week 19: things i miss about nyc

Being in New York last week--roaming the frigid yet crowded streets, seeing friends and family, stepping in and out of restaurants and cafes, of taxis and subways--heightened my awareness of things I miss about home. Above all is people; if you're reading this, I probably miss you. But even if every one of you moved here, I'd still miss:

• Roast pork buns from a restaurant-bakery on Walker Street at Baxter Street (an intersection that to the untrained eye would appear to be on Canal Street, but, astoundingly, isn't) whose pork buns I've eaten in 4 different decades, but I've never had any idea of the name of the place.
• Doing the Sunday Times crossword puzzle at the Odeon. 
• A porchetta sandwich at Il Buco; fresh-from-the-oven bagels; salt-baked soft-shell crabs at New York Noodletown; good sushi pretty much everywhere; fennel-dusted sweetbreads at Babbo; breakfast at Balthazar; the fatty duck at Fatty Crab; a gooey, chewy slice from Ray's on 6th at 11th Street; chow fun from wherever.
  
• Crowds everywhere, all the time.
• The 8 minutes the separates the placement of an order with Excellent Dumpling House and those dumplings' arrival at the door.
  
• The subway; unlimited-ride MetroCards; Sam's impersonation of a conductor, "Ladies and Gentlemen, there is a problem up ahead."
• The West Village in the snow; Duane Park in the spring; the terrifying anarchy of playgrounds with water spraying willy-nilly in the summer; the Central Park Mall in the fall.
  
• Soho House, aka Daddy's Office with the Swimming Pool.
• The DVR; a virtually unlimited supply of syndicated sitcoms; and (I'm surprised to have discovered) the NY1 theme song.
• Walking from TriBeCa through the civic center and then Chinatown and then the Lower East Side all the way to the absurd tennis courts under the Williamsburg Bridge.
  
• The view of the skyline from the Kosciuszko Bridge.
  
• Coffee bars where you can sit for a full day: Think Coffee in the Village; Cafe Cafe in SoHo; Pecan in TriBeCa; Grounded in the West Village.
  
• Rampant casual profanity. (I'm in an Upper West Side hardware store, first thing last Monday morning, to buy a small screwdriver. "Whaddya need it for?" the guy asks me. So I can open the boys' new walkie-talkies, to insert batteries. The guy nods, purses his lips, says "Kids' shit" as a clarification, then shrugs.)
• The spectator and participant sport (if you do it right, it can be a cardio workout) of celebrity-spotting. 
  
• Wallowing in my hypocrisy of loathing Duane Reade yet spending money there every other day.
• Taking the boys on a post-dinner run to the Mr. Softee truck outside Washington Market Park.
• Corner pizzerias (more on this follows).

a recipe: chicken parmesan

There are so many things that are great about corner pizzerias: the comforting reliability that you're never much farther than a block from one, and it's almost guaranteed to be open; the inexpensiveness of everything in the formica-clad shop; the uniformity of the experience; the portability of a slice (especially if you follow the Mike Carner custom of absolutely prohibiting the counterman from reheating it). All in all, bang for buck, it's tough to beat a slice of pizza. 

Or a chicken parmesan hero. I miss chicken parm, whether it's an utterly unwieldy hero from Mariella's on 2nd Avenue, or a heaping paper-plate arrangement with pasta from Maffei's in Chelsea, or even the $25 entree at Patsy's (if someone other than myself is paying). But I haven't come across chicken parm here in Lux. To re-create that true pizzeria delicacy, I believe you have to (1) skimp on the Parmigiano--just a dusting, like an unpredicted snow flurry--because this should really be called Chicken Mozzarella; and (2) make a sweeter tomato sauce than feels natural (I believe that's how the pizzerias get the kids addicted). Of course, if you live in New York City, you'll probably never make chicken parm yourself. Why would you? Me, though, I have to. 

olive oil

1 small onion, minced

tomato paste

1 small can of San Marzano tomatoes

salt and pepper

sugar, possibly

chicken cutlets

salt and pepper

flour

2 eggs, beaten

unseasoned breadcrumbs

grated Parmigano-Reggiano

mozzarella, sliced thin

First, make red sauce: heat a bit of oil in a small pot over medium flame. Add the onion and cook until wilted but not colored, just a few minutes. Stir in a couple tablespoons tomato paste and let cook for 1 minute. Pour in the can of tomatoes, bring to a vigorous simmer, and let cook for a half-hour or so. Taste for salt, which you probably don't need, and pepper, which you do, and sugar: remember, you want a sweeter-than-normal sauce, but don't add more than  a teaspoon, tops; this is not dessert. Add some more tomato paste if you want it more tomato-y. Using a blender, a food processor, or an immersion blender, whiz this till mostly smooth. Return it to a low simmer until ready to use. 

