Kitchen Yarns

by Ann Hood

  Most days I wrote my novels or articles for magazines like Good Housekeeping and Parenting and Redbook. When I wasn’t writing I was taking care of my children, my loves. Sam and Grace. Three years apart. Blond hair and goofy grins. I sliced so many cucumbers and apples. I zipped them into snowsuits and buckled them into rain boots and pulled on mittens and socks. I lay newspaper on the kitchen table and set up finger paints and large sheets of blank white paper. I had them lie on the floor and I traced their beautiful bodies, then cut along the lines and let them dress their shapes up in feathers and glitter. We made clay hot dogs and read books out loud and danced to Beatles songs. I took them to school and picked them up; drove them to swimming and ballet and fencing and art and drama; packed snacks for the car and lunches for school; and I baked cookies every week. I’d sit in the yard and read The New Yorker while they rode their bicycles in circles around me.

  My friends lived in my neighborhood, in historic houses like mine. There were filmmakers and artists and dancers and writers, and on weekend nights we drank wine and ate expensive cheese, fed our kids quesadillas and put on a video for them to watch while we ate coq au vin or mustard chicken. On one of these nights someone proposed a progressive dinner: appetizers at one house, main course at another, dessert at a third. It felt so grown-up, a progressive dinner. We all seized on the idea and quickly took assignments. There were more neighbors than courses in a dinner, so it was agreed that three couples would take the first one and the other three would be in charge the next time.

  I was to do the appetizers. I cannot remember what I made that night, but I do remember the hum of conversation in my dining room, all the children playing in the yard, walking as one large group down Arnold Street to Thayer Street, two blocks away, where the main course would be served in the backyard. Again, I can’t remember what we ate, just the memory of one woman taking all the kids to her house across the street to watch a video and the stars hanging heavy over us that summer night and the decision to go and get the dessert and just eat it here in this yard rather than move to the next house. So Mary—she was in charge of dessert—went home and came back with two beautiful peach pies. These were not typical peach pies. They had a shortbread crust and a moist filling and the peaches were ripe and perfect, as only peaches can be at a certain time in summer. In his poem “From Blossoms,” Li-Young Lee writes about the pleasure of eating “not only the sugar, but the days.” The recipe came from an editor at Allure magazine, Mary said. Later, she gave us all copies because we could not stop talking about that pie.

  We never did have the second progressive dinner. But the memory of that night—that magical happy time, that pie—has not faded for me, even as the gyre keeps spinning, even as the center doesn’t always hold. Not long after that night, Grace died. People moved away, to Santa Fe and New York City. Losses fell upon us all, as they do. We cannot stop them, not even though, as Lee tells us, “There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background.”

  Whenever I see peaches in the grocery store, I fill a brown bag with several, knowing that tonight at least, there will be peach pie, a reminder of one magical night when I was, fleetingly, happy.

  MARY’S PEACH PIE

  I still have this recipe written on paper with the Allure logo at the top and LINDA WELLS, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, below the logo. So I can only assume that my friend Mary did indeed get this recipe from Linda Wells. To me, though, it will always be Mary’s Peach Pie, served on a magical summer night long ago.

  INGREDIENTS

  PASTRY

  1¼ cups flour

  ½ teaspoon salt

  ½ cup cold unsalted butter

  2 tablespoons sour cream

  FILLING

  3 egg yolks

  ½ cup sugar

  2 tablespoons flour

  ⅓ cup sour cream

  3 peaches, peeled and sliced

  Make the pastry by putting all of the pastry ingredients in a food processor and blending until they just form a ball.

  Pat into a flat disc, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 1 hour.

  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

  Pat the chilled dough into a pie tin and bake for 10 minutes.

  Remove the tin from the oven and reduce the temperature to 350 degrees F. While the piecrust cools, make the filling.

  Beat the egg yolks lightly and combine with the sugar, flour, and sour cream.

  Arrange the peach slices on the piecrust.

  Pour the filling mixture over the peaches and cover with foil.

  Bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees F.

  Remove the foil and bake 10 to 15 more minutes, or until the filling is set.

  How to Butcher a Pig

  I have been invited to butcher a pig. Matt Gennuso, co-owner and chef of Chez Pascal restaurant in Providence, has come out from the kitchen to my table after a night of gluttony. My then husband and I have eaten mussels and duck confit, steak and chestnut bisque. But what has put me into a state of ecstasy is the pork tasting: house-made sausage, slices of leg, pulled brined shoulder, and a chop. I am a carnivore. And the meat that makes me drool, that makes my heart speed up and my eyes shine, the meat I love the most, is pork.

  My moans and sighs have brought Matt into the dining room. Like a tween meeting Justin Timberlake, I gush and giggle and manage to say, “That pork . . .” For a minute, Matt looks as if he isn’t sure what to do with me. But then he brightens. “Hey!” he says. “Want to come butcher a pig with me?” “Yes!” I practically shout. I am giddy with pork, giddier with the idea of more pork.

  “A lot of people say they’ll come and do it,” Matt says. “But then they don’t.”

  “No, no,” I tell him. “I will come. I want to do it. I want to butcher a pig.”

  I do not think of blood or Babe. I don’t yet think about what it will mean to see exactly where my food comes from. At that moment, I only know that a girl does not get asked to butcher a pig every day.

  On the Monday morning I am going to meet Matt, I hurriedly drop my kids off at school, eager to get to the restaurant. I fret about what to wear, unsure of how much blood I might encounter, how much splattering this could involve. Settling on an old button-down shirt and my jeans with the most holes, I remember something a friend told me. On a search for the best authentic jerk pork in Jamaica, he and his wife went to watch a pig being slaughtered. A freshly slaughtered pig, they were told, makes the best jerk pork. His wife has not eaten pork since.

  Of course, my pig has been killed several days earlier, in Vermont. I am going to butcher, not to slaughter. Still, I can’t help but wonder how squeamish I will be. I am the sort of person who walks quickly past dead squirrels or birds on the sidewalk, looking the other way. However, I love a bloody steak, a juicy lamb chop, and most of all, I love pork in all of its incarnations. One of the highlights of my culinary life was a wedding in North Carolina where we were served a roasted pig complete with its crackling skin. I couldn’t get enough.

  Among discerning chefs and diners, there is no disputing that the quality of meat is related to the quality of the animal’s life. The rabbit, venison, lamb, and pork that are served at Chez Pascal are all from milk-fed animals who have not had growth hormones or antibiotics. And they are all butchered by Matt.

  Many chefs say they butcher their own meat because the act forms an important connection to the source of their food. “Sure,” Matt says, “it’s easier to have someone else do it. But it doesn’t seem right. I just really enjoy it. I love seeing where my food comes from.” I did not necessarily have that same belief. Or I hadn’t articulated it yet. I did love picking strawberries and eating them still warm from the sun. I always selected local produce and eschewed tomatoes in their tasteless winter form, preferring to wait until they were in season. And I appreciated good food. I sought out restaurants that were innovative, that cooked using locally grown vegetables and naturally raised meats. But did I really need to look my dinner in the eye? When I glance
d at that pig’s solemn face, would I lose my love of all things pork? Would I be able to thrust a butcher knife, Charles Manson–like, into the animal that had inspired Charlotte’s Web and the lovable, stuttering Porky Pig?

  When I park my car on Hope Street and head toward the kitchen door, I think of my two-year-old daughter, Annabelle, whom we adopted from China a year ago, and the pink face of her most beloved stuffed animal, the eponymously named Piggie. When she asks me, “What did you do today, Mommy?,” will I have the courage to actually tell her?

