Asparagus Season

My needs are simple, and I seek joy in small doses. Joy arrives two miles from my village each year in mid-May when Joe Hall, who lives down on Terry's Plain Road, markets simply with a hand-painted sign all I need to know: asparagus is here.

Terry's Plain Road is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a preserved rural landscape. In addition to houses that used to be part of working farms on the east side of the Farmington River, one who travels along the road (preferably by bike) can see the militia drill field that dates to 1683, the town's first ferry landing, and where the town's first school once stood, but is now a field that is covered with cheery daffodils during the early weeks of spring.

But, back to asparagus and my personal revelation of God's intention for this member of the lily family. I moved overseas in the late 1980s and remained a quasi-ex-pat for ten years. During that decade, I made occasional visits home and enjoyed walking the aisles of grocery stores, to marvel at their gluttonous abundance. Something changed in the American grocery business during the decade I was gone, doing my shopping in small neighborhood stores. What used to be seasonal in America became available year-round. I pondered on the presence of cantaloupes and asparagus in November and December. What were they doing there? Didn't asparagus arrive around Easter? Shouldn't cantaloupe be eaten while wearing shorts? And more important, what's the point of having this produce year-round if it offers no flavor and its texture is unyielding?

In 1998, when I moved from Panama to Connecticut, I found myself facing asparagus on nearly every plate I was served when dining out, and I grew weary and suspect of it until eventually, I decided I didn't like asparagus any more. It tasted bitter. I crossed it off my list of favorite foods.

Until I found Joe Hall's farm.

Memorial Day 1999 was uncommonly hot, in the mid-90s. I watched the town's parade--a mile-long march of sweaty veterans, scouts, fife-and-drum corps and pint-sized baton twirlers--then hopped on my bike for a leisurely ride. I had not explored the area much since winter's arrival soon after I settled into my new home, so I did not yet know Joe Hall or his asparagus, only his pumpkins. As I pedaled by, I saw the sign--ASPARAGUS--and having some money and a bike jersey with a pocket in the back, I bought a bunch. I took it home, cooked it and had an epiphany. This is what the snap of the stalk should feel like when breaking off the bottom end. This is its proper shade of green when it cooks. This is what God intended asparagus to taste like.

I am patient as I await asparagus season, but once it arrives--three weeks in total--I become seriously competitive. I time my travels down Terry's Plain Road to when I sense there might be asparagus; when it's there, it's there, and when that day's harvest is gone, that's it. I feel victorious when I score a bunch, and I almost don't mind that the price of the bunches rise while their girth shrinks each year. Payment is by honor system, and Joe leaves a notebook and pen on the table so that his fans can leave him notes of appreciation.

Joy arrives in spring, when there is local, organic asparagus, a result of one man's labor in years-old fields. Joy feels like a bunch of just-picked asparagus resting against my spine, protruding from the pocket of my cycling jersey. I barely notice the hill I detest and must pedal up as I ponder the ways I can cook my bounty once I arrive home.

To be Poor is not to be Impoverished

Last week, I was invited to hear the journalist, essayist, novelist and educator Pete Hamill deliver a presentation at Boston University. Hamill was in fine storytelling form, and I sat back and allowed myself to be transported mentally to 471 14th Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn, beginning in 1935. His childhood was informed by a milieu of Irish-Catholic immigrants and The Great Depression. I imagined his story as a parallel chapter to my father's childhood in the Bronx, which was punished by the fear, hunger and loss of that era.

Hamill's father was denied the opportunity to be employed in the middle-class jobs available in their Irish-American neighborhood because he had lost a leg in a soccer match. In those days, Irish-Americans got ahead and made good wages as policemen and dock workers. Due to his disability his father got a job at the florescent light factory across the street and never complained about the pain or blisters on his stump of a leg. Wages were low, but it provided his family all the free light bulbs they needed; Hamill recounted everyone in his home appearing a sickly shade of blue due to those lights.

Hamill spoke in measured phrases: "Without a library, I don't know where I'd be," he said. He attributed his access to public libraries in his youth to the Scottish-American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The way he told it, Carnegie was refused a library book as a child because his Scottish accent implied to the librarian he would lack respect for a loaned item. Hamill attributed the later industrialist Carnegie's gift of thousands of free libraries in America to this single childhood incident; I couldn't help but wonder why there is a dearth of Carnegies in America nowadays. Whither thou goest, generosity?

