In the East 5.06 to 12.06

In the East, 5 to 12.06

Lamb and Artichoke Season

All Aflutter: The Spotted Pig

Will Drive for Food

A Brobdingnagian Bacchanal

The Vegan Butcher

Dog Years and Pork Bellies

1979 Part One Hong Kong, China, and Taipei....To Speak, Perchance to Dance

1979 Part Two...Taipei, Bangkok, Penang, Athens, and Crete

Women of "A Certain Age"

A Steak-ortunity, Seen and Grasped

The Journey of a Cook, Part 1

The Journey of a Cook, Part 2

So Many Mediterranean Gardens

Green Acres

America the Ugly

A Wood-Fired Imperative

The Poor, Dead Deer

May 3
Hudson Valley, NY: Lamb and Artichoke Season
During the three-year period that I was a young, lipstick and high-heel wearing career-girl in Manhattan, the annual arrival of spring made me feel like, well, sex. I’d turn into a hungry cat-on-the-prowl, and not one cute waiter or stockbroker in the vicinity was safe--at least in my imagination. I’d stretch and preen in front of the Wall Street ladies’ room mirror, fantasizing myriad potent possibilities for the evening to come. (Then-note to self: ignore knee-length, brown two-piece suit and peter-pan-collared shirt.)

Fairway Chokes

These days when spring is in the air, I think of lamb and artichokes.

The Greeks have a rich and festive Easter tradition involving both, usually together, and during the ten years I lived in—or fell under the influence of—England, all the Brits I knew went lamb-mad in the spring.
“Oooooh, baby English lamb. Lovely.” they’d coo. “Season’s only a few weeks, y’know. Eat it while you can, darling.”
Most Brits in those days preferred asparagus to artichokes, not having known the thistle for as long as the spear. (In England, asparagus is never, ever eaten with a knife and fork. It is eaten with the fingers, to intensify the blatantly phallic act of delicately nipping the tip, then boldly slurping the rest of the slightly wilted, butter-dripping vegetable.)

I used to do a damned fine lamb and artichoke spiedini (I think it’s in my W.S. Hors d’Oeuvres book). However, since C. is not a lamb fan, I tend to concentrate more on thistle cookery in the spring.
Okay, so what is going on with the price of artichokes? They make about as much Lamb in a pan

sense as gas prices. In California, home of the giant artichoke-—where I used to beg my parents to stop when we drove back and forth to San Francisco—artichokes always seem to cost $3.99 (apiece), no matter what the time of year. At least at my supermarkets-of-choice, Gelsons and Whole Foods. Here in the rust-belt northeast, I wandered into my local option, Price Chopper, the other day (very decent, considering everything and in spite of the unfortunate name), eager to cook again after the kitchen-less spell in Topanga.
Omigod. Five artichokes for five dollars! It’s Insane! I am instantly angry with the California supermarkets. Isn’t California supposed to be about fresh produce, fabulous farmer’s markets, the land of year-round abundance? Well, that involves spreading the savings down the food-chain when appropriate—in this case, in the spring—okay dudes?
Like Price Chopper, my new heroes. Admittedly, they don’t carry burrata or freshly-made tapenade (or wine, for God’s sake), but the company is a partner with Texas’ excellent Central Market, and as a result we get some truly divine non-perishables (including the jarred Green Olive Tapenade). And they do have fennel and radicchio. However, the jicama is a joke. Don’t even do it if you can’t do it right, K?
A Nice Sheep's Cheese

During my eighties-era stint at Morgan Stanley in New York, there was an urban legend rolling around that claimed prospective young employees were taken to lunch and ordered an artichoke, to see if they knew how to eat it. If yes, they were assumed to be affluent and/or savvy enough to join the avaricious team. If not, conversely, I suppose the supposition went, they must be deficient in the niceties necessary to milk money from trusting clients. But ask yourself for a moment, if you were confronted with such a thing, that you had never seen before (in this scenario), would you know what part of it was edible? And even if the answer were to be yes, how to get to the edible part?
Re serving artichokes, here are my preferences:
1. For channeling childhood: Boiled, with melted butter on the side. Maybe a lemon.
2. Still simple, but marginally more advanced: Steamed, with truffle-oil and mustard-augmented mayo. Make your own mayo if motivated.
3. Dress to impress: Toss shaved raw slivers with shaved Grana Padano and whole parsley leaves (be sure to coat thistle slivers in olive oil as soon as sliced to stop browning); use very best oil and fresh lemon for dressing).
4. Side for a crowd: Trimmed and choke-less quarters braised slowly in white wine with chopped San Marzano’s, fresh rosemary, and a plethora of garlic.

Bottoms up!!

Photos: 'Chokes at Fairway; Browning Lamb in a Pan for Lamb and Artichoke Ragout; A nice sheep's cheese in honor of lamb season.

May 7
New York City: All Aflutter
It was weird enough when Michelin announced the upcoming release of their first New York guide. How could the paragon of peripatetic food-lovers’ guides in Europe possibly have any pertinence in The Big Apple? Purists pooh-poohed the attempt, but top NY chefs preened, ready for their close-ups. When the hotly-anticipated (but oddly tiny) tome hit the street, several major omissions shocked the NYC restaurant community, but the upset that meant most to me was the inclusion--it was awarded one star--of a small, non-chef-driven, non-luxe establishment in the West Village called The Spotted Pig. The restaurant world was all aflutter. My obsession with pork notwithstanding, I’d already been hearing about the place for quite awhile, and after its unexpected appearance in Michelin figured my chances for getting a table had just become an order of magnitude less likely. So I resolved to put it into my back pocket for awhile.
Cut to the other day: Strolling along Bank Street with C. after watching his New School students’ truly moving year-end performances, I suddenly spotted a spotted pig. It wasn’t a live pig, but it was a rather cute, round black and white pig, perched above the door of an unassuming corner restaurant that sported numerous window-plants just like the corner Greek coffee shop. Although I’d never seen it and didn’t know the address, in my heart I knew: I’d accidentally stumbled on The Spotted Pig. What else could it be? The day’s plans didn’t include lunch, but neither did they include this fine piece of good fortune.

Destiny stepped in: There were two seats at the bar. (The man seated to my right, it later transpired, had rented our same casa in Chianti; he’d be arriving there two weeks after we’d leave this August. Who says New York is a big city? We promised to leave a cryptic message, perhaps spelled out in entrails.)
Sometimes, my eye goes straight to something on an important menu. It’s almost like I don’t see what else is there, so powerful is the dining imperative. In this case, it was the Sheep’s Milk Ricotta Gnudi with Sage and Brown Butter.
I went through a ricotta gnocchi period a year or so ago, with varying degrees of success, the best versions occurred after I got over the sense that adding any flour at all was a stigma. Zuni Café in San Francisco adds egg yolks as a tasty binder, but there’s still a touch of flour. Done correctly and very, very carefully, ricotta gnocchi—or gnudi, as The Spotted Pig had chosen to call them—can be life-altering. This dish called out to me from the menu. I called back via the bartender.
Interestingly, the puffy round balls at first appeared to be wrapped in a thin sheet of pasta, and I was about to point out that, officially, they could thus not be referred to as gnudi, but the bartender saw my look and explained that the delicate balls of ricotta are sprinkled with fine semolina, which absorbs the surface moisture from the ricotta and forms a sort of protective skin. Absolutely brilliant. The slightly smaller-than-golfball-sized puff offered scant resistance to my fork; inside was my ethereal, barely salty sheep’s cheese, grainy on the tongue but not gritty—the perfect expression of a mommy sheep’s most precious offering to her little lamb. Brown butter and just the right amount of crispy fried sage acted as perfectly nuanced back-up, and one glass of Marsanne lubricated the gnudi and the conversation without turning this into a terminal lunch.
(“Terminal Lunch”: A habit my English investment-banker ex indulged in about once a month. After such occasions a chauffeur would knock on my door out in the country, holding a pair of black dress shoes. “Sir’s shoes, Madam,” he would intone gravely, while the sir in question poured itself out of the back seat of the Bentley and skulked ignominiously in through the door behind me. As a result, I very rarely drink at lunchtime. Except in Europe. Or at The Spotted Pig.)