Preheat the oven to 350 (or, frankly, whatever the hell you want) and start to make the chicken, which is roughly the same as making schnitzel. In a large pan, heat a few tablespoons olive oil over medium flame. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. In 3 shallow bowls, put (1) flour, (2) the beaten eggs, and (3) breadcrumbs. Dip each chicken cutlet in the flour, then the egg, and finally the breadcrumbs, shaking off any excess of each coating. Place the coated cutlets in the hot oil, and cook for a couple minutes per side, until lightly golden; the chicken doesn't need to be cooked through, so don't try, or you may end up burning your coating unnecessarily. Replenish the oil as needed, between batches, and wipe out the pan of any fallen-off coating, which will burn if left in there; make sure the new oil you add gets hot before adding new cutlets.

Now, spread a film of tomato sauce on the bottom of a roasting pan that's big enough to hold all your chicken in a single layer, which you'll now arrange in that that single layer. Top with more tomato sauce, spreading some between the cutlets as well, but not utterly smothering them--you want some crispy breaded chicken to remain un-sauced. Sprinkle lightly with Parmigiano, then generously (but, again, not completely) with mozzarella. Slide the pan into the oven, and let cook until the mozzarella begins to bubble and ooze and the chicken is cooked through, about 20 minutes. Let cool for a couple minutes before serving, or, in the style of the pizzeria, serve it immediately with no warning and make everyone burn the roofs of their mouths in unison.

week 18: inauguration day

Yesterday passed without any notice; Martin Luther King is not in the forefront of consciousness here. But Barack Obama is, and today is different. The inauguration is front-page news in Le Soir and Le Monde, the Luremburger Wort and the FrankfurterRundschau; there's a 20-page special section in Le Figaro. (The election itself was also huge news: this photo is from Rome, in November.) The bookstore window down the block features 9 titles by or about the Obamas, including the bizarre merchandising tactic of two different French editions--trade paper and mass-market--of Les Rêves de Mon Père. 

Driving to school this morning, I was listening to Culture Français radio, as I've made a habit recently, to improve my French. CF is part of France's NPR network; this particular channel's focus is the arts, including performances. On Thursday evenings, when I'm driving to my weekly tennis club, they broadcast radio dramas, which are compelling with a surprising immediacy; it's like walking down a public hallway and overhearing an urgently whispered conversation from around a corner. You sort of have to listen.

On Culture Français there's a lot of debating--passionate and strident, but never yelling--about exactly the types of things you'd expect French intellectuals to debate on the radio: the human condition, the amorality of international trade, the fact that certain stars appear to have left the galaxy; ("Pourquoi?" "Ah, et voilà: la question, exactement: Pour. Quoi."). The word philosophie gets thrown around with a frequency matched only by the different forms of crises (la crise economique, la crise de la guerre, and, my personal favorite, la crise morale). It is from this radio station that I've begun to appreciate the crucial role played by the concept of jamais in French ideology; in America, we simply don't go around saying "never" all the time. But in France, it's apparently essential to stress that when something is not done, is not acceptable, is not moral or ethical, it is thusly jamais, jamais, jamais; the syllables are often drawn out as two distinct words, with an exaggerated pause between them: Ja . . . mais. I can feel the finger, transported over the radio waves, being jabbed in my chest. 

This morning, they were discussing Obama. And George W. Bush. Not to mention: (a) George Washington, the père of les Etats-Unis; (b) the only discussion I've encountered of Andrew Jackson since Walter LaFeber's History of Foreign Relations class at Cornell, back in 1987; (c) in a cameo out of left field, Mikhail Gorbachev; and (d) of course, Nicolas Sarkozy; he is always mentioned, regardless of the subject, including those stars that are leaving the galaxy (the French verb is the more voluntary-sounding quitter), though I couldn't decipher how the French president is implicated in that astronomical scandal. The gist of this morning's conversation was that Obama is a true leader in the sense of being a remarkable man, not merely a common man who has been elevated to a position of leadership. The panel were grateful for this sensible shift in American politics, away from the catastrophe of recent years. They jointly lamented the recent American style of common-man leadership.

