One of the 1,001 reasons that I’m glad I married Lloyd is that he is a dream to feed. Because his mom was, to put it kindly, not a cook, he pretty much likes anything I put in front of him; in 12 years, the only thing he has ever left unfinished was a plate of shu mai dumplings dressed with a very garlicky, very musky hoisin sauce, which was a little too strong for him. He has a terrific palate; whenever I know something is missing from a dish or a sauce, he can either tell me the ingredient it needs or suggest the flavor note that needs to be highlighted. (I am convinced that he is synaesthetic, because he will say things like “this tastes red” or “this would be better if it had a little more of a brown flavor to it,” and I know exactly what he means.) Best of all, he is not one of those guys who demands a tripartite meal on the table every night at 6:30, like too many of the husbands of my high school girlfriends. Although he never complains when I do a full “Sunday lunch” dinner (meat, two veg, spuds, pudding), he is just as happy eating cheese toast for dinner, which is why meals around here never have a common theme: we pinball from Adult Meals with Courses to One-Bowl Extravaganzas to, well, cheese toast. Thus it will be tonight.
Tonight was supposed to be Sunday lunch day, starring the monster capon I bought at the Greenmarket yesterday. I am a dangerous woman at the Greenmarket sometimes. I showed up yesterday full of good intentions: just some eggs, just some apples, plus any nice greenery that presented itself, cabbage or kale or mustard greens. Unfortunately, we are now in that interesting time of year which I always think of as Roots’n’Tubers, or “Mmmm, Parsnips *Again*!”, or “I Can’t Look at One More Fucking Cabbage.” I resigned myself to buying more broccoli of indeterminate national origin at the Grand Central Market later this week, and proceeded to buy what I could buy. Yellow onions. Red onions. Five pounds of Nicola potatoes (a relative of the yellow buttery tatties like Yukon Gold and Carola). A piece of horseradish to grate into the mashed potatoes I’ll make with those Nicolas, probably midweek. Because I longed for something crunchy, I picked up some apples, ten pounds of Winesaps and Baldwins. (Ironically, all of the Baldwins and a few of the Winesaps ended up in a pie, in which the only crunch is provided by the crust and the butter crumb streusel I patted over the top midway through baking. I remind myself that we still have plenty to eat raw.) A couple pints of clam chili from the Doxsee Clam stand to take home and heat up for lunch. Shuffling like Caliban against the weight of my bags, I headed to the poultry guys and snagged my eggs. As I was about to leave, I spotted the last capon on the table. I am embarrassed to give exact numbers, but let’s just say that it was almost as big as our Thanksgiving turkey, and about as expensive. It took me all of about 15 seconds to make up my mind.
My original plan for this big birdie was to make my absolute favorite soup, cock-a-leekie. Considering what capon is going for these days, it is an indulgence soup, but it is so glorious, so rich, so plain and yet so beautiful, that I never fail to feel transformed every time I make a batch of it. My favorite way to make it comes from Jane Grigson’s Good Things. Mrs. Grigson’s recipe calls for beef shin, capon, leeks and prunes. You cook some of the leeks, wrapped in cheesecloth, along with the beef and capon, remove everything when the meat is done, skim the stock, add the remainder of the leeks (white and light green parts only) and the prunes, cook until the leeks have softened in the broth, then add the meat and chicken, each stripped off their bones, back into the pot. If you prepare it with care, you are rewarded with a rich brown broth that feels almost like syrup going down and turns to jelly in the fridge. I have seen a lot of recipes for cock-a-leekie that omit the prunes, that call for barley as a thickener, or rice, or potatoes. I will grudgingly allow for starches, but I draw the line at revisionist monstrosities like the one I saw on a famous public TV chef’s show, which he called cock-a-leekie but was actually some fusion nightmare full of roasted red peppers, tomatoes, harissa, a head of garlic and several sprigs of thyme. Dear friends, I know I am being that most tiresome of creatures, the foodie snob, but as far as this beautiful ancient soup is concerned, the line gets drawn here: No garlic. No thyme. Nothing red. If you want all of this stuff in your soup, then create a new name for it—isn’t that supposed to be the joy of creating something new and good, that you can get credit for it?
In the end, though, all of my righteous indignation was for naught, because Lloyd asked if we could roast it instead. Sure, honey. I ended up making the capon version of hot turkey sandwiches, featuring one of last weekend’s eggless white sandwich breads, the birdie, and as close to perfect gravy as I’ve ever made in my life, and will probably ever make again. It was less a thick, nasty gravy than a jus: caramelized pan drippings, a little pan fat, a little port to deglaze, plenty of stock made from chicken broth plus the contents of the giblet bag and a pair of shallots. No flour, no cornstarch, no arrowroot.
In other kitchen adventures, I put some of those new eggs to use by making passion fruit curd, one of the goodies I want to demo at the Writers Colony this summer. I also made a big batch of hoppin’ John for dinner last night, with plenty left over for a week’s worth of lunches. Hoppin’ John is one of my favorite one-bowl meals, and making it is easier than kissing. As with cock-a-leekie, there seems to be dozens of permutations of it, but for me, simpler is better: blackeyed peas, basmati rice, a ham hock to season the water in which everything cooks. And, yes, there is pie to be had: those beautiful Baldwins, vanilla sugar (with the husk of the vanilla bean embedded in the apples to perfume the filling; that bean will eventually be rinsed off and added to the other vanilla bean husks in my bottle of cognac), lemon juice and half a jar of cherry preserves I put up last summer, all baked underneath a blond streusel. This pie comes from my favorite book of pies, Ken Haedrich’s Apple Pie Perfect. Yes, it is, it really is.