Photo: The teeming masses awaiting a table at The Spotted Pig.

May 11
New York: Will Drive for Food

Last year, I kept hearing about Fairway, an “amazing” market that carried “everything.” But in the busy house-building season(s) I never got organized enough to investigate. When the limited prandial offerings of our small upstate town palled, I’d ask C. to pick up something on his way home. Perhaps at Ottomanelli’s, the luscious, old-time butcher in the west Village, or Murray’s, the cheese-a-licious shop down the block. But these could not be serious pantry- or fridge-stocking visits; he could bring home only what could be easily carried on the train. Yes....everything, food-wise, that one might ever desire (even I) is available in Manhattan, but because of the parking issues the logistics of laying in a decent supply of desirable comestibles becomes largely insurmountable.
But that was then.
As we left the city yesterday, I informed C. that we’d be making a stop at 125th Street on our way up the Westside Highway toward the NY State Thruway.
“What’s there?” he barked, with unconcealed skepticism.
“Fairway,” I responded. He countered with the information that there was a perfectly good Fairway in the West 70’s.
“Ah,” I replied, savoring the savory information I was about to impart, “But the Harlem Fairway has a parking lot.”
We followed the directions from the web site and eventually found the door in the large, strange building, just a few feet from the Hudson river. Inside, a warren of narrow aisles and interconnecting rooms belied the incredible selection. Literally every foodstuff known to mankind. I went into high research mode and paced the canyons of farro, couscous, caviar, bespoke-bottled olive oil, gorgeously firm jicama and ripe avocados, chickens from D’Artagnan, whole branzino.
And the meat. An entire cold room housed the ridiculously comprehensive selection; jackets are provided to keep you warm while you browse the counters of veal breasts, dry-aged prime steaks, family-packs of country-style ribs, buffalo steaks, and every cut in between. (Sadly, I didn’t see the jackets until I came out, teeth chattering and covered with goosebumps.) I mean, there was every cut of every animal. Back in the warm room, the olive bar is the size of a small shop.
All this is on our way home. And it has a parking lot. Did I mention that?
Okay, I’m going to make an announcement: I can live here now. A two-hour drive from the house? Whatever. Fairway Olives

Driving for food has been a habit—you might say a compulsion—of mine, for many years. When I lived in rural Hampshire in England, I’d drive 45 minutes twice a week to frequent the far-better Sainsbury’s supermarket, in Farnham, instead of Basingtoke’s lower-end Tesco, just a five-minute drive. (There was also a fresh-water crayfish farm within forty-minutes; and Patrick Rance’s 'Wells Stores' cheese shop in Berkshire was only an hour away.)
Then, when I found myself unexpectedly living in Spain in 1989, I was faced with a rather counter-intuitive food-supply situation: For one thing, all the tomatoes grown along the coast were shipped to Northern Europe. In my local Hiper-Mart the vegetable selection consisted of hard pink tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and carrots. There was a fantastic fish market, but my then-husband didn’t eat fish. Not any fish. At all.
On the good side, there was fantastic olive oil, myriad styles of chorizo, cheeses from Cabrales to Tetilla to 85 styles of Manchego, sparkling jamon Serrano, and imported Italian polenta. Downside: The bread became stone-hard within hours, the butter tasted nothing like butter--at least to me--and the bacon was, well, weird. After a few months, several solutions emerged: It transpired that, when the tomatoes were picked--unripe of course--for shipping, quite a few escaped the boxes. They littered the sides of the fields, where, left unattended, they ripened to glossy, deep-red and flavorful perfection. No one seemed to care, so I snarfled them late in the evenings when the farmers had retired to have a tinto verano or twelve on the patio. In our own garden I grew the many varieties of herbs, arugola, red-leaf lettuce, and perky yellow pear tomatoes needed for simpatico dinners, and made two loaves of bread weekly from a sourdough starter that I created, according to Alice Waters’ directions, by fermenting some potatoes.
Fairway Cheese

For all-important items such as butter, bacon, puff pastry, and dependable hard-wheat flour for my bread, I drove to Gibraltar, i.e., another country. To show your passport every time you need groceries may seem excessive, but hey, Gib was only about 35 minutes from my house. Well, the border was 35 minutes away. In a perfect world you could just drive across the border, pull straight into the Safeway parking lot, shop, lug out the bags and place them conveniently in your car, then drive back across the border and rapidly home. Problem was, the world hasn’t been perfect for Gibraltarians for some time, and they’re, well, pretty pissed about it. So, in the only lame civil-servant manner available to fight back against the despised Spanish, shortly after I moved to Spain they instituted a crushing “go-slow” at the border. It was not uncommon for ten cars to to spend an hour in the queue waiting to drive across. Snacks were sold, people hob-knobbed…but who cares? It was bloody irritating.
I wasn’t about to stop shopping at Safeway though, so I just parked in Spain and walked 75 feet across the border and into the store. (However, when I was catering a party and needed hordes of supplies, this was indeed a serious pain.)
So finding, this week, Fairway, and suddenly seeing the future in happy term--of anchovies, Israeli couscous, fresh fish galore, smoked salt, and an olive bar to die for--made the whole concept of living in a rural area of the rust-belt Northeast a lot more palatable.
After the lengths I’ve driven for food, two hours for the privilege of shopping at a superlative supermarket is nothing to get excited about. To be honest, I drive to New York about once every two weeks anyway. So it’s not really going out of my way.

Of course, if I were responsible, I’d take the train and help lessen our country’s “addiction to foreign oil.” Let me take it under advisement.
I’ll get back to you.

Photos: I Love Olives; Can you say "Cheese-ortunity"?

May 15
New York City: A Brobdingnagian Bacchanal
While I was in California this winter, out of the blue one day I received an e-mail from someone I’d never heard of. I know what you’re thinking, but this was clearly no junk mail. It seemed the e-mailer had written a book, and would like me to read it and perhaps write a blurb for the back cover.
I googled him immediately. (I think we all know this is the current way of the world. When’s the last time you googled yourself? Do it. If you have the same name and spelling as someone who posts regularly to porn sites, I’m afraid you’re shit-out-of-luck, mate). Google didn’t reveal much, but I could see he was involved in fundraising for the theatre in Manhattan, so therefore couldn’t be too much of an ogre. One thing that was clear: he hadn’t written a book before. But the agent who would be selling the book was certainly one to be reckoned with. (Instant 100 points.)
Why, I asked myself, would little-old-my quote be of value to anyone, published or not? But of course, secretly I was terribly flattered.
He’d approached me because there were two elements in his book that corresponded to my life and published writings: Spain and food. I read the short synopsis thoughtfully attached to the e-mail, and immediately wanted to read the whole book. It sounded like a far-more-interesting version of “Under the Tuscan Sun,” except that it took place in Spain and starred a likeable, food-centric gay couple. Fantastic!
I called the number on the e-mail and identified myself.
“THE Brigit Binns?” he stuttered, apparently caught a bit off guard.
“Um, yeah? Hey listen, I’d love to read your book,” I said, “Why don’t you send it to me.”
We commenced a bit of an e-mail correspondence, as people with like interests are wont to do. The book arrived. I read it. I loved it. I blurbed. We made plans for a dinner at he and his partner’s apartment in New York after our return East; at that time, it was several months in the future.
Then, a few nights ago, the date for the dinner arrived.
I knew Mike (DeSimone: keep an eye out for his book “Between the Mountains and The Sea”) was cooking up something special; he’d mentioned an eight-course tapas menu. After reading the book, I felt like I already knew him. After reading this blog, he felt the same way about me.

