Birthdays are for cake, and sometimes for home

Father's Day and Dylan's birthday sometimes coincide, which can be a good thing if they're both fans of whatever kind of cake Dylan's picked that year. As I've doubtless mentioned, Eat Here is proud of its homey, comforting culinary style, which sometimes reaches new heights when cakes are baked. (Regrettably we don't make the same sorts of guarantees about the outward beauty of our cakes, for We Are Not Lis, and Don't We Know It.) But they are damned good to eat. This one is the famed Chcolate Buttermilk cake of Susan Purdy, the Second Goddess of Cakes at Eat Here, with Lis reigning unchallenged as First. You can - and should - get yourself a copy of A Piece of Cake, and I can tell you in less formal terms how to make this one, if you like. Suffice it for now to say that it doesn't come out of a box, has a touch of nutmeg and is the all-time favorite at-home chocolate cake at Eat Here.

Kisses are favored by both honorees also, in this case the birthday kiss being featured, but best friends who live most of the year in Africa and spend the rest of the year working so much you seldom see them any more frequently when they're home, do not have their kisses taken lightly. And the bestower of kisses could only be Katie, of course. This was before we settled down to the requested dinner. In our family it has long been the prerogative of the birthday person to choose the menu and the cake. By process of repetition I've learned to predict with pretty reliable accuracy what each of them will request. Mac usually asks for That Chicken (or as Suldog fondly recalls it, "Thai Chicken". Rodney always wants something that results in milk gravy over mashed potatoes. Dylan tends to change up the game a bit, but I'm never surprised when he wants tilapia a la meuniere, as he did this year, and neither is anyone else.

Consider, then: his menu.
Shot in too-little light with a camera phone, you can only glimpse its glory, but trust me: there is the tilapia with it beautifully browned, delicate crust and simple topping of browned butter. There are cheese grits, not the quick ones you do on the stove in 5 minutes and throw cheese on, but the ones you finish slowly in the oven (or truthfully: the crock pot) with carefully grated cheese, Teaxs Pete and a beaten egg, simmered for a couple of hours and topped with bright beautiful cayenne pepper. There are roasted potatoes because in their hearts my menfolk have a yearning for something with ketchup on it at just about every meal. And there was a decadent salad. Katie put fresh cilantro in and chopped fresh avocado, plums, mango and apricots and the most lovely goat cheese I've ever tasted, one that had a kiss of honey elevating it to mysticism. And of course, we put Tahini Dressing over the whole thing, though we had a backup plan in the form of a bottle of Annie's Goddess dressing which would have done nicely in a pinch. And those are gardenias off to the side, sweetening the savory scent of the room with their magic.

As the evening spun out like threads of gold, with laughter, friends, food and finally candles and cake, here is the ham we didn't eat, but which we enjoyed quite as much. I'd brought my exquisite Mon Amie Ribbonerie hat to show Katie. Looking as perfectly gorgeous as ever, it became a stage prop to the Dylan's Birthday Gents of the Back Deck Vaudeville Review.*

And at last, the best present of all, and the least expected: a brief visit from the only older blood brother with whom he has always marked the passing of time. Perhaps I will take my sentimental self into the kitchen tonight and make them stand still to be marked again, though they are both taller than their dad or me. Passing 6 feet, passing 6 feet and 2, maybe this year touching on 6 feet and 3 or so. No matter. I will sleep well tonight. As Ms. Moon reminds us, seldom do we sleep so well as when those babies, grown to men (or women) sleep in their childhood beds, Winkin and Blinkin and Nod. Love, everyone.


*Photo credits
Last photo but one, from left: Rodney, Luke, Dylan and Evan (all but Rodney products of the St. Johns County Center for the Arts at Murray Middle School and St. Augustine High School, with MANY THANKS to Mrs. Nance and Mr. Dodd!!)

Hat available from Mon Amie Ribbonerie (Remember, these are handmade and therefore no two are alike!)

