Beauty is an Understatement!

At first glance these desserts may seem innocuous enough for the Sabbath, but don't let them fool you. Take a taste. Beneath the surface, fruits of the bough and vine entwine in Bacchanalian ecstasy...

Torta Magdaleina- Grandma's knitted cap of marzipan complete with handmade roses gives in to a flirtation with marsala soaked genoise and apricot jam.


Crema Bacchia- The tentative surface of this delicate custard belies the sparkling conviviality of the eggs, cinnamon, cloves and Muscato di'Asti inside.

Of Bone and Blood

While attending a Jungian lecture on divine feminine and masculine archetypes where the audience was asked to participate by providing examples of commonly accepted traits and themes of each, I was picked to give an answer. Bored by the surprisingly pedantic answers from the group about men being active and women passive, I scratched this out on a scrap of paper on my knee:

A woman is like a mushroom. Most of her lies underground just as the mushroom's myceliae do, deep down with the roots of trees and plants, in silent facilitation of their processes up-taking nutrient and water from the soil. It is a symbiotic relationship she participates in with the plant, and one could not live without the other. She forms a vast underground web-like network unseen by man, save for when he stumbles by, kicking over a rotted log, exposing her ubiquitousness. She presents herself to the above-ground world as a mushroom, the fruiting body of her sex, only when the timing is right to release her spores, when conditions are amenable to her survival; indeed, to her thriving.

Tagliatelle al Barbaresco

My classmate and I looked across the table, staying put after the above dish was eaten. "I feel like I'm underground" she said. "No way I'm getting up after that" I agreed. It was the sauce that held us, sinking down in our seats. It was comprised of Dolcetto d'Alba wine, butter, shallots, agaricus and porcini mushrooms and parsley with an extra quarter cup of wine added in the last minutes. And with the final seasoning, I tasted blood in the sauce.

At the table, we discussed the wine from Barbaresco, with a taste like a ruddy complexion, hardy enough to carry the other ingredients on its back from the saucepan to the table, and the splash of fruit added at the end. The mushrooms were like meat, soaked with the deep burgundy sauce. Robert commented how you could taste the unfolding of earth to herb to fruit. We wanted to know where exactly this deep red came from and consulted his copy of the World Atlas of Wine. Turns out the grape grows on chalky, iron-rich soil, which speaks of bone and blood.


Composta di Verdure in Maionese


Lamb Patties with Apple & Polenta



Ciambellone Bolognese and Crema Bacchica

Mama's Tears

With our baby-bird spoons, tasting and seasoning Mama's soup.

She cried out when you came into the world, when you were plucked like a full ripe fruit from the impossibly small slit between her legs. She wiped a droplet from her cheek when you ran up to give her the four leaf clover clutched tightly in your chubby hand. Then when you ran away, or off to college, to the army or into marriage, her tears flowed unequivocally for joy and grief alike; for a Mama knows these two faces well, stamped indelibly on the one real currency of life.

The great universal solvent, water, and salt, nature's catalyst, join in a teardrop to flow in a release of emotion, becoming tiny agents of expression and relationship: I thought, flicking another pinch of salt into the bolognese sauce to lock in the latest level of flavor. We've discussed the role of salt in cooking a lot lately. "Salt is not an idea," Robert punctuated with a spoon in his hand, "Start with stock and vegetables and taste it. You can't taste anything! Add salt and suddenly: There's the sweetness of onion, carrot, celery, and the stock becomes a foundation beneath them."

Like tears' movement of emotion, there is a dance between the liquid in a sauce and the salt we use to season it that allows the ingredients to express themselves more fully. If a sauce has three ingredients and the third isn't found, adding salt will help bring it forward and meld them together. Salt is added in stages to lock in flavor as sauce develops, so that as it nears completion only minor adjustments are needed. Sprinkled on top of simmering vegetables, salt facilitates the release of water and bitterness so the starches can break down into sweet sugars.

Remember Mama when you season. She cried over your pot many times watching you develop!

