Here's What Happened

It’s been coming on slowly, this feeling that I have. Slowly, over the course of this year in which I have been coming here to write—that I would eventually make this blog more explicitly personal. I’m still figuring out exactly what that means: what it means to be writing as I do, in this way, to a group of anonymous readers and also to dear friends. We’ve been figuring it out together, you and I. That is the sense that I have.

I figure it’s time to recount some history. I’ve spoken obliquely about a number of things. And last week, I wrote about my sister in the most explicit way that I’ve ever done before. I received emails and personal notes about it. It lifted my spirits and reminded me why I like to come here and what makes this experience profound.

I think it has to do with a level of trust in oneself. Because if I’m not here, if I’m not really here, all of me, there won’t be much for either of us to hold on to.

So, here’s what happened: I started this blog on November 25, 2011. I was a nervous wreck when I did. I picked it up and abandoned it in my mind a number of times. Then, at the end of January, my fiancé (and boyfriend of 10 years) and I ended our relationship. What followed was a series of tumultuous months, a parade of meaningless dates, a reconnecting of many friendships, and a stark turn inward.

What can I say about that relationship here, now, in this way? We grew up together, he and I—that’s the most honest thing to say and the most true thing to recount. We lived overseas together, we traveled, we became recluses in a cottage in upstate New York for a period of time (in a house that was so quiet that one could hear, physically hear, the sound of a snowfall); it was a red cottage, across from a beautiful farm; I made drawings at the kitchen table in the mornings and watched the deer come to the stream to drink; it was an idyllic but also profoundly sad time for us both. We grew up together, and then, I think, we grew apart, in very different, but also oddly connected ways. Some part of ourselves is still in that little red cottage, and that’s the best that I can do to think of what happened between us, and where whatever it was—what it had been—still resides.

When it happened, I found myself coming to this blog more and more. I can’t describe what I felt or why I knew it was important, but it was. This was the place where I came to ground myself, and it always worked. There is something about seeing something that one has made, right there in front of you, that affirms to the soul that one has a home in the world. I suppose this was the reason I decided to become an artist so many years ago now. I think it was Heidegger who said something to that effect: that we make art, we create things, as a way of making a home in the world. It is something that I think we all strive for. We tear each other apart in our quest to find some bit of grace and solace. We never, ever stop searching. 

My life now is very different than it once was, and mostly for the better. I live with two lovely roommates in a quiet little house on the edge of the Mission District in San Francisco. I come here to write and to cook, and when I go home, I play my guitar and nuzzle my roommate’s little orange cat, and I drink with friends, and spend time with old acquaintances, and generally, live. I’ve forged some powerful connections to people who are now very dear to me; some from my distant past and some from a nearer present. I’ve let certain things go. I laugh a lot more than I used to. I take that to be the best sign.

I still haven’t figured out how to escape the waves of sadness—a sort of drowning that takes hold of me from time to time—but I’ve stopped trying to prevent them entirely. Yes, I wake up some mornings with tears in my eyes. It has always been this way. Sometimes I feel so stricken with sadness that I feel literally incapacitated. I feel that I simply cannot move—where my mind refuses to stop, my body will. But there is also this other thing in me; it’s the thing that makes it possible, the night after some deep moment of sadness, to get up the next day and make apple-cinnamon pancakes for my roommate. To listen to her when she tells me, “you should photograph this, Vera.”

These are the dueling impulses. I suppose, no… I trust, that we all have them.

What appears in this post, what’s been scattered throughout, is a sort of chronicle of my week. It’s incomplete, as all memories and experiences are; because what I really want to say is un-writable and un-photographable.

I inch toward it bit by bit.

This weekend I will paint my room the color of fog; that’s the best way that I can describe it. Sebald writes: “There is mist that no eye can dispel”; but we can let it envelop us, and find some bit of freedom there.

Next week, when The Moon in My Kitchen turns 1, we will celebrate with some cake. The real kind, the birthday kind, all frosted and shiny and new. 

Apple-Cinnamon Pancakes

Serves 2

This is not really a recipe, it's more of an idea. And now that we've passed through Thanksgiving, I doubt that many of you will be waking up and wanting pancakes. On the other hand, it might be just the thing. These pancakes have all of the taste of apple pie... but better, easier, and with maple syrup.

