Life From Scratch (38 page)

Authors: Sasha Martin

Tags: #Cooking, #Essays & Narratives, #Biography & Autobiography, #Personal Memoirs, #Regional & Ethnic, #General

BOOK: Life From Scratch

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“Did you know ‘Antigua and Barbuda’ is actually made of more than two islands? Behold Redonda.” I pull up a photo on my laptop.

“It looks like
The Little Prince
’s planet,” Keith laughs. At less than a square mile, the barren spine of rock looks oddly out of scale.

“There are 82,000 people in the country, with Redonda contributing exactly zero. There’s no fresh water. Heck, it’s more cliff than anything,” I add “But get this—there are
four
kings who claim Redonda as their own.”

A daydream is born: We sit in oversize thrones on that bald rock while sipping tumblers of the pink grapefruit drink. We finish our meal warm.

With Tulsa under an icing of snow, we imagine heating our hands over the crackling campfire kitchen of the famous Argentine chef Francis Mallmann. As we bite into our smaller rendition of the enormous pumpkins he roasts beneath embers, we can almost smell the same charred crust of the oven-roasted acorn squash, and see Patagonia’s yellowed grasslands through the eyes of a gaucho, a South American cowboy.

For Australia, we’re stockmen journeying into the heart of the great down under. We tear into kangaroo kebabs (purchased frozen four miles away, at Harvard Meats), palmfuls of damper bread (pretending we’ve cooked the baking soda mixture in ash), along with beet- and fried egg-topped Aussie burgers. When our motorcycle buddies contribute to the potluck, the backyard becomes the outback. On my face, I feel the orange glow of Uluru—that enormous sandstone rock that burns at sunset above the brush.

These daydreams give the weekly feasts dimension. We are no longer just eating like tourists; our imaginations now reside in a different country every week. “It’s better than TV,” I tell Keith. I ask if he thinks I should include our daydreams in my weekly posts.

“Absolutely!” he says, “You can be your readers’ tour guide.”

But our fantasies feel private, like the fairy tales Toni, Michael, and I reworked once upon a time in Atlanta—too silly to share beyond our small circle.

I hold back.

Roasted Acorn Squash With Arugula & Chèvre

This unusual salad is adapted from Francis Mallmann. To streamline the recipe for home cooks, I swap his campfire-roasted pumpkin for a more manageable oven-roasted acorn squash (a grill works well here, too). One half makes the perfect portion size, enough for a light meal, or as an impressive starter in a larger feast
.

I suggest letting guests assemble their own hot salad at the table. Provide a shallow bowl to hold the squash and 2 small spoons per person so that they can smash the ingredients together themselves. Oregano-mint dressing pulls together the peppery arugula and tang of goat cheese, making this hot salad an unforgettable experience worthy of regular rotation
.

2 acorn squash

1 glug of olive oil

Salt and pepper

For the vinaigrette:

1 handful fresh mint leaves, finely chopped (about 2 tablespoons)

1 handful fresh oregano leaves, finely chopped (about 2 tablespoons)

¼ cup red wine vinegar

½ cup olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

Finishing touches:

1 small bunch (2½ ounces) baby arugula

8 ounces aged goat cheese, like bûcheron

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Cut the squash in half and remove any seeds and strings. Brush the cut ends liberally with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 45 minutes to an hour, or until browned and a fork pierces the flesh with no resistance. Meanwhile, whisk together ingredients for the vinaigrette in a small bowl.

Finishing touches:

Transfer the roasted pumpkin to serving plates. While still steaming, fill the cavities with baby arugula and crumbles of goat cheese. Spoon on vinaigrette to taste, and toss, being sure to scrape the warm squash flesh into the greens. Eat immediately.

Enough for 4

Each country becomes a palpable moment in time, guiding our days just like Ava’s development. Just as we learned to eat with our hands as Ava learned to crawl, we also learn the Austrian art of romance when she drops down to one nap.

Everyone likes to tell new parents to make sure they carve out time for their relationship between diaper changes and all-night croup fests. But no one explains how to do it without child care. Whenever Keith and I discuss hiring a babysitter, I always say the same thing: “No way am I leaving my baby alone with some stranger. She’s not even a year old. She can’t tell us if something goes wrong.”

When I ask Mom what she did as a single mother when she needed a little downtime, she tells me there was no time to date, and she didn’t have friends. But Tim remembers that when Michael was nine and I was seven, she’d put us to bed and then take Tim, Grace, and Connor across the street to the park to blow off some steam, saying of Michael and me, “Don’t worry, they’re good sleepers. They’ll be fine.”

We must have been, because I have no memory of waking to an empty apartment. Perhaps I’d be more willing to leave Ava with a babysitter if she had a sibling closer to her age, a guardian of sorts, to watch over her the way Michael had watched over me. For the time being, Keith and I remain homebound; our romance will have to be kindled within these walls.

