Food Memoir Reading

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So my summer reading definitely had a theme to it: the food memoir.

It started in France and I have to say that reading books about other people traveling and eating totally enriched my trip. Once I got home I couldn’t stop and read a few more. And I have two that I can’t wait to get to so I am including them too. So on the off chance that you love food and travel, here you go.

1. Tender At The Bone by Ruth Reichl

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There is just something about her writing that really touches a very personal part of you and makes you feel like you are sitting down with a sister or best friend over coffee. Born to a mother who suffers from manic depression, she has an innate appetite that fuels her path in food writing (she was the editor of Gourmet Magazine for 10 years). She was rather groundbreaking in this genre, since only MFK Fisher had been a woman who wrote about food. During this period she worked at a camp in France, went to a French boarding school in Canada, Honeymooned all over Italy and Greece for months, and then ended up a Berkley hippy during a groundbreaking food scene. And she shares recipes that give a picture of each period, many of them mouthwatering, which she wanted to use instead of photographs but readers begged her for some and I am glad they did.  The time period is a very sweet, coming of age period for Reichl, unlike its successor…

 

2. Comfort Me With Apples by Ruth Reichl:

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Here she has some scandal. Affairs. Adopting a baby only to have it pulled away after 6 months. But it is mostly about the food. And when your friends are Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck and Jonathan Waxman, there is a lot to say about what is happening in food. Throughout the book she is the LA Times Food Critic, and so she covers everything from Wolfgang Pucks new restaurant opening to a chef’s dinner in Spain where she goes drinking all night with the celebrity chefs she is covering. But the parts that stay with me are how she couldn’t stop making Cream of Mushroom soup when she was going through a divorce. There is such an intimacy to food and she really captures it.

Both books are page turners, and now I am reading Sapphire and Garlic, their sequel, which I bought on Kindle the second I finished Comfort Me With Apples. It follows how she becomes the NY Times food critic and has to dress in disguise in order to review the food. I can’t put it down and keep hiding from my kids so I can read it.

3. My Sweet Life In Paris by David Leibovitz –

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I can’t believe how good this book was! I found myself telling the stories to my husband and father-in-law as I was reading it because it was so appropos to what we were experiencing in our travels (for example, feeling incredibly rude getting up to tell the waiter we needed our check, only to learn from Leibovitz that they expect you to tell them when you are done and want the check, since bringing it to you is considered rude, like they are rushing you.) This book also includes recipes and I for real want to try every. single. one. There is so much hilarity in the book but also real cultural insights into the French. A must read for anyone diving into their culture.

 

4.  Consider the Oyster by MFK Fisher –

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I read this before (and even did a blog post about it! One of my favorites), but she is like a supporting character in Ruth Reichl’s Comfort Me With Apples I am revisiting everything she wrote. This is a good one to start with.

5. Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist-

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This was a book I started a long time ago but only got a third of the way through. It was so nice to read it right after Tender at the Bone and Sweet Life in Paris, because the stories are based in the Midwest, where I grew up (Fun Fact: I actually grew up in the town next to Shauna Niequist.) So it was nice to have the narrative of a love of food through all different contexts, especially a familiar one. I want to make every one of Shauna’s recipes. And I love how she celebrates life around the table.

6. The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan-
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Ok, so this one isn’t exactly about food but it is a memoire of an Irish Catholic family, which helps me so much to understand where my loyalty and faith stem from. She gets cancer at 36 and has 2 small girls at the same time that her father gets cancer. And the resulting chaos in her family that ensues reminds me that every family is a little (or a lot) crazy. Really touching was her tribute to a mom of four kids, which she always wanted to have. Her hormone therapy made her unable to have any more so she had to grieve her dream. She is a master at creating character portraits of people and she writes from the heart, even if it exposes her own weaknesses.

7. A Personal History, Katherine Graham –

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I read this memoir a long time ago, and it is also not about food, but it has become the standard for me for all memoirs and I find myself thinking of it often. She was the editor of the Washington Post after her manic depressive husband, who was the head of the paper, committed suicide. Just a great story of an elegant lady whose steely intelligence outpaced her own naïveté to become a towering female figure in politics and writing.