Mix up a batch of buttermilk pancakes using (gasp) your favorite mix. But if I was going to make them from scratch, I'd use this recipe, which, with the addition of oats, I think would be quite good.

Heat a non-stick griddle until droplets of water dance across the surface. Spoon out the pancake batter to your desired pancake size (I usually make four at a time), and then add thinly sliced apples (about 3-4 slices per pancake) and sprinkle with cinnamon. Wait until the surface of the pancakes bubble and make large exquisite holes across the top, and then flip once. Wait about a minute and then serve immediately, with sweet cream butter and maple syrup over top.

Everything that Rises Must Converge*

I guess you could say that I’m on a pancake streak. I can’t help myself. Or maybe it’s a citrus streak. I’m learning that I love citrus desserts—and citrus desserts that double as breakfast, or the other way around.

I have this old issue of Gourmet that’s been lying around my apartment. I shift it to various stacks, but I never quite let it out of my sight. It has a photograph of a strawberry tart on its cover. It’s from April 2009. Inside this magazine there is an article titled “Transformers” about the magical things that a cook can do with three eggs and two lemons (and a few other pantry staples). It’s better than it sounds. It’s better than I’m able to describe here. There is a simple lemon glazed butter cake, an airy and elegant Pavlova, a light-as-air snow pudding (a remarkable concept for a dessert—something like my favorite île flottant, I imagine), a pudding cake, and then today’s star: the Dutch baby with lemon sugar. What on earth is a Dutch baby, I asked myself? It looks a little like a large crêpe, but its edges are puffed and browned, it is crinkly in the center, and it’s made in the oven, in a hot skillet or Dutch oven. It’s a pancake that is also like a popover; it’s a simple breakfast that would also be a most elegant, romantic dessert.

I was intrigued. The magazine has been spread open to this page for weeks now. It began to take on epic proportions in the mind—will it live up to my fantasy of it, I wondered? Or will it fall flat, be much different in real life, much smaller, less perfectly imperfect, less lovingly browned, with less crisp turned-over edges? This is how it can be with reproductions—they enter the mind and then they, sometimes, collide unpleasantly with the real thing, leaving one in all manner of disappointment and malcontent (a bit like heartbreak).

I decided to give it a try nevertheless. It’s thanks to you, really, dear blog, and dear few reader friends that I have. I thought to myself, this crew won’t mind if I fail and perhaps, then, neither will I.

I rose early this morning. I went through the methodical preparations of readying the kitchen for baking—utensils spread out on a just-wiped kitchen table, measuring implements stacked, dirty dishes cleaned and put away. I thought of various things while I did this. I also thought of nothing—only the task that was before me. This is the greatest gift that cooking can bring—a total clearing out of mind. I felt myself begin to relax.

I didn’t use an electric mixer as the recipe suggests, but whipped up the ingredients by hand. I prefer to do things this way sometimes. I made other various divergences while following the recipe, but the largest, most significant one, was the substitution of a 10-inch skillet for my trusty old 9-inch, red Dutch oven. I thought to myself that I would simply use less of the batter—that there would not be any need, there could not be any need, to go out and buy a brand new skillet.

Then I thought that I was wrong.

I forgot to reduce the amount of the batter. I forgot to add the right amount of butter. In it went anyway and roughly 20 minutes later it had risen into the most frightening looking variation of a pancake I have ever seen—it was sticking to an oven rack high above it; it was puffed in unearthly, haphazard ways; it was glossy and not at all dimpled; and it was browning unevenly. The height of the thing was remarkable—it filled the entire depth of the Dutch oven (an apparatus meant to hold several cups of stew…).

It had risen to unnatural proportions. My blog entry would now be about my epic failure, brought about by my inability to follow simple directions, a trait that, really, has been hounding me more or less for my entire life…

But then the most amazing thing happened: I took it out of the oven, set it down, and began to photograph it. Ever-so-slightly, through the lens of the camera’s eye, it started to converge onto itself; it sank bit by bit, until it had become the height of a normal pancake—that is, save for the lovely, rustic, elegantly browned edge that surrounded it. This was monumental and this was epic, but not in the way of disappointment that I had originally feared.

It reminded me that cooking is forgiving—a lesson that I learned last week and then promptly forget.

