A Homemade Life (17 page)

We weren't aiming high, and I was too nervous to have much of an appetite, so we decided to make a salad. It was early spring, and ramps—those skinny wild leeks, like scallions with flat leaves—were in season. We bought a small bunch, along with some romaine and a fat avocado. Then we stopped for a round of Cowgirl Creamery's Mt. Tam cheese—made in the county where I was conceived! Oh, the coincidence—and, on the way back to the car, a baguette and beer.

I let Brandon take the lead on dinner. By this point, anyway, I could hardly look him in the eye. I knew a kiss was coming. I just didn't know when. I felt bashful, impatient, itchy with anticipation. I put my head down and tried to focus, slicing the avocado. Meanwhile, he whisked together a dressing, a slurry of lime juice, olive oil, soy sauce, and Vietnamese chile-garlic hot sauce from my refrigerator door. I warmed the baguette in the oven, put the cheese on a plate, and set the table. He went to the refrigerator to retrieve two beers. When he turned around to open them, I knew I had to do it. I asked if I could kiss him. He smiled and pulled me in, setting the beers on the counter behind me,
and then he leaned down and kissed me. Then he kissed me again. We looked at each other, giggled, and leapt in the air, and then he danced me around the kitchen.

The next morning, we retrieved our dirty dinner plates from the kitchen table, wiped up the crumbs, and walked, wide-eyed and woozy, into we didn't know what.

FRENCH-STYLE YOGURT CAKE WITH LEMON

i
wrote about a version of this cake on my blog on August 1, 2004, and it's the reason Brandon's friend Meredith—and, by extension, Brandon himself—found me. I owe this cake quite a debt of gratitude. It may be simple, but to me, it borders on the magical.

This type of cake is an old-fashioned classic in France, the sort of humble treat a grandmother might make on a Sunday afternoon. Traditionally, the ingredients are measured in a yogurt jar, a small glass or ceramic cylinder that holds about 125 milliliters. But because most American yogurts don't come in such handy, multipurpose packaging, I've rewritten my own recipe to use cups.

You could certainly eat this cake plain, but I like to finish mine with two glazes: first, a lemony syrup that soaks into the still-warm cake, and second, a thin, glossy icing applied once the cake is fully cooled. Together, they're stupendously good. But if you're short on time or ingredients, you can certainly get away with only one of them.

FOR THE CAKE

1½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

Pinch of salt

2 teaspoons grated lemon zest

½ cup well-stirred plain whole-milk yogurt (not low fat or nonfat)

1 cup sugar

3 large eggs

½ cup vegetable oil, such as canola

FOR THE SYRUP

¼ cup powdered sugar, sifted

¼ cup lemon juice

FOR THE ICING

1 cup powdered sugar, sifted

3 tablespoons lemon juice

 

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-inch round cake pan with butter or cooking spray. Line the bottom of the pan with a round of parchment paper, and grease it too.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the lemon zest and whisk to mix thoroughly.

In a large bowl, combine the yogurt, sugar, and eggs, stirring to mix well. Add the flour mixture and stir to just combine. Add the oil and stir well. At first, it will look like a horrible, oily mess, but keep going, and it will come together into a smooth, pale yellow batter. Pour into the prepared pan.

Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, until a toothpick or cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Do not overbake.

Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Run a thin knife around the edge of the pan, and invert the cake onto a wide, flat plate or pan. Remove and discard the parchment paper. Invert the cake back onto the rack so that it sits upright, with the shinier, slightly domed side facing up. Set the rack over a rimmed baking sheet.

In a small bowl, whisk together the syrup ingredients. Spoon the syrup slowly atop the warm cake. Some of the syrup will run down the sides and onto the baking sheet; don't worry. Cool completely.

In a small bowl, combine the icing ingredients. Whisk well to dissolve the sugar completely. Spoon the icing over the cooled cake.

Serve immediately—the icing will still be soft and a bit juicy—or wait until the icing has firmed up, about 1 hour. Whichever way you like.

 

VARIATION:
Instead of making a lemon-flavored cake, try orange or tangerine, or Meyer lemon, when in season. You can also try replacing the vegetable oil with a fruity, round-flavored olive oil; it brings a subtly richer flavor and wonderful fragrance. And for an especially delicate, sweetly fragrant cake, try replacing ½ cup flour with ½ cup very finely ground blanched almonds.

 

Yield: 8 servings

T
he day after Brandon and I met, I asked my friend Keaton to join us for a drink after work. I was already crazy about him, but I needed a second opinion. It's a good idea to get one when you've been diagnosed with a serious illness, and the early pangs of love are not much different.

Keaton and I became friends during our junior year in Paris, although we first met when we were freshmen. We took a political science class together, and I noticed her because one day she sat next to the guy I had a crush on. She was beautiful. Also, she had a Fugazi patch on her backpack. I had spent the better part of my teens listening to Fugazi, a band from Washington, D.C., and I knew for a fact that they didn't sell any band merchandise. The patch on her backpack had to be unauthorized, a fake. I gave the guy a polite hello and then slouched to the other side of the auditorium to quietly fume that this girl with the fake,
fake!
Fugazi patch had stolen him. What a hussy.

