Eating for Beginners
Eating For Beginners
An Education in the Pleasures of Food from Chefs, Farmers, and One Picky Kid
Melanie Rehak
* * *
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
BOSTON • NEW YORK
2010
* * *
Copyright © 2010 by Melanie Rehak
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rehak, Melanie.
Eating for beginners : an education in the pleasures of food
from chefs, farmers, and one picky kid / Melanie Rehak. p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-15-101437-8
1. Gastronomy. 2. Cookery. 3. Applewood Restaurant
(Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.) 4. Rehak, Melanie. I. Title.
TX633.R45 2010
641'.013—dc22 2009047467
Book design by Victoria Hartman
Printed in the United States of America
DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Lines from "A Winter's Tale" by Wyatt Prunty appear courtesy of the author. "A Little
Madness in the Spring" is reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of
Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, editor, Cambridge,
Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, copyright © 1951, 1955,
1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Lines from "Variations: The
Air Is Sweetest That a Thistle Guards," edited by J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser,
copyright © 2001 by the Literary Estate of James Merrill at Washington University, from
Collected Poems by James Merrill, edited by J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser. Used
by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Lines from "Reluc
tance" from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright
© 1934, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright 1962 by Robert Frost. Reprinted
by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
To protect the privacy of individuals, pseudonyms are used
for the kitchen staff at applewood restaurant.
* * *
for Noah
* * *
My subject is my place in the world.
—WENDELL BERRY
* * *
Contents
Introduction [>]
1. IN THE BEGINNING [>]
2. WE EAT WHAT WE ARE [>]
Candied Orange Peel [>]
Jicama Slaw [>]
3. WHAT IS CHEESE? [>]
4. SCHOOL FOR CHEFS [>]
Oblique-Cut Caramelized Parsnips [>]
5. MEET THE FARMER [>]
Puffed Cayenne Rice [>]
Corn Off the Cob with Garlic [>]
6. LUCKY ME, LUCKY YOU [>]
Lucky Dog Creamed Spinach [>]
7. INTO THE FRYING PAN [>]
Easy Flip Raisin French Toast [>]
Not So Easy Flip Crab Cakes [>]
8. ONE FISH, TWO FISH [>]
Lobster à l'Américaine à la Steve and Melanie [>]
Pasta with Delicata Squash, Sage, and Pine Nuts [>]
9. NIGHT SHIFT [>]
10. RICH IN IMPERFECTIONS [>]
Brined Turkey [>]
Jean's Brussels Sprouts [>]
11. AWAY IN A MANGER [>]
Pasta with Bacon, Farm-Fresh Eggs, and Cream [>]
Lucy's Osso Bucco [>]
12. FARM TO CLEAVER [>]
No-Grill Pork Tenderloin with Balsamic Vinegar [>]
13. OUT TO SEA [>]
Pan-Roasted Sardines with Caper Butter [>]
Seasickness Cure [>]
14. SWEETNESS AND LIGHT [>]
Under the Bed Almond Cookies [>]
Melanie's Prune Bread Pudding [>]
Acknowledgments [>]
Introduction
A few months after my son Jules turned one, I started working in the kitchen of a small restaurant down the street from my apartment in Brooklyn, New York, called applewood (the lowercase a being a choice the owners hoped would convey plenty in contrast to the sharp, aggressive point of the capital A they had forgone). This unexpected move prompted various raised eyebrows and one miscommunication that resulted in several of my husband Noah's friends thinking I had gone belly up as a writer and needed alternate employment to help keep the family afloat. At a moment when many new mothers marvel at how quickly time passes or weep over outgrown onesies and booties, I instead endeavored to become, as the great food writer M. F. K. Fisher referred to herself in 1943, "the gastronomical me."
It was not, however, because I felt pangs of longing for the tiny (screaming, incomprehensible) baby who was gone forever. Nor did I do it because I had long harbored a secret desire to be on Top Chef, win thanks to my brilliant use of okra in all five courses of a meal including dessert, and open my own restaurant in a blaze of media glory.
I did it because I needed an education. The one I already had, which had served me quite well for some decades both professionally and personally, had lately begun to seem outdated. This was partly because of Jules. Though no one tells you until after the fact, every new parent experiences some variation of this feeling: one day you're a responsible adult with a clear grip on the details of your life and how they function; the next, you wake up to whole constellations of problems that you've not only never dealt with before, but had no idea even existed—exploding diapers, sleep schedules, an ever-present epaulet of spit-up on all your shirts that you don't notice until you've already left the house, and so on. And in spite of the host of experts (and their books and magazine articles and web sites) who seem to arrive with every new baby in the twenty-first century, there is always a question hovering in the air: Which of these things—you and the baby sleeping, you and the baby wearing clean clothes, you and the baby doing or not doing something you don't even know about yet—actually matter?
And then Jules grew old enough to eat solid food. Just as I was moving out of the confusion about layering his clothing and teething signs and why he crawled backwards first, I encountered a whole new set of choices I was unequipped to make. In short: What was he supposed to eat?
