Manga

I must have been obsessed with food (nothing new) during a recent library visit, because somehow I came home with 10 or 11 books about food- cookbooks, food-related memoirs, histories of ingredients (including one called, with refreshing simplicity, Milk). My favorite in the pile is Heat, an account by a New Yorker writer who, after bravely inviting chef Mario Batali to dinner (a mutual friend was having a birthday, and our author was cooking), began what turned into a 2 year adventure with Italian food. He works in Mario's kitchen for more than a year (this was supposed to be a 6 week assignment-can you imagine what his wife thought? You'd be right), growing competent in basic kitchen skills, moving up to line cook, pasta cook, and, most successfully, the meat cook (probably there is a more elegant word for it, yes?) and finally takes several increasingly lengthy sojourns to Italy where he apprentices with Mario's first pasta teacher, then a world renowned butcher. Heat is best when talking about what people- farmers, butchers, chefs- go though to get the best to people who may or may not appreciate it, and the seeming hopelessness of the Slow-Fooders against massive ag-giants from all over the world, but also when the writer himself has a food epiphany. One such aha moment comes when he is making polenta, and realizes that the difference between what everyone thinks is polenta- a pretty quick though labor intensive cooking of cornmeal on the stove- and real polenta is that, although the traditional polenta takes hours (!), it does not need you after a certain point, apart from an occasional stir, and that it was a far superior polenta, indeed.

I have never made polenta, but after reading this book, and knowing that it was probably the only thing I could make out of it, decided to try it. I got 3 cups of cornmeal from the co-op (please, BTW, go there if you can- they are not doing well and they need you), came home and put it in a pot with 9 cups of water, a few teaspoons of salt, and got to stirring. The book says that the polenta speaks to you when it doesn't need you anymore, but this polenta was telling me that it was done by no longer sticking to the sides (this after about 30 minutes of stirring a simmering pot), reportedly the classic sign of done-ness in polenta speak. I then put it on a tray where it cooled, and then brushed it with some olive oil and stuck it under the broiler for another 30 minutes. I didn't think it would taste like much- after all, it is just plain old cornmeal- but I should have trusted the Italians know what they're doing because, reader, it was good; golden, crispy outside and chewy inside. A fine vehicle for a sauce, and good on its own, too. Next time I'll try to trust that it can take care of itself and see what happens.

While I was stirring, E was making pasta with the pasta maker (did I mention I was a little obsessed this weekend?). She made spaghetti all by herself- I know she's 10 and that doesn't make her some kind of cooking prodigy, but I forget sometimes that she is big and competant. After our seprate projects were done, we made tortelloni, which are kind of like ravioli, but sort of envelope shaped, with a spinach goat cheese filling. We made a bunch that sucked, but eventually some fine motor skills emerged and she said they were pretty good.

Possibly I ended up with all the food books becuase everyone here is sick of soup. Even the people who would drop by to see if I had any on the stove. Even, um, me.