  In the kitchen of Chez Pascal, a thirty-five-pound dead pig is lying on a wooden cutting board with four butcher knives glistening beside it. Matt eagerly greets me, ready to get to work. He snaps on surgical gloves and begins to show me where the various cuts of meat come from—loin, ribs, shoulders—moving the stiff pig around as he indicates each section. I try to take notes, but I’m mesmerized by the pig. Its ears stick up straight and look not unlike the kind I buy at Target for my dog, Zuzu, to chew. The gray tongue protrudes from its mouth, and its little pig tail sticks out straight. The pig is a bad shade of yellow, and has been slit open from throat to butt.

  “I used to start at the legs and move up,” Matt explains. “Now I start at the shoulders and move down. Maybe because I’m left-handed, I do everything backward.” He smiles, tosses the pig onto its back, and begins cutting. The bones make funny little crackling noises as they break apart. After Matt dries the cavity and spins the pig around to face me, I peek inside. No blood. But a pair of kidneys are still in there. “People eat these,” Matt says. He removes them, and some membrane, and then urges me to feel around until I find the shoulder blades.

  Slowly, I grow more comfortable touching the pig. And as Matt expertly removes pieces, he tells me how he will cook them. This will be brined and slow-roasted; this will be marinated. At one point, the pig’s head is sitting on its naked neck like something out of a horror movie. But soon enough, Matt removes the head, too.

  I begin to understand why Matt does this as he lays out two perfect pork tenderloins. They look exactly like the ones in the meat department of Stop & Shop, except they are fresh. Those supermarket tenderloins in their tight plastic wrappings have been around a long time.

  The pig is starting to look less and less like anything recognizable, and I am starting to get used to the sound of bones breaking. Matt uses his fingers as much as he uses a knife, or even more. The meat comes off easily. “Let the knife and the meat do what they want to do,” Matt says. Here are the ribs, looking exactly like ribs. And the hip, with its ball and socket. “Some people see the whole animal and they think, Oh, poor pig!” he says. “But he wasn’t somebody’s pet. He was raised for this.”

  I am surprised that this thought—Oh, poor pig!—does not come into my own mind. Instead, I am standing here while the pig is being butchered, and I am feeling a mixture of awe and gratitude. Matt tells me he likes to come in here alone in the morning to do the butchering, and I understand why.

  There is almost a reverence about the process. When Matt cleans the table of bone and pig parts and puts the meat together like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle of pork, I am amazed. I am impressed. And unlike my friend’s wife, I am hungry. Hungry for the bacon Matt will smoke, and the loin he will marinate with lemon zest, fennel seed, parsley, crushed red pepper, Dijon mustard, and olive oil. Hungry for the sausages. Hungry, still, for pork in all its delicious forms.

  Weeks after I butcher the pig with Matt, I am eating at a fancy restaurant in New York City with friends. The special that night is roast suckling pig. I ask the waiter if it is milk-fed, from a sustainable farm. It is. And I order it, happily and eagerly. As I eat, I have the same thought I had that morning at Chez Pascal as Matt offered up the beautiful natural pork: As Charlotte said of Wilbur, “That’s some pig.”

  MATT GENNUSO’S CASSOULET

  Cassoulet of Pork Sausage, Duck Confit, Flageolet Beans and Herbed Bread Crumbs

  The first time I had cassoulet, that meaty, beany, slow-cooked dish from the south of France, was at a now-defunct restaurant called Quatorze, on West Fourteenth Street. I still always order it at Café Luxembourg—or, really, anywhere I see it on the menu. The one at Chez Pascal is transcendent, and if you find yourself in Providence, Rhode Island, go straight there and hope that it is available. If it isn’t, you will still have a transcendent meal, of course. Matt and his wife, Kristin, have shared Matt’s recipe, so that when you are not in Providence on a cold fall or winter weekend and crave cassoulet, you can make it yourself. It takes a little planning and a few days, which is why it’s a perfect weekend recipe. Cassoulet is a gastronomical commitment. And a worthy one. Your friends will be impressed. And you will feel accomplished, and satisfied.

  Serves 4

  Please note that this is a three-day process.

  Day 1:

  1 cup flageolet beans

  4 cups water

  Soak the flageolet beans in the water overnight, uncovered in the refrigerator.

