Feeding the Hungry Ghost (11 page)

1 cup cooked edamame (optional)

In a large pot, bring 3 cups of the broth to a boil over high heat. Add the rice and bay leaf. Stir gently, cover, and reduce the heat to low. Simmer until all the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender, about 30 minutes for white rice, 40 minutes for brown rice. Remove the bay leaf and set the rice aside. (The rice can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a day or two; bring to room temperature before proceeding with the recipe.)

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, onion, and eggplant. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables soften, about 5 minutes. Add the celery, green bell pepper, tomatoes, paprika, and thyme. Continue cooking, giving the vegetables a stir now and again, until they are tender and gilded with oil and spices, 5 to 8 minutes. Stir in the cooked rice and the remaining 2 cups broth.

Reduce the heat to medium and cook until all the liquid is absorbed yet the mixture is still moist, about 10 minutes.

Season with salt and pepper. Stir in the lemon juice and parsley. For a pop of protein and bright green color, fold in the edamame, if you like.

This will keep covered for several days in the fridge, and the flavor improves over time.

STANDING
on
CEREMONY

The big lessons, from seasonal eating to eating together as a family, are a little like sex. It’s all well and good to hear about, but it can seem like the practice or politics in another country — very far removed from your own overstuffed life. It’s only when you experience it yourself that you get that sense of wow, where have I been all these years? May the delights and mysteries of the world
reveal themselves to you in the first go. However, most of us need to lather, rinse, and repeat these lessons over and over again before the grin-making, grateful-to-be-alive feeling or the “Ah, now I get it” feeling sinks in. This is the nature of imprinting for us imperfect beings. So whether you’re instructing or learning, it helps to come to the big lessons with patience. Because it’s always going to be somebody’s first time. And you want it to be fabulous.

My family steeped me in ritual before I even knew it — stealth induction, very clever. Friday nights, we’d go to the home of Marcella and her husband, my grandfather. His name was Aaron, but he was not the sort of guy I’d dream of calling by his first name. Ever. Even Benjamin, who was twenty-five when he met him, referred to him as Mr. Kanner, and may I say, his voice occasionally broke when he did so.

The chummiest I got was to call him Grandpa. He didn’t notice me most of the time, and I tried to encourage that by keeping the hell out of his way. We were related and yet like different species to each other. He was not kid friendly, nor was his house, all stone and formal upholstered furniture and breakable objets d’art.

There were no toys on hand, just one well-worn copy of
The Velveteen Rabbit,
which I dutifully read every Friday, since my cousins weren’t interested. We were —
are
— close in age, so when we weren’t busy fighting, we played together, chasing each other down the hall, our shrieks ringing out; and though we were told to be careful, I wiped out on the living-room terrazzo and knocked out my front tooth. It was only a baby tooth, so no harm done, other than initial trauma and profuse bleeding everywhere. Just another Friday evening, another walk along the knife edge between order and chaos, a chaos just held in check by dinner.

We sat at the dinner table together, the whole family — that
was just the deal. By the time I was in the picture, the whole family meant Aaron, Marcella, their two grown sons, their wives, five grandchildren, and at least one family friend or distant cousin or someone my grandmother had run into and invited, as well. We crowded around the table — Italian, midcentury, with all its leaves in — my grandparents presiding at either end, me usually squished in between adults, straddling a table leg.

My grandparents weren’t observant Jews, but even so, Friday night, Sabbath, was special. The table would be set with starched white linen, the kind you never see anymore, sterling, china, and crystal stemware.

Dinner would mean soup or salad to start; a serious main course, which might be roast leg of lamb or stuffed peppers or spaghetti and meatballs; rolls and butter; potato or rice. There were vegetables, but of a distinctly old-school style, lacking brightness, flavor, freshness, and oomph. In regular rotation — peas and carrots (frozen and then boiled) and gelid iceberg lettuce salads. There were marinated artichoke hearts, which I came to love once I realized their name had nothing to do with choking your heart, and asparagus, canned, anemic, slimy, and, we were told, “a delicacy.” Like that would make us want to eat it.

On the bright side, there was dessert. Marcella was gifted in the ways of lemon Bundt cakes, coconut layer cakes, brownies, sugar cookies, and buttery, ground-almond cookies rolled in a profligate amount of powdered sugar. She called them wedding cookies, but they’re beloved all over, with many iterations — they’re called Mexican wedding cakes, Greek kourabiedes, and ghraybeh across the Middle East. My favorite name for them is liar’s cookies, because as soon as you bite into one, you’re dusted and incriminated. Or worse. I could never manage to eat one without inhaling the powdered sugar and having a coughing fit.

The rest of the meal, though, was prepared by Cora, my grandparents’ magnificent housekeeper. She was large, elderly, motherly, black, but with the heart and sensibility of a yenta. Cora had a definitive sense of How Things Ought to Be that I can only wonder at. The Friday night family dinner edict may well have come from her.

She cooked for all of us, including those of us too young to realize what a big honking deal it is to prepare enormous multicourse meals for a horde. Also a big honking deal — exposing little kids to grown-up food. Very grown-up. Archaic, even — I mean, whose idea was beef tongue? Who thought it would be a big seller to a six-year-old? Cooking it with raisins might have lent it sweetness, but it looked like what it was, with all those weird little papillae bumps on it. Don’t get me started.

If we didn’t love the tongue, there were no McNugget backups. We could eat or not eat what was being served; there were plenty of other things on the table; and well, better luck next Friday — maybe there’d be fried chicken.

