I emotionally eat for a variety of reasons:-to celebrate, yes, that is a great excuse of mine.   Others are to reward myself for a difficult task finally accomplished, when I am blue or under the weather, when I am stressed or hurried.   I don’t recall eating for heartbreak not because this has never occurred, but that I have successfully blocked the feeling from my consciousness.  My “consoling” foods are often warm and slurpy pastas that create that sense of physical fullness.  I suppose I rationalize it this way: if my heart cannot be full, perhaps my full stomach can replace the sensation.  I am far too “carb” focused to ever consider a salad as a comfort food, but when so beautifully described as Luisa Weiss does here, I would consider having the provisions on hand (in case of an emergency of the heart).

Now, I’m not talking about big leafy green salads.  Those won’t do for heartbreak.  What I find to be a very reliable meal in times of misery involve a little bowl of what some people might call an abbreviated version of a Greek salad.  What’s important is that you find yourself a snappy little cucumber without any give (I like seedless Kirbys or Persian cucumbers), a handful of cherry tomatoes that actually taste like something, mercifully available all  year long now, a small slab of feta cheese (Greek or French, it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s fresh), and dried oregano (Greek or Italian, please).

 

Don’t bother peeling the cucumber, but slice it in half lengthwise and then in little half-moons.  Cut the tomatoes in halves or quarters and the feta into small cubes.  Combine all of this in a bowl and sprinkle judiciously with oregano, plus a good pinch of flaky salt.  Don’t skimp on the salt because of the feta.  trust me, it’s a mistake.  Your body needs the salt; haven’t you been crying your eyes out?  Replenish.  Then add a good glug of olive oil and the smallest drip of vinegar (I use white wine vinegar; but you could use Champagne, I suppose, or sherry vinegar; whatever you do, no balsamic, I beg of you), and toss the whole thing together until the tomatoes glisten with olive oil, the herbs are dispersed, and the fetas is starting to break down, ever so slight;y at the edges.

Now if it’s summer; and I hope it I because at least then you’ve got a leg up on the the poor winter heartbroken who definitely have the rawer end of the deal, go out on your balcony, your backyard, or, all else failing, your front stoop.  I find it rather important to eat this little salad, which might be all you can stomach in a day, in the setting sun.  As you crunch your way carefuly through your bowl, the sun makes you squint and warms your hair,and the soft evening breeze will feel like a caress, which I think you need almost as much as you need the salad.

As your fork spears every more hungrily, you can start to daydream about that trip tp Greece you’d like to think about taking where you can eat feta and tomatoes, all day long ever day, and great big olives too, and nice warm bread, and there will be a few handsome waiters winking at you as you sit by the bar with your glass of retsina and your sun-kissed tourist glow.  Suddenly, you’ll find yourself scraping the bottom of your bowl rather lustily and you might feel sheepish, or at least a little guilty, for enjoying the simple meal so much when you thought you might never eat again. 

Don’t worry the heartbreak’s not entirely gone, and it won’t be until it skulls away of its own accord.  But in the mean time, you snuck a meal past its shadowy figure and you are felling rather good, like you wouldn’t mind another one of those,or at least a spoon to get at the dregs of the dressing at the bottom of the bowl.  Here’s a little tip from me to you: no one, but no one, will notice if your raise your bowl to your lips and tip it back, letting the herbed oil and vinegar, flecked with bits of feta and tomato seeds, pour down your throat.  You might cough a bit if its too sharp, and you might feel just a little greedy.  But it’s worth it, I think, to feel your appetite and your lust for life come back to life, one cherry tomato at a time.

I hope that these couple of excerpts have tantalized you to pick up My Berlin Kitchen for your own.  I haven’t even told you about the great recipes which eat each and every chapter…….

Kath’s quote: “I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them.”-Nora Ephron
 

Love-that is all.

In this second excerpt Luisa Weiss recounts what I have struggled to appropriately describe in the past; that moment when I have become overwhelmed with that utter bliss that comes after a well-prepared meal, surrounded by loved ones and often times in a beautiful setting. 