Wine x Seven

We were buzzed in and took the old-New-York-y little elevator up to the third floor, where Mike and his partner Jeff warmly ushered us into one of those apartments that patently defies the traditional limitations that define apartment living in Manhattan. The reason, it later transpired, was that they had purchased the apartment next door and knocked through the wall; among other grand improvements, this allowed for an elaborate wet-bar with several under-counter wine fridges in the living room (previously the presumably-miserable kitchen-nook of apartment number one). The real kitchen was a model of elegance and efficiency, darkly suave mahogany form and gleaming but understated stainless steel function. The rest of the apartment was festooned with masks from many countries, whimsical artworks, and myriad small and delicate treasures. Clearly, it was the lair of a well-traveled pair. On the centrally-located dining table, there were approximately thirty wine glasses of various size and shape. I eyed C. (Implied but unsaid: See, I told you there would be other guests tonight…but this was not to be the case. They were all for us.)
For the starter, dates stuffed with cabrales blue cheese and wrapped with jamon Serrano, we descended to the backyard terrace with glasses of Spanish cava. Jeff crisped the dates on the grill while we savored being outdoors in a peaceful, plant-lined refuge, surrounded by the muted sounds of a Hell’s Kitchen evening. Somewhere along the way, Mike had gone from eight to eleven courses of tapas; we were only whetting our whistles. Immediately, I mentally adopted the dates for this years’ high-summer, blow-out sit-down dinner.
Now, I’ll have to admit that in recent years my style of entertaining has gone from elaborate and labor-intensive to casual and focused: focused on one or two fantastic ingredients that can be, largely, prepared ahead of time—mostly because my guests didn’t enjoy me or my dinner parties very much when I tried too hard. Well, Mike had the ahead-of-time thing down pat (aided by his sous-chef—Jeff--who seemed to perform his role as seamlessly as a player in a long-running show), but the menu was as elaborate as tapas can get. More. In a lip-smacking, taste-bud-thrilling, and to be honest, life-altering way. As the evening progressed with delicacy (a shellfish trio), with guts (a rousing gambas pil-pil redolent with paprika and earthy Spanish olive oil), with rusticity (a tower of rib-sticking duck and chorizo risotto)—all with wines carefully designed to nurture the flavors, I reflected on the true meaning of entertaining. What I did know was that I lovedlovedloved the fact that someone else was doing the cooking, and had taken the time and the care to locate and craft the food, and choose the wines—many of which were hand-carried from Spain—to exquisitely complement each flavor of the by now very long evening of bacchanalia.
There are, oddly enough, quite a few people who are hesitant to cook for me. (Mostly, they are the ones who don't yet know me very well.) No matter how loudly I protest that I’ll be happy with a scrap of (good) bread and a sliver of (ripe and interesting) cheese, they think they know better. This has resulted, occasionally, in my feeling rather unloved (note to self: supply tiny violin to readers here). But here was a cook—a couple—whose love of food was enough to let them know they could do something very special, and do it right. Who weren’t afraid of a little effort when it’s warranted. Even more important, they were infectiously, charmingly, decadent. And funny. My kind of people.
We smiled like satiated cats and raised our glasses to Mike and Jeff. Again, and again, and again. Then again.

Here I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge my long-suffering, loving and beautiful partner, C.
C. always thought he knew how to live the high-life, to cherish fine food, fine liquors, exotic travel, spirited conversation. Then, he hooked up with moi. The Queen of the high-life.
In defense of his response to this decadent and delectable dinner, I must reveal that in recent months we have been engaged in a cholesterol-lowering project on his behalf. Because of his negative physical reaction to the wonder-drugs that are supposed to allow unfettered consumption of the very things that vie to kill those who have, for whatever reason, high cholesterol, cheese and saturated fat have been strictly off the menu. Okay, it’s largely hereditary, but we are trying an experiment. So C. had not had any of either for, oh, about six weeks. In the elevator I’d said “Honey, I think you’re probably going to go off the low-cholesterol diet tonight.” He nodded selflessly. But neither of us had any idea how far off.
After the pork filet with cured ham and mushroom ragout and then the dry-rubbed filet mignon with blue-cheese butter (do try this at home!), I looked over at C. and discovered that his eyes had ceased to focus in a strictly forward direction; they had in fact become smaller than I’d ever seen them before. So I went into high-social-mode, regaling our hosts with expansive (and loud) stories of ex-husbands, Spanish adventures, and portentious prandial pursuits--all probably at that point of dubious interest to anyone but myself---to divert their attention from the fact that C. was rapidly fading.
At some point, the tummy of even a committed connoisseur will just sit up and say “No. Enough. Tummy full now. Do not put more into tummy. Or else.”

Cheese Times Three

Some variation of this discourse was taking place within C., and he did not partake fully of the evening’s remaining (four) courses: a salad dressed with aged Jerez vinegar, a three-part cheese plate that celebrated every aspect of the cheese-a-licious riches offered by Spain’s cheesemakers, and the two desserts. Tocino de Cielo (literally, bacon of heaven) was a sliceable, yolky confection presented with rose-scented whipped cream; homemade rum-raisin ice cream had been crafted with full cream and the famous Malagueño raisins.
In order to aptly celebrate the end of this six-hour feast, the guys had procured a half bottle of 1927 Alvear Pedro Ximenez. Two, in fact. Whoa.

After locating the correct glass amongst the other six adjoining my place-setting, I raised it again. To Mike and Jeff. To the high-life. To new friends. To a soft pillow in the West Village and a day—one only, mind you—of strict fasting.

Photos: Wine times seven; Cheese times three.

May 20
Kingston, NY: The Vegan Butcher

About two years ago, when we were first noodling the concept of abandoning the “good life” in Southern California and making a stand in the Hudson Valley, we drove upstate to stay with some relatively new friends who lived in Coxsackie (stop right now, you are pronouncing it wrong; it’s actually Cook-socky…swear to God; say it the intuitive way and the locals get het). First things first: if we were thinking about moving here, I had to check out the pork possibilities (in my personal lexicon, these are known as pork-ortunities). So I got on the wire and did some research. In Kingston, I found a butcher called Fleisher’s Grass-Fed Meats. Portentous. I chatted on the phone with Josh and Jessica, the young proprietors; propitiously, they had a 125-pound pig on hand, and I was welcome to pick up it’s loin on the way upstate. (We’d planned a little get-together of the few people we knew, to convince them we be good additions to the community).
When we arrived in Kingston and found Fleisher’s on a little street in the old part of town, however, someone else had up and snarfled the big pig, so my loin was no longer. It was a small shop, and I could understand why it wasn’t viable to keep plenty of perishable meats on hand for drop-ins, but I was still a tad disappointed.
“Wait!” said Josh, who, it transpired, was a third-generation butcher, but surely the first of his line to be a vegan. “I have a 35-pound pig that came from the transplant people today.”

