Best Food Writing 2017

by Holly Hughes

  Why You Should Eat All the Asparagus Right Now

  BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT

  From the Seattle Times

  Every family has its own food traditions, customs and common memories that bind a clan together. And as Seattle Times dining critic Bethany Jean Clement discovered this year, there’s a poignant comfort in sharing those foods in a year of loss.

  Can a family have a vegetable, the way a state has a bird? Why not? My family’s is, incontrovertibly, asparagus.

  My father grew up east of the mountains, past Yakima, in Sunnyside. As a kid, he worked springtimes in the early morning fields, cutting asparagus before school. He said, if memory serves, that he made the princely sum of 35 cents an hour. At the end of the season—June, usually—the man who owned the fields would take all the part-time child laborers to town for root-beer floats, a treat of a magnitude that never diminished. “They were so good,” my dad would say decades later, momentarily far away.

  When I was growing up, we went over to Sunnyside often, to help my grandmother with the Angus cattle she raised: feeding, branding, mending fence. Spring was the time when we corralled the herd, loaded them into the truck, and took them out to graze on the sage rangeland; it was also the time of an outburst of lilacs and the glory of asparagus season.

  For some years, asparagus grew in the neighbor’s field, across the dusty road from grandma’s house. It was my job before dinner to “go cut some grass”—to take the long, forked-tongued asparagus knife and walk out into the field in the evening breeze, the land seemingly breathing, the light tending toward golden. My grandmother’s collie would stand guard, gazing nobly into the distance.

  It is difficult to equal asparagus that is mere minutes and yards from dirt to plate, just boiled briefly in an old farm pan, maybe a little butter melting on top. But Washington asparagus from the farmers market or the grocery store is still a miracle of spring, and this year, there’s a bumper crop, with a couple-few more weeks of eating left. My dad eventually started grilling asparagus—just salt and pepper and a little bit of olive oil, turned once or twice on a hot grill until just roasty and a little floppy—but we all felt, quite strongly, that any other preparation besides grandma’s and that one would be gilding the spear.

  Then, a few years ago, I accidentally hoarded a lot—a lot—of asparagus butt ends, adding them serially to a bag in the freezer. (Also, if you need any of those blue or purple rubber bands that asparagus is bundled with, let me know.) Eventually, I thought I should try making asparagus soup. This very natural conclusion was met at the extended-family table with undisguised suspicion, but even my dad had to admit that it was good. (It also essentially conforms to his first rule of cooking: Every good recipe starts with sautéing an onion.) The recipe here is adjusted with chicken or vegetable stock for those who do not have an obsessive amount of asparagus butts on hand, and it achieves its own kind of richness.

  My grandmother lived to a vigorously advanced age; she didn’t even give up the last of the cattle until she was 78. My father departed this earth prematurely, by all measures, around this time a year ago. I am not sure he had any asparagus last year at all; he, who had always eaten with an inspirationally majestic appetite, was whittled away at the end, his favorite foods suddenly tasting unbearable, one by one. Terminal cancer is nothing but betrayal.

  Love your loved ones—the people, the vegetables—as much as you can. You never know if this is the last of them for you. Eat all the asparagus.

  Asparagus Soup for Dad

  Serves 4 to 6

  Organic ingredients—especially for the broth, cream, and sour cream—really make a difference here.

  2 pounds asparagus

  3 cups chicken or vegetable broth

  1 small yellow onion

  3 tablespoons butter

  ¼ cup whipping cream

  1 tablespoon lemon juice

  Sour cream for dolloping

  Salt and fresh-ground pepper

  How to prep asparagus: Rinse each stalk well, then chop an inch or so off the butt end; discard those bits. My family then stores the stalks, up to several days, at room temperature standing upright in a bowl of water; this (perhaps apocryphally) is thought to rejuice them. When you’re ready to cook, bend each stalk until it snaps partway up from the butt end; magically, the top is the good part to eat, but the bottoms are also used for this soup (or you can hoard them in your freezer for future asparagus stock).