Last photo, from left: Mac, A Gargoyle, played by Meg, and Dylan
Photos mostly taken by Angie
P.S. I think because I started drafting this last night it carries the 6/20 date. For the record, I'm actually publishing on 6/21, accounting for the belated note in Mac's appearance today.

Julia Child and Claude Sinatsch, remembered together

In August 2006, long before Julie and Julia renewed public interest in Julia Child, a small group of friends gathered to celebrate the anniversary of her birth. We knew we were slightly off a milestone (the 100th anniversary of her birth will come in 2012) but we all admired her, we love good food and almost any excuse for a party, and I'd recently found a battered and beloved copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and wanted to try it out. It's become a more-or-less annual event in my circle and each is its own story, but this one was something special and I've wanted to share it since the day I started writing Eat Here. I beg your indulgence for its length and hope you'll be rewarded by the stories nested within the little story of this party.

I am far too cowardly to host A Real Dinner Party. In fact I often wonder who IS brave enough to consider such a thing without a staff to clean and help cook? But I do love to cook, and I trust the affectionate indulgence of my friends and the fact that they love to cook, too. It was Katie's idea. We asked a tiny group because we can only seat about 8 people at our table, and you can't host people outdoors in the August of north Florida without risking the possibility of melting people into little puddles. So, a small, safe crowd. And then somehow we invited Claude and Giselle.

They are owners, and Claude chef de cuisine of one of St. Augustine's favorite restaurants, Le Pavillon, where European cooking has been done excellently for more than a generation. It seemed perfectly crazy and perfectly natural, in equal measure, because the points of intersection were so many, and so intriguing.

When Rodney was a teenager he delivered restaurant supplies to Le Pavillon; when I was younger I had many dinners with an extended circle of friends practically in the kitchen of the restaurant. Pablo and Sue had separate connections as writers, video producers and members of various national culinary and cultural organizations. Lon and Lis, known to most of our small community for their astonishing musical range and connections, were old friends of the restaurant and the dedicated family who'd owned and defined it. Claude had known the Cafe Alcazar as a fan and a customer and therefore loved its owner, Lorie. And when Rodney and I bought our place some years ago we discovered to our delight that Claude and Giselle were neighbors. The friendship was renewed, with much of the kindness coming from Claude's side of the fence. I don't know if that all hangs together for you, but the point is we live in a funny little old town, and the circles are small, small, small, my loves, and the losses are poignant.

So Claude and Giselle were invited. Giselle was working at the restaurant that night, but Claude dropped by before the party really started: Giselle had sent a quiche and he was charged with dropping it off; couldn't stay more than a moment, had to be off, oh, but he would LOVE to see Lis for a moment...perhaps he would stay for just a few minutes. Claude had one of those personalities that fill rooms, but not in the bad way. He filled a room so that you wanted to just squeeze in and get in on the fun, because people were generally either loud or laughing or both and there was something interesting going on, something with people and food at its middle, something you didn't want to miss. In all honesty, I think Tommy Willis told this part better than I ever could. He's a priest and he was talking at Claude's funeral, but his story was perfectly balanced and a terrific snapshot of Claude. I'll make you a deal: I'll tell you what Tommy said later, maybe in a Part II. Suffice it for now to say that Claude was a force of nature, perfectly suited to running a great kitchen with one hand (that hand probably belonging mostly to Giselle and her brother, their late, much-lamented business partner Fritz), and making every customer feel as though they lived in his kitchen with the other. And not just as though they lived in his kitchen, but as if they'd been made welcome at the king's kitchen table, had set up housekeeping and couldn't bear to think of leaving.

Claude made some early noises about leaving as we waited for people to gather. I said, "Claude, really, you've brought this lovely quiche and Giselle is at work, and anyway, you have to eat. How about a cocktail?" He tilted his head as he considered. "What do you have?" he asked, clearly not interested in the red wine that was more or less going around. "Vodka," I answered, which was pretty much all I had, since I'd assumed Julia Child revelers would all drink wine of one description of another, and most of them had kindly brought bottles.