The Ex-Vegan Butcher

“Huh?”

“They raise these little pigs for medical use, transplantable hearts actually, and they have to be absolutely perfect. Every once in awhile—I never know when—they’ll sell me one that has some slight imperfection.” (Nothing which would affect the meat, he says.)
I’m not immediately convinced, and I’m thinking two things: do I know these friends well enough to show up at their house with a whole pig? And I’d better send C. outside to (ostensibly) scope the street for other shop-ortunities.
You see, C. cannot bear to be reminded--in any visual or intellectual way--that his food was ever alive. Josh is going into the back to get the little pig for a look-see, and I just know that C. is not going to want to participate.
Josh brings out the sweet, pale little thing, to aid in my decision-making process. If I were at home with my big rotisserie….I’ve never seen the Lupone’s new kitchen. Chances are they have no piece of cooking equipment that can accommodate 35 pounds of pig.

"I'll take it." I said.
“Can you quarter it for me?” I ask Josh. “That way, I can grill two quarters and roast two. And you keep the head, ok? And please keep it out of sight when C. comes back?”
When C. returns (while out, he’s managed to secure for me a future book-signing at the kitchen shop across the street), there are four tidy and sterile white packages on the counter.
But as I prepare to settle the bill, here comes Josh, dancing out of the walk-in towards C., holding the little pig’s head up in front of his face while making little Deliverance-like squee-squee noises.
Greeaat. Not only is my potential new pork source a vegan, he’s also a great big wag.
C. handles it beautifully, and just twenty miles later he’s no longer as white as a sheet.
“Hi, we brought a pig.” I announce to our new neighbors when we arrive. The New Fleisher's

I’ve been to Fleisher’s quite a few times since then, and when I got back this spring was thrilled to find them in a big new store with a fabulously-expanded line of produce and products, from just-picked vegetables to many-hued farm eggs to an excellent paté made at Hudson’s estimable Swoon restaurant (with Fleishers’ meats). Josh is no longer a vegan, and when I wanted a lamb shoulder last weekend he broke down a whole sheep for me (of course it started out with a head, but C. wasn’t there). On a Saturday, with customers abounding, while we chatted about pizza oven contruction and other meal-centric subjects.
Yesterday I relieved him of 7 pounds of the most beautiful short ribs I’ve ever tasted, and I hadn’t even ordered them in advance. Clearly, the people of the Hudson Valley have decided to clean up their acts, food-wise, and responsible, organic animal husbandry is the obvious first step. Pair that with the flavors of these cleanly-raised meats, and you’ll wonder why anyone with access to this kind of quality would ever even dream of buying their meat or fowl at the supermarket.

Photos: Josh with some of his MEATS; The big and bright new Fleishers, in Kingston.

May 24
Upstate New York: Dog Years and Pork Bellies

Tomorrow is The Big Day: the Arrival of Stella. And, although it embarrasses me to admit this, I’ve spent today cleaning the house and washing my hair in preparation.

Yes, I’m forty-something. And of all the years I can remember, a dog has made my life better, richer and, without question, more worth living.
First there was Jack Daniels. I was little though, so I don’t remember much about him. A black lab who was petrified of my dad, he eventually got testicular cancer, which necessitated us treating his balls with a powdery lime-green spray. Mostly, that’s what I remember. His green balls.
In college I was finally, after an excruciating wait—an individual. My first act was to adopt a black-lab/cocker spaniel mix, a sweet, black little-seal-like being that I named Ebony. Her nickname was “Zeebers.” I drove around Portland in an ancient Volvo sporting a “Zeeber Madness” bumper sticker. Ebony stayed with me for what seemed like forever but was really only five years. When I went to New York to pursue my “career,” (and live in a tiny apartment) she went to live with a loving friend in Denver. It was many years later that Cathy let me know: Zeebers had passed on, after a rich and Brigit-less life with Cathy’s growing family. They had loved Ebony, she said.
Then came Boss, and he was formidable. My mother had owned Rhodesian Ridgebacks ever since the demise of Jack Daniels, and I felt it was a breed I understood. We impulsively purchased a puppy that was advertised in the London Times, with no research. In the end, and after three years of heartbreak, it was clear that no one--not me and not my ex-husband and not my Ridgeback-breeder friends Peter and Cilla (who had bred and shown many champions)—could ever understand Boss. It wasn’t just having him drag me, face-down, through the lanes of Fulham on our (ostensible) walks, it was his everyday diarrhea, his constant attitude-altering stomach pain, and his aggression toward small children that eventually spelled his doom. At 90 pounds, he was just too big to not be under a human’s control. It was perhaps the hardest thing I ever did, and without a doubt the moment that presaged the end of my first marriage.
Cut to Spain, circa 1990: One day I met an English Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and that was it for me, for life. After ascertaining his heritage, I made a pilgrimage to his breeder, near the white hilltop village of Ronda. A new litter was on the way, and that litter yielded the most intuitive, the smartest, the most selflessly devoted companion dog of my life (so far). Her name was Wiggy. Nicknames? The Wig, and Norpington (sometime shortened to Norpy). For fifteen years Wiggy lived with me, first in Spain, then in various homes in Los Angeles, and then, finally and in ill health, in the Hudson Valley. Pork Belly

She shared our homes with all three of my husbands, and loved them only when they didn’t upset me. If Stella lives up to even half of Wiggy’s reputation she’ll be a bright star in the wet-kissy dog-world firmament. Newark airport is, perhaps, not the hilltop village of Ronda (who am I kidding; there's no perhaps about it), but tomorrow at 11:25am, just after the arrival of Flight 260 from San Antonio, it will be every bit as auspicious of a meeting-place. I'll be the one wearing bells. After all, it is Memorial Day weekend.

And in honor of Memorial Day, let us move on to the subject of pork. Most people are, I would imagine this weekend, thinking of pork. If you’ve been following the blog, you remember the ceviche-style pork ribs I made for the dinner at Math and Mike’s house in Venice last winter. Well, the Lupones are having a party and I’ve persuaded them to try the recipe, now with the addition of those improvements advised by “Ahnold’s” private chef (and proprietor of the veal-stock-lovers, my friend Alex. I.e., this time the ribs will be dried, oiled, and well seasoned after their 8 hours soaking in pure lemon juice (and before their moments on the grill). Also, there will be a scattering of fresh basil to “lift” the flavor with that often-touted (by me) kiss of freshness and/or acidity (acidity, I’m thinking, it’ll have enough of).
I’m working up to a pork-belly preparation (see photo, right, of a very successful, Venice Beach pork-belly moment). More on the crispy-skin versus succulent fat issue in a future post (an interesting old thread on this subject exists on eGullet).
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1979 Part One
Hong Kong, China, and Taipei....To Speak, Perchance to Dance

Hong Kong was a place of Vietnamese refugees, spoiled South African baby-businessman, tacky topless bars, and visible history. The place had reinvented itself more times than Marlene Dietrich. At that point still to come in Hong Kong’s future was their ultimate reinvention—as a province of mainland China. The exodus had already begun and even with twenty years to go the prospect of Chinese rule hung over every single citizen’s head like a palpable, sickening black cloud. Yet it was a wonderful time to be there, before the big airport, before the subway; the Star Ferry was still the easiest mode of transport from Central to the teeming streets of Kowloon. For another twenty cents, you could go first class. Junks, both beautiful and ratty, shared the bay with the ferry. Jade and porcelain were exquisite, reasonable, and plentiful. Although it ate up nearly a quarter of my walking-around-money I immediately bought a full set of blue-and-white china, with all the western plate styles plus Chinese soup bowls, variously-sized saucers, Chinese teacups, and serving pieces appropriate to both cultures.

