the cassandra pages

Grazie, Marcella

Marcella and Victor Hazan

Marcella Hazan, who died yesterday at the age of 89, has been an integral part of my life for decades. Her classic texts on Italian cooking taught me how to use fresh ingredients simply, so that their essential nature is never lost in the cooking or in elaborately concocted sauces. Her style of cooking was a perfect fit with a life lived in Vermont, where market farming and my own home garden provided the inspiration and ingredients for most of our meals, and then in Montreal, where the French and mixed-ethnic population, and high culinary standards, mean that top-quality ingredients are always available.

From Marcella, I learned to make the simplest, fastest, and best tomato sauce -- which we prepare from fresh Italian tomatoes at least twice a month and use on everything from pasta to pizza. I've made many of her other pasta sauces, her risottos, her wonderful vegetable recipes, her meat, chicken and fish dishes, her rosemary-studded foccacia, her cakes: her "farm wife's pear tarte," made from hard Rocha pears and almonds, is one of my all-time favorites, full of freshness and simplicity.

Like all the best cookbook authors, she was a teacher, and her voice, which comes through so clearly in her books, always impressed me; I felt she knew exactly what she was talking about and it made me want to follow her instructions to the letter,and even more, to learn her techniques. She didn't just write recipes, she explained the nature of each particular food, whether it was a grain of arborio rice or a perfect eggplant: that was what I appreciated, and what I wanted to know.

When I think of her now, it's in a black-and-white photograph -- not the one above, though I like that too -- from the flyleaf of one of those books. She's standing with her husband, along a canal in Venice, where they were living at the time. The couple appears sophisticated, urban, yet also relaxed, and most of all happy and in love: Victor, the handsome, elegant businessman, who came home every single day to share lunch with his wife; Marcella, the cook and author, looking comfortable, kind, and welcoming, as if we, the readers, were accepting that luncheon invitation too. A part of me, I think, wanted to be them, and in some ways I realize today that I probably absorbed something from that photograph into my own life.

Grazie, Marcella: you'll always live on in my kitchen; thank you so much for your love of food, and for everything you've taught me.

Breads by Other Names

Clam pizza and a plain margarita pizza at Lombardi's.

We intended to go on a bit of a pizza-crawl in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, but although we thought we could eat three or four pizzas during our stay, we only managed two. Even pizza by the slice tends to be excellent in the city. There are lots and lots of fantastic sit-down, whole pie pizza places in New York, and we've already sampled a number of them: John's, in the village, and Patsy Grimaldi's under the Brooklyn Bridge are two standouts that come to mind. But we wanted to try a few new ones. The first night, we ate at Giuseppina's on 20th St. and 6th Avenue in Brooklyn, and it was excellent but so dark in the restaurant that I couldn't take a good photo. They don't serve anything but pizza and calzone, and the restaurant has a nice dining area, reminiscent of small fancier Italian bistros, where the low light puts the focus on an enormous C-shaped marble counter where the pizza is rolled out, thrown, and assembled, and behind it, the glowing semi-circular mouth of the brick oven which reaches temperatures close to 1000 degrees. We ordered a classic Margarita pizza: homemade tomato sauce, real mozzarella, and basil. The crust was truly memorable, and I also liked the sauce very much -- and we told the owner so; he was making the pizzas and talking to the customers, many of whom he seemed to know. I'd go back for sure.

A close up of the clam pizza at Lombardi's: this topping was really really good, with two dozen fresh clams.

The next night, in Manhattan, we went to Lombardi's at 32 Spring Street in SoHo, a famous pizza restaurant that's become an institution. It was busy, with tables on many levels, and a rushed staff, so I already felt un-special as soon as we were seated. The pizza is good, but I wouldn't call it great, although the clam pizza as different and delicious. I thought the crust was too chewy, but the sauce was good, the beer was good, and the company was excellent. A fun experience to chalk up, but one we probably won't repeat. I'd rather eat at John's. The problem is that we're spoiled: J. makes such good pizza at home that it's hard to beat.

 

An egg bagel with lox, cream cheese, capers, and red onion.

Breakfast, however, was another story. I know, I know, I'm being disloyal to Montreal to even post pictures of NY bagels, but damn, they were good. Fresh and hot from the oven, covered with a shmear of cream cheese, maybe some fresh lox, the waxed paper crackling, the sesame seeds adding their nutty flavor as you sit and eat your bagel on the street with some good coffee: it's a great way to start the day. Monteal bagels are quite different: about half the size, harder, with a different texture and crust, and also a bit sweeter: NY bagels have no sugar in them at all. The Montreal bagels are just as good, but such a different species of breadlike thing that I don't feel they can be fairly compared.

I must admit, however, it's been a bit depressing to go back to my low-carb, post-vacation diet!

And my favorite: a sesame bagel with lox-scallion-and dill cream cheese.

A Haiku Series to Beat the Heat

A sore back demands
gin and tonic, a handful
of potato chips.