I am happy to report that my life has been made up of a string of these moments: on my many travel adventures, whilst on our precious Isla Mujeres,

a sunset walk on the beach at our summer house and indeed, even in my own backyard-lying in a hammock, or cuddled up around our fire pit or sitting under the blossoming plum tress that have been strung with white lights.  I think what I am trying to say is that Luisa Weiss “gets” me and I “get” her….

But pavlova felt too fussy for this languid afternoon.  I leaned back on the couch and closed my eyes, hearing the faint hum of the traffic from the outdoors and thinking about our day.  I remembered the buttermilk we’d shared, creamy and sour.  It occurred to me that buttermilk and berries would make the perfect summer dessert.  In my collection of clipped recipes from so long ago, I found the recipe I was looking for almost straightaway: buttermilk pannacotta.

The dessert consisted of not much more than buttermilk, heavy cream, and sugar, with a a little gelatin for suspension and wiggle.  To serve with the pannacotta, I decided to sugar red berries, letting a syrupy, ruby-red juice form.  Their sweet-sour pop would be a good contract to the nursery-dessert quality of the pannacotta.

The pannacotta was simple to make, but when the time came to unmold the set cream from its ceramic mold, I struggled to loosen it from the sides.  Max walked into the kitchen just as I was starting to lose my cool and ended up helping me, the two of us giggling at the pannacotta’s luxuriant wobble as it settled onto the serving plate.  Then I spooned the juicy berries and their syrup all around the pannacotta, almost obscuring the creamy mound.  As Max drove us to Muck and Jurgen’s house on a leafy street in Zehlendorf, I held the serving plate gingerly in my lap as the fruit syrup slid back and forth precariously.

Out on their deck at dusk, we ate pink-fleshed lake trout poached gently in fennel broth, small boiled potatoes, waxy and sunflower-yellow and dusted with chopped parsley, and a little salad of soft greens studded with toasted sunflower seeds.  There was a cold bottle of Riesling and a sharp and creamy horseradish sauce mixed with grated apple for a bit of sweetness to dollop on the fish, its flesh tender and barely warm.  Later, when the sky had grown dark and we sat outside in candlelight, full of fish and potatoes and wine, everybody oohed and aahed as I spooned out trembling portions of pannacottaand sweet-sour berries into little dishes that Muck had brought out.

As we ate, the buttermilk cutting the richness of the cream and the sugared berries a sharp contrast to the soothing blandness of the pannacotta, we listened to the neighbor’s children play in the garden next door.  The table soon fell quiet and as our spoons scraped against the china and I saw the light draining from the sky, my world suddenly felt so stunningly complete, so full and rich and just as it should be, that I almost lost my breath.

 Kath’s quote: “Life is not measured by the breaths you take but by its breathtaking monents.”-Michael Vance.

Love-that is all.

No secret here-I love to read.  This winter, I have averaged 2-3 books per week and I have a stack of them waiting for me on my night table.  Although I have been drawn to fiction all of my days and have had dalliances with some non-fiction travel writing, I am crazy about what I call the newest genre- the blogger/book author.   I too have a book in my head but not enough hours in the day to actually get it out of there or to put my “real” work aside, (the work that pays the bills while I support my “writing” habit).  So I am fascinated by the bloggers turned authors who have managed to pull all of this together.  And I love the authenticity with which they write: recounting the disappointments and indeed heartbreaks  but also the joys and triumphs in the kitchen and in life.  Luisa Weiss is my latest fascination.  In this excerpt she is writing of her relationship with her Dad which has so many parallels to my own.

My sweet Dad was as much my food mentor as my Mom.  I inherited my Dad’s inventiveness when I make “refrigerator” soup and I would attribute my natural instincts of knowing what foods will pair well together from him.  My love of salty/sweet is all about my Dad.  Just this Christmas, I was so hoping that someone would ask me about my recipe for the ham glaze because I intentionally mimicked my Dad’s style: throw open the fridge door, get your head and arms in there and start pulling out jars and bottles of sauces and chutneys and marinades, mixing homemade preserves with Asian, Italian and French concoctions.  The result was fabulous (in my mind at least) perhaps because it tasted like “Christmas past”.