  For the soup: Bring the butt ends of the asparagus to a boil in the broth, then reduce heat and simmer for 25 minutes. Strain and reserve broth (you can smush extra liquid out of asparagus butts with a wooden spoon if you’re motivated); discard asparagus butts. Sauté onion in butter until soft, sprinkling with a little salt and pepper. Cut the asparagus into about 2-inch pieces; reserve the dozen or so prettiest, smallest tips for garnish. Add the stock and the asparagus pieces to the butter and onion; bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes, until pieces are soft to the bite. Blend in batches or with an immersion blender until fairly smooth. Stir in cream and then lemon juice; taste and season with salt and pepper (it’ll want some of both). Garnish each bowl with a dollop of sour cream and asparagus tips, plus a little pepper over the top.

  La Serenata

  BY FLOYD SKLOOT

  From Southwest Review

  Award-winning poet, novelist, memoirist, and essayist Floyd Skloot has lived in Oregon for decades, but he grew up in Brooklyn and then Long Beach, New York. In this tender essay, he takes us back to that boyhood, to a time when all was not right in his world—and a special restaurant offered him safe haven.

  I opened the door of La Serenata around 5:30 as usual. It was a cold winter evening in early 1959, and the restaurant’s thick garlicky warmth was like a second door to walk through. I waved at Paul Russo, part-owner and bartender, and smiled at his brother Vince, part-owner and maître d’.

  “Evening, Mr. Skloot. We’ve got your table ready.”

  I hung up my overcoat, checked that I had all the papers I needed, and followed Vince to my booth near the kitchen. I liked the anonymity of its location, and the hubbub when Vince rushed through the doors releasing the voices of his mother, wife, and sister-in-law as they cooked.

  Vince unfolded the white cloth napkin for me and handed me a menu. “Mama’s cooking tonight,” he said. “So you might want to try the Homemade Ravioli.”

  “Thank you, Vince. I had the Shrimps fra Diavolo last night.”

  “Make Mr. Skloot his drink, Paul,” he called as he left for the kitchen.

  I was still considering my choice of appetizer when Paul brought over my iced drink, garnished the way I preferred it with lime rather than a maraschino cherry. It was a Shirley Temple. I was eleven years old.

  About fifteen months earlier, my father had been critically injured in a crash during his dawn commute to Manhattan. Waiting for road-side assistance from the AAA, parked just off the edge of Rockaway Boulevard, he went to open the trunk and was hit by a car that hopped the curb and slammed into him, smashing his head and chest against the still-shut trunk, shattering both legs between the bumpers. For a week, it wasn’t clear that he would live. Then it wasn’t clear that he would walk again.

  He’d been hospitalized ever since—first in Queens, not far from the site of the accident, then in Long Beach, a small barrier island off the south shore of Long Island, where we’d been living since 1957. Because children were not permitted to visit, my mother would drop me off at La Serenata each evening on her way to the hospital and pick me up on her way home two or three hours later. I’d never had dinner alone in a restaurant before. I ate and did homework, lingering in my booth, comforted by the warm light, the red flocked wallpaper, the large oil painting of a fantastical Italian castle nestled among snowy mountains. Sometimes Vince would sit with me for a few minutes, sighing as he sank into the red cushioned seat and leaned back, and sometimes he would wink as he rushed past with dishe
s of hot food riding on his arm and in his hands.

  I worked my way through most of the menu, skipping the Steak alla Pizzaiola because at $4.95 it was more than double the price of other entrees, and the Saltimboca alla Romana because Vince said I wouldn’t like it. After a month, I knew my favorites, but tried to keep rotating what I ordered so I wouldn’t get tired of them. Except for Chicken Cacciatore, with its silky sauce and mushrooms, a dish so delicious I had to have it twice a week. My father had been a Kosher chicken butcher until selling his market in Brooklyn when we moved to Long Beach, so I convinced myself that ordering chicken was a way to honor him. Keep him in mind. On the other evenings, I listened to Vince’s suggestions, studied the menu, remembered seeing or smelling various dishes as they passed by me each night or overhearing diners’ reactions, and thought seriously for the first time in my life about what I actually wanted to eat, learning the way appetite and mood and daily circumstance interacted. Some evenings were right for heaped, filling plates of Linguini with White Clam Sauce or Lasagna, others for the spicy shock of Sausage and Peppers with Special Marinara Sauce or the solace of Veal Cutlet Parmagiani, the touchstone of Chicken Cacciatore.