I'd expected to be touchy about these criticisms; I'd expected that Europeans would blanketly condemn all Americans for our egregious electoral decisions. But in person, I've encountered nothing with which I could take any umbrage; in the media, nothing with which I've disagreed. Mostly what I've encountered is enthusiasm for Obama, occasionally exuberant. In an epicerie in Paris last weekend, I fell into conversation with the proprietor, who was Middle Eastern. He asked me if I was English, and I shook my head. "Je suis americain." This guy then beamed at me, reached out, shook my hand. "Barack Obama," he said, ear-to-ear smile. "Barack Obama!" he reiterated, nodding. When I was halfway out the door, he called to me again, projecting his voice to the crowded sidewalk; people looked up at the shouted name, and smiled. It was as if this guy were thanking me for liberation in 1945. 

And maybe that's what it is, for him; maybe today is a new type of V-Day, and not one merely--or even primarily--for Americans. I've no idea where that shopkeeper is from. But I realized, standing outside his tidy little store in a dicey quarter of Paris, that his mother, his brother, his children might live in a part of the world where the American inauguration has far more critical consequence than in America: perhaps life-or-death consequence. There are no bombs falling in New York or Texas or California that may cease to fall when someone new has settled into the Oval Office. American foreign policy is foreign only in America; in the rest of the world, it's simply American.

an american recipe: smoked ribs

We didn't end up going to the International Dinner last Friday night at St. George's School, because we, like many people, couldn't find a babysitter; it's a problem here. But I was somewhat relieved, because everyone at the dinner had to bring a homemade dish from their homeland. There'd be lots of chicken curries and pastas and I assume kidney pies, or whatever it is that British people eat. But what the hell is American food? Someone admitted she'd be bringing an apple pie, because she couldn't think of anything else; but I don't bake. (Alex, in the unapologetic sexism of little people, asserts that all cooks are men, and all bakers are women; Madeline does all the baking in our household.) 

The only thing I cook that's American, as people in Orient know, is ribs. And I'm not ashamed to admit that two of the primary elements of my ribs are store-bought, and filled with I'm sure an ungodly array of horrific chemicals: jarred barbecue sauce and packaged spice rub. In the distant past, I used to produce home-made barbecue sauce, and mix up my own spice rubs. But I discovered that what I love about barbecue sauce is ketchup, whose ingredients label is depressing, combined with a bunch of other stuff that's not especially uplifting. So why bother? The same goes for the spice rub, which revolves around garlic powder, an ingredient that's otherwise not permitted in my pantry. So I've found packaged products that I like (Bone Suckin' jarred sauce, and some rub in a brown-paper bag that I buy at the Wayside Market in Southold) and I tell myself and anyone else who'll listen that it's the cooking method here that counts: a half-day of wood smoking. 

pork ribs, baby-back or spare, dealer's choice

spice rub

hickory (or applewood, or whatever-wood) chunks or chips, for smoking

barbecue sauce

cider vinegar mixed with water, or a bottle or 2 of beer, for basting

First thing in the morning, prep the ribs. First, use pliers and a dry kitchen towel to remove the thin veil of silvery membrane that covers the bone side of most racks. If what you've got are spare ribs, they probably have a flap of meat on the underside, which you may want to trim off; I happen to like this meat, but apparently some people don't. Now wash the trimmed racks, pat them dry with paper towel, and cover with the rub, evenly coating everywhere and, of course, rubbing it in. Pile the racks in a platter, cover with foil, and let sit in the refrigerator until lunchtime. 

Before you eat lunch, set your wood to soak, submerged in water. I do this in a stockpot, with a plate pushed in to keep the wood submerged. Wood chips need soaking for just 20 minutes or so; the bigger chunks could really use 45 minutes or more. I prefer the chunks, because they smolder for a longer period before they turn to ash, meaning you don't have to replace them as often, and also I can just rest them on the heating element of my grill (the chips, on the other hand, need to be enclosed in something); but chunks seem to be harder to find. 