I’m sure there were more than a few meltdowns, maybe from the kids, maybe from their parents. I have a vague but recurring memory of Cora threatening to kill herself if we didn’t eat the mashed potatoes and my grandfather getting up from the table to pour himself a tumbler of scotch.

Maybe he wasn’t so old, but he had all the accoutrements: false teeth, which he kept in a glass by the bed, hearing aid, thick glasses, and — yecchh — a truss. The precursor to the more macho weight belt, this was a complicated, allegedly flesh-colored, many-strapped thing that mostly resided on a chintz bedroom chair, where its sole purpose seemed to be to scare the bejesus out of me. I gave it a wide berth, never so much as touched it.

What with the truss and my debacle on the terrazzo, the
kitchen became my playroom of choice. I was obsessed by the big, black gas range with a cooktop that lit up witchy rings of blue flame. Marcella and Cora’s knives worked better as bludgeons than as sharp implements, so I couldn’t do too much damage. The two women didn’t mind having me underfoot, but they had dinner to make and went about their business. They didn’t talk about process or recipes; both had experience and instinct. And perhaps in Cora’s case, recipes were her source of power, and she wasn’t about to give that up.

If they weren’t instructive, they weren’t restrictive, either, especially my grandmother. If six-year-old Ellen wanted to dump a box of raisins in the brownie batter, she was all for it. The kitchen was where I had my first sense of
Yes,
where I caught a glimpse of the self I still want to be the rest of the time — clever, creative, composed, not tripping up on my own craziness.

But you can’t stay in the kitchen forever. Cora died, leaving my grandparents stranded and clueless. They hired and fired a series of housekeepers, all of whom were doomed because they weren’t Cora.

Marcella tried to keep the Friday evenings going, but she and my grandfather were well and properly old by then. The granddaughters were older, too, and suddenly fuggy with teenage girl hormones. We served the food, whisked away the plates (sometimes before people had finished eating), and cleaned up, but we had school and social things and other interests. We had Friday-night dates with boys. Even when we managed to show up at our grandparents’ house, we were so goofy and moody, my grandfather must have yearned for the past, when we were smaller and more tractable.

Looking back, I’m appalled by how casually we, the grandchildren, took things. We assumed Friday night meant it was time
to trot out the heavy table linens; that was how the world worked. We shattered more than a few of those crystal glasses. But now I think it’s not such a bad thing to have the line blurred between ceremony and daily life, to fold one into the other. That’s how I like to live.

Benjamin and I eat dinner together, no matter how late we’ve worked or how crappy the day might have been. It may not be posh, but it’ll be home cooked and crazy with whatever’s in season. We use Marcella’s sterling silverware — we never did get around to buying stainless — and plates we got in Kappabashi, Tokyo’s restaurant district. They’re heavy, blue-and-white, each different but all painted with scenes of old Japan — boys chasing butterflies, a tree bent by the wind, a dragon reaching out a claw. The table is lit with tapers in tall brass candlesticks that, along with the silver, could use a bit of polish.

Now is when we share our respective days, our dreams, our deadlines, the lyrics to that song Benjamin just downloaded, and my idea for a great thing to do with barley. With it, we usually share a glass of wine. It returns us to ourselves.

After dinner, Benjamin and I often move to the living room, a riot of Marrakech red and Caribbean blue, with pieces from all the places we’ve been to and loved. We recline on the low Moroccan couch, facing each other like bookends, the soles of our feet just touching if I stretch.

It is an epic couch that can seat many friends who come over to laugh and drink and eat. If they sometimes fall asleep there, too, we try to take this not as an insult, but as a sort of compliment — that you’re welcome here; you can be who you are; and if at the moment you are sleepy or tiddly, then you nap, and we will tuck a quilt around you and try to whisper and keep the dog from licking your face. And when you wake up, the party will resume,
we will be glad to see you all over again, and there will be something wonderful to eat.

Farinata

In Liguria, they call it farinata; in Provence, they call it socca. Because this Mediterranean pancake is made with chickpea flour, it’s not just luscious, it’s gluten-free. With a crispy crust and a tender inside, it’s great by itself, or topped with roasted vegetables, tapenade, sweet and tangy jewel-tone Red Onion Jam (
page 63
), or vibrant Spring Pea Puree (
page 64
). You can make the batter ahead and bung the frittata in the oven, enjoy a glass of wine, and your farinata will be crisp, hot, and ready to serve.

Take it from stylish appetizer to more of a meal by serving it with a harvest of fresh roasted vegetables or a big, tumbling kale salad.

Serves 4

1 cup chickpea flour
*

¾ cup water plus 1 tablespoon

¼ cup olive oil, plus more for the skillet

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Pour the chickpea flour into a medium bowl. Slowly pour in the water, stirring constantly, until a thick batter forms. Add the ¼ cup olive oil and stir until just combined. Cover and refrigerate for at
least 1 hour and up to overnight. The batter should be creamy and golden, with texture and color like tahini’s.

Place one rack in the uppermost position of the oven and another rack in the middle position. Preheat the broiler. Lightly oil an 8- or 9-inch skillet.

Pour the batter into the skillet, using a spatula to spread the mixture into an even layer. Sprinkle salt and pepper on top.

Place the skillet on the uppermost rack and broil until the farinata is golden, starts to firm up, and takes on a pancake appearance, 8 to 10 minutes.

Turn off the broiler and set the oven to 450°F. Transfer the farinata to the middle rack. Bake until the farinata smells toasty and a light brown crust forms on top, about 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool slightly. Slice into wedges and serve.