Robert's Potage aux Haricots et aux Champignons Sauvages, perfectly seasoned.

Florentine Desserts

Photo by Christine Grimsby

Early morning in Florence in 1991, painting the Duomo's parabolic silhouette haloed by the rising sun's rays; its mass of marble and tile still cool from the night before, shadowing laundry lines tethered beneath its arc with their white sheets held drooping like damp flags, awaiting their daily surrender to the afternoon heat that comes in two or three hour slices between buildings in winter.

The same morning while walking in Boboli Garden, I stopped to admire a paving pattern of narrow stones and imagine the agile fingers that painstakingly pieced them together, when I saw a figure behind a line of cypress. Moving silently as a cat, it was a woman practicing Tai-chi. I didn't think her human, save for exhalations coming at regular intervals and hanging about her like a mist; her hands sliced clear paths through it and the still December air.

Zuccotto- Genoise in paving pattern, soaked with rum syrup; Cream filling punctuated by the crunch of almond and hazelnut praeline.

When in Roma...

My Roman friend's name is Lavinia, which means "Mother of the Italian Race." She is all that and more: Extraordinarily brilliant, funny, passionate, incisive and loves above all things, to dance. I have supped at her table many nights; she is an indulgent cook and friend. If you happen into her circle of light, you will be blessed. I joined Lavinia and her mother for breakfast one morning and captured the elegance of her table in the photo above.

We were in Rome today at the studio and I thought of these two beautiful Italian women. I want to cook for them someday soon and return the blessings they have bestowed on me...


Carciofi alla Romana


Gnocchi alla Romana


Braised Lamb with Eggplant Fries

Ze Art for Ze Heart

The original David must've held a tart aloft. This orange tart bears an exquisite ruff of crust.

Like Michelangelo's David, the tart is a pedestal being, rising from the relative obscurity of its origin in humble ingredients to embody perfection. It is said that David was pieced together from various castings in an attempt to find the ideal physical form. The same could be said for the construction of a tart. Butter, sugar, egg and flour are the basic construct and the filling options are endless: Lemon, orange, marmalade, walnuts, chocolate, just to name a few. Tomorrow, week two of our two week Italian culinary tour begins. Though we've crossed the border and are now firmly in the arms, kitchens and perhaps even the museums of Italian mamas, part of us remains in France. I know this because a tart always ends up on the table alongside the Italian dessert. We just can't seem to give up on le beau ideal.

Walnut above, and Orange Marmalade below.

Veni, Vidi, Vici

She came, she taught, she matched the menu. Robert's friend Marietta Sisca came to class to show us a thing or two about making gnocchi. She arrived wearing a purple sweater and white pearls just as the radicchio chicetti were spooned onto plates with sweet and sour cippolini onions and porcini stuffing. While snacking on chicetti, we watched as she demonstrated kneading, rolling, cutting and rolling the dough again with verve. Gnocchi is only potato, flour and salt, so one must arrive otherwise equipped for success: With common sense, a big heart and a flair for rolling the little buggers, all of which Marietta has in abundance.

I had Bolognese sauce on the brain when I woke up this morning. We made a fantastic lasagne with it in class last week. Figured I would get a pot started late morning, maybe buy a pasta maker to fit my new mixer and try and recreate it and invite a neighbor or two over. Went to the market and that's when all hell broke loose. Spotted star anise next to the nutmeg. Pear clafouti! Oranges and fennel...do I have white wine vinegar left? Think simple: Oh yeah-broccoli soup!

This is my first menu made outside of class; I'm a bona-fide beginner. The dishes come from all over the map, but each one was a success in it's own right and I even made minor improvisations to a few:

Toasted Broccoli Soup


Pissaladiere de Nice


Pasta with Bolognese Sauce


Friend Caught Licking Plate


Lemon Orange Tart with Candied Orange Peel



Pan de Genoa with Orange and Star Anise Syrup- They asked, Is the syrup Amaretto?