I took it out of its pan and placed it on a large white plate. Then I followed the recipe exactly: I sprinkled it generously with sugar that had been soaking up the oils from the zest of two lemons.

In the end it was transformed indeed, and so, ever-so-slightly, was I.

*P.S. The title of this entry is taken from Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Everything that Rises Must Converge.”

Dutch Baby with Lemon Sugar (adapted from Gourmet, “Transformers,” April 2009)

1/3 cup sugar (I used organic sugar, which is not quite as white)

2 teaspoons lemon zest (from approximately 2 lemons)

3 eggs at room temperature for about 30 minutes

1/3 cup low-fat milk

1/3 cup half and half

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract (the real stuff)

1/8 teaspoon cinammon

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon salt

2–3 tablespoons of unsalted butter (I like Straus)

Lemon wedges (and the juice inside of them) for serving

Place a rack in the middle of the oven and remove any racks above this one (I learned the hard way, with my pancake pushing itself adamantly into my top oven rack.)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

In a small bowl or ramekin mix together the sugar and the lemon zest; set aside. Put a 9 to10­–inch Dutch oven or skillet in the warm oven to preheat.

Beat the eggs in a medium bowl with a whisk, until pale in color and frothy. Add the milk and half and half, flour, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt, and whisk this together until the batter is smooth. The original recipe suggests doing this with an electric mixer for about a minute. I beat it by hand, not very vigorously, for probably thirty seconds or so. The batter will be quite thin, and you will truly be unable to conceive of how on earth this will ever turn into the final product that you desire.

Place 2 to 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter in the hot skillet or Dutch oven and swirl it around until it is melted. Pour the batter into the pan and return it to the oven. Bake for approximately 25 minutes or until the pancake has puffed and the edges are browned.

Allow the Dutch baby to rest just until it has sunken inward. Turn out onto a plate (carefully) if desired, sprinkle generously with the lemon sugar and serve with lemon wedges for squeezing.

Notes: I used organic sugar; I liked the slightly beige color of the sugar mixed with the lemon zest on top of the pancake, but I’m sure pure white would also be nice in its own way, too. The recipe also calls for whole milk. I had only low-fat milk and half and half in my fridge, so I used 1/3 of each to reach the required 2/3 liquid total. (This was one of the many divergences or should I say, ahem, liberties, that I took with this recipe.) It worked out just fine. I would use whatever you have on hand, because a pancake for breakfast isn’t really that fun if it requires all sorts of special ingredients. This one won’t. It’ll take to your adjustments beautifully.

Last Night (and a Morning Pancake)

Last night, unfortunately, brought more disappointment in the heartache department. And this morning, up at 5 am as I was, contemplating love, and life, and the meaning of the universe (I can figure this stuff out by 10 am, right?), I feel, sadly, that the orange-ricotta-pancake high that I was on since yesterday is now but a dim wave, lapping lazily against my ocean’s floor.

But, oh!, look at those photos… billowy stacks flecked with the zest of an orange, bites of airy ricotta, swirling in a puddle of maple syrup and melted butter on my ever-so-slightly-warmed plate! Surely one cannot truly despair when visions of orange and ricotta whipped majestically into a sort of “cake” made in a “pan” are before them? Surely…

It takes a lot of courage to get up in the morning sometimes and to face the computer screen and to think, in one’s solitary state, I can begin again; there will be many more mornings, better than this one; they will be orange-and-ricotta scented; there will be happiness—and in fact, as they always say (those optimistic types), it won’t always be this way, things will get better. And it would all be true. I just know it somehow; perhaps it’s the cook in me—she’s optimistic by nature, she knows somehow that when your first pancake has burned and your butter is a browned, greasy mess in the middle of your too-small pan, that you can scrape it clean and start again. You can find a masculine, nonstick griddle who needs but a little heat (no grease!) to get things sizzling… but I’m mixing metaphors here.

Alas, it was this way with the pancakes. The first batch was a total flop. But it seemed so promising!, I thought wistfully to myself. And it was, in fact, promising and more than that, once I saddled my determination—got the hunger in me to twist itself out of defeatism—and began again, with a new pan and a new strategy that felt, how should I say this?, more like me.

