(Written mid-October through mid-November)
Before Halloween, I cleared the shelves on either side of the fireplace. They were laden with unread, unused, and unwanted books. Twenty books on New England travels: from best restaurants in Boston and coastal walks in Maine to hiking the Green Mountains in Vermont and directions to waterfalls in the Northeast. Stacks of games that no one played. Old photos that no one looked at. The stuff on the shelves didn’t elicit calm and welcoming, but rather it all looked like too much. Too much left undone.
A healthy clearing between seasons feels good. Not just an in-depth dusting. An absolute removal of everything. The shelves sat empty for two weeks. A little sad looking but also comforting. Tabula rasa: a blank slate. Like clearing the cobwebs before the headlong plunge into the holidays and winter.
Now the shelves are thickly settled with Halloween decorations. Thickly settled, that quirky New England road sign posted in rural areas where buildings are less than two hundred feet apart for at least a quarter mile. Often times it doesn’t look thickly settled as the homes sit far off the road and are hidden by trees. The coy thing about these signs is in their legal assertation: the yellow “thickly settled” sign is code for “30 mph speed limit.” No where is that visually stated on the road. Quaint wording reminiscent of pilgrim days? Or tricky speed trap?
In the coming week, I’ll dismantle and re-tub the Halloween decorations. Eight tubs of black, orange, and purple; cats, pumpkins, skeletons, and scarecrows. And the shelves will stay sparse until the ten tubs of Christmas enter from stage right. Another intermission in the middle of too much.
Sometime in the last year, my husband Bill and I discovered Jamie Oliver’s Show on PBS, “Quick & Easy Food.” I remember when Jamie, a young English chef, first came on the food scene back in the late nineties. His spunky young energy flew in the face of stodgy chefs.
Bill and I have gone through many iterations of cooking, and our spice cupboard reflects it. It takes up one cupboard in our kitchen and the spices are alphabetized. We don’t follow the recommended shelf life on spices because we know that they can be resuscitated with a twist of thyme between the palms or a dry roast of cardamom in our small skillet dedicated to dry roasting. That spice cupboard is like a desert full of wildflower seeds burrowed into the sand and lying in wait for the every-20-year rain. Yet to cook an intricate dish means to go on an archaeological dig through the bottles, and undoubtedly, among the 75 bottles, there will be one spice missing. Thus, it was only a momentary surprise that when we looked for Italian seasoning yesterday so my husband Bill could make his legendary Bolognese sauce that the cupboard was bare of that ingredient. Here’s where the beauty of Jamie’s quick food lies: he uses just five ingredients, plus a handful of pantry staples: salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil, and red wine vinegar.
Our 14-year-old son Liam saunters through the kitchen on occasion with a request for ingredients to try a new recipe. Most recently he wanted to make muffins—make that one muffin, in a mug, in the microwave. “I just need some self-rising flour and vanilla ice cream.” And indeed, with those simple ingredients, he replicated a food hack he had seen online. The result was a bit rubbery but edible to him. Jamie Oliver’s five ingredient recipes are like food hacks for grown-ups.
As some people are drawn to cozy British mysteries for the cinematography of the land or the Marvelous Mrs. Mazel for the stunning period dress, I gape bright-eyed at the tight shots of a thick steak being rolled in pepper on all sides and at the sight of garlic and sage hitting hot olive oil. It’s like a balm for the senses. When my son Liam was little and his eczema raised its ugly head, I would cover him in thick skin cream, Vaseline, or a few dabs of Cortizone. If he had a sore spot, I would tell him that we just needed to put on a little “shield,” and he would feel better. I would look at the spot and decide which version of ointment would work best. As he grew older, he didn’t complain about the hurt, he only asked for the fix. “I need some shield.” Jamie in the kitchen reminds me of the “shield”—that which protects.
A few weeks ago, up in the middle of the night unable to sleep, I was watching one of Jamie’s episodes. I smiled seeing a close-up on a beautifully clean counter of cilantro, butternut squash cubes, a whole chicken, a bottle of red curry paste, and a can of coconut milk. The few ingredients for “Thai Red Chicken Soup.” When the stores opened later that morning, I nipped out for the five ingredients.
The beauty of this was the ease of preparation. A little chop of the cilantro stems, a big chop of the squash, a rinse of the chicken, a pop of the lid on the curry paste, and a twist of the can opener to free the coconut milk was all the prep required. I dropped that whole chicken into a stock pot and dumped everything else in on top of it. Then I simmered it for 1 ½ hours. That was it – done.
Twenty years ago, Bill and I would have made an afternoon out of making red curry paste. With a little rummage around online, I just found one recipe for this paste that included fifteen ingredients ranging from fresh lemongrass and fresh turmeric to avocado oil and coconut sugar. I read that prep as four grocery stores and at least one ingredient substitution. Too much.
While chopped cilantro stems flavored the soup as it cooked, the leaves were reserved for serving. I took a handful of freshly chopped cilantro leaves and liberally sprinkled them over my bowl of soup. I have a special connection to cilantro that’s hard to put into words—if you grew up with cattle, you have a better chance of understanding. When cows graze, they lower their majestic heads to the ground where their big teeth rip off a hunk of grass, and then they slowly lift their heads and chew and chew and chew. Standing still, looking around unhurriedly, they chew and chew and chew. Cattle don’t have huge food choices, but what they have, they chew. I’ll stop short of explaining that chewing as it relates to their digestion, for the important point here is their calm and quiet happiness in eating grass. Cilantro is to me what grass is to cows. Cilantro, balm, and shield are one when there is too much.
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Click here for Jamie Oliver’s “Thai Red Chicken Soup” recipe—and a picture of the final product. Jamie Oliver’s show airs on PBS; however, I couldn’t find a link to this particular episode.