I use a gas grill. This, as well as my packaged sauce and rub, betrays me to be a rank amateur, which I don't deny. But I still contend that my ribs are good. So anyway, after lunch, place a handful of wood chunks clustered together on the heating element of the grill, under the grate; alternatively, for the chips, use a small disposable baking pan, folded over to enclose the chips, then poked with holes using a sharp knife, to allow the smoke to escape. Set the heat to high, so the wood gets hot enough to start smoking. Then reduce the temperature, keeping the flame only directly under the wood, to maintain smoke; I find that 225 degrees is the lowest temp that will maintain continuous smoke. Place the ribs on the grate away from the flame; the ribs can be piled atop each other and rotated occasionally, but they should not be cooked directly over the flame. From time to time, baste the meat with the vinegar-water mixture or beer, and move them around the grill, so you feel like you're doing something (and, more important, so other people notice you doing something, thus making this appear to be more work than it actually is).

Let this go on for 3 or 4 or even 5 hours; the longer you smoke it, the more smoky and cured the meat will get, eventually tending toward ham. When the wood has burnt away and is no longer smoking, replace it with new soaked wood. Finally, 30 minutes before you want to eat, use a basting brush to cover the ribs in sauce. Let cook for 10 minutes, then apply another coat, and cook for another 10 minutes. Then spend some time to carve the ribs: separate the racks into 3- or 4-rib portions, then run the knife 75 percent through the meat that separates each rib, to make them easier to pull apart; these are not fall-off-the-bone ribs, but are firm, chewy, smoky, and flavorful. 

week 17, part ii: holiday in bavaria

I now know why Germans make all those high-performance cars: they drive fast. The average highway speed seems to be 150 kph, aka 93 mph. It took me a couple days to adjust, at first barely accelerating past the recommended 130; at this, 80 mph, I felt like an old lady on her way to church. When I eventually settled on 155--pretty arbitrarily--I was still being passed willy-nilly, and these passers weren't merely inching by me. And when Germans are not on highways, they're on hilly, winding, insanely narrow roads--old horse paths, now paved. On either type, they need good cars. What I no longer understand is why people buy them in the U.S., where, let's face it, these cars really don't do much good. 

Other things I learned over our week-long Christmas-break trip:

• The people who work in hotels and restaurants in Germany are extravagantly nice. If I were working at the desk, and I saw my family arrive with our mountain of luggage and our unruly little boys and what has become the shaggiest dog in Europe, I think I might say, "Sorry, no record of your reservation, we're fully booked." But everyone welcomed not only the children but also the dog warmly. In Munich, the woman who served breakfast greeted Sam with a long, tight, surreal hug. And then brought hot chocolate. And then handed out candy. All the while prattling in German, cheerfully unfazed by our total lack of response or comprehension. Plus, no one batted an eye when we walked into restaurants with Charlie. In fact, it would have seemed silly to even ask permission; hunds are clearly expected.
• The restaurants were fantastic, especially in Munich: the Osterwaldgarten, across the street from our hotel in the Park Slope-y neighborhood of Schwabing, where the goulash was rich and spicy, the schnitzel light and crunchy, the room convivial, the clientele chic; and Spatenhaus an der Oper, facing the opera house, in of course the ritzy part of town where the opera house always is, where they served a fantastic house beer and an equally fantastic sauerbraten with horseradish cream; and Augustiner Großgaststätten in the pedestrian zone, for cakes and a drink at a site where monks started brewing beer in the 14th century, and which now seats up to 1,000 people. When we walked in after the boys' first-ever ice-skating attempt in the Karlsplatz, at 4:00 in the afternoon, almost every seat was taken. Perfect. 
• The downside to German dining was that the only green thing at almost every meal was a sprinkling of parsley; I heretofore did not know that I could ever want a salad so badly.
• Two of the most beautiful places I've ever seen were were a medieval walled village called Rothenberg ob-der-Tauber, and a small city called Bamberg. Both spectacular. And before this trip, I'd heard of neither. 

