What Color is Your Pâte Brisée?

After 20 years in PR, I qualify as "seasoned."

It's time to shake that up.

I get a charge out of telling stories for a living, thinking about the hook, the angle, what sparks interest. I approach work the way I do my greatest love, cooking: by visualizing an outcome that brings out the high notes of whatever lies in front of me. The kitchen is my comfort zone. It is where I think best, move most fluidly, and get lost in translation from raw to realized. Chaos becomes order, most of the time, and I love the buzz of heightened instincts, brightened flavors and seeking that fickle grail of joy at first bite. I am a good cook and fairly knowledgeable, but I want to learn the craft and apply those skills toward an even fuller life, work and all.

And that's how I landed in a class at The International Culinary Center.

I had always thought that culinary school was for people singularly focused on a future in the restaurant and hospitality industry. Then I picked up “Love What You Do,” a jewel of a book by International Culinary Center founder Dorothy Cann Hamilton that simply and directly explores all of the possibilities associated with a culinary degree. The Campbell, California campus of ICC is a short ride away, so I arranged a tour. They do make this incredibly easy. Culinary school is a big financial investment, and certainly a commitment if you have limited resources, a family and a day job. Still, I felt a genuine reception for my open-ended quest, and I was encouraged to come back to audit a class.

What a day! Upon arrival, I was warmly greeted, provided with a toque and chef coat (best dress-up moment ever), and led to a classroom. The kitchen was large and open, with several workstations, rows of stoves and ovens at the center and storage on two sides. Eight students, in what appeared to be varying states of anticipation, were gathered around their Chef for what turned out to be the first day of a new stage of their program. That day’s lesson was Timing; students were divided into teams and provided with a four-course menu that covered consommé to apple tart.

Suddenly, with murmurs of "Yes, Chef!", the room came alive. Knives were drawn, supplies were sought, flames were sparked and fevered chopping punctuated the air. It was a collective moment of invention and interpretation, and I was fascinated by each individual’s approach to the task at hand – in technique, yes, but more so in temperament. I was bearing witness to a cacophony of hope and fear buffeted by confidence and competence in different degrees as the kitchen filled with salt, sweet, melting butter, caramelizing onions, toasting rice, earthy mushrooms, bright citrus, smoke and saffron. Possibility and potential was all around me, and I saw myself among them, a lightly seasoned amateur with my own quiet dream.

Life’s midpoint can also be a starting line, and I walked away from that morning thinking that when I was younger I hadn’t once cast my dreams aside because of obstacles in my path. As Julia Child so happily declared, “I think every woman should have a blowtorch!” I think I’ll fire mine up and blaze ahead.

Community

There is so much talk about community. Building community, nurturing it, finding like-minded people to share this virtual connection we now access whenever we hit "Send" or "Post" from whatever device we have in our hands. I'm a big participant in my community of online friends. I know many personally across a spectrum of time.


Others I've never looked in the eye, yet they inspire me.


After many years as an in-house PR Director, I'm now out on my own. The silence of a home office is a salve in many ways, but I miss my most recent and very tight community at AFAR: my pod-mates who made me laugh, whose editing skills were always available, and whose dedication to making a beautiful product is true. They routinely made a day at work better and even dried my tears on an occasion or two.  (It's okay to cry at work, people.)

And now, working from a home office, I have a small window of dedicated hours to actually walk around the block.

When we first moved into our neighborhood in Palo Alto, we knew very few people. Our friends who had lived here for 25 years introduced us to the locals and we immediately felt welcome. Our neighbors over the fence welcomed us, dropping off flowers and kaffir lime leaves and throwing balls for Graeme into our garden.

A neighborhood camp ensued, followed by Kindergarten, and we began to know more and more families in our community.

Ever so naturally, it has all started to gel. When we walk the dog around the block, we're routinely invited in to play or to have a brief exchange on the street. We know each others' names.

Yesterday our neighbor smoked a chicken for us, as he did for many others in the neighborhood. Graeme played at that house almost all day, the smell of smoke in his hair when he came home. As a thank you, he delivered warm cornbread to them via scooter at dinner time.




