Read Online Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant by Jenni Ferrari-Adler - Free Book Online
Authors: Jenni Ferrari-Adler
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sauce—sometimes the butter slides off, the lemon dilutes. Steamed asparagus can sink into a puddle on the plate. It seems to me that it might be more useful, though I have never tried it, to have an upright serving dish than an upright steamer, so that the asparagus can continue to drip dry at the table. Then you could take a piece at a time with your fingers (like toast from one of those English toast racks, which seem to exist only to make the toast cold), dip it in a dish of salt or a cup of melted butter, or rub it along your lemon wedge.
Asparagus is finger food. When I eat at home alone, almost everything is finger food. But even if you are in company, my great-aunt Lonnie assures me that the only polite way to eat asparagus is to pick it up. 2 Have you ever tried to fork a whole stem, and then, if you succeed, to aim the asparagus tip at your mouth while your tines are stuck in the base, six inches or so away? It’s a game of depth perception. The stalk dangles, dodges, then smacks you in the face. And unless you are eating with a steak knife, nothing cuts into a stalk of asparagus as well as your teeth do. A regular dinner knife just bruises it.
I sat with Aunt Lonnie at a luncheon where we had to hold our plates on our laps, perched on the edge of a sofa. There was no way to saw at the food on our knees, but Aunt Lonnie said she would have picked up the asparagus no matter where she was sitting. “Go ahead,” said Lonnie as my sister and I hesitated. Despite her benediction, there was something sneaky about eating with our hands in society. And Lonnie, ninety-some years old, giggled a little as we all bit into our stems.
The single person, if he is concerned, as I am, about plowing through his leftovers to avoid confrontations with rotten produce, must create multiple variations on the single ingredient, or repeat themes. A head of lettuce or a bell pepper stretches beyond one meal. A loaf of bread lasts from sandwich to toast to French toast to croutons. After the first night’s meal, the bundle of asparagus still stands, a small army in the fridge.
After steaming comes roasting. 3 Roasted asparagus is a triumph, because you can sort of caramelize—I think that is what is happening—whatever vegetable sugars are in there. The tips turn brown and sweet like chicken wings. You cut the slipperiness. You can seal in the salt and pepper and olive oil while the asparagus cooks, so you won’t need the sauce that was sliding off before. The skin crinkles a little, like a grilled rather than a boiled hot dog—without all the liquid, the flavor is intense.
By June, it starts to get too hot for even the superhero to turn the oven up to 450. I move the asparagus to the grill. This involves threading stalks of asparagus onto three skewers until I have built a kind of raft that rests on the grill without falling through. Some of the asparagus stalks are too thin to be pierced this way. Inevitably, something about the precarious arrangement fails. Stalks fall onto the coals and shrink into sparklers. Some stay on top but blacken. The few that survive make it worth the effort.
I keep eating. I don’t know what nutrients are in asparagus, but I am infused with them. I ride my bike and plant herbs outside. To be this happy in Michigan borders on insanity. Yes! The old winter depression bordered on insanity too. Living in a place of lesser contrasts, how would you know what it feels like to come back from the dead?
I steamed, I roasted, I grilled. I was not tired of it yet.
There was no particular reason, after a while, for my determination to eat asparagus every single day it was in the market, except that I had been doing so since the beginning and was assuming the pride of a challenge. By June, there were other vegetables in the market. I could have quit. But I wanted to be Spargelfrau. Sometimes, eating alone, you are humble. Sometimes, though, the reason to go through with cooking for yourself is the chance
Asparagus is finger food. When I eat at home alone, almost everything is finger food. But even if you are in company, my great-aunt Lonnie assures me that the only polite way to eat asparagus is to pick it up. 2 Have you ever tried to fork a whole stem, and then, if you succeed, to aim the asparagus tip at your mouth while your tines are stuck in the base, six inches or so away? It’s a game of depth perception. The stalk dangles, dodges, then smacks you in the face. And unless you are eating with a steak knife, nothing cuts into a stalk of asparagus as well as your teeth do. A regular dinner knife just bruises it.
I sat with Aunt Lonnie at a luncheon where we had to hold our plates on our laps, perched on the edge of a sofa. There was no way to saw at the food on our knees, but Aunt Lonnie said she would have picked up the asparagus no matter where she was sitting. “Go ahead,” said Lonnie as my sister and I hesitated. Despite her benediction, there was something sneaky about eating with our hands in society. And Lonnie, ninety-some years old, giggled a little as we all bit into our stems.
The single person, if he is concerned, as I am, about plowing through his leftovers to avoid confrontations with rotten produce, must create multiple variations on the single ingredient, or repeat themes. A head of lettuce or a bell pepper stretches beyond one meal. A loaf of bread lasts from sandwich to toast to French toast to croutons. After the first night’s meal, the bundle of asparagus still stands, a small army in the fridge.
After steaming comes roasting. 3 Roasted asparagus is a triumph, because you can sort of caramelize—I think that is what is happening—whatever vegetable sugars are in there. The tips turn brown and sweet like chicken wings. You cut the slipperiness. You can seal in the salt and pepper and olive oil while the asparagus cooks, so you won’t need the sauce that was sliding off before. The skin crinkles a little, like a grilled rather than a boiled hot dog—without all the liquid, the flavor is intense.
By June, it starts to get too hot for even the superhero to turn the oven up to 450. I move the asparagus to the grill. This involves threading stalks of asparagus onto three skewers until I have built a kind of raft that rests on the grill without falling through. Some of the asparagus stalks are too thin to be pierced this way. Inevitably, something about the precarious arrangement fails. Stalks fall onto the coals and shrink into sparklers. Some stay on top but blacken. The few that survive make it worth the effort.
I keep eating. I don’t know what nutrients are in asparagus, but I am infused with them. I ride my bike and plant herbs outside. To be this happy in Michigan borders on insanity. Yes! The old winter depression bordered on insanity too. Living in a place of lesser contrasts, how would you know what it feels like to come back from the dead?
I steamed, I roasted, I grilled. I was not tired of it yet.
There was no particular reason, after a while, for my determination to eat asparagus every single day it was in the market, except that I had been doing so since the beginning and was assuming the pride of a challenge. By June, there were other vegetables in the market. I could have quit. But I wanted to be Spargelfrau. Sometimes, eating alone, you are humble. Sometimes, though, the reason to go through with cooking for yourself is the chance
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