Best Food Writing 2014

by Holly Hughes

  “Like I’d told you, the meat falls right off the bone. You just lift the spine out like a chain. I can do it for you, if you like.”

  “Uhhh . . . I don’t think I can eat this. It’s just . . . you know.”

  The day before, when I’d bought the fish, I’d told him my plan, how we’d be eating these little fish like they do in trendy restaurants. He’d seemed into it then, unless he hadn’t been listening, or hadn’t understood. I guess I talk about cooking food a lot, using terms that don’t have any meaning for a person who doesn’t cook food. I guess it’s easy to tune me out. It’s certainly no effort for me to tune him out.

  “These have faces. They look like fish.” He’s trying to excuse himself, to extricate his feelings from my hostility, but it’s only digging him in deeper. People who gladly eat dead animals but don’t like to be reminded that they are eating dead animals are not people I have much patience for.

  “Okay, so don’t have the fish. You can have mashed potatoes and salad for dinner.” Mashed potatoes and salad is what a kid who’s not into what Mom made for dinner eats. I feel like I’m Joe’s mom a lot of the time.

  “Mashed potatoes and salad?” he says. “That’s not very exciting.”

  “So make yourself something else.” He does not. Joe eats a modest serving of unexciting salad and mashed potatoes, and by that point I’d be happier if he’d slapped together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead, because at least he’d be proactive about getting what he wants.

  I find I no longer want my smelt, either, but I gamely eat a few ounces. The flesh does fall right off the bone. The caper sauce is excellent. I drink most of the rosé. Before we opened it, I had been thinking maybe we’d have sex later that night, but right then I wasn’t even interested in being in the same house with Joe.

  A few days later, I made smelt salad with a dab of the caper sauce and the leftover flakes of smelt—rich and fishy and still with some stray bits of crispy skin, fin, and needle-thin bone. I ate this at work atop long pieces of toasted rye and cornmeal bread I’d made myself, interspliced with nibbles of a kosher pickle I’d pickled myself. It was a splendid lunch, serendipitously Scandinavian. All it needed was some pickled beets. And while it’s no feat to make no-knead bread, or to make kosher pickles (that it’s all a matter of letting cucumbers and garlic cloves sit forgotten in salt water for a few days seems like an April Fool’s joke), I thought to myself, “I am awesome.” I wanted Joe to be saying this, and for the same reasons I was thinking it: that I made things that tasted good, that I figured out how to on my own, that I so shrewdly navigated our little family’s constantly ailing finances through cruel storms into civilized ports of comfort and even occasional refinement.

  Daniel—Daniel of the trout and the remote Appalachian cabin—loved my food. It enthralled him, as did nearly everything about me. Only once was he less than thrilled, at a dry and chewy noodle kugel I’d baked using thick Amish egg noodles instead of the lighter supermarket kind, and even then he tactfully said he didn’t think this misguided Amish-Jewish fusion ranked among my culinary triumphs. I broke up with Daniel because I eventually found that I was not capable of being adored so much by one person. He spoke French and rebuilt motorcycles engines and split wood with an ax and won awards for his journalism. He thought everything I did was wonderful, and I left him.

  Which I don’t regret. On paper the relationship was ideal, but in practice the responsibility of being idolized smothered me. Now I try to please the man I did marry by being who I am, and it backfires. Even when I set out with lovely intentions, I have to cook on my terms. To love me is to love my food. For him, I do not slice onions but dice them; the limp, stringiness of cooked onions reminds him of worms, the sight of which makes him retch. For him, I eschew spaghetti and fettuccini and linguini for the same reasons. For him, I buy Tofurkey sausages. There are far greater concessions.