Up next, these two selections which are next on my reading list. I already know I will love them and am really familiar with the authors. Having them to look forward to are like having unopened chocolates waiting for me.

8. The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffery Steingarten –

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I love Jeffery Steingarten as a judge on Top Chef Masters, and I was thrilled to figure out that the food writer for Vogue was the same gruff guy I see tearing apart the chefs’ creations, especially because he writes sort of sweetly about food. The first piece I ever read by him was on Brown Butter, and I have loved every piece he ever wrote since. I have a feeling it will be like Ruth Reichl’s Sapphires and Garlic in content, but Steingarten has a style all his own.

 

9. Mastering the Art of French Eating – by Ann Mah

 

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I follow Ann Mah’s blog because she splits her time between NYC and Paris, and she is a momma to a toddler, so her food is always based on great food experiences but is pretty down to earth at the same time. Her husband was in the military, and like Julia Child, she has to define herself in the city of Paris alone when he is called to duty in the middle east. If this book is half as warm and smart as Ann’s blog is, it will be a terrific read. I can’t wait to read this book.

 

Have you read any memoirs that you loved? I’m all ears.

Happy Reading! xoxo Katie

 

 

 

Roast Chicken with Crème Fraîche and Herbs

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I am still dreaming about this dinner.

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I couldn’t be more excited to share Roast Chicken with Crème Fraîche and Herbs for the next installment of The Humble Onion Tuesday Dinners. I am hoping that by searching the hashtag  #thotuesdaydinners you can have quick and easy meal ideas at your fingertips for when you meal plan. Or frantically think of dinner at 4:30 like I do on busy days.

This dinner is the trifecta of home cooking; it is easy, delicious and the kids will happily eat it (and possibly lick their plates like mine did). I know many kids have already gone back to school and ours start next Monday, so I am on the hunt for fast easy dinners that still feel a bit special.

As I mentioned last week I am infatuated with the cookbook My Kitchen In France. She shared her recipe for a whole Roasted Chicken with this mixture on top and I was d-y-i-n-g  to make it. I had a package of chicken thighs in the fridge and some Crème Fraîche, and I thought why not just try it with these?

The result? Totally delicious. The chicken thighs cook in a third of the time but the meat has lots of flavor. And the crème fraîche mixture is totally simple but so fragrant and delicious. image

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The perfume from the shallots, garlic and herbs is just intoxicating, and when creme fruit melts it almost turns into butter and makes the most amazing gravy. Luckily I served it with whole wheat couscous which was perfect for sopping up all that goodness, but mashed potatoes would be heaven too. (I may have tipped the pan sideways to pour all the leftover juices on my plate).

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So don’t forget to add Crème Fraîche, shallots, herbs and chicken thighs on your next shopping list (that’s right. This dinner has 5 ingredients). And get ready to lick your plate. You will totally thank me, scouts honor.

Roast Chicken with Crème Fraîche and Herbs (printer version here): 

1 package of chicken thighs (around 2-3 lbs or a whole chicken, around 3 lbs)
1 & 1/4 cup crème fraîche (you can also use fromage blanc – alternatively, you can mix 2 tbsp buttermilk or sour cream with 1 cup heavy cream)
4 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
1 shallot, finely sliced
A large bunch of parsley, chopped
A few sprigs of fresh thyme
Salt and black pepper

Preheat oven to 350F

Mix crème fraîche with finely chopped garlic, parsley, thyme, salt and black pepper. (If using a whole chicken spoon half of the mixture inside the cavity of the chicken & truss the chicken). Spoon the cream on each piece of chicken.
Transfer to preheated oven and cook for 20-25 minutes (60-75 minutes for a whole bird).

Serve with couscous or mashed potatoes.

Adapted from Mimi Thorisson’s recipe in My Kitchen in France. 

 

Perfect vs. Better

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(Photo Credit: www.abovethelaw.com)

 

I have been putting shoes on my toddler all week that are too small.

He has red scabs on his heels and little blood stains on the back of his shoes that I didn’t see.