Germany was never on my list of places I've wanted to visit. Maybe because of starting all those wars, and editing all the fun out of the book-publishing business, and my lack of interest in high-performance automobiles, and my suspicion that it's really cold there, and an apparently eternal fashion for eyeglasses that I don't like. I was right about the cold. But I noticed that it doesn't stop Germans from walking all over the place. You see droves of them strolling across open fields when it's 20 degrees, using those ski-pole type things they like to use, pushing strollers, and then probably ending up in superb restaurants in stunning towns, drinking exceptional beer, being friendly to strangers and children and other people's dogs, and in general making me feel like an idiot for not particularly wanting to go to Germany in the first place. 

a recipe: schnitzel

When Sam will agree to eat any type of protein, a certain gauntlet is laid down, because that kid would happily subsist on a diet of exclusively plain, unadorned noodles. With maybe an occasional plate of spaetzle (or, as he calls it, "speckles"). So it was with a combination of surprise, delight, and trepidation that I heard him ask for seconds of Anne's schintzel, at her house in Munich. The trepidation is because I've had problems with sautéing breaded things here; I'm still not used to the electric cooktop, so there's more burning going on than I'd like to admit. But with fresh advice from an experienced schnitzel-maker--thin thin thin cutlets, plus clarified butter--and my own realization that I should just try a lower temp, I've gone at it again, a few times. Not only because I myself love a good schnitzel, but because I really want to keep Sam alive. And now I've come to the right formula: 

butter

veal scallopine or pork medallions, pounded uniformly thin (I use a rolling pin)

salt and pepper

flour

2 eggs, beaten

1 tablespoon heavy cream

breadcrumbs

lemon wedges, for serving

First, clarify butter: put a stick of it in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, and melt it, skimming any foam from the surface. Turn off the heat and let the melted butter sit for a couple minutes, and the solids will sink to the bottom. Before the butter recongeals, slowly and carefully pour off the melted butter from the top, leaving the solids at the bottom; discard the solids. You now have 3/4 stick of clarified butter. Heat a couple tablespoons of it in a skillet over medium flame.

Season the meat with salt and pepper. In 3 shallow bowls, put (1) some flour, (2) the eggs beaten with the cream, and (3) breadcrumbs. Dip each veal slice in the flour, then the egg, and finally the breadcrumbs, shaking off any excess of each coating. Place the coated veal in the hot butter, and cook for a couple minutes per side, until golden. This will probably have to be done in batches: pounded cutlets take up a lot of surface area in the pan. So replenish the butter as needed, between batches, and wipe out the pan of any fallen-off coating, which will burn if left in there; make sure the new butter you add gets hot before adding new cutlets. Keep the finished cutlets warm in a low oven while you finish the others. Serve with lemon wedges.

week 17, part i: pictures of little boys in germany

Christmas Vacation (top to bottom) outside the castle Neuschwanstein, in Bamberg, in a beer hall, ice-skating in Munich, and warming up with hot chocolate mountain-side.

week 16: christmas in luxembourg

At first I avoided Auchan, which is a breed of store called, fantastically, a hypermarket. I was intimidated and somewhat revolted by the Wal-Mart-esque proportions of the place, its associations with economy-size bins of Doritos and the economy-size people who consume same. Plus, I was confused about the parking situation, worried that what I was driving into would turn out to be the private garage of an accounting firm. And it's in a mall. 

But then I discovered that at Auchan's terrine counter there are 30 choices; it might be the only store in this country that stocks passionfruit puree; they sell Bresse chickens. I still don't much like shopping there--too big, too much of a production, too distracting. But when I need something at all specialty--a turkey, prosecco, whatever--I head to the centre commercial, park on the -2 parking level, and bite the bullet. As I did on the morning of Christmas Eve, to ensure that I could find (a) the proper accompaniments for foie gras, and (b) frozen corn and baking powder, both to make corn pudding, to serve with a standing rib roast instead of Yorkshire pudding, which is too last-minute-y and I think somewhat pointless.

Boy what a mistake. I sensed trouble when I could barely find a spot in the garage, but I assumed these were last-minute gift-shoppers, madly grabbing toys and electronics on Auchan's second floor; I was headed to the food, on the first. But I was wrong: it was a goddamned feeding frenzy. In Seafood, the staff were handing out freshly shucked oysters; dozens of men were gathered round, slurping away, while their wives waited at the counter to buy crates full of French coast oysters. In Wines--the size of a large Manhattan shop--the crowd was three deep in Champagnes. It was impossible to get your cart into Produce, so people left their carts around the perimeter, much like a park-and-ride commuter situation. There were three different sections in the store with large displays of foie gras and its accessories, including special knives, toasts, jams, salts, and dozens of choices of the engorged livers; people were grabbing half-pounds hunks willy-nilly. It was like a whole country desperately laying in supplies for Martha Stewart's house arrest. Hypermarket indeed.

