Read The Body in the Bonfire Online
Authors: Katherine Hall Page
The Body in the Bonfire (25 page)
She listened in surpriseâand more than a little alarm.
The pulse of the reggae music was continuing
to drift out from the kitchenâ“You Can Get It If You Really Want.” She felt herself relax, and took the words to heart: “Try and try. You'll succeed at last.”
She'd keep trying.
Jane Eyre arrives at Lowood and after breakfasting on burned porridge, a “nauseous messâ¦almost as bad as rotten potatoes,” she confronts her dinner, which she finds “to consist of indifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rusty meat, mixed and cooked together.” She wonders to herself “whether every day's fare would be like this.” Alas, yes. In
Down with Skool,
Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle entitled the chapter describing Nigel Molesworth's thoughts “Skool Food or The Piece of Cod which Passeth Understanding.” Certainly school food has never been associated with gastronomy, yet what we consumed in an abbreviated period of time in surroundings more likely to hinder than aid digestion is often remembered with something like affection.
My mother packed good healthy food for our lunches each morning, filling first our lunch
boxesânow bringing astronomical prices on eBayâthen brown paper lunch bags, as we entered adolescence and put away childish things. We ate sandwiches made from Pepperidge Farm, not Wonder bread. Carrot and celery sticks were lovingly wrapped in waxed paper. There was usually an apple or a banana. Wholesome plain milk stayed cool in our thermoses. Of course we longed for squishy bread, peanut butter and Fluff, chocolate milk, store-bought cookies, and, most of all, school lunches prepared by the cafeteria ladies: chicken à la king, franks and beans, American chop suey, sloppy joes, macaroni and cheese, lime and cherry Jell-O cubes with whipped topping, and tapiocaâ“fish eyes and glue.” Meat loaf. For lunch! With gravy and mashed potatoes! I looked at kids who nonchalantly plunked down their quarters and grabbed a tray each day and thought how lucky they were. And the food wasn't bad. A few times a year, Mom would run out of bread or we'd be late, or some other reason would put me in line with my own tray. The women were good, plain cooks, despite the persistent rumors that a kid once really
had
found part of someone's finger in the beans.
I would never have given a second thought to the school lunches if I'd had a lunch box like the one Elnora Comstock had in Gene Stratton Porter's
A Girl of the Limberlost.
It was brown leather, and when opened, it revealed “a space for sandwiches, a little porcelain box for cold meat or
fried chicken, another for salad, a glass with a lid which screwed on, held by a ring in a corner, for custard or jelly, a flask for tea or milk, a beautiful little knife, fork, and spoon fastened in holders, and a place for a napkin.” This was the other end of the spectrum from a tin lunch pail for high school girls in 1909. Reading the book at age nine or ten, I thought it sounded absolutely perfect.
When I entered college in 1965, meals and how we ate them at the school I attended hadn't changed much since Elnora's era. Food at college was too good. Each dorm still had its own kitchenâno food servicesâand the dorm I was in freshman year was renowned for its baked goods and was presided over by a Mrs. Mallory named Dotânot that we ever dared call her that to her face. There were piping-hot popovers for breakfast, delectable lemon meringue pies, rich fudge cakes, flaky biscuits, and plenty of cookies. Collectively, we were “the freshman ton.”
There was sit-down dinner every nightâand we had to change into a skirt. We all kept a basic number in the front of our closets that could be pulled on in a hurry. Tuesday nights, there were candles on the tables and you could invite a faculty member to dine. It was called “gracious living,” and it was. Freshmen waited on the tables, wearing starched buttercup yellow aprons that stood up like butterfly wings at the shoulders. From Dot, we learned what underliners were and what “Raise right, lower left” meant. Like Mans
field's “mystery balls,” we had nicknames for everything, and a perennial lunchtime favorite was “garbage salad,” a toothsome mélange of lettuce, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, strips of ham, cheese, and anything else the kitchen had left over, all hidden under a sweet dressing.
Times have changed, and the notion of sitting down to dinner every nightâtaking that much time to eatâmust seem to today's college students positively Victorian. But for us, it was a chance to talkâand laugh. We had to stop for a while to break bread together. What could be better?
HAVE FAITH
IN YOUR KITCHEN
BY Faith Sibley Fairchild
A WORK IN PROGRESS
PASTA E FAGIOLI WITH SAUSAGE
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
1 rib of celery, diced
1 large garlic clove, peeled and diced
2 cups canned diced tomatoes with the juice
4 cups chicken broth, canned or homemade
½ pound chorizo or other cooked sausage sliced into ½-inch rounds
1 cup cooked and rinsed (if canned) cannellini or other white beans
½ cup ditalini or other short tubular pasta
Salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons fresh basil leaves, minced
2 tablespoons fresh parsley leaves, minced
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan, Romano, or combination of the cheeses
Heat the olive oil in a heavy saucepan or stock-pot and add the onion, carrots, celery, and garlic. Stir and cook over medium heat until the onion is soft, approximately 2 to 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and broth (if you can find these without salt or MSG, it's preferable). Bring the mixture to a boil. Add the sausage rounds. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the beans and pasta and cook, stirring often, until the pasta is done, approximately 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper, remembering that the sausage may be salty. Add the basil and parsley. Serve with a sprinkling of cheese. Serves 6.
You can prepare this ahead of time, stopping before adding the beans and pasta; add those and the rest of the ingredients shortly before serving.
