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Back in my young bride days, I was a big fan of a food zine called Cooking on the Edge ("The Food Newsletter for Distracted People"), which I used to pick up at Tower Books on Lafayette Street, at least until I bought a subscription.  Dear friends, Cooking on the Edge was a lark, filled with brilliant, funny, whimsical writing, mostly by the publisher, Jill Cornfield; her husband, Jeff Stimpson and her sister-in-law, Julie Schuman, with occasional guest writers.  The recipes were, as promised, easy for distracted, vaguely anxious workerbees to put together.  The graphic design, by Julie Schuman, was largely composed of sweet and whimsical (there’s that word again, but it’s really the best one) clip and stamp art.  It was published bimonthly from 1993 to 1996.  When a new issue showed up, I fell on it.  When publication ceased, I thought my little heart would break.  I still miss it.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about food writing, what I like to read, what I don’t like to read, and why.  This will be the subject of a scintillating, hot-blooded essay later in the weekend—okay, you can stop guffawing now, guys...guys…—but for now I want to share with you what is probably my favorite Cooking on the Edge moment ever, an essay by Jill Cornfield entitled “Doing the Subcontinental,” published in the May/June 1994 COTE.  I love this piece because it embodies all that I found best in the zine:  a warm, friendly, funny editorial voice; a profound and comforting sense of place and time; a set of terrific recipes; and, although I can’t replicate it here, some truly fine stamp art.  Jill has very graciously given me permission to reprint her essay here, for which I thank her profusely.

Doing the Subcontinental (c1994, Jill Cornfield)

1.  Cook lentils in water with salt until tender (about 25 minutes).  Since lentils have a tendency to froth, use a large pot.  Set aside.
2.  In a skillet over medium flame, heat the oil.  Add the cumin and fry for half a minute.  Next, add onions, garlic, ginger and hot pepper.
3.  Fry until the onions and garlic begin to turn golden brown.  Add the tomatoes and cook for a couple of minutes.
4.  Now add the lentils to the saucepan or the contents of the saucepan to the lentils.  Either way is fine, as long as the lentils aren’t absolutely swimming in extra water.  If they are, drain some of it off and proceed.
5.  Serve with rice and chopped fresh coriander.

Notes from Jen:

1.  Lately we have on a bit of a keema macaroni bender.  I’ve made it for lunch the past two Saturdays.  Jill is right; you really want to eat this at room temperature, not hot.  The last time I went to the Indian grocery, they were out of fennel, so I bought a spice mix called panch puram, which is a blend of fennel, whole cumin, mustard seeds and kalonji (also known as black onion seeds, black caraway and nigella).  It is a great blend for this dish.  I also like to throw a handful or two of frozen peas into the pot when I put the tomatoes in.  For some reason, I just think that keema needs peas.

2.  We had Mrs. Ramachandran’s chicken for dinner tonight, with hot chapatis instead of rice.  Bee-yootiful.

3.  Curries Without Worries can be ordered through the usual internet channels, or you can call my pals at Kitchen Arts and Letters (212-876-5550) and ask them to order a copy for you.  They will ship.  Tell them that Jen McAllister sent you.

Basil: Seriously, Sybil, do you remember, when we were first...manacled together?  We used to laugh quite a lot.
Sybil: Yes, but not at the same time, Basil.
-- a Fawlty Towers moment

Dear friends, there is laughter to be had this week, I’m sure, but not at LuthorCorp.  I will not bore you with the intricate details of what makes this week at the box factory different from any other, but it is different this week, even more airless and cheerless than usual, and it is starting to tell on my non-box-factory life.  I’ve been playing through lunch, I’ve been missing my lunchtime workouts at the gym, I come home feeling shaky and utterly without attention span.  I know there are worse ways to make a living, especially since reading How Green Was My Valley, but I can’t help but feel that there has to be a better way, there just has to be a better way, a way that doesn’t fill me with fury all day long, and leave me too spent to read or write or play nicely with my blogroll/nonblogroll/IRL pals.

Friends, this is a very short pity party, one I’m going to nip in the bud right now.  I just received a very nice e from a writer who once edited a food zine I couldn’t get enough of, and she has very kindly given me permission to reprint one of her articles in this space.  I will probably save it for the weekend, as I want to make it part of a larger reflection about food writing, but until then I will just be quietly stoked about it.  (whisper) Woo-hoo.  (/whisper)

In the meantime, in the spirit of a trivia-minded friend, here are three interesting things I learned this week:

1.  Until the year 2000, the U.S. was the number-one grower of tomatoes in the world.  In 2000, the U.S. was eclipsed by China.  China now grows and sells more tomatoes than any other country in the world.  None of these tomatoes are exported, and they are sold and consumed exclusively in south China.  The preferred method of consumption is raw, with salt.  (Source: “From Marcus Apicius to Julia Child:  An Introduction to Culinary History,” a class taught by Andrew F. Smith at New School University in New York City.)