"Perfect," he said, "but just one." He settled at the table with Pablo and Lon. It didn't last long, but here they are in a regrettably dark photo with Claude to the left, dressed in tennis whites, Pablo and Lon.

I had game hens or chicken roasting on the grill and when I brought them in, Claude stepped capably into the kitchen and cut them into serving-sized pieces and I made him a second drink. Katie's French onion soup was simmering on the stove and we shaved Gruyere and pretty soon we all were more or less in the kitchen together. I think this was when Claude realized that the point of the party was to celebrate Julia Child: her influence on us as people (watching her on TV) and cooks (reading her cookbooks and using her unflappable steadiness to brave French cooking). He shoved his glasses onto his forehead as he worked with the chicken, sipped his vodka martini and said, "Ah! Julia! I knew her, you know." So the tiny crowd drew in closer, excepting one or two who'd already heard the story, and Claude described his first meeting with Julia Child. He had been a sous chef at The Four Seasons, and she had just walked into the kitchen one day. Laughing, Claude put his hand out above his own head to indicate how tall she'd been and even imitated her voice, which was funny on Saturday Night Live but for various reasons even funnier when Claude did it, leavened by genuine respect and affection, and his persistent Swiss-German accent. Apparently she'd made more than one stop at the famed New York restaurant, and each of his recollections led him to another. We made stops via Claude's memory at the White House, where he once cooked, and finally ended back in St. Augustine.

In the late 70s, Jacques Cousteau was here, his famed ship Calypso undergoing work at one of the local shipyards. Claude shared his European sensibilities and taste in food with Cousteau, and it sounded as though Cousteau was quickly welcomed to the king's table I described above. Whether sitting in the kitchen at Le Pavillon or eating Claude's bouillabaisse aboard the vessel he was loathe to leave untended, an important friendship was apparently forged. More than 30 years later, our tiny circle welcomed these memories and warmed its collective hands as they were recollected. Claude stayed until the very end of that party, drinking and laughing and eating and telling stories. Giselle's quiche, it turned out, was a Quiche Lorraine, bound by a creamy cheese and egg flavor she claims is a snap but which I've never been able to replicate.

And though we've continued to celebrate this special (en Francais) anniversaire, its inaugural will stand in our memories forever. If you can see the delicate web of connections between us at which I have hinted, you'll understand why. There are many more stories beneath this surface, my loves, but they will have to come another night. Sooner or later, I'll tell you about the impact of Claude, Giselle and Fritz on the family of Tommy Willis and about some of the other connections we share. Thank you for keeping your drooping lids open with me for this recollection, for listening carefully to all that needed saying, all that didn't need saying, and all that lies between.


Credits: Photo by Rodney
Umm, I had no copy editor tonight, so any typos are completely the fault of Dylan. He does promise to proof for me tomorrow so stay tuned. :)

Eat Here's once-a-year Fried Chicken, for when Katie comes home

Here's a sweet nosegay of violets, uncovered today in the Ongoing Excavations of Rodney. It'll have to get you by til the real ones bloom, my dears. Or you can go to Ms. Moon's, and look at her deliciously delicate white violet.

The Countdown to Katie is in full swing, and I've been thinking about how my welcomes always include food (I know, I know) and then, inevitably, about what to cook. This is partly because of me, because of my history and my roots and my crazy family and Why We Are Fat, but as Monty Woolley says in The Man Who Came to Dinner, "Yes, yes, we won't discuss that". It is also, at least on this occasion, because I've been thinking of the relative privations of living in a country, on a continent, where much of what we take for granted is simply not there. Katie called me a few months ago to ask how to make buttermilk. She knew it could be done but couldn't remember the proportions; she was cooking for Adam and something needed buttermilk. A few days later she emailed and said whatever it was had been wonderful, especially considering that she'd made buttermilk out of canned milk, because fresh milk, what my mother used to call "sweet milk", was an hour's drive away. Eggs were the same. So since she's had to be without these riches we hardly give a thought to enjoying, it seems to me that the thing to do would be welcome her with the, er, fatted calf, with apologies to my vegetarian friends, who are legion.