But none of these people was Martha Stewart. Rather, there's a certain type of woman in Luxembourg who at any given moment seems to constitute an impossibly large percentage of the overall supermarket crowd: she's sixty years old, grim-faced, bespectacled, and built like a linebacker. She's got her elbows out and her dander up, and this battle ax looks like she will happily ram you with her shopping cart filled with 100 pounds worth of pork and potatoes. Wherever I turned, there she was, daring me to try to navigate around her. 

Back at home, I found little boys chomping at the bit for tomorrow. I never before realized how much Christmas Day is nirvana for little boys; I certainly don't remember feeling the way they clearly do. But it was still the eve, grownup time, so I preheated the oven for the giant hunk of roast beast, and put the foie gras and its wine in the fridge, modulating temperatures all over the place. 

a recipe-assemblage: foie gras

Of course, foie gras is not for everyone. Our dinner guests had never had it before, and one of them, I suspect, will not have it again. But I love it, and served it thusly: 

• The foie gras: chilled, then removed from the fridge 30 minutes before eating. Sliced 1/4 inch thick with a sharp knife that's wiped clean in between slices.
  
• The bread: rounds of brioche, toasted. 
  
• The sweet: a wine jelly such as confit de Monbazillac, spread on the toast before topping with foie gras.
• The garnish: a few grains of coarse sea salt. 
• The wine: Sauternes, chilled and thawed on the same schedule as the liver. 
  

Et voilà!

week 15: winter solstice

I understand it has already been quite cold in New York this season, and some snow has fallen; people have complained about the brevity of daylight. Yes, yes, yes. But let me tell you this: in Luxembourg today, the sun rose at 8:29, and will set at 4:37; a scant 8 hours and 8 minutes of daytime, while I see that New York will have 9 and 15. The disparity is not, I assure you, inconsequential. 

And snow? It has snowed here a dozen times. It has sleeted, it has hailed; frozen rain has pelted me, frequently. Every few days, a dense fog settles over everything, then freezes the whole landscape white. When I climbed out of the car on Thursday, to go wait for school to let out, the thermometer read -1°C, and for good measure it was raining. Hard. And it was windy. You don't know what lovely is until you've stood in a gusting below-freezing rain at 3:00 p.m. with the sun barely above the horizon. 

Alex asked, "Daddy, when is the sun going to shine again?" I looked at the kid, his eyes all wide with innocence; I didn't have the heart to say "May," so I feigned ignorance. He was silent for a minute, then he said, not for the first time in his life, "Remember, Daddy, I was the first in our family to talk to Katherine, in Orient." Katherine has a nice swimming pool, which she's kind enough to allow the boys to use. It didn't take me long to figure out how Alex got from Question A to Comment B, nor what the imminent C would be: "When we get to Orient next summer," he began, "do you think we should go to Katherine's pool right away? Or should we call her first?" This question was 100% earnest. I told him we should call. Then his follow-up floored me: "From the airport?" I almost crashed the car.

But then late Friday morning, despite a forecast that called for the usual rain, it became partly sunny, and the temperature rose above 40, where it hadn't been for weeks. Then the sun became brilliant. I walked out into the streets of the vielle ville, to wander around, to Christmas-shop. The whole city seemed to be with me, having laid down their umbrellas, dusted off their sunglasses and even their smiles; in general, this isn't a terribly smiley place. I don't think 40 and sunny had ever felt so warm. 

a recipe: risotto aux crevettes et petits pois

In honor of the balmy weather, I felt like I should give us a break from my relentless stewing, from the heavy meats and hearty casseroles that seem like requirements when it's -1°C and raining; also a break from what may have become my pathological habit of including bacon lardons in every meal. But it's not as if I could grill some corn and mix an heirloom tomato salad; we're still where we are, when we are. So I bought these tiny freshwater shrimp that are sold all over the place, inexpensively, and a packet of arborio. The petits pois, I have to admit, are frozen. And I further have to admit that even if we were living next to a pea farm, at harvest time, I think the peas in my pot would still be frozen; there are some conveniences that are simply too convenient to resist. Plus nearly all the frozen peas I've ever eaten have been better than nearly all the fresh peas I've shelled. 