2.  In response to the aforementioned orionoir post, that seaweed in your toothpaste is probably carrageenan, a derivative of various red seaweeds used as a stabilizing and emulsifying agent in all sorts of foods (I used to find it in my old brand of drinkable yogurt) and nonfoods (like dog food and air freshener gels).  I used to think of it as a spooky nonfood until I read in one of Nick Nairn’s cookbooks that you can buy powdered carragheen in supermarkets in Scotland and Ireland and use it to prepare things like carragheen pudding.  Whoa.  (Source:  The Food Reference Website and Wild Harvest 2 by Nick Nairn, BBC Books, 1997.)

3.  In a 1937 study, Witchcraft Among the Azande, E.E. Evans-Pritchard describes the use of the “poison chicken oracle” practiced by the Azande in Sudan.  A chicken is fed poison and then asked a question.  If the chicken dies, the answer to the question is “yes.” If the chicken survives, the answer is “no.” (Source:  The Chicken Book by Page Smith and Charles Daniel, University of Georgia Press, 2000.)

Okay, I’ll throw in a fourth, just because I can’t resist this recipe for brandy broth, another piece of beautiful food writing from How Green Was My Valley:

O, Brandy Broth is the King of Broth and royal in the rooms of the mouth.  A good chicken and a noble piece of ham, with a little shoulder of lamb, small to have the least of grease, and then a paste of the roes of trout with cream, a bit of butter, and the yolk of an egg, whipped tight and poured in when the chicken, proud with a stuffing of sage and thyme, has been elbowing the lamb and the ham in the earthenware pot until all three are tender as the heart of a mother.  In with the carrots and turnips and the goodness of marrow bones, and in with a mixing of milk and potatoes.  Now watch the clock and every fifteen minutes pour in a noggin of brandy, and with the first a pint of home-brewed ale.  Two noggins in, and with the third, throw in the chopped bottoms of leeks, but save the green leaves until ten minutes from the time you sit to eat, for then you shall find them still a lovely green.

Drink down the liquor and raise your eyes to give praise for a mouth and a belly, and then start upon the chicken.

Because I’ve been told I’d best not darken the door of the blogosphere unless I show the fruits of my labors…

The whole wheat/fruit/seed breads.

The walnut and scallion bread. (We ate one of these with dinner, and baby, was it lovely.  It also had the side benefit of a vaguely purple crumb, the result of all the walnuts.  I love it when that happens.)

The whole wheat/oat/pecan loaves.

Peanut butter cookies. (These come from The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion. Lloyd has proclaimed them good.  Actually, he didn’t say anything at first, as he was too busy eating them.  Eventually he came up for air and murmured, “wonderful,” so I’ll take that as a good sign.)

Marionberry ice cream. (When I took the chilled ice cream base out of the fridge, it was so thick that I had to ladle it into the ice cream machine.  I love it when that happens.)

Dear friends,

Just dropping in for now, in medias res, kitchenwise.  My woeful bleatings have been answered by the weather gods, for spring arrived, really arrived, this weekend.  70 degrees yesterday, 70+ today, supposed to hit 80 tomorrow.  From our open window, I can smell cut grass, the neighbors’ hyacinths and narcissus, the telltale scent of a thousand grills being lit up (my Greek neighbors, in particular, take their grilling very seriously) and air that smells so clean that it can make you forget that New York City has unhealthy levels of ground-level ozone lately.  Bring the spring, I said, and spring, it has been brung.

I should be outside in the park, any park, running on the loop around the reservoir in Central Park, walking 60 or 70 blocks with my fellow urban cranks, maybe even heading out to Coney Island or the Rockaways and pretend that we have a timeshare down the shore.  Instead, though, I am reverting to my Bakerinish tendencies and cranking up the oven.  Don’t ask me why the inclination to heat up the kitchen increases as the temperature goes up.  I guess it’s my own form of spring cleaning.  I get the kitchen running, I scrub the floor, I throw all the windows open, I feel like a well-oiled machine.

Today’s kitchen adventures:

Two loaves of whole wheat seeded fruit bread, packed with apricots, raisins, prunes, flaxseed, millet and wheat berries.  It comes from a now-out-of-print cookbook written by my bread mentor, a woman who runs a kickass artisan wholesale-retail bakery here in the city, and who kindly let me work nights and weekends in her bakery to see if the bakeshop life was the life for me.  (It was, it was.)

Two loaves of whole wheat/oatmeal/pecan bread, from the same cookbook.

Three loaves of walnut/scallion bread.  Third verse, same as the first.  (I told you she was my bread mentor.) All three of these doughs have been sitting in the fridge overnight, fermenting slowly, unlocking the flavors in the grain, coaxing it out, inviting it to play with the others.

Two chickens, cooling nicely in the kitchen after roasting in a hot oven, seasoned only with Penzeys 4S salt and a lemon stuck up their bottoms.  These chickens will appear in tonight’s one-bowl extravaganza, soba noodles with chicken, broccoli rabe and satay sauce.  What doesn’t get eaten tonight will feed us all week.  Carcasses will be picked clean and turned into soup midweek.