It sounds idyllic. It is. And it's also true. You get what you give in this world, and I'm not giving up on the power of true, face-to-face community. As long as you mean it.

Ode to Thanks

I recently spent a pseudo-psychedelic marathon watching the first season of "The French Chef" with Julia Child and won't soon forget it.
In the "To Roast A Turkey" episode, there's a moment where she splays the raw, exposed turkey toward the camera before she plops it into a bowl to be stuffed proclaiming, "This is going to be a bit undignified!"
A Thanksgiving prophesy.
For all of its inherent warmth and glory, this holiday can't always escape its moments of dashed hope. Half-baked turkey ripped from the oven and strewn out the front door into the falling snow?!
Done.
By a Canadian!
Wish I'd been there.
(I'm in the Calvin Trillin camp when it comes to turkey.)
Still, I'm a believer in the day.
Woke up early this morning and ran through hushed, anticipatory neighborhoods hearing and smelling preparations getting underway. And I did think about gratitude: for laughing to tears with my boy in the dark last night, for my warm and true husband, for my big, loving, imperfect family, for my beautiful mother and effervescent father. And for my friends.
Imperfection is a virtue. Love is all there is. Happy Thanksgiving.

Life in the Kitchen

I'm back.

We've been growing around here and diving head-first into the possibilities that await us in the kitchen.

Our boy is four and he's all over it.

I'll almost leave it at that, except to say that our experiences together at the stove, over the grill, pulsing the food processor and licking the bowl have reinforced my belief that life is briefly in your hand(s) when you're cooking.

Adventure, lack of fear, discovery, joy. And best of all, my child's happy eyes to remind me.

More to come.

In the New Kitchen

Over the past several weeks, we've been moving. We moved about a mile but it may as well have been across the country.

I'm bad at moving. Really bad. My husband? Really good. He's a labeler (his Brother P-Touch is a prized possession,) box organizer, plan-ahead guy. I'm of the "just think how nice it will be, where should the KitchenAid mixer go and where should we hang the copper pots?" variety...before I've even packed a box. Not "unpacked" ..."packed".

But we made it. I did, anyway. He's still recovering.

My favorite room in the new house is, of course, the kitchen. My sweet friend Annie cooked in this kitchen for ten years and it is filled with her essence: roasted chickens and potatoes, apple tarts, panna cotta, farmers' market breakfasts, beautiful holiday meals, afternoon tea, and the smell of sweet butter melting into the countless pastries and pies she and her daughters made here. Annie also moved about a mile away into a house with another beautiful kitchen. It's big and it's downright dreamy. I've warned her that I'll be descending upon it to wreak havoc and I'm told I'm most welcome.

But oh to unpack into a big, clean palette. Drawers and shelves and cupboards all waiting to be filled with the things that, for me, are at the core of feeling at home. Spoons and apple slicers and pancake molds and knives and big pots. Jams, plum sauce, rice, pasta, olive oil and vinegars. And, at least for the next week or so, they'll all be in their proper places.

I can hear the sounds of meals to come and it fills me with joy.

Thank you, Annie, for your kitchen. I will fill it with warm meals and love.

A Bowl of Apples

Today it's all about apple tart. Actually it's a galette: no pan, free-form dough, oval or round. 

 I'm a believer. I adhere to the 3-2-1 formula. 3 parts flour (1 1/2 cups); 2 parts butter (2 (TWO) cubes); 1/2 cup ice water. Totally freaks out the butter police but man does it make a great pie crust. Never fails. 

I've fallen in love with the Mutsu apple. Tart, sweet, holds its shape. Braeburn's nice but Mutsu has a little something that nestles into that buttery crust and delivers. And they're big. I cradle those green jewels in my elbow and peel them, smelling the beautiful aroma of tart apples as the skin is peeled away. Sometimes (always) I get a whole lot more flesh than I intend to while peeling. I do, therefore, buy a lot of apples. 

                             

Roll, pound a little and flatten the dough into a circle on a cookie sheet. Slice apples thinly and lay to rest in a circular pattern. Takes 2-3 apples depending upon your peeling talent. (I usually need 3, thanks.)