This was a question I had already been asking myself for some time, and it represented the other area in which my education seemed to be failing me. Eating, as it happened, was a subject in which I had been interested long before having a baby. Before I ever cracked any books with titles like The Seven Sleep Habits of Highly Effective Infants, I was cuddling up at night with Julia Child and James Beard and Mark Bittman and falling asleep with visions of roasts and sautés dancing in my head. None of which is to say that I was a genius in the kitchen. I was a pretty good cook if not necessarily an inspired one. I was game for almost anything and I liked to throw dinner parties, but I was also happy eating an egg-and-cheese sandwich from a cart on the street. I patronized greenmarkets and was (and am) a long-time fan of numerous unpopular vegetables, like Brussels sprouts, though I didn't (and don't) expect others to be since I personally can't stand melon of any kind.
But then, somewhere in the few years before Jules was born, my feelings about food started to change. Along with Child and Beard and Bittman, I had begun reading Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser and Wendell Berry. Initially, I wasn't sure I wanted to—I feared being lectured about what I was eating and then feeling even more guiltily ignorant than before. I resisted buying Fast Food Nation
for several years, but when I finally did start it, the book quickly won me over. Not only were my concerns about its tone unfounded, but it was a pleasure to read. I was actually relieved that the train I was on when I first opened it stalled for three hours, allowing me a chunk of uninterrupted reading time. There were no lectures, only useful information and engaging narratives. Next came Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, and after that Berry's What Are People For? Together, these books presented, much as my child did, a host of issues that I was first unaware of and then unsure how to prioritize—issues that often left me paralyzed in front of a produce or dairy or meat display at a supermarket or greenmarket. What, exactly, was I supposed to be buying?
I knew that I should be eating less meat. Pollan's intentionally simple motto had stuck with me as it had with so many other people: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." But when I did eat meat, I still didn't know what kind it should be. Was grass-fed more important than organic or vice versa? And what if I didn't have access to either? What about food miles and growth hormones and climate change and land preservation? Maybe it would be easier to give up meat altogether.
I also knew I should avoid processed food. (Fast Food Nation permanently destroyed my love of McDonald's French fries, and for about a week after I finished it I couldn't even walk by a food store without feeling both slightly nauseated and suspicious about the origins and production of every item on display.) But there were moments when doing so seemed impossible or just hugely inconvenient, and other moments when, to be honest, I just didn't want to. I wanted to think a little more about what I ate and why, but I couldn't keep up with all the information coming my way, important and well intended as it was, and as a result I simply blocked a good deal of it out.
Which, I should say, was no easy feat. Every newspaper or magazine I picked up seemed to have a story about people who ate only certain foods or cut out certain other foods for health reasons, political reasons, or environmental reasons. One study I came across claimed that sixty-one percent of Americans were confused about what to feed their families. I found that depressing but was also relieved to know I wasn't alone. Clearly the old methods of learning about food have been made obsolete by everything from enormous changes in agricultural practices to modern technology and the work schedules it has brought with it. As children, many people I know, myself included, rode in the seats of grocery carts on weekends, watching their mothers and fathers buy food at the nearest market (and pestering them for candy). Now, even if you do still engage in the receding practice of shopping for groceries in person instead of online, the odds that you'll be able to teach your child anything during those visits are pretty slim; you'll be too busy debating whether or not paying the extra two dollars per half gallon for hormone-free milk is worth giving up something else on your grocery list. (For the record, I happen to think it is.)
Since I was now in charge of steering the cart (and saying no to the candy), I thought I'd better sort out a few matters to pass on to my son. If the lettuce I bought was organic but came from California, was I saying I cared more about what I put into my body than I did about fuel consumption and global warming? If I chose chicken that was hormone-free but not free-range, was there any point? Was it really so bad to eat a hot dog once in a while? One thing I knew for certain: I was not about to give up my favorite Austrian cookies. I felt vaguely distressed that I refused to allow my panic about the world's dependence on oil stand in the way of revisiting many happy childhood afternoons by eating hazelnut wafers, but there it was.
What really happened when Jules got old enough to eat, in other words, was the unavoidable collision of two worlds of information—parenting and eating. To begin with, there, in the form of my baby son, was an actual person for whom I wanted to leave the planet in decent condition. That goal was no longer just a noble abstraction. Then there was the amazing fact that I had before me in a highchair someone who had literally never tasted anything, whose body had yet to be tainted by MSG in bad Chinese take-out, or clogged by palm oil "butter" on movie theater popcorn, or compromised by pesticide residue. I was unprepared for both the sheer weirdness of this—was it possible that I actually knew a person who had never eaten chocolate?—and the huge responsibility I felt to get it right. Yet I couldn't imagine not feeding Jules the things—okay, the hazelnut wafers—that had brought me joy as a child, even though many of them were imported over long distances and very sugary. Some part of me resented the fact that something that should have been a pure pleasure, teaching a person to eat, was now so complicated.