"I knew we were poor because of the way we lived. But to be poor is not to be impoverished," he said. "Thanks to the library, I sailed to Treasure Island and spent a summer in the castle of the Count of Monte Cristo. Who was poor?"

Hamill didn't dwell on the hardships of his childhood but marvelled at what he considered the best thing--the sense of stories found in the streets. "My mother was a cashier at the RKO theater. The ushers would go up and down the aisles paging people, shining their flashlights as they progressed among the rows. One night, there was 'Paging Willy Pagano. Paging Willy Pagano,' down the aisle, under the screen, up the next aisle. When they found Willy Pagano, blam, blam, blam. Shot him dead right there. Now that's a story. That was the next day's news."

Thanks to the internet and Twitter and YouTube and Facebook, we have access to hundreds of stories from around the world that reach us instantaneously. But I grasped what Hamill meant when he spoke of a sense of impoverishment despite our drowning in communication. He challenged us to continue to know more about human beings one at a time instead of en masse. 

We are drowning in an embarrassment of riches, yet where has it got us as human beings?

Pastiera Napoletana

I will confess upfront: I am not a observant Christian, although I was raised in the Episcopal church. Yet year after year, during Easter week, I find myself singing an Easter hymn embedded in my deepest cranial recesses, "He has risen, He has risen...He has burst His three days prison....Death is conquered, we are free, Christ has won the victory." Commercially, I welcome Easter for the pastel decor that appears on store shelves: chocolates wrapped in festive hues, bunnies, Peeps, bright jelly beans, chocolate rabbits.

Easter is full of symbols: Eggs--the indelibly popular item of Easter--signify birth and new life. The cross, appearing in many forms as well as eaten on Hot Cross Buns, represents Christ's crucifixion and His resurrection. And the fragrant, trumpet-shaped Easter Lily is replete with symbolism, including hope, purity, peace; even its underground bulb suggests Jesus' tomb.

I was surprised to learn how much symbolism is embedded in the dessert I chose to make for Sunday's dinner, the traditional Neapolitan Easter pie, or Pastiera napolitana. I lived in Naples, Italy for four years, and that city's pastry shops sold this pie at this time of year--golden, dense and topped with crossed strips of dough. I have never made this pie but now, when I have decided to do so, I referred to my cookbook called, "La Cucina delle Regioni d'Italia: Napoli." I use this book rarely and enjoy that its recipes are written in three languages: Napolitano, Italian and English. I of course referred to instructions in English yet was nearly immediately bewildered by the recipe's instructions.

The pie's filling is made with ricotta cheese and corn (corn?), symbols of well-being and family prosperity. I must soak 200 grams of corn for a few days and change the water daily. I took a shortcut instead, happy to have an excuse to patronize my favorite market in south Hartford, D&D, where I could buy the appropriate corn in a can, or ask la signora who knows how to slice prosciutto better than anyone else in all of Hartford, what she uses. She pointed me to the cans, which contain wheat. Its instructions are in Italian. It was an easy decision, and the shelves were well-stocked, which suggests how many descendants of Neapolitan immigrants live around Hartford and who flock to D&D for the same familiar succor as I.

I abandoned my original recipe. It was vague and translating grams for the dry and wet ingredients into ounces and cups tried my confidence. I consulted the internet where I found several recipes that varied greatly. Should I use two cups of sugar or one-and-a-half? Seven eggs or two yolks and one whole egg? It's no wonder that the official website of the pastiera informs me that "every Neapolitan housewife considers herself to be the one and only to have the best or authentic recipe." There must be as many recipes as ever there were number of housewives. I avoided Martha Stewart's recipe; she doesn't seem sufficiently Italian to me.

So, the symbols embodied in my now-cooling pastiera are numerous. The cake symbolizes Resurrection. The orange peel grated into the batter represents the perfume of the orange blossoms that grew in the convent gardens where the nuns who invented the pie lived. The eggs, new life. Cinnamon, the wealth of an ancient Italian who could come into possession of Asian spices.

My pie is finished. As I enjoy its aromas--vanilla, cinnamon, orange and lemon peel--I am full of fond memories of my generous neighbors along Via Suola San Gennaro who so often treated me as family.  And on this sunny and seasonally cool Easter weekend, I look forward to consuming with friends these symbols of a joyful and holy season. Buona Pasqua tutti.