  When he returned to take my order, Vince brought me a complimentary plate with two Clams Arreganata, two steamed mussels in their shells, chopped carrots, and a small square of Sicilian Pizza. He placed a shellfish fork beside the plate.

  “How’d you do on that math test today?” he asked. “I know you studied hard.”

  “I’ll find out tomorrow, but I think I got everything right.”

  The restaurant had opened in 1957 in a building that once housed the Long Beach Public Library. La Serenata’s bathrooms were at the top of a long flight of stairs, the dimly lit space cluttered with extra tables and chairs, stacks of white tablecloths, ice buckets and tongs. The only quiet spot in the place, its hushed air was like a preserved pocket from the original library, and entering its stillness was like slipping back in time, as though I’d stumbled into an episode of the new television show The Twilight Zone.

  The Russo brothers had grown up working in the family restaurant in Brooklyn. They’d swept floors, washed dishes, stocked the kitchen, bused and waited on tables. After it closed, Paul and his wife, Frances, and Vince and his wife, Lisa, had moved to Long Beach and opened La Serenata. The similar paths and timeframes their family and mine had taken to arrive at that place made them feel like relatives to me.

  Paul was the quieter older brother, thirty-six, with thick graying hair, a suave stillness of demeanor, and a slight stoop I imagined he’d developed from bending over to measure precisely the drinks he made. He reminded me of Dean Martin and I kept waiting for him to start singing “Volare.” From behind the bar he seemed to keep a close eye on things in the dining area and knew just when to ask if another drink was needed. We shared a July birth date, which added to my feeling that we were related.

  At thirty-four, Vince had a receding hairline and a rounder face that seemed a perfect expression of his open, friendly, gregarious nature. He moved quickly, issued loud but friendly directives to the waiters or called orders to his brother from across the restaurant. His clothes were always disheveled, white shirt poufed above the waist of his black slacks, collar unbuttoned. When he stood by a table to take orders and write them in his tiny spiral notepad, he couldn’t help taking quick glances around the room. Like Paul, he watched everything that went on so he’d be sure none of his guests felt neglected.

  One evening when he sat next to me I asked Vince why they’d named the restaurant La Serenata.

  “It means ‘Serenade,’” he said, checking the table for crumbs and sweeping a few into his hand. “You know, like the love song for someone special.”

  The first time I remember eating at La Serenata with my parents, shortly after it opened, my mother made her usual grand entrance, demanding that we be moved to a different table from the one Vince had chosen for us, demanding a different set of utensils from the one on the table, a different napkin, a different ashtray. All throughout her performance, Vince was calm and accommodating, soothing, cheerful. When he spoke to her, his voice was a soft croon. He was neither intimidated nor apologetic, but determined to find a way to make my mother feel welcomed despite her shenanigans. He brought over a plate of fresh bread that radiated warmth and a soft yeasty aroma. He made sure her water glass was full. I liked him and the restaurant instantly.

  We were a family that ate dinner out once a week, on Sundays. After we’d moved to Long Beach, the dinners followed a regular monthly routine: Wing Loo’s one week for the combination platters with extra fried rice, then Meyer & Kronke’s just across the bridge in Island Park for seafood, Lenny’s in the west end of town for steak or barbecued ribs, and then La Serenata. Wherever we ate, my mother began with a Brandy Alexander, my father with a Seven and Seven, the drinks consumed slowly with an order of appetizers—egg rolls, shrimp cocktail, oysters on the half-shell. I remember my mother’s disgust as my father savored Clams Posillipo at La Serenata, getting tomato sauce splatters on the tablecloth, on his shirt, and eventually on my shirt as I leaned over to eat a clam off his extended fork.