KitchenAid

I found a KitchenAid mixer waiting patiently at my doorstep when I came home from class yesterday, the doormat draped over its white nose like dog ears. Well, just what are we going to do with you? I thought, picking up the thirty-pound lug and bringing it inside. My bachelor friend, Jack, had made this offering to my bachelorette kitchen, saying it had held down his fridge long enough and would have better use on mine now. I put it on the dining room table and began to clean the enamel machine made in Ohio in the 1970's

I called Jack to thank him and tell him he would be the recipient of the first good thing made by the machine. "I'm thinking of making dinner sometime this week, you around?" I asked, trying the switch. "We're in Italy now at the studio, so the main course will be a pasta with meat sauce or something like that" I lured, knowing he had just posted a gross picture of a piece of meat he had grilled on Facebook. It was aptly named the 'Bacon Explosion'.

The gleaming white mixer easily took its place at the center of my dining room table and practically begged me to take it for a spin. I relented, grabbing the keys and headed for the market, arrogantly thinking I could make two Pan de Genoa quickly, one for a birthday party a few hours later and the other for Jack.

Two hours later there was only one Pan de Genoa in the oven, due to a miscalculation at the store and I had a dilemma: Who gets the cake? In gratitude to Jack I had promised first dibs from the machina, but I had mentioned dinner later in the week. I also wanted to make a nice offering for the birthday. I couldn't do both, though. It was getting late and I reasoned that the birthday party was probably well under way, beers sloshing and tongues being made numb from wine. Would they be able to feel the texture of this cake made from ground almonds leavened by egg and taste it's delicate orange flower water perfume? Who would most appreciate this cake at this time?

Some things are sacred. The gift of the mixer had been given, sparking inspiration. Now a labour was to be returned in kind, a labour of gratitude to appease the gods. This is what people did before usury, before market economies: They gifted one another a few bushels from their harvest in return. As I pulled the fragrant cake from the oven, I knew again my life was to be about this kind of natural harmony. It is like music, which is like making love, which is like cooking. It is all about preparing the container. Time and timing. Staying present. Abandoning oneself to awe. Essential humility.

The decision had already been made. Jack? You won't believe it! I've already made something with the mixer. A beautiful cake. Come try it!

We sat at the table with the mixer as a centerpiece eating slices of cake and drinking coffee. I regaled him with tales from the studio, including the one about the vinegar chicken that made me cry: I had taken a bite of this extraordinary chicken and saw a countryside scene for a moment and then felt a sudden sadness and great sense of gratitude at the same time as the tears flowed. Once they subsided, Robert told us that the chef who devised the masterpiece we were eating had committed suicide. The story was intrinsic to the recipe. We made a toast to Bernard who figured out how to make cream sauce without cream, then gave his life for it.

Jack's eyes were wet. He had a story too. An old family friend, Wally, had called him the day before. He had recently turned 100, they hadn't spoken for years. They talked for maybe twenty minutes, reminisced and said goodbye. Wally passed away minutes later.

He recalled taking Wally's Sunfish out as a teenager and crushing the boat's daggerboard on the reef and the good-natured man waving it off saying he'd done it himself a million times; the image of the old Navy admiral's six foot two frame, bent over with age and squinting at his well-worked pointilism painting, making tiny dots and looking up to pause and wave at Jack with his brush.

Just painting, Jack! he called, Just painting!

Cassoulet

Working, Together

Too bad Studs isn't around, he would be a great lunch guest at the studio. He'd be entranced by the spectacle of our motley group of characters dropping down from the heavens or off the street and into Robert's kitchen, being rendered by his tutelage into something useful and beautiful for the world. Sometimes things don't go smoothly and as my mechanic friend says when things don't go right at the garage: "Some days it's just elbows and assholes." Get distracted and another skillet of onions burn. Sometimes we get frustrated with ourselves, sometimes with each other. In the end at the table, everything is gorgeous: The food, the wine and US. Each day a grain of irritation becomes a pearl and from the rough diamonds are plucked!

Harmoniously Hollandaise