immaculate screen door painted white, is long gone, replaced by an access ramp to the new Augusta highway. But the memory of those magical hamburger evenings beside the lake is fixed in my mind as firmly as my own name.