Serves 2, generously

Olive oil

1/2 pound of the smallest, sweetest shrimp you can find, shelled

Salt and pepper

Butter

1 medium onion or large shallot, minced

1 cup arborio rice, or whatever rice type you prefer

Dry white wine

3 cups chicken stock, heated in a saucepan to a simmer, ready for action

3/4 cup frozen peas

Crème fraîche or heavy cream or butter, all optional

Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Put some oil in a small casserole or a deep pan over high heat. Season the shrimp with salt and pepper. Sauté them aggressively for at most a minute, then get them out of that pan quickly, before they turn to rubber. Toss some water into the hot pan and deglaze, then dump any scant liquid into the bowl with the shrimp. Replenish the pan with a slick of new oil and a tablespoon of butter. Add the onion and cook over medium heat for a couple minutes, until soft and translucent but not brown. Raise the heat to medium-high and add the rice. Toss the rice in the oil and onion, and let toast for a couple of minutes, until just barely coloring. Pour in 1/2 cup wine, which should evaporate almost entirely in a minute, while you stir. Add 1 cup of the hot stock, stir, and let cook for a few minutes. (This is really the only break you'll have when simmering the risotto--which will take a total of  more than 15 minutes--so if you need to make a quick phone call or clean up some big mess you made, do it now, quickly.)

Once that 1 cup of stock has evaporated, add another 1/2 cup of it, stirring, and then another 1/2 cup, and so on, stirring with greater frequency and urgency as the cooking progresses, and the rice releases its starch and becomes more prone to sticking/burning/ruining if you're not vigilant. Once the rice has been cooking for 12 minutes, stir in the peas, and keep at the stirring and moistening. The risotto is done when (a) the rice still has the tiniest bit of firmness to it, and (b) it seems moist in there, but when you push the rice to the side, no pool of liquid forms, and (c) you may not have used quite all of your stock. Stir in the reserved shrimp and whatever liquid is in their bowl.

Remove from the heat (which means not merely switching off the burner, but actually moving the pot off the heat, or you'll risk having sticking issues). If you've got some crème fraîche lying around (because maybe you made blanquette de veau the other night), then stir in a tablespoon of it; some heavy cream would also do, or just butter. Or an absence of utterly gratuitous dairy would also be fine. But the cheese is not gratuitous; I think you need something to hold it all together, and to add tang, and salt. So stir in a handful of Parmigiano-Reggiano, at a minimum. Place the cover on this pot, and let it sit for a couple of minutes. Uncover, stir, and taste; at this point, unless you were profligate with the Parmesan, you'll probably want to add more cheese, and maybe salt and pepper too, all of which you should also put on the table with this pot, right this instant, because the perfection of risotto is fleeting. 

week 11: mit frites?

It was cooler than we'd expected for September 2nd, our first full day in Luxembourg. Nevertheless we sat outside, at a café facing the grand duke's palace (pictured), tired and chilled. We ordered sandwiches. The waitress asked, "Mit frites?" a quick little hodgepodge of Europe in one compact package. Which can also be said of Luxembourg.

We are doing our small part to stir the melange. I take French classes and Madeline takes German, both at Berlitz; once a week, the boys go there too, for French, which they also learn daily at St. George's (along with no small number of Britishisms). Admittedly, none of us is attempting to learn Luxembourgeois, although the other day Alex happily sang, like an aria, "Moyen, moyen, moyen!" when the supermarket cashier bestowed him with the local greeting. She rewarded his enthusiasm with a tweak on the nose.

Outside the classroom, I no longer begin every single interaction with the humiliating "Parlez-vous anglais?" The answer is invariably, "A little," overly modest, and so then there I am, living in Europe and talking in American with someone who probably speaks five languages. So now I've begun to forge ahead in bad French, then rarely understand what people say to me in return. Sometimes, that doesn't matter much; I end up buying a bit more cheese than I'd wanted. At a furniture store, I thought I'd be walking out with a rug, and even had a shopping cart, otherwise empty, for this rug. It wasn't until the transaction had apparently ended, and the clerk and I were exchanging confounded looks--he thinking I should leave, me thinking I should have a rug in my cart--that I realized I'd ordered the rug, which will arrive who-the-hell-knows-when; whilst I was trying to translate something, he blithely pushed on, and I never again caught the thread. Instead, I just smiled and left, empty-handed; this is not unusual.