  La Serenata provided my first taste of veal scallops, of eggplant, Manicotti Parmagiani, cooked shrimp, Biscuit Tortoni. That’s where I learned to like string beans slathered in marinara sauce, and broccoli crisply sautéed rather than boiled until limp. Where I understood the difference between homemade spaghetti and Ronzoni from a box.

  By the time my father was injured, we’d eaten at La Serenata often enough for the Russos to know our peculiarities. Vince would greet us by asking my mother where she would like to sit, effectively blocking her standard table-switch maneuver. He would show her the napkin before placing it in her lap and check out the silverware, sometimes frowning and removing it himself and bringing her a new set without being asked. Paul would mix and deliver the drinks unbidden.

  “I’ll tell Mama you’re here,” Vince would say, implying that of course my mother would be receiving special attention from the chef.

  The restaurant was exactly two miles from our home. Sometimes it felt like another world altogether, a million miles away, so full of family warmth and ease, so different from our way of life, and sometimes when my parents laughed and lingered over coffee and Spumoni it felt like a newly discovered part of our home, no distance at all.

  I think I remember that first dinner at La Serenata so clearly (Shrimps Scampi, Veal Pizzaiola, String Beans Marinara at Vince’s suggestion) because it was the evening my mother announced she would learn to drive. It was as though she’d needed her Brandy Alexander and antipasto before mustering the courage to break this news. My father, bent over his plate, came to a dead stop, threads of fettucine dangling from his mouth, and stared across the table at her for a long time.

  “Well, I’m not about to teach you,” he mumbled, then looked at me and continued eating.

  “I didn’t think you would.” She paused to light her Chesterfield. “So I’m going to take private lessons. Edith Sills knows a man.”

  He shrugged and said, “I hope he knows what he’s getting into.”

  It was difficult to imagine my mother driving. As a passenger she had a peculiar relationship with the rules of the road. Sitting beside my father while he drove, she would argue with traffic signs, certain they couldn’t apply to a vehicle she was in, insisting that he ignore one-way streets or speed limits and stop signs if we were in a hurry, or that east and west were meaningless pieces of information when she wanted to know where Westbury was. And she loathed being told what to do—I think that was a key element in my father’s reaction.

  My mother was forty-seven and had never felt the need to drive. Living in Manhattan or Brooklyn all her life, she’d gotten where she wanted to go by taxi, subway, bus, or trolley, or as a passenger in someone’s car. But the public transit options on the small island of Long Beach were limited and less convenient than she liked, and she only knew a few peop
le there she felt comfortable asking for a ride.

  After taking lessons and practicing for weeks with Edith, she failed her first road test. “Stupid examiner!” she said. “Made me parallel park and had the nerve to say I was too far from the curb.” When she finally passed and began driving a new white Plymouth Fury around town, she seldom ventured off the island, until when my father ended up in Queens General Hospital and she would visit him there daily.

  One night my mother dropped me off during a light snowfall. As the evening passed, the snow worsened to a blizzard and I noticed that there was only one other customer in the restaurant. I knew who he was: Mr. Ritacchio, a language teacher at the high school I would be attending in a few years. Usually, his table at the center of the restaurant attracted a steady progression of visitors, students and parents, colleagues. But tonight it was just the two of us and he sat with his back toward me, glancing at the window. Vince kept looking out the window too, checking the weather, shaking his head. The restaurant was eerily quiet.

  When Mr. Ritacchio left, Vince exchanged glances with Paul and they both shrugged. Vince went back into the kitchen. I heard him talking to his family but couldn’t make out the words. Paul picked up the phone near the bar and made a call, speaking softly. I wasn’t used to the subdued atmosphere, but it felt cozy rather than alarming.

  After a few minutes, Vince sat next to me. “Your mother,” he said. “She’s still at the hospital with your father and didn’t notice how bad the snow is. She can’t drive in this.”

  I remember feeling a rush of confusion. My mother couldn’t come for me? Maybe she’d have to sleep in the hospital and maybe I’d have to sleep in the restaurant. Maybe upstairs in the Twilight Zone there was a secret room with a bed or something. Would the Russos cook me breakfast? That would be all right. All of it would be all right.