SMOTHERED PORK CHOPS
Four 1-inch-thick center-cut pork chops
1 large garlic clove, halved
1½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
2 teaspoons dried basil
½ teaspoon dried thyme
½ teaspoon dried rosemary
½ cup flour
1
/
3
cup vegetable oil
1 cup yellow onion, diced
1 medium green bell pepper, sliced
1½ cups water
Rub the chops on both sides with the cut sides of the halved garlic clove. Mix the salt, pepper, basil, thyme, and rosemary together. Generously sprinkle both sides of the chops with the herb mixture, pressing it into the meat. Cover loosely with waxed paper or plastic wrap and let stand in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Remove and dredge the chops in flour. Heat the oil in a skillet large enough to hold all the chops. Brown on both sides, approximately 6 minutes on a side. Remove the chops to a warmed platter. Add the onion and bell pepper to the skillet and cook until soft, approximately 2 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons of the flour used for dredging and the water. Stir until the flour is completely dissolved. Return the chops to the pan and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat, and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes.
The pork will be very tender and the gravy delicious. Serve with rice.
PASTA FRITTATA
½ pound capellini or spaghetti
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan, Romano, or comination of cheeses
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons pesto
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the package, usually 3 minutes for capellini. Drain, place in a warmed bowl, and add 1/2 cup grated cheese, 1 tablespoon olive oil, the pesto, a pinch of salt, and another of pepper. (Pesto, which you can make yourself in a blender or food processor, is a combination of fresh basil leaves pureed with garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Pine nuts and Parmesan are sometimes added. You can freeze pesto. You can also buy prepared pesto in specialty markets.) Mix well until all the strands are coated. Set aside to cool slightly for about 5 minutes. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl and add to the pasta; again, mix well. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil with the butter in a frying pan. Add the pasta mixture, smoothing the top and sprinkling it with 1 tablespoon grated cheese. Cook over medium heat until the bottom is nicely browned. Slide it onto a plate and flip it to cook on the other side, sprinkling the top with the rest of the cheese. You may also run it under the broiler until browned and not flip it, or put the entire pasta mixture into a slightly greased casserole dish, baking it until firm in an oven pre-heated to 350°F. Cut in wedges. Serves 4 as a main course with salad or 6 as a first course or side dish.
This is the recipe for making a frittata from scratch. As Faith tells the boys, you can make it using any kind of leftover pasta as well. If you happen to have some fettuccine alfredo or pasta with Gorgonzola sauce left on handânot likely in my houseâeliminate the cheese.
MRS. MALLORY'S PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES
1½ cups flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
1
/
3
teaspoon baking soda
1 stick unsalted butter
½ cup chunky or plain peanut butter
¾ cup firmly packed brown sugar
¼ cup white sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Chocolate kisses
Preheat the oven to 350 °F. Sift the flour, baking powder, and baking soda together and set aside. Cream the butter, peanut butter, and sugars together; then add the egg and vanilla. Beat well, add the flour mixture, and beat again. Shape into balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet, leaving 2 inches between the cookies. Cook for 8 minutes, push the chocolate kisses in, and cook for 2 minutes more. Cool on racks (although these taste sinfully delicious warm). Makes 4 dozen.
You may also use Hugs, which are small chocolate kisses covered with white chocolate.
LIZZIE'S FLOURLESS PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES
1 cup chunky or plain peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup miniature chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix the first five ingredients in a bowl and then add the chocolate chips. Mix well. Using moistened hands (the dough is sticky), shape 1-tablespoon portions of the dough into balls. Place about 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for approximately 12 minutes, until the cookies are puffy but still soft to the touch. Immediately transfer to racks to cool.
This is one of those recipes that is a godsend when a dessert is needed quickly or when you need to take something to a bake sale. Faith made sure to teach it to her students.
(VIRTUALLY) FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE CAKES
1 stick unsalted butter, plus a small amount to grease ramekins
2 tablespoons flour, plus a small amount to dust ramekins
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, broken into small pieces
3 large eggs
2 egg yolks
1
/
3
cup sugar
Confectioner's sugar
Preheat the oven to 425°F. Butter and lightly flour six 4-ounce ovenproof ramekins. Gently heat the chocolate and 1 stick butter in the top of a double boiler, stirring often. For a sweeter cake, use sweeter chocolate. Using a whisk or an electric mixer, beat the eggs, yolks, and sugar together until thickened and foamy. Beat the melted butter and chocolate mixture into the egg and sugar mixture and immediately add the 2 tablespoons flour, beating well to avoid air holes. Pour the batter into the ramekins. The dessert may be covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated at this point. Bring it to room temperature before cooking. Place the ramekins on a tray and bake in the middle of the oven for 10 minutes. The centers of the cakes should be very soft. Unmold on dessert plates and sift some confectioner's sugar on top. Serve immediately.
Note on recipes:
As always, substitutions can be made. The frittata tastes fine with Egg Beaters and no butter. The cookies and cakes can be made with butter substitutes. Low-fat peanut butter is widely available. There is, however, no substitute for real chocolate!
Long overdue thanks to Jeanne Bracken, reference librarian extraordinaire at the Lincoln Public Library, Lincoln, Massachusetts. My thanks also to Elizabeth Samenfeld-Specht and David Fine for their help with the dessert recipes; and to Jim Samenfeld-Specht, my Aussie guide. Thank you to the following students: Diana Davis, Adam Globus-Hoenich, and Nicholas Hein for technical and other savvy advice. As always, thanks to my editor, Jennifer Sawyer Fisher, and my agent, Faith Hamlin.