Emotional Californian Cuisine
Emotional Californian Cuisine
What I cook when I am trying to calm myself
I am writing this a few days before you will see it, but food friends, I am writing to you about what I cook when I am freaking out. I am still catching my breath as I stand in my kitchen the morning after, listening to the spin cycle of the dryer and trying to inhale slowly, exhale slowly.
You may have seen in the news that on Tuesday night (last night as I write), New Orleans got hit by a tornado. Well, I am okay, my husband is okay, my dogs are okay, my house is okay, but my brain that night of the tornado, well, it wasn’t quite okay. We were about a mile and a half from the center of the large hurricane, which in tornado terms means we didn’t sustain any damage, but my husband and the dogs and I had to hide in a bathroom for an hour, praying.
We were fine, thank God! Our house didn’t lose so much as a shingle. The power stayed on. But you have to understand, I felt scared anyhow.
Tornadoes are explained clearly by science. We understand what causes a funnel cloud to form. Non-scientists can see radar images of how storms move in and out of regions. But none of this satisfies the primitive part of my brain, which can only understand a tornado in medieval terms — it is clearly the finger of an angry god squashing enemies as we all cower. One time in Mississippi, I was teaching in a college town that was hit by seven small tornadoes in a day, and while all my students, who were really not scared in the basement where we were sitting, did class presentations, it was truly all I could do to stop my mouth from screaming. I gave every single class presentation a grade of 100. Why tempt fate and make that finger of a malevolent volcano storm god come back and squash me for a lack of charity? Also, I was too panic-stricken to know if they had made any mistakes. I’m sure they did better as students than I did as a professor.
Perhaps because it was the first way I learned to cook, Californian cuisine feels like the homiest of home cooking to me. I am an emotional eater. I am also an emotional cook.
Last night after the tornado, when we emerged from the bathroom, I could not sleep. I could not even sit still. I thought about what I could do to calm myself down. I am a praying woman (not to a malevolent volcano storm god but to the Christian one), and I had been praying for the hour in the bathroom non-stop. I needed to do something else, something to clear my head. The best thing for me is always to cook. I put on an apron as I was trying to control my breathing.
I looked in the fridge and saw lots of produce, a chilled bottle of Napa Valley chardonnay, and some chicken thighs. While the place where I lived the longest in my life by far is New York City, I actually began to learn to cook in California. I have some family there still, and the Californian way of cooking is the food that seems the most calming to me.
I began to learn as a child when visiting my cousin Betty on her land in the Russian River Valley, picking beans from her kitchen garden, snapping them, and steaming them. I helped her chop carrots out of that same garden. One one trip, I picked wild blackberries in a large meadow, and I learned how to add a little vanilla extract and powdered sugar to the cream she was whipping by hand before we ate them in stoneware bowls looking out at a grove of redwoods from her back window.
My mother wasn’t a cook when she could avoid it, but Betty was happy to stir a pot while she laughed at her own snarky but clever jokes. When I would visit, I would watch her and learn, helping as I could. It was from her that I learned some of the principles of food that Alice Waters championed famously in Berkeley — food ought to be fresh whenever possible, grown locally whenever possible, and we should try to eat with the natural seasons of harvest to have the freshest and most satisfying food possible. Alice Waters was not alone in another conceit of Californian cuisine — the pairing of sweet with savory in most dishes.
Furthermore, Californian cuisine is generally simple. It isn’t fussy. It doesn’t attempt to denature the ingredients but rather cooks them almost precisely as nature offers them. It was a fine introduction to a child learning to cook, as I was able to understand the pairing of flavors before I worried too much about culinary techniques.
Perhaps because it was the first way I learned to cook, Californian cuisine feels like the homiest of home cooking to me. I am an emotional eater. I am also an emotional cook.
Californian cuisine is generally simple. It isn’t fussy. It doesn’t attempt to denature the ingredients but rather cooks them almost precisely as nature offers them.