But two years later, we found ourselves in Paris together, and I had to admit, against my better judgment, that I liked her. I couldn't help it. I even told her, giggling, about my fury over the Fugazi patch. She confided that the guy I'd had a crush on was actually the resident assistant from her dorm, and that he was kind of strange. She was ter
rific. For six months, we palled around Paris, teaming up for research projects and sharing packets of Peanut M&Ms from the Métro vending machines. She was with me when I met Guillaume, and when he disappeared, and when we came back to the States, we drew together in the campus housing lottery and wound up sharing an apartment. It was in a dark, gloomy building on the edge of campus, but we did our best to make light of the brown shag carpet and the mold on the bathroom ceiling. I taught her how to sear tuna in a cast-iron skillet, how to roast Brussels sprouts and potatoes, and how to make my family's favorite cranberry chutney with crystallized ginger and dried cherries. She shared her formula for spinach salad with green apples, toasted walnuts, and blue cheese and made me giggle every night when she put in her mouth guard (she grinds her teeth when she sleeps) by saying “I love biscuits,” which came out as “I love bis-CUSTH.” I love that girl. Also, because no one ever gets her name right, when she introduces herself, she says, “Hi, I'm Keaton, like Buster Keaton.” I just love that.

When I decided to go to graduate school, part of the reason I chose Seattle was because Keaton lives here. She's the kind of person you want to have around, especially if you might be needing advice on important matters. And especially when those matters concern your heart and a man who, only three weeks earlier, you hadn't known existed.

So, at around five in the evening on the second day of his visit, Brandon and I met Keaton at a bar called the Alibi Room, underneath Pike Place Market. When we arrived, she had already ordered a beer and made herself at home, and she jumped up, smiling, to shake Brandon's hand.

I hardly remember what happened after that, except that Brandon handily passed her inspection. It was so easy, so fun, the three of us sitting there together, as though we'd done it a million times before. And you know that expression, “to spread like wildfire?” Well, at one point during the evening, Keaton told us about some bit of news she'd heard at the office, and about how, she said, “it spread like
wildflowers
!” Then
she paused and wrinkled her brow, sensing that something was amiss, and we dissolved into howls.
Spread like wildflowers.
Isn't that great? It's so much better than wildfire, and yet still fitting.

Sometimes, when I tell people about Brandon, I think of that night. I like to tell them that he spread like wildflowers through my life. Because he did. He does.

CRANBERRY CHUTNEY WITH CRYSTALLIZED GINGER AND DRIED CHERRIES

w
hen I gave Keaton the recipe for this chutney, she fell instantly in love, and so does pretty much everyone who tastes it. It was originally intended to go with Thanksgiving turkey, but it's delicious with almost anything, from biscuits to sweet potato soup. Brandon and I like it best as part of one of our favorite lunches, a thrown-together meal we call “toasts.” We take whatever bread happens to be sitting on the counter, slice it and toast it, and turn it into small, open-faced sandwiches dressed with whatever cheeses or spreads can be found in the refrigerator. In the fall, this chutney is a special treat, dolloped onto toasts smeared with fresh goat cheese.

My mother doesn't remember where she first found the recipe, which is now written in her handwriting on an old slip of paper. But we've been making it for long enough, and I've tweaked it enough, that it feels like ours. The original version calls for raspberry vinegar, which Brandon tells me is
“so
eighties.” If you happen to have some in your pantry, by all means, use it, but if you don't, feel free to substitute a mixture of white distilled vinegar and raspberry preserves. It works just fine.

Also, keep in mind that this chutney reaches its thick, jammy, finished consistency only as it cools, so it will still be somewhat loose when you first remove it from the heat.

 

24 ounces apricot preserves

¾ cup raspberry vinegar, or ¾ cup white vinegar plus 1½ teaspoons raspberry preserves

Pinch of salt

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ cup Grand Marnier

2 (12-ounce) bags fresh cranberries, picked over

½ cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

1¼ cups dried tart cherries

 

In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the apricot preserves, raspberry vinegar (or vinegar and raspberry preserves), salt, cloves, and Grand Marnier. Stir to mix, and place over medium-high heat. Bring the mixture to a boil, and cook for 10 to 15 minutes, or until it has thickened slightly. It will bubble aggressively, and you should stir regularly to keep it from scorching.

Reduce the heat to medium, add the cranberries, and cook until they are soft but not popped. I know that they're ready when I hear one or two of them pop; that's a good indicator that most of them must be getting pretty soft. Add the ginger and cherries, stir well, and remove from the heat.

Cool completely before serving. The chutney will thicken considerably as it cools.

 

NOTE:
Stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator, cranberry chutney will keep for at least a week, if not indefinitely.

 

Yield: about 5 cups

P
opular wisdom has it that long-distance relationships are a bad idea, and popular wisdom is often right. Dating over a distance is painful, expensive, and, much of the time, doomed to fail. It is a lot of things, and easy isn't one of them. But for me, it's a little more complicated. I may be the first person in history to say this, but I like long-distance relationships.