Austria turns out to be the perfect catalyst. Austrian romance is epitomized by the Sacher torte, a bittersweet chocolate cake layered with apricot jam, enrobed in a shiny chocolate glaze. One of the world’s first chocolate desserts, it was invented in 1832 for Prince Metternich by a 16-year-old chef’s assistant. The Hotel Sacher claims to be the point of origin, but could only claim this credential after a seven-year lawsuit in a tooth-and-nail litigation that captivated the entire country.

While researching, I learn from Chef Schorner, an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America, that “chocolate is everywhere now, a common thing. But if you go back 200 years, people who made something with chocolate created romance. Today, we have nostalgia for that simple time. Sacher torte represents a way of life without Google or Twitter, when people sat next to each other and simply had a beautiful conversation over cake.” Today, Austrians eat slices of the shiny cake at cafés in a quiet, face-to-face, device-free time.

I spend one day whipping and swirling chocolate into a light, airy cake. The method feels like I’m stoking a fire, willing the batter to inflate, rise. And it does. When I put the cake in the oven, the batter looks so full that I half-expect it to burst into flame. When I place the completed cake under a dome on the kitchen counter, I can almost hear the light glinting off the glaze, crackling.

That night, as a family we eat a simple preparation of schnitzel and green beans cooked with speck, a cured meat product similar to bacon that I found at the local German market. As with the African market down the road and the kangaroo at Harvard Meats, I had no idea Siegi’s Sausage Factory & Deli existed. Tulsa has proved its international mettle yet again. If I can make this adventure work in a small city like this, I realize, people could do it from most any city. I make it official and decide not to order any ingredients online. A motto is born:
Cook global, shop local
.

Over dinner, Keith and I talk. “I don’t know why I never saw all the culture here in Tulsa,” I say. “I’m sure Mom would have discovered these markets years ago.” I remember how she dug up the German Tree Cake recipe all those years ago at one of the many folk dancing festivals she took us to. I watch Ava gum her green beans for a moment and sigh. “I wish our families could share some of this with us.”

Keith jumps up and grabs my Canon Rebel. He points it at Ava, peering over the lens at me. “They might not be able to fly here every week, but we can make all this real by filming. For my parents, too.”

In his footage, nine-month-old Ava looks like a cherub while she eats, all rosy-cheeked. “I can do this every week and post it with your meal reviews,” Keith says.

I love the idea. After dinner I tuck Ava into her crib with a kiss, then lift the chocolate cake from the darkened kitchen. Since Keith and I cannot gallivant around to cafés, I invite him into the backyard for our first date since Ava was born. Under the balm of night, we enjoy one enormous slice, nearly a quarter of the cake, with two forks. I serve it with Austrian hot cocoa thickened with whipped egg yolk.

The cake is soft, chocolaty, but not cloying or particularly moist. What makes it memorable is the layer of tart apricot jam—a flirty little tease peeking out from between the two cake rounds. The bittersweet glaze drapes each bite like a satin sheet.

When we get down to the last few morsels, I slide the cake over to Keith and let him finish it. I pull out two poetry books Mom once picked up for a quarter at a yard sale, and we take turns reading from them.

A line from the Austrian poet Georg Trakl speaks to me most forcefully: “A smile trembles in the sunshine / Meanwhile I slowly stride on / Unending love gives escort / Quietly the hard rock greens.”

“You know I couldn’t do this without you, Keith,” I say, turning to face him. His skin looks silver in the moonlight.

He nods and holds my hand.

“Thank you for not giving up on me,” he says. “I know I’m a picky eater, but …” He smiles a sheepish sort of grin and points at the crumb-laden plate, “This cake was delicious. Who knew a tiny country in the Alps was holding out on us all this time?”

I laugh. “Well, it’s not like I’ve always made the adventure easy for you.”

“Seriously, Sasha, I guess I didn’t realize …” he bites his lip, “how much of the world I was missing out on, you know, by only eating hamburgers.”

I nod, leaning into his embrace. “Austria came along just in time. When was the last time we did this together? No laptop, cell phones, dirty diapers?”

We’re both quiet. Somewhere in the shadows, the cicadas and crickets are in a humming, clicking frenzy. Fireflies puncture the darkness. I stare into the light, but soon I’m distracted, thinking about how to describe all this for the blog. I release my breath slowly and linger in that space so rarely visited, between yesterday and tomorrow, for once truly present.

We sit together for hours. At the end of the night we slip to the bedroom and once again consume each other like new lovers. When the passion we tended so carefully before parenthood rises up in me, I find it older, wiser, as resonant as a well-aged violin.

Over the next days, the warmth of Keith’s touch stays with me, as a hot cup of cocoa leaves the table beneath it warm.

Sacher Torte

For romance to reach its full potential, the very notion of perfection must be tossed aside. Like the bitter note in chocolate, struggles draw out love’s sweetness in a more sophisticated, less cloying way. When we come back together after challenges, we reveal what we—and our relationships—are made of. In the Sacher torte, one of the world’s first chocolate cakes, dark chocolate is combined with a moderate amount of sugar to make the perfect bittersweet blend
.