Naturally, I feel horrible.

So when I read over and over again about how we are too obsessed with perfection, how learning that one can’t be perfect is a big insight, I am a little bit like, who are these people? Who is under the impression that they could be perfect? I am presented with my blatant failure on the daily and I sort of want to know – who isn’t?

I recently read an expert of Mindy Kailing’s new book that I loved. Because it hinted at this dilemma around the ideas of perfection and confidence. She says that confidence really only comes from hard work. So when people encourage others to know that they don’t need to be perfect to be comfortable with themselves, I think, no they don’t. But they will definitely be more comfortable with themselves if they are getting better. On some level. Even if it is just bowling.

On most days, I have plenty of reasons to embrace imperfection, but I am always in search of reasons to embrace discipline, to keep all kinds of atrophy at bay. And all this talk about not being perfect seems like it confuses perfectionism with improving. I am writing all this not because I want to discourage people who are helped by being reminded that perfection is not the goal. I get that being comfortable with your self, loving your self, right where you are, is behind it. It is just that it doesn’t help me at all.  I am well aware of this fact. I respect my learning curve. But the reality of life as a mother, daughter, sister, wife is messy and bumpy. I need to be strong to deal with it all, and that means striving. That space where what your doing hurts a little, pushes you out of your comfort zone, and challenges you – that’s where my muscles grow. That’s what helps me deal with all the imperfections of life. Along with coffee.

Growing is often hard work. And sometimes, I will cave from doing this hard work when I hear messages like, ‘life is hard, don’t expect too much from yourself, here, have a donut.’ I need to hear messages like, ‘just do it’ and ‘no’.  Because I am the strongest version of myself with discipline.  I am inspired by the stories of people who weren’t trying for perfection. But they were trying for their best.

It might just be how I am wired. And on the off chance that someone is wired this way too, I am writing this for you.

I find peace in the place where effort meets reality. I like hard work, especially the kind that changes you as you do it. When I am running and I am conditioning my lungs, it sucks right then but it will make my next run better. When I clean and stock the fridge even though I really, really want to be lying on the couch eating fudge and reading a novel, I am setting up feeding my family healthy food. It is not fun. It is not pretty and I am not trying to be perfect. It is hard work. And that’s fine with me. Because it will make tomorrow better. Not perfect, just better.

Shrimp Scampi + THO Tuesday Dinners

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imageI can’t believe how little of summer is left. I am holding onto it like a toddler holds on to a lollipop. Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to send my kids to school (for their sake and mine) but I am chaffing at the schedule that comes with the school year. September means football and soccer and a ton of family birthdays, so I am trying to savor you, August. You and your staying up past everyone’s bedtime playing games and sleeping in late, beach days and long runs, swimming in rivers and endless ice cream and gorgeous hikes in the woods.

So to help with this transition that can be brutal, I am starting a series before the school year is upon us.

THO Tuesday Dinners.

I find it helpful to have, in any given season, a repertoire of 5-7 meals that I know everyone will like. Using seasonal ingredients that we seem to crave, and that I will likely have most of the ingredients for in my pantry or my weekly shopping, that cooks fast. The new and exciting recipes I will save for the weekend, when I have more time. I hope that sharing these helps you to make your week easy peasy. And lemon squeezy.

I will publish them every Tuesday, so you can either jam it into that weeks line up if you didn’t meal plan or you can get all the ingredients together for it for next week.

This week I am showing you how I make shrimp scampi.

It is so easy, a five year old can do it.

imageSeriously, my five year old loves to help me peel shrimp. I usually soak them in a bowl of hot water for 15 minutes to thaw them, and then peel them. If your crew doesn’t love shrimp, you can use chicken tenders or cubed chicken breasts. Rotisserie chicken can be added at the end too. See, easy peasy.

imageimageI usually make this dish at the end of summer, when the parsley is overflowing in my herb garden and we are hungry from playing outside all day but still want something sort of light. My kids love it, it cooks super fast 10-15 minutes and I always have a bag of shrimp in the freezer and angel hair pasta in the pantry. If you have tomatoes overflowing you can add those too, they are traditionally in shrimp scampi but mine were still green when I made this last week.