  When I was a teenager, you could have knocked me over with a feather if you told me I’d someday marry a skateboarder who plays drums and makes art, so elated would I have been. Skateboarding is the thing Joe slips away from the house for on Sundays, leaving me alone with Frances to cope with a pile of smelt and a cold, muddy playground calling her name. Then he goes to band practice. Then, after dinner, he washes the dishes and complains about how difficult it is to clean a sheet pan in our shallow sink, and about the amount of dishes there are to wash, even though I never reach for a utensil or pot without first thinking, “Do I need this? How can I go about this prep in such a way as to minimize cleanup?” because that is what working in professional kitchens and graduating from one of the top cooking schools in the country will pound into you. Then, after the kitchen is acceptably immaculate, Joe gets out his colored tape and works away at his art. The sight is so familiar by now that I don’t even notice him. He shows me a new piece and I can’t come up with convincing enthusiasm if I do like it; if I don’t like it, I just say “hmm” or “ahh,” then retire to the bedroom with a book.

  Would that have happened with Daniel or someone else, that after more than ten years together he’d wander in from the garage, black grease under his short-clipped nails and an industrious evening of manly repairing and improving under his belt, and I’d grunt in indifference? Would the oily cling of cooking smelt put him in a grumpy mood once he set foot in a kitchen thrumming with the energy of a meal in unstoppable progress?

  A week later, we still have some of the caper sauce. I cook two decent-sized artichokes in the pressure cooker to serve with it. It’s taken me years, but I finally figured out that artichokes taste best when you cook the hell out of them. I put them on a plate, one for me and one for him, and set an empty wooden salad bowl next to it for us to put the leaves in.

  The artichokes are rich and meaty, more so as we work towards their gray-green hearts. Cleaning an artichoke is involved, about as much work as gutting a fish, though it’s not nearly as slimy or fishy. Eating an artichoke is work, though tasty and relaxing work. We obliterate our artichokes, dipping them in caper sauce and leaving behind only a thorny pile of spiny scraped-up leaves, and Joe gladly works his way toward his favorite part, the rich and tender area toward the center of the base and stem, and I realize you can’t count on everyone to be satisfied with making a meal of artichokes, or to think of such a thing as a special occasion, and I decide to let the smelt thing slide.

  Stocking the Pantry

  A GREEN MOVEMENT

  By Jane Black

  From Dark Rye

  As a reporter and columnist for the Washington Post, New York Times, Slate, and New York magazine, Brooklyn-based Jane Black dives into issues of food politics, sustainability, and the vagaries of foodie trends. Who better to explicate how 2013 became the Year of Kale?

  Had you been a foodie at the dawn of the twentieth century—though, of course, no one would have called you a foodie then—you very likely would have followed the teachings of Horace Fletcher. A wealthy businessman, who lived in a grand thirteenth-century palazzo on Venice’s Grand Canal, Fletcher was neither a scientist nor a chef. Nonetheless, his prescription to chew each bite 32 times, a technique soon dubbed “Fletcherizing,” was widely accepted as a key to good health. “Nature will castigate those who don’t masticate!” he warned. His adherents, who today might be called celebrity endorsers, included John D. Rockefeller, Henry James and U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Leonard Wood.

  The concept, of course, seems ridiculous today. But each food fad is a reflection of its age. Fletcher, who also advocated more sensible practices such as eating less meat and only eating when hungry, was keen to cure upper-class ills such as gout and dyspepsia. More recently, doctors have prescribed low-fat, low-carb and vegan diets (to curb obesity), while chefs have brought us nose-to-tail eating (to save the planet), Korean tacos (to redeem fusion food), and cupcakes (ostensibly to promote equal parts nostalgia and portion control).

  And now, we have kale: glamorous but respected; sexy but not in a cookie-cutter way
. The Cate Blanchett of vegetables. Like any starlet that has hit the big time, kale is everywhere. It has bumped romaine out of Caesar salads. It curls across pizzas and alongside locally raised pork chops. It’s the muse for 50 Shades of Kale, a cookbook and love letter too. “I hold her leaves in my hands,” writes author Drew Ramsey. “Her fine, iridescent dust glimmers. I am invincible. Immortal. Potent.” It is even the inspiration for American Kristen Beddard’s crusade to enlighten the French who, despite their claims of gastronomic superiority, remain oblivious to kale’s appeal.