One moment stands out. It was around five in the morning on a raw midwinter day when Jules was about eight months old. He was an extremely early riser, clearly a genetic anomaly (I myself am famous for having slept through the night on my second day home from the hospital). True to form that morning, I was lying just this side of comatose on the kitchen floor in my bathrobe, watching him crawl around happily after the Cheerios I had scattered all over the room. This setup was one of my main parenting accomplishments to date. I had discovered that if I set him free on this mission, he would be both fed and occupied without my having to move much at all. Occasionally he would crawl over to me, offer me a Cheerio, and then stuff it gleefully into his own mouth before scrambling off to find the next one. (When I described this scenario to an acquaintance whose son was a bit older than Jules, instead of the sympathetic smile I expected she gave me an odd sideways look and then, obviously choosing her words with the utmost care, said slowly, "That's a funny story," in a tone that made it clear she didn't think it was funny at all and was considering calling Child Protective Services.)
So there I was, contemplating mustering up the effort to press the "brew" button on the coffeemaker as Jules scuttled around, when the knowing recent words of a friend popped, unbidden, into my mind. "The organic Cheerios are best."
All of a sudden my morning routine, so elegant in its energy-saving simplicity, was blown to bits. My Cheerios, naturally, were not organic. Rather than life-saving little circles, they now appeared quite suspect. The General Mills logo on the screaming yellow box looked like nothing so much as a sinister black sneer. I was totally sleep-deprived, but still able, somehow, to feel bad about what I was feeding my child. (As for the issue of whether or not my floor was clean enough to lie on, much less eat off of, well, let's just say that this is a book about food, not hygiene. And also that I was more than willing to trade a certain amount of risk in one area for a certain amount of rest in another.)
***
But there was a light in the foodie darkness, and unexpectedly it emanated from a restaurant devoted to local farmers and sustainable agriculture: this was applewood. David and Laura Shea, who own the restaurant where I eventually landed in the kitchen, believe fiercely in these principles and yet are all about the joy of both cooking and food. They don't fetishize food or lecture their patrons about it; they do what they need to in order to feel good about their business and their own lives, but if you just want to eat dinner, it's okay by them. Humanity, in the deepest sense of the word, matters to them as much as ideology. As David explained to me, when you run a restaurant you're in the business of catering to people's desires. You can give them access to their fondest memories simply by serving them a meal. What that means is that at certain moments you give in and order a flat of strawberries from California because the weather has turned warm and it's strawberry season in the heart and mind even if it isn't on the East Coast of the United States.
In addition to having made sense of all of this for themselves, the Sheas were also somehow managing to stick to their principles and run the restaurant while raising two daughters: Tatum, born just a few weeks after applewood opened in 2004, and Sophie, who had been three at the time. So it was Laura's voice that interrupted my guilty musings that cold morning as I pondered the box of Cheerios—the voice of a parent who knew all about what food could and should be but also knew that, as I was fast learning, being
a parent, just like being committed to sustainable agriculture or eating locally, sometimes means figuring out what you think is right and then facing reality.
"The first time I saw Sophie eating Cheetos, a part of me died a little inside," Laura once confessed to me. "But I didn't say anything and I was very proud of myself. You can't always be championing a cause. Don't you sometimes just want to have a Snickers bar and call it a day?" She had paused for a moment and then said thoughtfully, "I'm realizing it's evolutionary. Where I am now is different from where I was a year ago or a year before that."
Yes, I thought on that cold winter morning, lolling on the floor amid the Cheerios as the sun finally came up. I will evolve.
Which was how I found myself, a few months later, in the kitchen at applewood, wearing a chef's jacket, with many long days and nights of cooking ahead of me. After that came some very early mornings (my favorite) and long days working on some of the local farms that supplied the kitchen. If I was really going to learn about food, if I was going to understand the choices and the compromises for myself and be able to make them with confidence, I wanted to learn about it from, quite literally, the ground up. I wanted to understand, finally, who (besides Joel Salatin, the farmer featured in The Omnivore's Dilemma and later in the documentary Food, Inc.) was behind the phrase "local farmer" and who, exactly, got the food these farmers grew to those of us who were supposedly so concerned about it. I wanted, I confess, to butcher a pig. So I went to the barns and the fields and the restaurant kitchen, and I started over.
Then, just as I was embarking on my new food life at applewood, Jules became a child who, despite being born of a mother who once ate goat brains in Marrakech and a father who would happily live on kimchee and innards of innumerable varieties, wouldn't eat anything. He wouldn't eat eggs, meat of any kind, or cheese. Or pasta. Or toast. Yes, I said toast. In light of this (I know: toast), I suddenly felt that—all politics aside—it would be pure heaven to prepare food that would actually be appreciated by people who would actually eat it when it was served. People who would not throw it to the ground shouting "Da! Da! Da!" and demand yogurt for supper. And so, in addition to being the place where I learned about the pleasures and aesthetics and complications of cooking with local food and changing the menu daily, the place where I may have worked harder than ever before in my life, applewood became for me something all parents of small children secretly long for on occasion, even though we're never supposed to admit it: an escape.