I love how lemony and butter this meal is, and I add a ton of hot pepper flakes to my plate and lots of Parmesan cheese to their plates.

imageHope this dish helps you ease into the school year while still tasting a little bit of summer. xoxo Katie

Shrimp Scampi (printer version here):

Ingredients

  • 3-4 garlic cloves
  • 4 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 lb jumbo shrimp (headless)
  • 3 medium tomatoes, seeded and diced
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon salt, to taste
  • 1⁄4 teaspoon pepper
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 1 package angel hair pasta, cooked according to directions
  • Plenty of fresh parm for serving

Directions

  1. While pasta cooks, chop the garlic together with the parsley until it almost reaches a paste like consistency.
  2. Heat the sauté pan and, when hot, add the oil. Add the shrimp and toss. When halfway cooked, about 1½ minutes, add the tomatoes and toss for 30 seconds to 1 minute more. Add the garlic and parsley mixture, the salt, pepper, butter, and lemon juice and toss one last time.
  3. Mix cooked pasta with scampi mixture. Turn out onto a plate and serve. Top with freshly grated parm and more fresh parsley, if desired.

Almond Gazpacho + Introduction

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I know I just posted a gazpacho recipe, but consider this a recipe post + introduction to a cookbook that has me totally inspired.

Before we left for our trip to France, I took the kids to Barnes + Noble , and while I was there I decided to get a French cookbook to use when we get back since I would likely want to dive into cooking the foods we tasted (which turned out to be très vrais). This was the one I picked up:

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Every review I could find since learning of her and her (much better) food blog, Manger, points out the high degree of life envy people get from her, since she lives in the country in Médoc, France, in a gorgeous house with her photographer husband (who shoots all the pics on her blog and in the book) and lots of gorgeous kids (5 young children and 2 teenage step-children) running around in Petit Bateau dresses. She believes in dressing up even in the country, so most of the photos showcase her chic wardrobe as she is picking fresh plumbs or grilling steaks (she worked in fashion and journalism). With a father from Hong Kong and a mother from Paris, her perspective is very unique. But it is her celebration of simple ingredients, beautiful countryside, and love of family that I find most inspiring. In fact, she got ‘discovered’ because this cake she decorated ‘to celebrate spring’ went viral:

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^^I mean…can you even? I cannot. Photo credit goes to Oddor Thorisson (Mimi’s husband).

I sat down to read her cookbook, cover to cover, which is based around the seasons (making me even more inspired and craving fall a bit as I savor summer). Her dishes were at once a reflection of having lived in Paris for 10 years and wanting to recreate the bistro food she couldn’t get in the country, as well as just good rustic home cooking with some imaginative twists. And I have to heart a girl who gives a nod to The Humble Onion – she says “I think onions are so beautiful, to me they are as lovely as flowers and I love having a big bowl of them on display.” Girl after my own heart, that one.

But one recipe jumped out of her book that I had to try immediately: Almond Gazpacho.

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 It just sounded so different, yet comforting, cool yet hearty. It turned out to be all those things. And you will not even believe how easy it is, or how interesting the ingredients are. That sherry vinegar is that kick I love:

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You just pulse it all in a food processor, just like tomato-based gazpachos:

imageUntil it is all frothy and gorgeous:

image(I added the cucumbers after this photo, fyi)

And then serve it with some crusty bread, a drizzle of olive oil, and she lists ‘pigment d’Espelette’ as a topping, which is just a French type of chili powder. She also lists frying up garlic slices as a topping which I somehow missed, but will do next time.

Hope you love it as much as I did! xoxo Katie

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Almond Gazpacho (adapted from ‘A Kitchen in France’ by Mimi Thorisson. Printer version here): 

2 cups cubed crustless white bread

1 ⅓ c. slivered blanched almonds (plus some for garnish)

1 ⅔ c. seedless green grapes

1 medium cucumber, peeled, halved lengthwise and seeded

2 garlic cloves minced + 2 garlic cloves sliced

3 cups ice-cold water

⅔ cup extra virgin olive oil + extra for drizzling

2 T. sherry vinegar

fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

¼ teaspoon piment d’Espelette (red chili powder)

 

Directions:

 

Soak the bread in a bowl of cool water for 1 minute, then drain, squeezing out as much water as possible.