  Why kale? The question echoes across the blogosphere. But kale’s powerful allure on this side of the Atlantic is hardly a mystery. While most trendy foods appeal to only one camp of obsessives—acai is for health nuts; bacon is for food fashionistas—this most humble member of the cruciferous family is a crossover act: a uniter not a divider.

  To the fashionistas, kale is the poster child of the chic farm-to-table movement. Led by chefs such as Alice Waters and author Michael Pollan, its adherents prize “authenticity” and yearn for a simpler, more connected way of life. To its credit, kale has a vibrant history. It was farmed in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. By the Middle Ages, it had become so popular in England and Scotland that the word actually meant “dinner,” just as “tea” did later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During World War II, Britain urged home gardeners to grow kale for its “Dig for Victory” campaign, a historical moment that prompted New York magazine to cheekily note that “kale did its part in the defeat of fascism.”

  But more important, kale offers to those who cook it a badge of honor. Sure, they could buy foie gras or truffles. But that would be too obvious—too “one percent.”

  To make something delicious out of kale demonstrates pluck, a trait prized by those who also raise chickens out back. Rightly or wrongly, it also signals a cook’s commitment to farm-to-table values, like buying local and, of course, eating your vegetables.

  That kale is versatile is another plus. Kale salads have a monopoly on trendy restaurant menus and the charity circuit. But kale can be eaten raw, steamed, sautéed, baked or deep-fried. Cooks can present it “authentically” with white beans and sausage or, creatively, as cornmeal and kale spoon bread. In 50 Shades of Kale there are recipes for kung pao kale, kalejitos with rum, lime and mint, and chocolate-kale fudge pops. (Perhaps 25 shades would have been enough.)

  Healthy eaters, in turn, love kale for its nutrient density.

  One cup of kale has just 33 calories but packs nearly 700% of the recommended daily dose of vitamin K, more than 200% of vitamin A and 134% of vitamin C. Plus it’s got so much iron that some are calling it the “new beef.” A salad of kale, avocado and quinoa—today’s trendiest grain—is hard to beat. No wonder it’s the most popular item on salad bars at Google’s corporate offices.

  With every fad, though, comes the inevitable backlash. Curiously, the first attacks have been lobbed, not at kale’s pretensions of grandeur, but at its health credentials. Writing in the Huffington Post, the respected author Nina Planck argued that raw kale—even baby leaves—are too tough to chew. Moreover, cooking it—and cooking it with fat—is what gives kale its superior nutrition.

  Like all crucifers, kale, Planck explains, contains high concentrations of a family of toxins called oxalates, which interrupt the absorption of potassium and calcium. You need heat to destroy oxalates. Meanwhile, the vitamin A in kale is in fact beta-carotene, which the body must convert to a useable form in the presence of fat. Likewise, calcium is best absorbed with fat, saturated fat in particular. “That’s the nutritional wisdom behind the pairing of greens and ham in the American South,” Planck concludes.

  Such a critique is worthy. And it could do kale’s stellar reputation some damage. America is a country built on immigration and, as such, it lacks the deeply rooted food cultures of countries like France, Italy and China. That, combined with the peculiarly American belief that what is new is always better, dooms us to lurch manically from one culinary fad to another. Before kale was the “it” vegetable, sundried tomatoes, arugula, portobello mushrooms and celery root each wore the crown.

  Still, the backlash, such as it is, isn’t changing people’s minds about kale yet. There’s a petition on Change.org to make the first Wednesday of October National Kale Day (though to date it has fewer than 700 signatures). Vermont folk artist Bo Muller-Moore is locked in a trademark battle with fast-food giant Chick-fil-A to allow him to keep selling T-shirts that read: “Eat More Kale.” If the ubiquitous raw kale salad proves not to live up to its nutritious and culinary promise, perhaps the solution is to mix and match culinary fads. Anyone ready to Fletcherize?

  THE 16.9 CARROT

  By Dan Barber

  From The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food

  Chef/owner of New York City’s Blue Hill restaurant and its farm-to-table sister Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Dan Barber is a gifted and thoughtful cook, continually pondering big-picture questions about food and the environment. His new book is equal parts memoir, eco-science, and rousing call-to-arms.