I don't, of course, say that lightly. Being separated from someone you love is nothing to sneeze at. I spent the better part of my early twenties living that way, and I was glad to see it end. At age twenty-two, a couple months out of college, I ran into Lucas, my childhood crush, and we fell in love. A month later, I left for a year of teaching in France. Then, when I went to Seattle, he got a job in Mississippi. We were like checkers on a board, jumping around and over each other, but never landing in the same spot. And in retrospect, I'm not so sure we were supposed to. When his Mississippi gig was finished, he joined me in Seattle, but we only lasted a year. Doomed was an apt descriptor.

But that didn't stop me from diving in again. When Brandon and I first met, we used to joke, wincing all the while, that we lived as far apart as we possibly could without needing a passport to visit. But we threw caution to the wind, and with it, ourselves. We took turns flying to see each other, me this month and him the next. I brought coffee
beans from Seattle in my carry-on. He stuffed his suitcase with pastries from Balthazar and bottles of Brooklyn Brown Ale. We made friends with our flight attendants and credit card companies. He flew to Oklahoma for Thanksgiving with my family, and I sat with him in a noisy auditorium in northern New Jersey, watching his little sister's school play. We got used to greeting each other with bloodshot eyes and to saying good-bye in public places with fluorescent lights and PA systems. It was painful, to say the least, and certainly expensive, but in a small, secret way, I liked it.

For as nice as it is to wake up next to someone and to spoon while you fall asleep, there is something to be said, too, for being apart. For one thing, it left plenty of time for missing him, which, when done right, could be delicious in its way. Take love poems, for instance. They were made for long-distance relationships. I combed the shelves for my old favorites—Anne Sexton, Robert Hass, and “Slow Dance,” by Tim Seibles, because it has that part about couscous—and I sent them to him slowly, one at a time. I bought new underwear and practiced making eyes at the mirror, like Brooke Shields in those early eighties Calvin Klein ads. I spent hours daydreaming, devising elaborate plans of seduction, each with its own soundtrack and choreography. When we were together, the days had a sense of gravity that was exquisite and awful. They were finite, and we filled them to the brim.

When we were together, we were always on vacation. (If one of you is living out of a suitcase, it's only fair for the second party to get into the spirit.) We ate accordingly. In Seattle, we splurged on dinners out, and I showed up late for work. I sat on the couch and wrote while he cooked in my kitchen, spelling out MOLLY in pizza dough on the counter. One night, we undertook a rigorous taste-test of malted milk powders, making four different chocolate milk shakes. (Carnation won, in case you wondered.) In New York, we had no schedule. He only had classes two days a week, so we had plenty of time, albeit not much money. He lived on West 123rd Street, not far from the enormous Fairway Market, and sometimes we would wake up late and walk to get a jug of orange juice, a bunch of radishes, a baguette, and some butter.
Back at home, we ate lazily at the wobbly table with the window open, the box fan blowing, and my bare feet on his lap. We'd spend the day wandering or skimming through museums (he has since told me that he once thought about proposing to me, and I'm
so
glad he didn't, under the big whale that hangs from the ceiling in the American Museum of Natural History) and then, at dusk, stop at Fairway again for the makings of dinner. It was some sort of salad, usually, something easy to eat with leftover baguette and sharp cheddar.

One such night, I climbed into his lap in the middle of dinner and told him, with a prickle of fear, that I was falling in love.

RADISHES AND BUTTER WITH FLEUR DE SEL

t
he French have been eating radishes this way for time eternal, for breakfast or an afternoon snack, or with the evening aperitif. There's no hard-and-fast rule for how to do it. You can make a little tea sandwich of it, assembled on soft bread or baguette, or you can eat the radish whole, on its own, dragged through a dish of soft butter and dipped in salt. For breakfast, Brandon and I do something in between. We slice the radishes thinly and put them on the table with a couple of knives and the butter dish. Then we tear hunks from a baguette and top them, bite by bite, with butter and radish and salt. But on evenings when we're having friends over, we'll make things a little more refined, slicing the baguette thinly and giving it a quick toast. What follows is this last method, but you're welcome to do whatever you want.

 

Baguette

Radishes

Good-quality unsalted butter, preferably cold

Fleur de sel, or another crunchy salt

 

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Using a sharp serrated knife, slice the baguette into thin rounds. I usually aim to slice mine about
¹
/
₃
inch thick. Arrange the slices in a single layer on a baking sheet, and bake them until they are pale golden around the edges, just a few minutes. Watch carefully to make sure they don't burn: you want them to toast lightly, so that they crisp just a little, but you don't want to turn them completely dry and crunchy. Remove the pan from the oven, and cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile, trim the radishes and slice them thinly—as thinly as you can, like a communion wafer—into rounds.

When the baguette slices are cool, shave a slice of butter off the
block—this is why it's helpful to have the butter cold, so you can peel off thin slices—and smear it onto the bread. Don't worry about really spreading it: I like the way it looks and melts on your tongue when it just sort of sits there. Arrange a few radish slices on top. Sprinkle with salt.

Repeat with the remaining baguette slices and serve.