Author Archives: erinrosalita

an anniversary dinner

SONY DSCYesterday was the first anniversary of our wedding.

With our first, I hadn’t a clue what to expect. But as with most every occasion I went with my default — food.

At the store I bought an expensive load of groceries, much fancier than our usual fare. White hydrangeas and a couple bottles of wine, a flat of raspberries like wee garnets, three pounds of sirloin. When I brought them home and unloaded it all I proceeded to exercise the love language I know how to best express.

First things first: the beginning stages of Julia Child’s classic boeuf bourguignon. Dicing beef, frying bacon, browning batches of the meat, four minutes in the oven, stirring, four minutes in the oven, then pouring with reckless abandon from a bottle of red wine (“young and fullbodied”). In goes a faggot of savory herbs, some crushed garlic cloves, tomato paste and homemade beef broth, to be sealed with the meat and wine in a hot oven at a moderate temperature, emerging three hours later full of steam and juices and rich aromas.

Then wrapping tiny smoked oysters in strips of bacon, to slowly crisp up alongside the boeuf for our appetizer course, and clipping away the spiny leaves of the artichokes I picked up on a whim.

Whipping plumes of powdered sugar and vanilla into coconut cream, caramelizing pearl onions and shiitake mushrooms, arranging a cheese course with sliced radishes, pouring champagne. All steam and heat and crumbs akimbo, my apron over my dress and a scarf keeping my hair back from my face.

SONY DSC

I like to do this dance alone in the kitchen, where I’m free to time the next act in accordance to the thousand little measurements taken with a taste here, a skillet toss there.

In the end I am the master of the symphony, solely responsible for the failure or the success of my creation. My favorite solitary task means little if it can’t be shared. And so at the end of my conducting, all there was in the kitchen was a plate of stew, low candles, the hydrangeas I’d bought and the yellow daisies he gave me, a crust of bread, a satisfied sigh.

All the work is nothing without that sigh. If what I create doesn’t satisfy hunger it is meaningless — not just a physical emptiness to be quenched with something to chew, but a deeper hunger of connection, of warmth, of love in the tangible form of something delicious.

My wish for my marriage is simple: May we always be hungry, and always be able to feed each other well, wholesomely.

Artichokes with Herbed “Aioli”

2 whole fresh artichokes

peppercorns, a bay leaf, a whole garlic clove

2 Tbsp. mustard

1 Tbsp. grassfed ghee (clarified butter)

1 tsp. coarse sea salt, fresh black pepper

1 Tbsp. champagne vinegar

generous handfuls of whatever fresh herbs available

extra virgin olive oil

In a food processor, combine the mustard, ghee, seasonings, vinegar and herbs into a smooth paste. Any herbs would be excellent here, but I used a few fistfuls of flat-leafed parsley, thyme, French tarragon (my favorite!), and some little leaves plucked from my baby basil plant. Whizz this all together and drizzle in olive oil until smooth and emulsified.

Meanwhile, in a large pot, boil enough water to cover artichokes. Rinse artichokes under running water to dislodge any dirt from the leaves, taking care to avoid the spiny edges. Chop off the stem and about a third of the top of the artichoke, and with kitchen scissors clip the sharp leaves away.

When water is boiling, submerge artichokes, bay leaf, garlic, peppercorns and a little salt, bring back to a rolling bubble, then cover and simmer for 30 minutes, until artichoke leaves are tender. Drain and cool, and serve with herbed sauce for dipping.

Relish the juices running down your arm and the visceral nature of tearing at the leaves with your teeth. You can be civilized when the next course arrives.

all that effort and a sourdough starter

SONY DSC Ah, effort. How many times have I tried and failed, strained and struggled only to realize I haven’t made any progress, despite the energy expended in the process.

This has been my lesson lately. All kinds of striving has been happening on my part since the beginning of the year: I’ve been trying to make new friends and keep the old, trying to make something of a career and fit self-worth in there somehow, trying to make a home in a temporary place.

Maybe the lesson here is to stop trying so hard?

Sometimes, when everything is working in concert, what seems like spinning wheels all of a sudden results in something amazing. The jumbled mess aligns in a moment to reveal one single, beautiful path. Clarity often comes after a storm, when the torrent has washed away all remaining options.

And then, sometimes, things fall apart. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. The sourdough starter wastes my time. And other such metaphors.

SONY DSC

But you know this disappointment. The instance when you put an incredible amount of effort into achieving something great and in the final hours it crumbles before you. When friendships disintegrate. When efforts to save another human from themselves, from others, ends in nothing short of tragedy.