And so here is an excerpt by Luisia Weiss. But do not limit your reading to here, go out and buy My Berlin Kitchen.

But best of all, my father gave me a family tomato sauce.  He says he got the recipe from my mother’s mother, Nini, whom he adored, but my mother says that couldn’t possibly be true, because Nini hated to cook.  They always like to argue about who was right on this count.  “Ree-chard, don’t you think I’d know if my mother ever made that tomato sauce.” Oh, get out of town.  Are you telling me that I don’t remember who taught me how to make it?”  I didn’t mind the arguing; it was nice hearing their voices together in the same room.  And besides, I didn’t really care where the sauce came from-to me, it was his sauce.

It may seem a little funny to talk about tomato sauce.  Chances are you scarcely need a recipe for one.  The thing is, this is where it all starts for me.  This sauce was one of the first things I ever made.  It’s the only thing I tend to cook when there’s nothing in the kitchen and I need a quick dinner: its what I cook when there’s nothing I’d rather be doing less than cooking.  It’s what I make when I need steadying and reassurance.  Its smell reminds me of my father and my Italian Grandmother and I like to think that, one day, it’ll be the first recipe my children inherit from me.  If it’s not a family heirloom, then I don’t know what is.

To make it, he would dice up an onion and throw it along with a clove of garlic into a pot of olive oil warming on the stove.  The smell of the cooking onions would drift past the pantry into the living room, where I’d sit in anticipation.  When the onions were soft and fragrant, he’d add chopped carrots and canned tomatoes into the pot and the whole thing would simmer together until it got sweet and saucy and I could hear my stomach growl.  He’d boil a pot of water for spaghetti and break the long strands in half to cook them.  Then he’d dress the whole thing.  We’d sit down at the drop-leaf table in the kitchen and we’d eat together and talk about the day.

Sometimes before bedtime, after he’d finish singing to me and he’d said good-night, he’d turn at the doorway, ready to switch off the light, and tell me I was the apple of his eye, the love of his life.  But I’m not sure he ever really needed to.  I knew it all along.

Kath’s quote: “Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings.” Psalm17:8

Love-that is all.

I have two last excerpts from Ferenc Mate’s accounting of the planting of their roots in rural Tuscany.  I have to be careful not to read this when I am hungry or I will start salivating and building fires to grill my mushrooms over.  Even though I am a happy forager-loving the wild flowers and blueberries around our summer home, I have bever pursued the study of safe mushroom harvesting.  Belair Forest which surrounds our property, is regionally famous for their wild mushrooms and as a result of reading this, I intend to become an expert this coming fall.

 The first funghi-feast at their house I will never forget.  Piccardi casually invited us to taste the year’s first finds.  It was a Saturday night and we went through the graying light, up the hill to their house and looked down on our valley, taking some Vino Nobile and some PinotGrigio from Orvieto.  We had no idea what we would be eating.

The table was set for seven, for their children too were there: feisty Francesca, gentle Angela, and the resolute Allessandro.  We chatted about their schooling, about the coming fall, the nearing vendemmia, because the grapes might be ready early this year with all the heat.  Then the season’s first funghi appeared, chopped fine, cooked down to a sauce and spread on round crostini.  It was heaven.  The pungent, fragrant porcini flavors exploded in our mouths-bittersweet, moody-and the flavors came even more alive with the Vino Nobile from the Avignonesi vineyards.

Having finished the appetizer, I asked if we should open the Pinot Grigio for the next course, but Anna Maria said coyly, “No, there’s a bit more funghi.”  That night at the Piccardis‘ funghi rained like manna from heaven.  After the crostini came tagliatelle con funghi, not with one but two kinds, the first made from tomatoes, the second with porcini only, cooked with sliced garlic, parsley and salt in oil about twenty minutes, then at the end splashed with wine and simmered for a while.  Then came a zuppa di funghi, a think soup of sliced mushrooms, deep, peppery, calling for more wine.  After that we were convinced that we had reached the end, leaned back to relax, thanked Anna Maria for a stupendous dinner, when we noticed that Piccardi had been absent for a while.  We asked if all was well, and just as Francesca was about to reply, in burst her dad, aproned, grinning, carrying in his arms an enormous plate of grilled porcini.  Their fragrance wafted across the room and eddied all around us, and their taste made for the world’s best grilled steak taste dull.  We ate.  Savoring each bite as if it were our last.  The room fell silent as a tomb.