Last night, the night of the tornado, I took out the chicken thighs from the fridge and some of that produce, chopped some celery, a couple of red peppers, some broccoli, some parsley, some basil from my kitchen garden, and I pulled a few black grapes off a bunch. I turned on the oven at 350 degrees. I poured some olive oil into the base of a small roasting pan. I placed the chicken in the pan and salted, peppered, added garlic, and sprinkled the aforementioned herbs on them. I surrounded the thighs with bits of broccoli, red pepper, carrots, grapes, and celery. I poured a little of that chardonnay in the pan as well. I braised this all in the oven for an hour and fifteen minutes.
I then opened the refrigerator again and began to think about how to mix sweet and savory in a salad, California style. I remembered that once in Santa Barbara, my family had eaten strawberries from nearby Oxnard that were as big as my nine year-old fist. I had strawberries in the fridge, not that big, but they would make a nice sweet-savory mixture with fresh watercress I had. I mixed these ingredients together with slivered almonds from California.
We should try to eat with the natural seasons of harvest to have the freshest and most satisfying food possible.
I was out of potatoes, but I had a box of stuffing in my pantry. I added pumpkin seeds, more chopped celery, and chopped dates to it, along with a bit of parsley and thyme.
The result was rather quickly made Californian meal, one I wasn’t ready to eat until tonight, but I was calm once more. I can’t control the weather — alas — but I can make a salad of watercress and fresh strawberries, tossed in a classic balsamic French vinagrette, accompanied by braised chicken with the good of the Earth, and yes, a store-bought product enhanced by dried and fresh ingredients, both sweet and sour.
May your houses be filled with pleasant smells and conversation, food friends. While you may not be able to change the weather by talking about it, you can make a meal that will be a blessing to those with whom you share it. I wish you safety and good company with whom to share good food.
Shopping list and recipes
Shopping list
To make this meal, you will need:
WINE
1 bottle of Chardonnay
PRODUCE
1 pint of strawberries
2 bunches of watercress
1 celery bunch
1 bunch of black seedless grapes
1 red pepper
1 bunch broccoli
1 bag of baby carrots OR 1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
Parsley
Basil
Garlic
MEAT
4 chicken thighs
OTHER GROCERIES
Roasted Pumpkin seeds
Chopped dates
Slivered almonds
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
1 box of stuffing
At my grocery store this week, these ingredients cost $62, with a LOT of leftover ingredients to use later, including most of the wine, nuts, dates, oil, vinegar, pumpkin seeds, grapes, celery, and baby carrots (which at my grocery store were actually cheaper than buying a single large carrot). You may have many of these ingredients already at home and consequently would not need to buy everything on the list. I only made one meal here, so the expense is not enormous, but the ingredients are delicious in many different kinds of food.
Recipes
Watercress Strawberry Salad
2 bunches of watercress
16 oz chopped strawberries
1/4 cup of slivered almonds
2 tbsp. Balsamic vinegar
6 tbsp. (1/3 cup) olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste.
Optional: 1 tbsp. Chopped fresh herbs
Pour the olive oil, salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar in a large bowl. You may also wish to add herbs. Whisk these ingredients until fully combined.
Toss the watercress and sliced strawberries in the dressing.
Add the almonds and toss again.
California-fied stuffing
1 box of store-bought chicken stuffing mix
3 stalks of celery, chopped
1/4 cup chopped dates
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup olive oil
2 1/2 cups of water
The easiest way to make this by far is in the microwave. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and microwave them for six minutes. Voila.
Braised chicken thighs a la californienne
4 chicken thighs
1 red pepper, chopped
4 stalks of celery, chopped
1/2 cup of black grapes
1 cup of chopped broccoli
10 baby carrots
1/4 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup of Chardonnay
1 tbsp. Fresh parsley, chopped
1 tbsp. Fresh basil , chopped
1/2 tbsp. Dried thyme.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
Pour the olive oil and wine in the base of a roasting pan
Place the chicken thighs in the pan, and cover them with the chopped parsley, basil, thyme, and salt and pepper them to taste.
Arrange the chopped peppers, broccoli, celery, baby carrots and grapes around the thighs (Don’t be afraid to crowd the chicken thighs. The point here is to have these fresh ingredients release their juices around them while the chicken cooks, adding to the flavor of the meat)
Bake for 75 minutes. Cool a bit before serving.