I was there to study Mandarin, and to write my senior thesis, in pursuit of a B.A. in Chinese Studies, which would be awarded at the end of a six-month stay in the ultimate City-by-the Bay (still haven’t found a use for that degree). As a cost-saving measure, I was tacked onto a group of twenty-one younger students from my school, Lewis & Clark College, of Portland, Oregon. I shared some of their studies and all their travel arrangements, but was there to accomplish different academic goals. I worked in a refugee camp several days a week as part of the research for my thesis, frequented many interesting bars, and often took my meals at a small, open-fronted restaurant up the hill from Central. One of the girls on the trip was a vegetarian, and since my Chinese was better than anyone else’s, it was my job to convey to our favorite waiter that she could not eat any meat. The fact that I was studying Mandarin and everyone in Hong Kong spoke Cantonese didn’t seem to register with my fellow students.

“No pork, no beef, no meat—okay? Just vegetables.” His smile was luminous and toothy with perfect understanding. Then he’d proudly carry out a steaming, glistening-green platter of vegetables—draped with lots of saucy pork. This happened quite a few times. I began to lose faith in my language prowess, as did everyone else. We often ate in large groups, and our favorite entertainment—in between the tall Singha beers—was to pass one single pea from chopstick to chopstick all the way around a table of twelve or fifteen.

For me, however, pork was prime nourishment even then. In Cantonese, the words for pork and dog are very similar (pork is gau-yuk, dog is ngau-yuk). We had heard—but happily never saw any sign—of the rumored Chinese penchant for eating dog, and were all a little sensitive on the subject. Our favorite waiter was very aware of this discomfort, and several times a week just as I came up the steps he used to sing out to me in Cantonese, “Blidgie want special dog platter tonite?” It was always good for some festive cross-cultural protestations and feigned misunderstandings, and neither of us ever tired of the game.

The school group was scheduled to spend a week at a Buddhist monastery, on an island in Hong Kong bay. I thought I would tag along. Apart from the food, I remember little about the experience. Perhaps I was off practicing my characters in a garden surrounded by circular gates. At the table, three times a day, we were served tofu. It was shockingly delicious, but I had to be convinced that it was indeed tofu. The Chinese do some magical things with bean curd—layered, pressed, in leaves, in sticks, deep-fried—the curd does such a good job of imitating meat that it’s hard to tell the difference. We had, or so it seemed, chicken, pork, and fish with various tasty sauces and vegetables, and aside from the lack of Singha beer at the tables, the week was festive and enjoyable when it came to matters of the stomach.

There was another important benefit of my week at the monastery on Lantau: from then on, I would tell our favorite waiter “My friend here eats like a monk.” Never again was she presented with a plate containing meat.

I’ve never been a lover of sweets. I almost never order dessert (or make it, to the chagrin of some of my dinner guests over the years). Chocolate, although it is certainly very nice, has never been as important to me as it seems to be to many people. Except when I was in Hong Kong. The whole time, I absolutely craved Toblerone chocolate bars. As I write this there is one on the counter behind me; I received it as a Christmas gift and it’s now the end of August. But in Hong Kong, I needed chocolate. What was the dietary imbalance that caused my system to require something it could normally do quite happily without? I never could figure it out. Lack of fat and richness in the food, perhaps?

In 1979 no one thought of Hong Kong as part of China. Visiting the mainland at that time was another story entirely. It was only a year or so after the first Western visitors were allowed, and in some of the areas we visited, people had never seen a non-Asian face (once in Changsha, our old schoolbus was literally mobbed—every window a kaleidoscope of faces smashed up against the window and each other, desperate for a look at us). Our little group was assigned several “guides.” Actually, these were young people who would have been just as happy quoting Mao to us from their little red books. I wondered if the word “spy” had any relevance here? Perhaps.
In fact the true goal of our guides was not to show us around but to keep us away from the people on the street. I think it was equally to protect us from learning something inappropriate from the regular folks, as well as to protect them from seeing something objectionable in us. When we ate, always in government restaurants, large screens were erected between our tables and the other diners. I was told that this was so they wouldn’t have to watch us eat—evidently being quite disgusted by the whole fork thing. I chafed under the constant supervision of our guides and was eager to try out my hard-won Mandarin on some real Chinese people. So when we arrived in Guelin and were actually given 30 minutes to shower, I was right out the back door with another Mandarin-studying friend. We were semi-mobbed in an instant, but we did get to practice both our own Mandarin and our new friends’ English for a few minutes before the breathless guides caught up and gently admonished us to hightail it back to the hotel. Like...Now.
But before we had to leave, our new friends asked us to dance. Western-style dancing, in particular the waltz, was all the rage in Guelin that year, and actual Westerners to dance with were exceedingly thin on the ground. So we all waltzed briefly on the barren streets of Guelin, that strange vertical village so woefully unprepared to be blasted straight from the early nineteenth into the last third of the 20th century. Concrete alone does not a city make.

That night, there was a gala banquet to celebrate the meeting of two cultures. You know, peoples of two countries that are destined to be great partners in the rosy economic future we would all share, now that China had begun to open its economic borders. I wonder, where are those little red books now? At the prospect of a room full of Americans the local—what? Chamber of Commerce, I suppose--really pulled out all the stops. I guess they didn’t care that most of us were under 25—not usually a respect-worthy age in the local culture.

In China, the rarer a foodstuff, the more honor is paid to the guest to whom it is served—thus the unfortunate delicacy of the bear paw. Yes, the paw of a bear. (Then there’s the monkey-brain thing, but I’d rather not go into it.) We were really and truly honored that night in Guelin. On the menu, along with about ninety-‘leven other things, were bobcat and fruit fox. Fruit fox? What’s a fruit fox? A gay game of guess-the-animal ensued and we eventually discovered it was a possum. Then there were the toasts. Toasting in China is like a game of one-upsmanship (one downsmanship?), only it’s not that much fun after you’ve matched your host toe to toe through fourteen exclamations of “Gan-bei!!” (bottoms-up). Now I’d like to think I can keep up with some serious drinkers, but I was way out of my league on this occasion. Mostly, it was because of what we were drinking. Sorghum liquor. Ever heard of sorghum liquor? Good. Here’s what it tastes like: chewing on a concrete wall. Not that I have ever chewed on a concrete wall but I’d be willing to wager that it would taste exactly like sorghum liquor.

Riding a train in China at that time felt like going back to a pre-revolutionary era of grand journeys, steamer trunks, paneled wood Stella, week 3

compartments and beveled-glass windows with discreetly closeable blinds. I was seduced by the rickety ambience of the train we all took from Guelin to Kwangchou (Canton), and imagined myself an “Old China Hand,” traveling through the pre-war China I had studied so much--and so blissfully--about (in spite of my constant attire of blue jeans, wallabies, and a wool sweater). Although there were no white-gloved cabin boys or sparkling glassware, there was some old-time romance: a young man with sparkling blue eyes, jet-black hair, and an infectious smile—the twinkling embodiment of Ireland’s most attractive genes in one long, lean, Pendleton-shirted package.