  One day, during an especially cold stretch of winter in 2006, a few years after Blue Hill at Stone Barns opened, Jack came running into the kitchen, smiling big. Jack has curly hair and—especially back when his beard was still full and flowing—the look of a man who works closely with nature. You might say (although he wouldn’t) that he’s sort of a cross between Paul Bunyan and a young Bob Dylan.

  On this particular day, he held two big handfuls of bunched carrots, their green tops waving in the air like pom-poms. It’s hard not to be taken by Jack’s electric good cheer in moments like these—showing off a new variety, or a perfectly ripe vegetable. You’d think such displays would happen often in a kitchen that’s connected to a working farm, but the truth is that we tend to ignore one another, the farmers and the cooks, precisely because we’re so close. The morning harvest arrives, it gets organized in the receiving room and stored in the coolers, and by the end of dinner service it’s gone.

  “We’re sort of like a marriage,” Jack once said. “We need to do one of those date nights every week just so we can actually talk.”

  Jack placed the carrots on a cutting board and took a step back, allowing us to admire his work. The last time he’d displayed his wares like this, it was an exotic variety of ginger, and before that an “extra dwarf” bok choy that fit into my palm. But carrots? They were always growing—in the field during the spring and summer and in the greenhouse most of the winter and spring. They were usually good carrots, sometimes exceptionally good, but did they deserve such swagger?

  “Sixteen-point-nine, pal,” he finally said. “Sixteen-point-freakin’-nine.”

  “Sixteen-point-nine?” I repeated, not understanding. “Brix,” Jack said, removing a small handheld refractometer from his pocket as evidence. Refractometers, which look like high-tech spyglasses, are popular tools for measuring the Brix, or amount of sugar present, in a fruit or vegetable. They’ve been used for years to verify levels of sweetness in grapes, helping winemakers determine ideal harvest times.

  But Brix also indicates the presence of healthy oils and amino acids, proteins, and—this is key—minerals, those ingredients that Albrecht recognized were so critical for flavor. A 16.9 reading means the carrots were 16.9 percent sugar—and bursting with minerals. It’s an extraordinarily high number, which Jack made sure I understood, even as the cooks, being cooks, drifted away to get back to work.

  “Off-the-charts high,” Jack said, watching me take a bite. He wasn’t kidding. The variety, mokum, had been shown to reach a Brix of 12, a fact Jack discovered before his visit to the kitchen. So the astonishingly delicious mokum carrots I tasted that day were, in fact, off the charts. . . .

  The 16.9 mokums lasted only a few services, but the small harvest left a big impression. Which is why, the following week, early on a frigid January morning, I stood with Jack in front of a row of future 16.9’s incubating in the rich soil of th
e greenhouse. He had offered to explain to me in detail how the carrots had come to be so delicious.

  The 23,000-square-foot greenhouse was calm and quiet, save for the soft hum of the overhead fans. Jack wore a look of pride as he surveyed the rich black soil that spanned the building. The soil came from the excavation of the Stone Barns parking lot, which partly explains Jack’s fondness. After the construction crews unearthed the virgin soil, Jack rescued it from the dumpster. Then he created a recipe for the highest-quality compost, mixing it in to build up the soil’s organic matter. He applies a wheelbarrow of his compost to every new row of vegetables.

  I was familiar with the power of compost (what I understood of it) and impressed by the quality of Jack’s personal blend. So I had a sense of how, after several years of building fertility, the soil could now nurture a carrot with a Brix of 16.9. But how exactly?

  Jack pointed to the soil. “There’s a war going on in there!”

  “War” seemed a funny way to put it. The process had always struck me as extremely cooperative: Leaves and needles and grasses eventually die, forming a brown carpet of carbon on top of the soil. Herbivores (such as cows) and birds (chickens) periodically disturb the surface, allowing soil organisms (worms) to reach up and pull this organic material deeper into the dirt, where it—along with other material such as dead roots—is broken into nutrients available to the plants.