Add a little sugar (brown), cinnamon (fresh if you have it), tiny bit of cardomom, some lemon zest and a few more dots of butter (!) Pungent apple slices, sweet brown sugar, spices and buttery crust. What could go wrong?

Fold the crust over galette-style and bake at 350 for 30- 40 minutes (crust needs to be brown, apples tender and sweet.) 

Easy as pie. But better. 

Soup is Life

I'm thinking about soup. Probably because I'm making it. It's a beautiful October day and we've officially launched the "season of soups and stews" as an old friend used to say. 

Here's what I like about soup - at least the soups I make. They're a perfect reflection of life's basic patterns. There's the order/chaos/order continuum. You can go by the book or you can make it up as you go along (guess which category I fall into.) You can choose to blend or stand alone. And like many of the great foods in life, soup is at its most beautiful while it's raw.

I like to make vegetable soup. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was (quite literally) born to chop. And it's cathartic to wield a large, sharp knife as long as the only flesh you encounter is that of an onion or a zucchini. Vegetable soup is the epitome of make-it-up-as-you-go-along. 

Pictured here are today's ingredients. Yes, that is a JAR of pesto you see. I'm topping the soup with pesto once it's in the bowls and I actually ran out of garlic - very rare. I happened to have this jar of back-up pesto hanging around - extremely rare. 

Other than that, you have your basics: leeks, shallots, cippolini, garlic, carrots, rutabaga, zucchini, tomatoes, beans and pasta. Full disclosure: cooked carrots make my throat constrict. When I was a little girl I would wedge myself between my mother and the stove and try to negotiate for a raw carrot instead of a cooked one, to no avail. She is not one to be held hostage by a carrot. 

But I can handle them in soup, sort of.

So you chop and you toss; you think or you don't think at all; you get everything into the pot, you cover it with a lid and you wait. Simple as that.

Chaos contained. Comfort on the horizon. Isn't that the rhythm of life?

Vegetable Soup (Un)Recipe

4 cloves garlic

3 leeks

1 sweet onion (yellow or cippolini)

2 large shallots

2-3 each yellow squash and zucchini

2 rutabega (rutabegas? rutabege?)

2 15 oz cans cannellini beans

1 28 oz. can whole peeled tomatoes (I prefer Muir Glen; WF didn't have in stock)

1/2 lb. pasta of choice. (I like small shells or orechiette)

2-3 generous sprigs fresh thyme

Red pepper flakes to taste, about 1/8 t but you can inch it up if you want more kick

A generous splash of white wine (equivalent to a swig straight from the bottle if you were on a picnic and had forgotten the cups. That has never happened to me.)

Prepare the pasta but take it out 2 minutes before the box indicates.

(it'll continue to cook in the soup)

Carefully wash the leeks. Cut and reserve the white part only.

Chop in 1/2 inch discs.

Peel and chop onions, shallots and garlic.

Melt 2-3 T butter or olive oil or a combination of both in a large stock pan.

Add the leek, onion, shallot, garlic mixture.

Allow to cook gently on medium heat for a minute or two, then add pepper flakes, thyme and

swig of wine (for soup, not you, but nobody's looking.) Stir and continue cooking until soft. 

Add carrots and stir for a minute or two more.

Add chicken broth.

Add rutabega, zucchini and cannellini beans.

Note: I like to add a splash of sherry vinegar at this point. Umami.

Cover and simmer for 1/2 hour. Add tomatoes. (I learned this trick from Martha: before pouring the tomatoes into the soup, take scissors and go at them in the can. Easier than stabbing at them with a spoon once they're in the soup.)

Simmer for another half hour or until vegetables feel tender. 

Salt and pepper to taste.

Add pasta and turn to low. Simmer for 5 minutes and either serve immediately or take off heat until ready to serve.

Spoon it into bowls and top with a dollop of pesto (definitely fresh is best; 

that jarred stuff I used today will do in a pinch, but it's certainly not the same.)

I like it with a little cheese sprinkled on top and a hunk of herb focaccia on the side.