My college career was drawing to an end. The only thing left was to actually write the thesis I’d spent 5 ¾ months researching. It was a festive subject: “The Behavior of Nations Regarding Vietnamese Refugees” and there was no way I could write it in the communal living accommodations we were sharing for our final month in Taipei (where I was finally able to use my Mandarin with everyone, everywhere). I needed the privacy of a hotel room, but had virtually no money. So, I came up with a creative solution. Not too far northeast, as I recall, of Taipei was a famous, generations-old red-light district called Peitou. “Hotels” there were dirt-cheap. I secured a small room at the end of a hall, and after the management—with a great deal of giggling—managed to locate a desk lamp, I sat down at my little manual Olivetti, surrounded myself with scribbled, categorized index cards, and wrote my thesis. Smiling Irish eyes brought spring rolls for sustenance and deflected wandering clients from my door. Three days later, I turned in the thesis, bid goodbye to the group and—choosing to skip my college graduation—headed off alone to Bangkok, with a side trip by train down the Malay peninsula to Penang and back, and then on to a long-planned rendezvous at a small cafe, in Athens' Constitution Square.

Photo: Stella, week 3.

1979 Part Two
Taipei, Bangkok, Penang, Athens, and Crete

For me, graduating from college was a piece of cake, perhaps because a key ingredient, me, was missing from the actual ceremony. Sure, I felt like a momentous moment had arrived, but it had little to do with the diploma. In 1979 I was free, single, and twenty-one: the world was my oyster. However, the mail between the USA and Taiwan had thrown a major wrench into my extravagant post-college plans. My very last, ever, allowance check ($300), had failed to arrive in Taipei in time for my planned departure for Bangkok. I had a ticket from Taipei to Bangkok, but no onward flight from there, because “Southeast Asia on a Shoestring” counseled that it was far cheaper to buy these items in person in Bangkok. Trouble was I had no money, no credit card, no nothing. So a friend—who was headed back to Oregon where money was available--signed over, to me, a check made out to him.
And so I set off. But in Bangkok, no airport money-changer, no bank, and no hotel would touch a third-party check from another country. Something of a sticky wicket. I didn’t even have enough to cover the one night I’d already spent at the Royal Hotel.
So, in the initial heady moments of my full-and-proud adulthood, I called home.
“Mom? Hi, I’m at the Royal Hotel in Bangkok, and dad’s check never got to Taipei, and I don’t have enough money to buy my plane ticket to Athens.” This was a difficult admission to make. Fortunately my Godfather—who happened to be on the board of Indonesia's national oil company, Pertamina--happened to be at the house when I called.
One hour later a sleek black limo pulled up to the rather shabby Royal Hotel. A uniformed chauffeur got out, handed me an envelope containing four thousand baht in cash, and sped back into the snarled traffic. Thanks, Guv. (Oh yeah, and thanks, mom.) OK, enough of this childhood thing.
Before going on to Athens, I’d planned a little detour down the Malay peninsula, to Penang. I’d take the rickety post-Colonial train that plied its way from Singapore to Bangkok and back, ferrying locals and overland travelers (in those days, you could travel “over land” from London to Bangkok, because Iran and Afghanistan were, well, more friendly). At the Thai border, foreign tourists were asked to detrain, and those who didn’t have an onward plane ticket, or adequate cash, were barred from entering Malaysia. I’m not really sure how I squeaked by, but by dusk the ratty, paneled-wood dining car was filled with travelers of every nationality, sharing tall tales and Singha beers while gleefully bemoaning the heat of the Thai chilies that garnished every roti and bowl of rice. Second-class travel meant the sleepers were “Some Like it Hot” style: short curtains were all that separated your tiny, luggage-filled bunk from the aisle. An hour or so after retiring, I was suddenly battling a pair of intruding hands, persistent hands that were intent on violating my sleeping space and more. It seemed like a silent battle, because the clattering of the train was too loud for anyone to hear my cries. But on the bunk below, a bearded Scottish merchant seaman felt the struggle and came to my aid, dispatching what we both then realized was an obnoxious German traveler who’d already alienated all of us in the dining car. Unembarrassed, he stumbled on down the aisle.
In Penang, I shared a dumpy room with the Scot, while I chased down the Tamil family I’d stayed with for a month in 1976--as part of another scholastic sojourn—and caught up with the children’s wild stories and the parent’s proud successes. Then it was back to Bangkok for the onward flight to Athens, where I had a long-standing appointment with my college boyfriend: June 30, at a café in the southeast corner of Constitution Square, we had agreed. In the six months that had elapsed since then, the mail from Africa to Hong Kong, and then to Taipei, had been intermittent, but as far as I knew the rendezvous was still on. I had to hope it was, because after buying the ticket and stopping in Penang, I had only about $1.50 leftover from the 4000 baht.
Life as a beach

I went to the café. No boyfriend. So I went to the message center at American Express, right around the corner. There was a message, yes, but sadly “If you are not a card-holder, there will be a fee to pick it up.” (Drachmas in the amount of $1.50.)
What the hell. I was out of options. I knew me, and I knew my mother. Another call would not be quite so quaint.
The boyfriend, the note informed me, had gone down to Nafplio, on the Pelopponese peninsula for a few days. Uh-oh. But wait--this was written a few days ago – he’d arrived early from Africa.
The meeting was on, then, for noon.
I went back to the hotel that had been kind enough to hold onto my backpack and changed into The Dress. A month or so before, at a street market just underneath the last few yards of approach to the old Hong Kong airport, I’d bought The Dress from a woman long deaf from the roar of jet engines. She’d completely ignored the sudden, shocking sound as I looked up, cowering suddenly, for a moment disconcertingly able to identify each and every rusted bolt on the underbelly of a China Airlines jet.
But there was The Dress. It was cheap, a throw-away for many, but let us linger on it for a moment: The neckline was collar-and-placket, the short sleeves slightly puffed, the reddish, floral-patterned fabric cut straight down from armpit to just below the knee; a thin, matching belt cinched the feather-weight garment. And it was truly wash-and-wear: the cotton seemed slightly polished, and after hand-washing dried in ten minutes, when it would appear to have just been ironed. Not, at first glance, a significant dress. It cost me less than five Hong Kong dollars.
After that meeting in Constitution Square on June 30, 1979, I wore The Dress virtually every day for a month—unless I was wearing a bathing suit or nothing at all. I chose to take a road that appeared smaller on the map than any others, purely for that reason, and it led to a Cretan beach town that became my first spiritual home. There, the crossword puzzle in the Trib was enough intellectual challenge for the day, and I learned that—at least in Greece—Greek wine is sweet and soft, a subtle social lubricant.
As my tan deepened and my hair burnished blond, The Dress became symbolic of my quiet female power and the promise of the rest of my life, lying in wait there, just out of sight at the end of six months in Southeast Asia, a month wandering the Greek islands and, of course, a college degree. Let me think for a moment: Which item was more significant in giving me the cool confidence to go forth and grasp the future…Was it the diploma? Or was it The Dress?

Photo: After college, my life, for awhile, was a beach.