I am thinking of our old favorite chocolate cake, a Susan Purdy recipe I won't share with you here, but you can find it in A Piece of Cake, and you'll be glad you did. It calls for buttermilk. Before I was given a copy of this invaluable Biblical reference for cakemakers by our dear Lis, I used cake mixes. I was raised with cake mixes. But when you make a few cakes from scratch you discover a couple of things. One is that cake mixes don't really save you much time. Another more critical fact is this: cake mixes are made with chemically-treated flour. When you taste the difference for yourself, there's no going back. So I was thinking of the chocolate buttermilk cake, to celebrate a missed birthday.

And because I was busy sharing the Angel Biscuit recipe with you, the thought of fried chicken came to me. My menfolk will tell you that this is something I only cook once or twice a year, usually for celebratory occasions. Generally speaking they believe to a man that it should be served every other evening, but you'll know right away that it's not good for you and is a luxury to be savored on rare and memorable occasions. This is partly because its inseparable, more or less, from its many friends and relations, which include biscuits, of course, and usually mashed potatoes and what is called in the South "milk gravy". I think I might fry chicken for this wonderfully savor-able occasion, so I thought I'd tell you how to make it, in case you ever need to know. You can make it rather less bad if you use smart things like skim milk and reasonable serving portions, and boneless skinless chicken breast meat instead of pieces of chicken. However you decide to do it, here are the secrets to success.

Black cast iron skillets are highly recommended, but if you don't have one, use whatever you have, as long as it has a lid. Season enough flour to coat the chicken and leave some to make the roux for the gravy. This may take a couple of cups of flour, depending on how much you need, but make plenty. It's easy enough to throw away the extra but hard to recover from in mid-fry. Use salt and plenty of pepper, and whatever else you like: marjoram, rosemary, fresh or dried parsley and thyme...the salt and pepper are mandatory. The best pepper is that nice stuff that comes in different colors, fresh ground, but you know how to do this for your people so they'll like it. Put enough oil in your skillet to fry the chicken, but remember you're not deep-frying; you probably need an inch or so evenly across the bottom of your skillet. I use canola oil, but you can use peanut or safflower or whatever you prefer. Be sure it's an oil that can tolerate a heat, especially if you're frying chicken with bones; it takes longer to cook. Make sure the oil is well heated to what you might think of as medium high if you used an electric stove; this is one of the places the recipe might become science if I knew enough. I don't, so it's still art for me and you'll have to use your good cook judgement. Salt and pepper your chicken, too, but mostly pepper.

Dredge the chicken in the seasoned flour. In my family there is no dipping of the chicken in buttermilk, or any extra liquid at all. Just dredge. Place the pieces of chicken (carefully!) in the skillet, making sure not to crowd. Feed the pan (which means, sprinkle more flour on top of the chicken) and cover the skillet. This is the magic part. If you don't feed the pan, you won't have those tasty crunchy bits to season the roux for you and the gravy will taste like milk and flour. And you can only do this on the first side you cook; once you turn the chicken your opportunity passes. Leave the cover on the chicken until you're ready to turn it. The time will vary, depending on what you're cooking: if you have three chicken breasts with bones in your skillet, you let it cook for 15 or 20 minutes before you turn it. If you're doing boneless breast meat, it takes about half that time.