That was, thank God, the end.  Except for some whipped chocolate cake with a thick sauce of berries, and a bit of vinsanto and coffee, and just a tiny bit of grappa.

I can just feel the heaviness of the rich food in their tummies, can’t you?  Next installment  from The Hills of Tuscany is of their Easter Feast.

Kath’s quote: “Nature alone is antique and the oldest art a mushroom.”-Thomas Carlyle

Love-that is all.

I have a “gift” of being entirely swept away by books and movies.  This can be a difficult burden when I despair over the sad ending of a movie or the conclusion of a book, even if it had a happy ending, but simply because I will miss the characters as part of my life.  The great part though, is that when I read a story set in a foreign place, it is as if I am living there too (this really saves money in our travel account).  So too, when I read well-written descriptions about food, I can smell and savour and ridiculous as it may sound, feel “full”.

These are the hills of Sicily (not Tuscany) where we have traveled.

I have just finished this wonderful accounting of a couple’s desire to live a simpler life and their move to rural Italy to do so.  It is entitled “The Hills of Tuscany-A New Life in an Old Land”.  I have a crush on Ferenc Mate.  He is originally from Eastern Europe (like my Dad), lived for a while in Canada (the best country in the world!) and then the Caribbean, Paris and New York (all of my favourite places on earth).  He writes so beautifully about very simple pleasures which ring so true for me.  He also loves abundantly-his wife, his little piece of property and food!  Here is his description of dinner at a little Tuscan Trattoria.

 

The food was as simple as the place.  For appetizers there were assorted crostini-fire-toasted bread, some smeared with chicken livers, others with sauteed mushrooms.  Then of course came pasta.  We both had pici– a homemade, hand-rolled, unevenly thick spaghetti-Candace with a sauce of wild boar and I with a sauce of mixed wild mushrooms.  We were slow in eating, savoring every bite, and looked up as the little girl’s Mamma came and asked if the sauces were fine.  Candace complimented her on the food and apologized for eating so slowly.  A big smile broke on her face, “Piano, piano, con calma,” she said.  Slowly, slowly, with calm.  The came the meats: for Candace roasted pheasant with parchment-like brown skin, and for me wild boar stew marinated in red wine and juniper berries and tasting like heaven, and a plate of Tuscan white beans drenched in olive oil and crushed garlic, and a salad.  And we kept emptying wine glasses, toasting the little girl, her Mamma, Tuscany, the boar, the beans, the toasts.

We ate, with calma, and drank, with gusto, and the little girl and her doll had said good-night long ago, led upstairs by Nonna, Grandma, from behind the bar, and then Mamma went up, too, to say good–night, and we swooned from the heat of the fire and the wine, and thank God Nonna came back and brought us two espressos to bring us to, then she quickly thought it over and brought two glasses of grappa, to sink us once again.

As we left, they both came and said good-bye-handshakes and smiles as if we had been acquaintances for years.  Then we went out into a silver flood of moonlight.

We breathed the night air deeply, utterly content.  And it wasn’t just the food and the wine, but also the family.  There was something heartening in three generations together there-at home.  We felt as if we had dinner at someone’s house.  And the place was so honest, unpretentious, that you knew what counted was not the walls and floors, but the people they comforted.  And it felt reassuring that the vegetables came from their gardens, the wine from the small vineyard across the road, and that the boar and the pheasant were hunted by Grandpa.  We talked about this as we ambled in the moonlight.”

For a moment, didn’t you feel as if you were there with the heat from the kitchen, the smell of roasting meats and basking in the attention of this Grandma and her daughter?   Come back for a couple more installments in the days to come.

Kath’s quote: “Arm in arm in the autumn light, calmed by the warmth and the pitcher of red wine we had at lunch, we ambled in contented silence up the hill towards the piazza where the mosaic facade of the cathedral blazed like a million tiny stars.”-Ferenc Mate

Love-that is all.