Marionberry ice cream.  Now that the weather is getting hot and the kitchen is getting hotter, it’s time for ice cream.  When I found Jersey cream at the market at about the same time that The Amateur Gourmet discovered the joy of homemade ice cream and wrote about it with such wit and panache, I knew the time had come.  My favorite Italian deli sells bottled marionberries from Oregon.  Usually I’m not a fan of bottled fruit, but I make an exception for these.  I know that sorbet would bring out the taste of the berries better, but I’m in a real berries + cream mood today, the kind that can only be solved by a pint of cream and six egg yolks.  I can’t wait to eat it.

Peanut butter cookies, just because Lloyd asked for them, and he almost never asks for anything.

Should you think it is an act of depravity to stay in on such a nice day, have no fear.  I’m going out now, to pick up some paninis for lunch.  What, you don’t think I’m going to fix lunch for us on top of all this?

I call it a Fisher King moment.  Not long ago in this very space, I mused at how it could be possible for me, a die-hard Terry Gilliam fan, one who has seen Brazil about 15 times, one who has lost count of how many times she has seen Jabberwocky, who still brags about the time she and Lloyd went to see 12 Monkeys at the Ziegfeld, not knowing that what turned out to be the Blizzard of 1996 was raging on the other side of the exit door, to have waited 13 years to see The Fisher King.  I didn’t do it on purpose; it wasn’t as though I were trying to avoid the movie.  Everyone I knew who had seen it not only loved it, but they all made the same comment:  “Every time I see that scene in Grand Central, I think of you.” And yet, somehow, I missed its theatrical run, I kept missing it on HBO, I never rented it once we got our VCR.  Then Lloyd picked it up on DVD, I watched it, I adored it, and I thought, where was I during all this time?  How did I let this get away from me?

I had another Fisher King moment on Tuesday.  A few weeks ago, on an egg-research-book-buying trip to Kitchen Arts and Letters, I picked up Bobby Freeman’s wonderful book about Welsh cookery, First Catch Your Peacock (Y Lolfa Press, 1996).  This book is worth a post all its own, as it is such delightful, charming reading and the research and recipes are solid, but tonight I just have to share the following passage, which she said was the only written record of a dish for which she’d only been able to find verbal confirmation.  It is a quote from Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 novel, How Green Was My Valley:

Out to the back to mix the potch, then.  All the vegetables were boiled slowly in their jackets, never allowed to bubble in boiling, for then the goodness is from them, and they are full of water, and a squash, tasteless to the mouth, without good smell, an offence to the eye, and an insult to the belly.  Firm in the hand, skin them clean, and put them in a dish and mash with a heavy fork, with melted butter and the bruisings of mint, potatoes, swedes, carrots, parsnips, turnips and their tops, then chop small purple onions very fine, with a little head of parsley, and pick the leaves of small watercress from the stems, and mix together.  The potch will be a creamy colour with something of pink, having a smell to tempt you to eat there and then, but wait until it has been in the hot oven for five minutes with a cover, so that the vegetables can mix in warm comfort together and become friendly, and the mint can go about his work, and for the cress to show his cunning, and for the goodness all about to soften the raw, ungentle nature of the onion.

Dear friends, it makes my heart trill to read this, and my fingers tingle as I type it.  Not only is it one of the most glorious pieces of food writing I have ever read, but it is practically a textbook on vegetable cookery in one paragraph.  I can see that creamy pink; can smell the mint, onion and watercress; I marvel at the elegance of both the cooking technique and the description of it, at the love, honor and respect contained in here for the plain-yet-grand traditions of Welsh home cookery.  I consider the vegetables becoming friendly together, snug in their warm comfort in the oven, and I am in love.  All this in a book that has been sitting quietly on a shelf somewhere all my life.  This is a novel written seven years before my mother was born.  It was made into a film in 1941, directed by John Ford and widely considered to be one of his best films.  How did I miss this?  How did I get to be 36 years old without having read this book?

I went to Coliseum on Wednesday morning.  There it was, sitting on the shelf as though it were waiting for me.  I picked it up, opened it to Chapter One. 

I am going to pack my two shirts with my other socks and my best suit in the little blue cloth my mother used to tie round her hair when she did the house, and I am going from the Valley.

This cloth is much too good to pack things in and I would keep it in my pocket only there is nothing else in the house that will serve, and the lace straw basket is over at Mr. Tom Harries’, over the mountain.  If I went to to Tossall the Shop for a cardboard box I would have to tell him why I wanted it, then everybody would know I was going.  That is not what I want, so it is the old blue cloth, and I have promised it a good wash and iron when I have settled down, wherever that is going to be.

Where was I during all this time?  How did I let it get away from me?  I don’t know, but I do know this:  I have it now, and I will never let it go.