The recipe is promising and delicious and all of the things that you want out of a Saturday morning when you have a bit of time on your hands (just a bit) and the need for something warm and sizzling to perfume your entire kitchen and the neighbor’s hallway. As I learned from Nigel Slater, from whom this recipe derives, it’s also an excellent afternoon snack, to be taken, preferably, with a good friend, accompanied by a nice chat, some new ideas kicked around, a few hearty sarcastic cracks at the whole enterprise of love, and tea, of course. That was how it was for me. I ate these twice in one day. Once alone, a stack of three warm cakes on the plate, a generous pat of butter, and a drizzle of maple syrup, with my coffee; and then again, later, with my good friend S., with tea and syrup and a bit of Greek yogurt on the side.

Both times were good, for different reasons.

You begin by mixing together ricotta cheese, sugar, egg yolks, and orange zest. Then you mix into that some flour, an impossibly small amount, and then gently fold into this mixture egg whites that have been whipped into peaks. The whole thing at this point is nothing if not luscious—light and fragrant and simply beaming—it will transport you. 

If you succeed at folding in the whites without utterly deflating them, you will also feel proud, as I did (if you didn’t, don’t worry!, you can start again!, no one can see you in there, in the privacy of your own kitchen). You will look at your light-as-air mixture, and you will think, ha! look what I did!

Nigel suggests cooking these in large tablespoonfuls in a nonstick pan with melted butter. Maybe this works for him—I’m sure his pancakes are divine, and I’m sure I would gladly eat them at his kitchen counter any day—but the method didn’t work for me. I tried it, but my heart wasn’t in it from the start. I’ve never much liked pancakes that have been cooked in butter—I prefer the thin crust that forms when you cook them in nothing whatsoever except for the heat of the griddle, warmed until a drop of water dances chaotically across the surface. So that’s what I did, after the first batch came out all manner of burned and blackened and too greasy for anyone’s good.

At first it seemed that the griddle technique wouldn’t work—the pancakes seemed to be sticking… I was beside myself with grief. But I just tried to be patient. I waited, and waited. I waited until the edges of each little cake became slowly outlined in a light brown and until little, discrete bubbles seemed to open, ever so slightly, onto each surface. Then I turned them. And I won’t conceal the fact that I was utterly pleased with myself when I did.

Orange and ricotta pancakes—you and me are back on.

Orange and Ricotta Pancakes (adapted from Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries)

I should say that The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater is a beautiful book; if you like simple ingredients lists and honest, elegant prose, this book is for you.

1 cup ricotta cheese (store-bought ricotta works great)

4 tablespoons sugar

3 large eggs, separated

1 orange, the zest of which has been finely grated, avoiding the pith

1/2 cup of all-purpose flour

Butter, syrup, and orange wedges for serving

Combine the sugar, ricotta, egg yolks, and orange zest in a large mixing bowl. You can grate the orange zest directly into the bowl, no need to make this a separate step. Stir in the flour. Beat the egg whites in a bowl until semi-stiff peaks form (see the photo), and then gently fold this into the ricotta mixture. Nigel recommends a “surely but gently” method that I found was a good way to think about this folding process.

Warm a griddle. When a drop of water dances madly over the surface, bringing a smile to your face, begin dropping heaping tablespoonfuls of batter onto the griddle. I got four pancakes on at once. I felt that it helped to delicately smooth the batter into a circle, using a very light touch. You are not looking for perfection here, just rustic beauty. Cook the pancakes 1-2 minutes, until the edges begin to brown and a faint bubble or two cracks open on the surface, then flip them. Continue cooking until the bottom of each pancake is nicely browned and the pancakes are puffed.

Serve them while they are hot—I recommend a pat of sweet butter and a drizzle of cold syrup; Nigel likes a little melted apricot jam and some confectioners’ sugar.

Just eat them how you like them. And marvel at how nourished you feel with each delicate, cheesy crumb.

Notes: I cut the sugar by 1 tablespoon from the original; in the batch I made, I used 4 1/2 tablespoons rather than the recommended 5, but I still felt that it was a bit too sweet, so I’ve cut it further to 4 tbsp. in the recipe above. Use your judgment based on your own taste for sweet things—I prefer desserts and breakfasts to not be too sweet in general, but you may feel differently. These reheat beautifully if consumed later in the day, and I would imagine the next day as well. I heated them on a parchment-lined baking tray in a 350 degree oven.