On the other hand, at a play-date last week, I spoke French most of the time. This was at the house of Alex's so-called best friend, Lorenzo (how can Alex's best friend not be Sam? If ever there were a best friend, it's Sam, to Alex). Lorenzo's mother Sonia speaks passable English, but I suspect she doesn't understand anything I say (much as I can speak a little French, but can't comprehend nearly any of it). Sonia speaks Italian, which is not in my repertoire, and also some French. So we settled on this: she spoke in English, and I spoke in French. Our conversations ended up being far less sophisticated than the four-year-olds'. But we managed.

an american recipe: chestnut stuffing

When I began cooking in the early nineties, I worked as a copy editor at Doubleday, and so I used the recipes from the manuscripts that crossed my work desk. A book called Backroad Bistros, Farmhouse Fare by Jane Sigal was my go-to source, then later Alfred Portale's tall-food-oriented Gotham Bar and Grill Cookbook, which was also a favorite restaurant; it's where Madeline and I dined the night we got the keys to our first apartment together, the rickety place over the wine shop on Hudson Street. When we began to have people over for dinner, I started making ridiculous multi-component entrees from Gotham, often involving duck. For side dishes, I'd scour other books from the office, such as Michael Lomanaco's '21' Cookbook, where I discovered non-Pepperidge Farm stuffings. I think there are four stuffing recipes in that book (I can't check, because '21' didn't make the trip to Luxembourg), and I tried each, a number of times. But never on Thanksgiving Day. For thirty-nine years, cooking Thanksgiving supper was the job of other people in my family, or Madeline's. My job, as I understood it, was to show up and eat. 

Until yesterday. No one on this continent is going to cook a turkey for my family, if not I. So I found some cranberries, and a small dinde (about six pounds, the size of a big chicken), and mixed up a stuffing for the first time in maybe a decade. After my 21/Gotham phase in the mid-nineties, I spent nearly all my cooking energy on European food--Italian, French, Spanish--and ignored American. Now that I live in Europe, though, I think I'll start making stuffings again, tossing a little something foreign into the cultural hodgepodge around here.

Bread, preferably 1 or 2 days old, sliced

1/4 pound slab bacon, cut into lardons, optional

Unsalted butter

2 medium onions, diced

4 ribs celery, diced

1/2 pound button mushrooms, diced

1/2 pound (or more, if you like) peeled chestnuts, diced

Salt and pepper

3 eggs

1 cup chicken stock

Coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley

Set the oven on as low as possible. Cut the crusts off the bread slices, then cut the slices into 1/4-inch or 1/2-inch cubes. Spread on a couple of baking sheets, and let sit in the warm oven until completely dried-out, which will take just a few minutes if the bread was old, but maybe as much as a half-hour if not. You want to end up with 3 or 4 cups of bread cubes. (Stuffing, as much as anything, is an inexact science.) 

Meanwhile, in a sauté pan over medium-low heat, cook the bacon until firmed up. Remove from the pan, leaving the fat behind in the pan, to which you should add some butter. Toss in the onion and celery and sauté until wilted, but still some crunch to the celery. Remove from the pan, and replace with the mushrooms. Cook over high heat, adding some more butter if needed, until browned. Add the chestnuts and toss. Then merge all the sautéed stuff together with good doses of salt and pepper.

Increase the oven to 350°, or whatever it is for whatever else you're cooking; I don't think it matters much. At this point, your bread should be dried, and out of the oven. In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the chicken stock. Add the dried bread cubes, toss to coat, and let sit for 10 minutes. Then, if excess egg/stock has collected in the bottom of the bowl, toss it out; if the bread doesn't seem moist enough--utter judgment call--sprinkle with some more stock. Add the sautéed vegetables, a fistful of chopped parsley, and stir everything together. Pack it into a Dutch oven, and spread a few pats of butter over the top. Cover and bake for 30 or so minutes, until cooked through but not dried-out.  If you want a brown crust, turn up the heat, remove the cover, and cook for a few minutes to crisp the top, but don't let this go on too long, or you'll end up with dry stuffing.