Transfer the bread to a food processor and add the almonds, grapes, cucumber, and minced garlic. Start processing and gradually add the ice water, ⅔ cup of the olive oil, the vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Puree until you have a smooth and velvety mixture.

Pass the soup through a fine sieve into a bowl (NOTE: I omitted this step as I liked it coarse). Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, or overnight.

Just before serving, heat the remaining 2 teaspoons olive oil in a small saute pan over medium heat, and cook the sliced garlic until golden and crispy about 3 minutes (NOTE: I also omitted this step but would like to try it next time). Add the reserved almonds and toast for a minute or two.  Serve on top of a bowl of the soup adding a drizzle of olive oil and red chili pepper.

Chocolate Mousse

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Have you ever had real Chocolate Mousse? If so, you know there is nothing else like it. So light and airy, but still with an intensely rich chocolate flavor and the absolute creamiest texture ever. It is so good it hurts.

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When I was thinking, what inspired me the most in France? I came up with the answer that they keep things very classical, and once you learn those things, you can endlessly improvise. I know I am not the first person to come up with this, (**cough, Julia Child**)but I am here to say how true I am finding it. So when I thought about what classical thing I loved the most, it was very simple.

Chocolate Mousse.

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When my husband handed me a little glass jar of this stuff with my sandwich on the train on our way to Dinan, I was completely transported. It was like chocolate frosting, but better. It was like chocolate pudding but better. It was like itself, completely.

And basically I had to have it again.

So when my extended family planned to get together for dinner, I volunteered to bring dessert. Chocolate mousse, si vous plait. I researched recipes (I ended up with a combination of Ina Garten’s and David Lebovit’s) and put a movie on for the kids (even though the prep time said 30 minutes and it didn’t really take that long for something so good).

I cut up some good chocolate:

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And whipped all the eggs:

image^^ When Ina says whip the egg yolks until they fall back on themselves like ribbons, this is what she means.

image^^ And when she says whip the eggs whites until they formed stiff peaks, this is what she means.

And then, you stir them into the melted chocolate. That has some booze added to it.

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Well, I guess the technical term is fold them into the chocolate (if we are going to talk about classics we may as well learn some basic skills, right?).

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And then you pour them into ramekins and chill. Don’t they look amazing? I think my egg whites were a little too stiff, so check out that video to avoid this! But it didn’t impact the flavor at ALL. They were amazing.

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So if you are scarred just give it try! Mine were not perfect but were SO yummy.

Once you get this recipe down, the options are endless. A chile spiced chocolate mousse? Or an orange chocolate mousse? Or some whipped cream with Grand Marnier in it? All yum.

imageHope you are having a great week!

xoxo Katie

Chocolate Mousse (adapted from Ina Garten and David Lebovitz’s recipes, printer version here):

INGREDIENTS

SERVINGS: 8

DIRECTIONS

  1. In a heat-proof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, melt the two chocolates, coffee, coffee powder, rum, and vanilla extract. Cool to room temperature. Beat in the softened butter.
  2. Meanwhile, place the egg yolks and the 1/2 cup of sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on high speed for about 5 minutes, until pale yellow; when you lift the beater, the mixture will fall back on itself in a ribbon. With the mixer on low speed, blend in the chocolate mixture. Transfer to a larger mixing bowl.
  3. Measure 1 cup of egg whites and freeze or discard the rest. Combine the cup of egg whites with a pinch of salt and 1 tablespoon of the remaining sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Whisk on high speed until stiff but not dry. Mix half of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture; then fold the rest in carefully with a rubber spatula.
  4. In the same bowl of the electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whisk the heavy cream and the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar until firm. Carefully fold the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture. Pour the mousse into a 2-quart serving dish. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for a few hours or overnight and up to a week.
  5. Decorate with fruit and/or sweetened whipped cream just before serving.