May 29
The Hudson Valley: Women of a "Certain Age"

Recently it has come to my attention that 60-ish women are drop-dead fabulous. I know a couple of women in this age-range, and what I love about them is their incredible sense of easy destiny, in the complete absence of self-pity. Many women, but not all of them, spend their lives making excuses for what they want to do. When you get to 60, I gather, you are or should be released from ever having to justify anything to anyone, ever again. Even—no, especially--not to your children. Because what you want to do is right simply because it is what you want to do. Period. You earned it.
Sometimes, Women of a Certain Age are lucky—or smart—enough to have a bit of money, and then that independence feels—and let’s face it, is--so much easier. Maybe they were lucky, and were born into or married it, or they’re smart, savvy, and so good at their career that they’ve actually been richly rewarded. But I find that even without money, there seems to be something about the sixties that is freeing and empowering. Que sera, sera. that sort of thing. I hope I will have as much grace and selflessness when I get there. It doesn’t feel quite so scary, now that I've known a handful of elegant, sensual, and powerful sexagenarians.
All my life, women have helped me. Sometimes they have been older, like my English friend who insisted that “one instance of infidelity” was not grounds to scrap a nine-year marriage. In the end she was proven wrong, but it was a good thought and gave me some needed pause, for about six weeks. Or the friend that, around the same time, counseled me to freeze my marital joint account in the tax haven of Jersey, in the UK Channel Islands (this was, actually, on the same morning that I discovered said infidelity). That one piece of advice in particular allowed me to rebuild my seemingly-shattered life with grace and aplomb (I never said money didn't make things better, just that if necessary we can make do without it). But just as often my wise women friends are younger than I, like the lovely Los Angeleno who cautioned “Some things, once they have been said, can never be unsaid.”
Oh yeah, right. It’s amazing how often good advice received is something you should have known, thought you knew, but clearly didn’t until someone brought it to your attention. Once, when I had bemoaned that fact that writing cookbooks was not the same as real writing, my fine, ex-but-still-eternal stepdaughter said to me (at age 14). “You write things, People pay you to write them. You’re a real writer.”
Thanks, kid.
Peas

One of the wisest women I know turned 24 years old last week. Coincidentally, she is my niece, but this has nothing to do with the extreme high esteem in which I hold her. From the time she was eight years old we have been on the same wavelength, and she has consistently proven herself wiser, and more able to glimpse the big picture, than I could ever be. If you were to point out to me that this is the child I never had, you’d probably be right. I’ve learned from all the spectacular women in my life that wisdom traded back and forth across generations is priceless, but when that trade occurs within a family, where blood runs thick and weaknesses are unavoidably shared and acknowledged, and strengths (occasionally) celebrated, the relationship becomes something so precious that to imagine shaping a destiny without it would leave me heartbroken and rudderless. That my niece has chosen a profession which, already, allows us to work symbiotically together as co-professionals is like the icing on the cake…the truffle in the risotto…the, ah, caviar at midnight (standing at the fridge).
My family also gifted me with another spectacular woman, without whom I might not even be alive, and certainly not sane. Though not officially of my blood, my stepmother championed me when my own mother vociferously did not, allowed me to be me, and always congratulated me for being so. She also led me to trust in the universe, a step which all self-employed people must take to insure or, at least, give a better chance to, survival. When you are headed down a long and lonesome road of disaffection and confusion, a voice of confidence and enthusiasm can save your soul from the flames of hell. Or, in other words, you catch more bees with honey than with vinegar.
This is something every married person should keep in mind. After three marriages, I think I’ve finally figured it out, and maybe, just maybe, that knowledge will allow me to call this one—as we did my dad’s marriage to my bright star of a step-mom—“Third-and-Final.”

Because, you know, practice makes perfect.

Photo: Peas from a similar pod, at Il Latini in Firenze. Thanks, sis.

June 1
Hudson Valley: A Steak-ortunity, Seen and Grasped

Last night Mr. Cholesterol went down to the city, for a goodbye ceremony at Juilliard in honor of one of it’s most enduring stars, teacher Michael Kahn. Thus, I was left to choose the star of my own dinner without a sideways glance. I might have accompanied him to the event, but Stella, the mouth-on-steroids-puppy, is not yet ready for alone-time, nor for her first visit to the Big Apple.
Taking C.’s cholesterol issues into account at each meal has been good discipline for me—although it has, sadly, not caused me to shed even one pound—but rules are made to be broken, n’est ce pas? Steak-ortunity

I knew dinner would be a big, thick rib-eye steak, and I knew I would pan-fry it in the counter-intuitive but carnivorously crafty fashion that I learned when I wrote the Palm restaurant cookbook. At Amazon, my appreciation of the brilliance of this at-first-odd-sounding technique is born out by quite a few savvy but surprised users of the cookbook, who “now, would never cook a steak any other way.” My exceedingly steak-savvy friend Rolfe also uses the technique, which involves an early sear, a 30 to 60-minute rest, on a rack, at room temp, and then finishing in the oven. But, he says, he cuts the oven-time slightly to accommodate his affection for steak au bleu.
First I slather the steak with olive oil and set it to repose in the turned-off oven for 1 ½ hours, so the oil can seep into the pores of the steak, like an expensive night cream.
During this time, I soften the truffle butter and let my unblemished bulb of fennel hang out in the freezer, so that when I sliver it for the raw fennel and parsley leaf salad that will be the steak’s only supporting cast, it’ll be crisp and teeth-chatteringly chilled.
There is some Spanish Sumarocca rosé in the fridge and I indulge in a glass of this during the cocktail half-hour (menu: a few Bella di Cerignolas).
OK, let’s do it: The cast-iron pan goes over the hottest flame on my Viking. And stays there, untouched, for a full 4 minutes. No oil (that’s why the steak was slathered). Place the generously-seasoned 1 ¼-inch steak carefully in the center of the pan and step away from the stove. Do not attempt to move or adjust the steak IN ANY WAY. Stand there patiently for 2 ½ minutes. Turn the steak over with one smooth move of the tongs, and again step away for 2 ½ minutes. Place a flat wire rack over a plate, and gently transfer the steak to the rack. Make sure no dogs, children, or other beings (like insects) will have access to the steak while it’s takes its beauty sleep, then go and do something else for 30 to 60 minutes (I slivered the fennel, washed and dried some parsley leaves, and squeezed a lemon for the dressing).
Preheat the oven to 425F. When it reaches temperature, return the steak to the pan it was cooked in and place in the oven for either 5 minutes (Rolfe), 8 minutes (me), or, if you have a monster 1 ½-inch-ish steak from a really serious butcher, maybe 12 minutes. For C., in the days when he could have one, it would have been 25 minutes. Don’t ask. (Other details, cuts of steak, and done-nesses are covered in the Palm cookbook). Now return the steak to the rack for about 5 minutes, while you heat up your dinner plate in the now-turned-off oven and dress your salad, if appropriate. Transfer rested steak to hot plate, dollop on an injudicious hunk of truffle butter, and get ready to enter The Beef Zone.
Stella, Week One

To fully appreciate this moment, I recommend cueing up the most recent episode of “Huff” on Tivo, so that as you take your seat, with TV tray placed conveniently at hand, you can press “start” and proceed to enjoy life at its most rewardingly full.

Note: some of you have asked what kind of dog Stella is. Well, she's extremely headstrong. Ooooh, you mean what breed? She's an English Staffordshire Terrier. More on this subject later.

Photos: The tools of my trade; Stella, at the end of her first week.