When you're ready to turn the chicken - this is the super top secret part you canNOT tell ANYone, and I am not kidding - turn this chicken and DO NOT put the lid back on. The lid has helped you steam your chicken to perfect white doneness and set the fine crumb coating. If you put the lid on after you turn the chicken, the breading will fall off and you'll throw the whole mess away. Peek at the chicken until the second side is nicely browned and you know you've cooked it long enough. (Make a test piece of a breast or thigh if you haven't done this before, and you'll get an idea how long it takes to cook.)

After the chicken is done, pour off the extra oil and leave just enough in the skillet to make a roux. This is purely art, my loves. Add seasoned flour until the oil is "taken up" and you can see a nice thick roux forming, stirring all the time. You want this to be as brown as it can be without even hinting at burning. As soon as you're happy with that color, add enough milk to thin the roux to the right consistency and cook as it thickens, usually another 5 minutes, perhaps a little longer. To reduce the fat, you can use half skim milk and half water if you like. The flavor is going to come from that feeding of the pan you did earlier and your beautiful dark brown roux, anyway.

Don't try to do this for a dinner party tomorrow night if you've never done it before. It's one of those recipes you have to try a few times before you do it for show. But it's completely worth it. I think Katie will love it, don't you think so? It's a good bit of work and care, this chicken, but it says, Welcome home, my dear old one. Welcome home.

Best friends and homecomings

My heart's sister is coming home soon, from darkest Africa and her dear love. Here we are together at Gatorbone, having slipped onto a wide porch that would soon be a stage filled with music. Here we are paused for a moment together, before we ever guessed that she would go so far from home and be so long away.

There is a passage in T.H. White's "The Once and Future King" wherein a kindly badger tells the very young and not-yet-king Arthur about a treatise he's written, explaining why Man has become superior over the other species of the earth. It's about how the animals choose their gifts, how these gifts are granted by God, and most importantly, how the gifts influence the development of their recipients. It's whimsical and funny and if you haven't read it I won't spoil it for you. But my point is that I do believe each of us arrives at the door of life with certain gifts, the influence of which shapes and changes us.

My gift, I think, is friendship. I am blessed beyond measure by friendships that have changed me, and by which I have been incalculably changed. Some friends are already known to you at Eat Here. You know Lis and Judy by their music, and Ms. Moon by her blog. You know Lorie by her recipes, and O'Hare by her dramatic exit. And I hope you will know Lauren and Susan and Mary and Tina and so many others and if you do, you're likely to catch my references to all of them as my "best" friend, for each of them is a sister of my heart.

Come home, sister. Hurry. Hurry.

Cold days, blue skies and more remembering

Remember when I mentioned that stunning view to the west, from high up on the beachside tower at Guana? This is more or less what it looks like, though of course my phone pictures are far inferior to the serious ones Rodney takes. (Sooner or later, I'll get his work into my blog since I'm pretty sure he'll let me use if for free, but that's a photo layout for another evening.) Still, you get the idea. And since it's approximately as cold as it is in Outer Space or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and therefore too cold even for crazy people like Rodney and me to walk on the beach, this picture will have to do for now. And it's been cold for a long, long time, at least, for those of us used to the brief cold snaps and quick warm-ups of north Florida where the proximity of the Gulf Stream usually means the cold evens out pretty reliably. It's been cold for so long that even things that don't usually freeze seem to have frozen.

I love the things in my garden (by which I mean, my whole messy yard) most that have been started from cuttings and have a history. There are Seven Sisters roses which bless us every May with cascades of pink clustered flowers; every one of these plants came from an ancient rose bush started from a cutting by Rodney's mother, 40 years ago or more. There is abundant wedelia, started for me by Lauren. It covers an otherwise bare section of ground, and in summer that cover looks like a carpet of miniature wild daisies, bright with yellow petals against green foliage. And two summers ago, Rodney took a cutting from my friend Katie's yard, one in which I had little confidence at the time. It was an enormous bush-turned-tree with large, lush leaves, punctuated by ridiculously large, gorgeous pink flowers.