Of Spring and Saints

Something rare has happened in New England this year: spring has actually arrived at the same time as spring's arrival on the calendar. On March 20, the temperature rose into the 70s, and the trees' bare branches stood stark against a flawless canvas of blue sky. Since I have lived in New England, I have regarded March as the host to lingering, unwelcome cold and occasional blizzards. Indeed, last year on the same date, the mercury rose anemically to 39 degrees F, and an online headline dated March 23, 2011 read, "According to the National Weather Service...a snow storm is barreling down on New England with snow already falling in some parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts."

On this year's first day of spring, I took a break midday and mounted my bike for a ride. I anticipated seeing a Busby Berkeley-like spectacular of flowers in front yard gardens and along the roadsides while I pedaled. My anticipation was greater than the reality. Instead, I found patches of color here and there, small clumps of flowers warming up in the wings for the full-throttled display yet to arrive. White, yellow and ecclesiastical purple crocuses are out. Along a bank of the Farmington River in Simsbury where I purposely seek out patches of Dutchman's Breeches, I saw their predecessors, pale pink Spring Beauties. And here and there, daffodils--a common harbinger of the coming floral eruption--are in various stages of bloom. Daffodils: how I love their sunny disposition. They're cheery little stalwarts that crop up in factions large and small. I am not alone in my admiration of daffodils. Poems that exalt them have been penned by William Wordsworth, Robert Herrick and e.e. cummings.

As I passed scattered clumps of daffodils, I thought of the tale of Santa Zita, the patron saint of domestic servants. I was surrounded by reminders of the Saints when I lived in Italy but admit that I learned few of the stories of their canonizations. Like Roman and Greek myths and the gods that propel their stories, I have only so much capacity to keep the details well-ordered in my brain. But I remember well Santa Zita, whose tale I learned while visiting the Church of San Frediano in the Tuscan town of Lucca.

Zita was born in the year 1218 AD; at the age of thirteen, she became a domestic in the home of the Fatinelli family. The online Catholic encyclopedia described Zita as of "happy disposition" and of piety and "exactitude with which she discharged her domestic duties." This is the tale I remember from my visit to the church during one of my several visits to Lucca: Zita often took leftover bread from the Fatinelli's household to feed the poor in the streets of Lucca. One day, her master caught her with her full apron gathered in her hands and demanded to see what she was taking from their home. Zita opened the skirt of her apron and, rather than the stolen bread for which she would have been punished, her apron was full of daffodils. It was this miracle that led to her canonization in 1696. Lucca, a peaceful walled town which to me resembled a serene park that circled the town rather than a medieval fortification, celebrates in late April "i moschi dei fiori di Santa Zita," when the piazzas are filled with flowers--particularly daffodils--for sale and admiration.

I remember this story, not only because it involves daffodils but because it's like a fable of the beauty of caring about those who are less fortunate than those of us with greater abundance than we really need. Express a small saintly act today and don't forget to admire the flowers.

Slow down, you eat too fast

Later today, I'm attending a Slow Food Swap in New Haven, Conn.  Day-to-day, I meet few people that know what the Slow Food movement is, so a brief primer is called for.

In an organic nutshell, Slow Food is a grassroots movement that recognizes and celebrates the pleasure of well-prepared foods that integrate a sense of community, culture and sustainability. Worldwide, members live in 153 countries and are grouped in 1,300 chapters.

The Slow Food movement was started by the Italian Carlo Petrini in 1986 in response to the opening of McDonald's first fast food outlet in Italy near Rome's picturesque and oft-photographed Spanish Steps. Petrini, a journalist who wrote restaurant reviews, felt that food was increasingly losing its value in our lives.  Initially, the group's manifesto was not as much a protest against the questionably named "food" offered by McDonald's and its brethren but against "faceless international business interests." It's nearly impossible to escape the presence of international commerce 26 years since the group's founding, but fortunately collective regard for how food is produced and consumed continues to grow.

The Slow Food USA chapter or "convivium," was founded in the year 2000.  By that time, McDonald's had opened outlets in more than 100 countries, adapting to local tastes by offering items such as a grilled salmon with dill sandwich in Norway, the McHuevo in Uruguay and a sausage patty with soy sauce in Thailand.  There are different ways to "eat local" I suppose.