  Day 2:

  3 tablespoons blended oil for cooking; olive oil is also fine

  2 pounds pork stew meat, cut into ½-inch cubes

  2 cups carrots, diced into large pieces

  2 cups diced onions

  2 tablespoons minced garlic

  ½ cup white wine

  3 cups veal or beef stock

  3 cups chicken stock

  1½ teaspoons quatre épices

  2 bay leaves

  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

  In a large ovenproof rondeau pan or deep stockpot, over medium-high heat, add enough cooking oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Once the oil just begins to smoke, carefully place the pork, a little at a time, into the pan. You want to sear the meat, not stew it. If you place too much meat into the pan, it will cool down and the meat will sweat, not sear. You are not cooking the pork through at this point, just lightly browning it. Once the pork has taken on a golden-brown color, remove it from the pan and set it aside.

  Discard the cooking oil and the grease that has come from the meat. Pour a dash of new cooking oil into the pan, enough to coat the bottom, and add the diced carrots and onions. Cook for 4 to 6 minutes. Add the garlic and cook till you can smell its aroma. Deglaze the pan with the white wine and cook until half the liquid evaporates. Add the veal or beef stock and the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Then add the quatre épices, bay leaves, flageolet beans, and your reserved seared pork and place the pan in the oven. Cook, uncovered, at 350 degrees F for 2 to 3 hours, stirring every 30 minutes or so. During this stage, you are developing color and flavor. As the stew is cooking, a “skin” or flor (a term from the wine world) is developing on top of it. It is important to stir the stew in order to mix that skin back into the base of the stew. If left unattended, the stew can burn, and that will impart an unpleasant taste. So stir your stew.

  Once cooked, the beans and the pork should be very tender. Season with salt and pepper to taste. This is your cassoulet base, or stew base. Let cool and place in the refrigerator overnight.

  Day 3:

  2 pounds pork sausage, precooked, cut into fourths or thirds, crosswise

  4 duck confit legs, skin removed

  Herbed bread crumbs

  NOTE: You’ll need 4 ovenproof dishes for serving the cassoulet.

  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

  In the four ovenproof dishes, evenly distribute the cassoulet base you made the day before and the precooked sausage; the cassoulet base goes in first, with the sausage on top. Place the duck confit legs in the center of each dish.

  Bake at 400 degrees F for fifteen to twenty minutes, or until the broth has reduced and is bubbling and thick. Sprinkle the herbed bread crumbs on top, continue cooking for four to five minutes, until the bread crumbs are browned, and serve.

  Risi e Bisi

  When we adopted our daughter Annabelle from Hunan, China, in 2005, she had been fed only baby formula for the six months she’d lived at the orphanage in Loudi.
We cannot say what nourishment she’d had for her first five months, before she arrived early on a September morning at the door of the orphanage, tucked into a cardboard box and dressed all in blue and white—socks, pants, shirt. At the orphanage, they named her Lou Fu Jing. Lou because all the baby girls at that orphanage were named for the city of Loudi, as if that gave them a place to be from, a homeland, a history. Fu for good luck, a way to counter these abandoned daughters’ bad luck in their short lives. Each baby got her own third name—actually the first name in the Chinese order of reading names—one that suited or described them. Jing means bright, like a light; she was given that name because, they said, she brightened a room. With her wide and easy toothless smile, her black hair sticking up all over her head, and a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, the name suited her perfectly.

  For my then husband and our son, Sam, and me, she did more than brighten the room in the city office building where we first held her in our arms and the rooms in the cities across China we traveled to that chilly March week to sign papers and more papers to finalize the adoption. Annabelle brightened our lives, which had darkened since we’d lost Grace over two years earlier. Although we had returned to home-cooked dinners and weekend trips in our VW van and boisterous games of cards or Clue, a gloom still hung over us, a grief that, although almost imperceptible to the outside world, still lingered in our home and hearts. Annabelle, that bright light, brought us joy and hope and even optimism again.