Not one of us can anticipate what tomorrow holds. We can neither make plans actually happen, nor can we put stake in the future with much certainty. Few things are certain: the pull of the tides to the lullaby of the moon, the inevitability of death. We are under the illusion that we have our little worlds under control.

Yet the one thing we can control is what happens in the aftermath. How we pick up the fragments of well-laid plans determines how do the next time around.

SONY DSC

I made a from-scratch sourdough starter with freshly ground rye flour. I fed and watered it for seven days, watching as it bubbled, gently frothed, subsided and began to ripen.

I ground eight cups of flour from spelt berries and kneaded it all into my starter mixture by hand, relishing the push and pull of the sticky dough in the bowl. I shaped a mound and let it rise in a warm place overnight, and the next morning I baked with immense anticipation.

The result was hard, flat, dense, but flavorful. With a tart sourness and a nutty aroma, my bread did not yield easily to the pressure of a knife, but still managed to slice into passable tokens, vehicles for butter for a day until it became too hard to eat.

Despite the effort, the energy, the kneading and striving and the failure, it was at the very least a little bit good.

And in spite of it all I will probably try (and fail, and try and fail and try) again.

Sourdough Starter from Nourishing Traditions

8 c. freshly ground rye flour

8+ c. cold filtered water

2 large glass bowls

cheesecloth

wooden spoon

Combine 1 c. flour and 1 c. water in a large glass bowl, adding more water if necessary to make the mixture soupy. Stir with a wooden bowl. Cover with cheesecloth and set aside.

“Feed” the starter every day for seven days, adding 1 c. flour and enough water to moisten it all, always transferring the starter to a new, clean bowl. In a few days the mixture will bubble and start to smell ripe. Continue to feed for seven days, until volume has increased to three quarts.

From this soupy gloop — alive, reactive — you can make bread. If you eat bread, all the better to cut out the middleman and sustain yourself. If you don’t eat bread, like me (mostly), make this for the one you love, especially if the one you love talks about sourdough incessantly. Or take a warm loaf to a neighbor, wrapped in a cotton towel, or use a crusty round as a centerpiece for a rustic dinner. Nothing can make you feel like both a peasant and a king with such simple pleasure.

bygone summers and honeysuckle fizz

SONY DSC

My first memory of honeysuckle is tied up in childhood. After a summer t-ball game we would wander back to the creekbed – sometimes me and a little boy with red hair and freckles, sometimes me and my best friend, whose complexion was so fair she was nearly translucent.

SONY DSC

We’d pluck the blossoms, orange, yellow, white, pinch off the ends and suck the sweet nectar from the blooms. The carnage we left in our wake got lost in the tall grass, the poison ivy tangled up in its kinder cousin, and still there was more honeysuckle climbing up the trees beyond our reach.

SONY DSC

The sweetness of summers then seems almost too much. Was it real? Did I wear cutoff overalls, play in the creek, roast marshmallows over a campfire, stargaze on the trampoline, fall asleep to the orchestral swell of cicadas and peepers? (Yes, I did. I wanted to be Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird.)

It all seems so far removed now, that season worth celebrating because school was out and so was the sun. It was simple — A pure season, a celebration.

SONY DSC

Looking ahead to this summer I anticipate a little less simplicity, a little less celebration. We will take refuge from the punishing desert heat with our iced tea and our ceiling fans and everything will be burnt to a crisp. We will say goodbye to friends as they move across the country, across continents, ahead of us. We will work as hard as we can to make the future come a little faster. But in all of it I’m hoping to bring an attitude of celebration — to see the good and commendable, the commemorative in every day.

SONY DSC

Honeysuckle Fizz

1 Tbsp. vanilla orange vodka

1 Tbsp. St. Germaine elderflower liqueur

champagne or sparkling wine, chilled

1 lemon

ice cubes

Combine the liqueur and vodka in a small glass with ice and pour desired amount of champagne over. Peel a small segment of a lemon and rub around the rim of the glass, finally nestling the peel into the glass with the cocktail. If the end result is too sweet, add fresh lemon juice and a little more champagne. I found this to be delicious with a splash of Perrier, too.

To make the vanilla orange vodka: using this suggestion, I found that making small batches of infused liquor before mixing a cocktail yields the freshest results. For this, combine a cup of Ketel One vodka in a small mason jar with a small vanilla bean, halved, and two slices of an orange. Seal tightly and store in a cool, dark place, like your spice cabinet. I let mine marinate for about four days to reach the desired flavor concentration. The vodka ended up tasting like a fiery orange creamsicle, which was exactly what I was hoping for.