--

The lime slice floating
in its carbonated sea
--a drowning green moon.

--

While sun-like peaches
lie in pleated purple ruffs
ready to bleed gold.

 

--

I've been away; back in Montreal now, with a report on the travels coming soon. My back is better, it's been a little cooler here, and I hope everyone is coping with the heat and humidity.

Sketches during Breakfast

Turkish Sausages and Oranges, pen and watercolor on paper, approx. 11" x 5", 6-2-2013

We're with T.C. and K. at their home for a couple of days. Our breakfast this morning was very attenuated...two hours at least, spilling almost directly into a mid-afternoon lunch. There's been a great deal of picture-taking, drawing, art-talk, as well as eating, and even a little sleep in spite of the humidity and heat. It's wonderful to be here.

 

Jonathan. pencil on paper, approx 6"x5". 6-2-2013

Yesterday we visited the Brooklyn Museum of Art and saw several great shows; I'll post photos from there later on.

The Scariest Breakfast Ever

Yes, I know. That doesn't look scary: it looks like a small bowl of bran flakes with sliced bananas.

Which is exactly what it is.

Except that these are the first bananas I've eaten in, let's see, 59 minus 19  = 40 years.

I stopped eating bananas when I was in college, after getting violently sick after consuming one -- intestinal cramps, diarrhea -- and not for the first time; I had suspected for a while that bananas didn't agree with me. But this final incident was much worse - like an allergic reaction. So I just stopped, and since then I've told people I can eat just about anything, except bananas. And oysters.

But lately, I started thinking I wanted to try again. J., who loves them, had just bought a bunch of particularly delicious-looking bananas, and on Sunday, as we made our coffee and fixed bowls of cereal, I said, OK, let me have a taste. I ate one bite, and waited. Hours went by...nothing happened. So the next day I ate three slices. Again, nothing. And yesterday, I ate the breakfast in the picture above, and I'm still here, none the worst for wear, except that (a) I'm delighted to think I can add this wonderful food back into my eating repertoire and (b) I feel like an idiot.

Well, OK, not an idiot exactly, but I'm perplexed. Was this a real thing, at one time in my life - a real allergy - that I've outgrown? Or have I been under a forty-year illusion? Either way, what I thought was reality has a sudden curve in it. How many things in life are like this? How many fears are actually baseless? How much living do we avoid because of those fears, or illusions? Conversely, how much does one's body chemistry change over time? My suspicion is that it changes more than we think, particularly with regard to digestion. I used to be much more lactose-intolerant than I am now, for instance, and my entire digestive system works much much better since I adopted different and healthier eating habits, which took place over a fairly long period of time, most of the entire last decade. Developing a bleeding ulcer ten years ago and learning what was going on in my insides, with the help of an excellent GI specialist at Royal Victoria Hospital, was one precipitating factor. I changed my diet to include considerably more fiber, whole grains, whole foods, less sugar, less fat, less meat, more fruits and vegetables. Living in Montreal had something to do with it too -- we are able to eat a greater variety of food here, it's fresher, and while it's not all organic, there are fewer additives and preservatives allowed by law: in fact, a USDA inspecter at the border once told me if she could, she'd only eat Canadian food products because she knew what the differences were. I tried to learn about, face, and take steps to control the stress in my life. And I stopped using aspirin or any other form of anti-inflammatory medication, which were, in my case, after all the tests came in, the immediate reasons for the bleeding ulcer.

Anyway, to get back to the hero of today's story: I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to look a banana in the eye and not have a moment of thinking of it as potential poison (and you with gutter-minds, just stop that thought in its tracks...) but I do feel like I've been given a gift, not just in terms of a food I'll enjoy eating, but the questions it's prompted me to ponder. What else lurks in the shadows of my life, avoided, feared, abandoned, untried for decades? Isn't it time to find out?

 

Farmhouse breakfast

My blue heaven. Blueberries, peaches, chewy whole grain toast with feta and dark wildflower honey, scrambled eggs, strawberry jam, coffee and rooibos tea...and a petite angel who prepares it all for you with love.

We're home now, after a beautiful drive through farmland and mountains. Home to our well-tended cat and garden, grateful for good neighbors and friends here, too.

More pictures and stories to come, including a visit to Cooperstown (not far from where I grew up) and my first fact-to-face meet-up with friend and writer Marly Youmans!

Red Curry

How the fragrance of the newly opened tin bites my nose, how its redness dyes the coconut milk the colors of salmon, calendula, rust.

Washington Bookends on a Chinese Lunch

 
Last week we were in and near Washington, D.C. for American Thanksgiving with family. More to say about that later; for now, just these photographs from Sunday afternoon -- and gratitude that we don't have to drive 11 hours again anytime soon, though being together was worth every bit of effort we put in to get there.

October Fog

(photographs taken three days ago between Amsterdam and Ballston Spa, New York)

The Bakers

For Zuleme.