I am delighted by Slow Food's Italian roots since I lived and ate in Italy for four years. I shared numerous meals with my generous Napolitani neighbors who invited me often to celebrate family, tradition and the bounty that nature happened to be offering that particular week. Had I not had the opportunity to live in Italy, I would not have experienced pizza at its best (that is to say in Naples), eggplant with skins as shiny as polished ebony, or just-picked figs, still warm from the sun and hosting tiny ants who I competed with to enjoy the fruit's succulence. I could wax rapturously about fried zucchini blossoms in March; summer's promise suggested by hillsides of pink-blossomed almond trees in April; three short weeks of strawberries in June; August's tomatoes fertilized by the volcanic soil of Mt. Vesuvius; and bitter rapini and sausage panini served in the streets during i festi di San Gennaro every September.  But that would barely scratch surface, and I do have a swap to attend later today.

I have made two Italian citrus olive oil cakes to take to today's swap.  I made this cake once and found it delightfully rustic and absent of sweetness I typically require from dessert. I hope that among a group of Slow Food acolytes, I find an audience who is receptive to this very un-American dessert.  I tried researching the origins of olive oil cake and found more sources attributing it to Portugal than to Italy. In a 2009 article from New York magazine, journalists Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite declared that the olive oil cake at Greenwich Village's Abraço was a "homey, unpretentious" superstar that signaled "hope on the horizon."

It is with hope that I take my cakes to today's food swap. I hope they are well-received; in my wildest imagination, my cakes become the subject of swap-bidding wars. And it is with less hope and more certainty that I walk away from today's event reminded of the abundance with which my life in so many ways is blessed.

A Bridge to Memories

This week, the Wall Street Journal published an article about a Floridian nonagenarian--Maggy Simony--who is on a crusade to restore respect for the nearly lost art of afternoon contract bridge sessions and the homemade luncheons that were consumed in due course. In her day, Mrs. Simony made sacrifice bids and breaks and discards with her friends while nibbling upon chicken à la king, cream puffs and Waldorf salads.  The article described the pastime as an activity from a "largely vanished era."

Bridge occupies a spot in my childhood memories of the 1960s. My mother played bridge every other Thursday evening with women from the neighborhood, women named Kitty and Phyllis and Eugenia.  At card tables set up in the living room, they gossiped, shuffled and dealt cards, drank coffee and ate homemade desserts. I looked forward to Friday mornings when I might find small bowls of leftover Bridge Mix, a shiny jumble of light- and dark-chocolate covered nuts and raisins.  I never learned to play bridge, nor did my mother attempt to teach me or my siblings, so I too have contributed to the game's protracted death.

The waning of attention to bridge caught my imagination in this article as much as the food that was consumed during that era of housewife-centric afternoons: layer cakes, meat loaf, chicken salad, aspic.  I have a few trappings of those more genteel days from my mother's and grandmother's homes: relish trays, aluminum Jello molds, linen napkins and floral tea cups and saucers.  One relic I particularly cherish is a book from my grandmother's house misleadingly titled, "A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband."

The first edition of "A Thousand Ways" was published in 1917; my edition is dated 1941. Unlike conventional cookbooks' chapters segmented by courses or types of food, this book's chapters follow a narrative of the evolving lives of newlyweds Bettina and Bob. Chapter names invite the reader into the intimacy of Bettina's trials and triumphs as a housewife: "Bettina's First Real Dinner," "A Guest to a Dinner of Left-Overs," "Polly Comes for Mildred," and "The Modern Refrigerator."  Before I, as a curious cook, can arrive at a chapter's recipes, I am invited to lose myself in the gripping narratives of the first time Bob brings his boss home ("Oh, dear!"), the contents of telegrams from Uncle Bob, or Aunt Isabel's comments about Bettina's housekeeping.

The recipes are as dated as the names of the characters that populate Bettina's busy days and evenings. The reader is introduced to Ruth, Alice, Rev. Henry Clinkersmith, Aunt Nell, Cousin Kate and big Cousin Charles.  Bettina's friends and family members are treated to endless menus of delicacies: creamed veal, jellied beef, "emergency biscuit", codfish balls, caramel custard, steamed suet pudding and finally, in chapter CVIII, chicken à la king.  And the narrative, oh my!  There is plenty of blushing and exclaiming and deflecting credit for lovely tables to the bearers of the flowers that made it so, and dialogue such as "Mary gave a waffle party today," to which Bob replies, "A waffle party in the afternoon? That was queer!"