They looked more or less like this, though it's hard to imagine how gigantic the flowers are: they're bigger than my hands, and the most delicate pink color, that pink you associate with babies. The one you see in sunsets now and then. And since my dearly loved Katie has been in Africa for 53 or 54 years, (that's a lie: it's only been a few months but it seems like years to me)give or take, that ridiculously overdressed shrubbery has been just a teensy bit like catching sight of Katie in my garden now and again. Only now it has frozen, its branches drooping sadly, the promising buds of flowers that clung to those branches right up til the freeze curled into brown husks and dropped to the garden's floor. And as sorrowful as this is, even its faded glory serves to make me think of Katie, to see her face, to remember that she'll be home soon. Soon, soon.

The elephant ears, which grow to what Mel Brooks might have called Ludicrous Size during those years in which frosts and freezes only brush past us quickly, almost unnoticed, have frozen into drooping brown stalks that look almost as if they'd melted. The canna lilies, those glamorous, flashy, long-legged beauties we can always count on to return in the spring, have melted into similar sad disarray. And yet I know that sleeping under the cold ground are the delicate wild violets I treasure so much that I forbid all yard work in their little acre, the small spot they've chosen for themselves under the convergence of a tall water oak and two magnolias. So the cold goes on, and I think of the coming of spring. Keep an eye out: I'll find a picture of those enchanted wild violets to keep us going until the breeze warms and the days lengthen and the sun's benediction returns.

Just keep warm, for now. Make onion soup for your people; you'll warm them, too, right on down to their toes. This is how I do it, in case you don't have a soup brewing in your heart right this minute.

Take about 4 or 5 onions, nice big ones, any kind you have - I like a couple of sweet onions and a big red onion, and a big white onion and even a shallot or two. Slice them thinly and put them into a cast iron skillet with some butter and olive oil. Salt and pepper a bit, to your taste as well as you can while you're still guessing. Cover the skillet and cook the onions for 15 or 20 minutes, and then take the lid off and pay close attention. You'll need to finish cooking the onions, reducing them drastically, stirring almost all the time. This will take another 15 or 20 minutes, and you can add a tablespoon of sugar or two to help the onions brown and caramelize. When they're done, really nicely browned and much reduced, sprinkle 3 or 4 tablespoons of flour over them and allow this to cook, too. You'll have to keep stirring. Deglaze the skillet with a little white wine, which will make a bit of a thick roux. Slowly add broth to this mixture and then pour this back into a nice big pot with the rest of your broth (you'll need about 4 cups of broth, all told, perhaps more if you want the soup to go further). The interesting part here is that Julia Child will tell you to use a homemade beef broth, but this why people think of French Onion Soup as being too labor-intensive to make at home. Nonsense. Use store-bought broth. Use chicken broth if you prefer, or even vegetarian broth. Let this nice mixture simmer for as long as you like, over very low heat, stirring now and then. It can simmer for half an hour or 3 hours, and if it reduces too much add some more broth or water. Taste occasionally to be sure you have the right amount of salt. When you're almost ready to stop simmering, add 3 or 4 tablespoons of good Port wine if you have it. If you don't, don't give it another thought. Immediately before you serve, stir in 3 or 4 tablespoons of good cognac, and again, if you don't have any, don't worry about it. Serve in the traditional way, with a piece of nice French bread topped with Gruyere cheese, heated under the broiler. Or you can make slices of your own or store-bought French bread, toasted in the oven at 300 degrees for half an hour, until they're golden, and melt some Gruyere or Emmenthaler on top; this gives you nice cheese-topped croutons and lessens the amount of cheese you'd use if you put it directly atop the soup. And if you're not eating cheese, fine. Just serve the soup with a nice salad and your family will be in heaven. They will forget that it's freezing, that the garden has melted, that the long winter has wrapped them 'round. They will, for a little while, think about how much they love you and each other and how lucky they are. That should hold us for a little bit, don't you think?