June 5
Mostly in Italy: The Journey of a Cook, Part 1

It was very funny

When we made the decision to sell up in L.A. and build from scratch in the Hudson Valley, our thought processes were powerfully influenced by a great good friend who lives in our chosen village in the Hudson Valley. Such a very good friend that, indeed, he offered us his weekend home as a seven-month resting place for our heads and hearts during the building process. They don’t come much better than that.
I was lucky enough to inherit Jared as a friend—he came with C., and I mean he came from a long way back. Yet the first time I really met him was three nights before our wedding, at a very loud restaurant in Florence. Afterwards, as we strolled together toward the Piazza Repubblica for a digestif, he asked me how I’d met C.
“Well, actually it was in a bar.” His eyebrows went up a few centimeters.
Then I added, “Sadly, I was married at the time.” With that he threw himself to the 14th-century cobblestones and began pounding them with his fists, laughing so hard that I feared mightily for his digestion. Apparently, I’d struck a chord that resonated with, I suppose, some knowledge of C.’s history.
We’ve been inseparable ever since.
Jared is a consummate master of the witticism and the bon mot, a gracious and accomplished horseman, and an urbane, knowledgeable oenophile. He’s also, as we have noted, extremely generous. He even flew out to Los Angeles just for our In the Kitchen

goodbye dinner, which we titled “The End of The Beginning.” What he was not, at least when we first arrived in Athens, was an entertainer. Now don’t get me wrong, Jared has always loved to eat (not that his physique would reveal this) and hold court at tables of chattering glitterati (us, mostly) in Florence, Siena, Radda, Athens, New York, and the Hudson Valley. He just wasn’t much of a cook. Inviting people over for sustenance was more likely to involve frozen pizza than, say, fried polenta with red pepper ragout.
Then we arrived. To lessen our impact on his upstate weekends (and those of his housemate Bill), I tended to cook a lot. And of course C. is the prime orchestrater of perfect evenings. Later in the summer we all went to Italy, to cook and talk and sip wine and generally have a ridiculous amount of fun for two weeks in our rented casa, sightseeing and shopping only when it didn’t interfere with our meals. There, everyone pitched in, doing the marketing, dicing, prepping and gathering fuel for the wood oven on the patio. Jared became my Cinder-fella; I’d say “Medium-hot fire by 8:30, please.” And he’d set off into the olive trees to gather kindling, then orchestrate the perfectly glowing embers needed for our red mullet stuffed with braised fennel, or our porchetta. But he also began to make inroads into the kitchen proper. First, he volunteered to pit olives (there were one or two awkward incidents early on but then he learned how to keep them on the cutting board and in the kitchen). Then, he sliced a veritable mountain of onions for the four-hour red wine and onion pasta that we just had to recreate after a long lunch just outside Montevarchi. (When the chef visited our table, we’d queried him about his mysterious, wine-dark dish, redolent with olives, baby-food-soft onions, and a slight porky undertone. “You cooka da onions for a-four how-erss-a,” he actually said. So I was assigned the task of recreating the dish.)
For Jared’s next baby-step towards being a cook, he surpassed even my kitchen prowess by frying some zucchini blossoms.
(I don’t deep-fry. Ever.) By the time we left Monti-in-Chianti last year, Jared was well on his way to being a cook--or at least a very competent sous-chef. His debut as an accomplished, cool, and collected solo host at a party of 39 was not to take place for another seven months. After The White Party. But more about that next time…

Meanwhile, here’s a note that arrived this morning from Mike DeSimone:
"Brigit: So, you will never guess who had two rib-eye steaks and some truffle butter kicking around the house...We had to run out to buy some finocchio for the salad, but other than that we were covered! The terms "tastebud-thrilling" and "life-altering" come to mind--what an amazing steak preparation! I'm heading down to the yard right now to throw out the grill.
Thanks for the inspiration
MIKE"

Photos: I must have said something very, very funny...Piazza Republica, Florence; J. drizzles chickens for the wood oven, while I massage.

June 9
The Hudson Valley: Journey of a Cook, Part 2

Frying...

When we got back from Italy, it was time for a joint celebration so momentous that a really big party was called for: it was our wedding anniversary, and the birthday of Jared’s cherished mentor and supremely generous benefactor, the late Barbara Matera. I planned a menu to serve 40 friends at one table without stress, combining buffet service plus family-style platters to efficiently handle and please the throng. One capable set of hired hands manned the kitchen, and our brigade of non-blood “family” (often, the best kind) took up the rest of the slack. Ninety percent of the cooking was done the day before. Jared and Bill set a stunning (and alarmingly long) table, on the lawn under the oak trees, with white china, Queen Anne’s Lace, and crystal salt cellars. C. trundled back and forth on the Gator bringing odd chairs and setting up the serving table and the separate wine station with flowing white tablecloths. It is a measure of Barbara’s over-the-top entertaining legacy that the only thing we had to rent was wine glasses. There was even one tablecloth long enough for the six conjoined tables. The evening was one that will live long in the memories of those who hosted and those who attended. Everyone wore white, and absolutely everyone had fun.
Jared was getting a taste of the kitchen, and he was liking what he saw and tasted. A few weeks later, he announced that he’d be frying some sage for an assemble-your-own-pizza “class” I’d volunteered to “teach” in his kitchen (read: excuse for a party).
Now, I’m sitting here racking my brain and I just can’t think of any deep-fried foods that are meant to be enjoyed more than a few minutes after they leave the hot oil, so I was slightly alarmed when I arrived to prep the pizza toppings, and found Jared proudly displaying his paper towel-lined plate of already-fried sage leaves. Somewhere along the way, he’d decided to dip them in a batter, so the twelve little things looked like nothing if not slightly greasy caterpillars about to break out of their cocoons.
“Mmmmmm, good!” I exclaimed proudly. (Every growing cook makes mistakes in judgement. Witness the time I decided to cook a whole fish on a rotisserie. One must not be daunted.)
Soon afterwards, I decamped for the winter to the supposedly fine weather of southern California. So I wasn’t around when, in March, Dreaming of Pork

Jared hosted a baby shower for our friend Virginia. To his surprise, 39 people accepted the invitation (upstate New York is very, um, quiet in the early spring). With, at most, two long-distance menu consultations from me, Jared decorated, orchestrated, and, by himself, cooked all the food for the event. Which went off like a dream.
Afterwards, he said to me “In the past, I would have had a party this large catered, but watching you cook and entertain has given me the confidence to do it alone and know that the food will be good and that I’ll enjoy the party too.”
Well, my friend, hearing this makes me not just proud, it also makes me love what I do even more. I feel warm and fuzzy and, yes, even validated. I’m not crazy….there is an easier way. And now there is one more passionate cook who can enjoy himself while providing festivity and fine sustenance to his friends.
Just you wait for Italy this summer, Cinder-fella. We’re going to cook up a storm!

A Note on the Weather: In the six weeks since we returned from the West, I can count the number of sunny, temperate days on one hand. It has been unceasingly cold, rainy, windy, and gray. Of course, I blame George Bush. But seriously, I know the clamp-down of the unbearable humidity is coming…couldn’t we have just a few weeks of spring, first? What's the point of the semi-annual peripatetic bi-coastal lifestyle if it's cold and rainy everywhere?

Photos: A man with no fear of frying is a friend indeed; C. and J. last summer in Volterra, dreaming of pork

June 22
So Many Mediterranean Gardens

When I think of all the gardens I have created, from scratch, it makes my heart ache. Yet it seems, sometimes, that I’m destined never to stop. They say that only when one ages a bit can they become a good gardener, because a gardener must see the big picture, be open to long-term rather than immediate gratification. But I was an old soul at the age of 18, buying a complete set of china in Hong Kong while friends were buying jade. An unabashed domestic, a nester who had yet to make her first nest, I knew the china was more important. So to become a gardener