Given our assumed modern sophistication in just about every way today, it's easy to take cheap shots at the innocence of last century's young married wives, and Bettina's earnestness and loyalty to her marriage and friends. For me, this book--as well as my memories of spying from my bedroom upon my mother's "bridge ladies"--makes me yearn for a time when we all had expectations that were less complicated, lives less cluttered than we have come to allow, and the abiding sense of security that dinners prepared by satisfied-to-please housewives endowed upon us.

Fond Memories of Who Knew How to Eat

A few years ago, I endeavored to write an essay I entitled, "Loss of a Muse," when a man who served the role as such stepped out of my life temporarily.  More recently, my muse has been on hiatus--since last November--which was duly noted by the aforementioned man who misses my writing.  The last time I wrote for my enjoyment (and perhaps for that of a small audience) was on the first day when my village awoke to the reality of Nor'easter Albert, which left more than 800,000 residents of Connecticut without power for up to a week or more. I was giddy with the beauty of the sunny winter scene and the confidence that surely, by day's end, power would be up, and I could type from my handwritten essay. Once my power was restored seven days later, I had been victimized by a series of events that conspired to sever my tether to that which inspired me.  Until today.

This morning, I read a review of Jacques Pepìn's latest cookbook that included the line, "Behind every great chef is a fond memory of a mother who knew how to cook." Perhaps, but not necessarily or completely so.

My mother was a good cook.  She had four children and a hungry husband to feed and did so admirably and without complaint.  I have fond memories of her cooking, some of which I now recognize as "poverty meals": creamed corn beef on toast, turkey croquettes, corn fritters with sausage and syrup; crusty rösti potatoes; Chinese almond cookies, made with lard; and cakes, puddings and pies.  She made good pies with homemade crusts.  We ate baked hams and roast beef and on holidays, turkeys.  I own the cutting board that hosted the carving of all those meats; it was a wedding gift to my parents in 1953.  My father did the carving.  He kept his good knives off-limits to his sometimes unruly children by stashing them in a cabinet high above the refrigerator.  He feared that if he didn't instill in his young charges respect for a good knife we might use them indiscriminately to open boxes or to coax stuck slices of bread from the toaster.

Yes, I have memories of a mother who could cook, but my passion for food is inspired more so by my father who was an adventurous and insatiable eater.  He in turn drove my mother to cook to fulfill his needs and curiosities.

Were it not for my father, I may have never eaten a proper fondue--the recipe came with the fondue pot they received at their wedding in Bern, Switzerland.  He made thin, toothsome palatschinken filled with strawberry jam and sprinkled liberally with powered sugar. Because of him, my rearing included egg drop soup; overly sweet halvah; freshly-shucked oysters, destined for the Christmas dressing, slurped from the half-shell early in the morning; snails in a rich, herbaceous butter sauce and topped with dime-sized pieces of puff pastry; a whole crispy fish in spicy Chinese black bean sauce; and curries, the hotter the better. I was not allowed to eat Chinese food with anything but chopsticks, nor were my siblings and I allowed to drink anything but a juice glass of National Bohemian beer when we ate Maryland steamed crabs, encrusted with Old Bay seasoning.

My father modeled why it was worth going out of one's way to buy cinnamon-raisin rolls in Hamden (a section of Baltimore, now quite trendy) or all the way downtown to Lexington Market for the best rye bread.  He would admonish the clerks at Silber's bakery when asked if he wanted the bread sliced or if they tried to slip the loaf into a plastic bag; both actions were sins against a good loaf of bread, in his opinion.  It does not surprise me that I am now compelled to drive miles out of my way to the Neapolitan grocer's in south Hartford to buy Pecorino Romano or prosciutto di Parma, although many Italian goods are available more conveniently but with far less passion or interaction at local suburban supermarkets.

We're in the dead of winter now, and I struggle during these days to be inspired by the rutabagas or cabbages that have been sitting neglected in the back of my refrigerator since late October.  On this frigid but sunny Sunday in New England, I awoke to single-digit temperatures and acknowledged that it will be months before the local earth is capable of providing me reasons to rejoice in the little miracles produced of seed, soil, sun and rain. So, I satisfy myself with the indulgence of memory that a single line from a cookbook review--fond memories of a mother who knew how to cook--can evoke.  That will be enough to sustain me, for now.