The Lost Art of Real Cooking (& Lacto-Fermented Jicama Pickles)

The Lost Art of Real Cooking is a real book! You can get it here.

Yesterday, I got off the train from Oregon and just like that, all of a sudden, I was a published author. I was also tired, smelly, grumbling at the fog, and oddly nervous.

Is it odd to be nervous about book releases? Particularly, cookbook releases? It's not like I've just published The Collected Love Letters of Thirteen-Year-Old Rosanna (which, incidentally, would be a longer book than I'd like to admit). But still, reading over this cookbook, I find myself thinking, "I said that? But it's so opinionated! How bold!" and I shiver. Not that I don't hold those opinions, of course. But I've had a bit too much practice actively suppressing my opinions in the short-sighted belief that they would only stir up contention if I uttered them. I was nervous. I sidestepped controversy, nodded and said "hmm." I was afraid of being engaged. And now, there's a permanent record of my cooking opinions, in a book! So I'm nervous.

If only I had so actively suppressed my romantic opinions at the age of thirteen.

Certainly it's not very odd to be nervous about live radio interviews. Can you conceive of something more nightmare-and-fever-inducing to an introvert than a live radio interview? It's like talking on the telephone. Times a billion. Of course it's always worth it afterwards, when I'm glowing in the knowledge that the gracious interviewer was actually interested in my book and what I had to say, and that there were many stupid things I could have done and said but didn't. Then I play the interviews back, and notice how my voice sounds so girly and breathless, and wish all over again that I were one of those people who can be effortlessly warm and funny at once.

Like Ken, my co-author. You should listen to an interview he did for Good Food on KCRW today. You can find it here, sometime in the future when it airs.

Now I'm wondering if I'm supposed to confess this timidity, or not! I should be bold and forthright, shouldn't I?

Here's something decidedly bold: jicama pickles! I've only ever had vinegar-pickled jicama before, but it was good enough to convince me that lacto-fermented jicama pickles would be sublime. (It is one of my opinions that lacto-fermented pickles are superior to their vinegar equivalents.)

It took them almost a month to ferment at cold room temperature, but as soon as I got back from [sigh] Oregon, I stuck my nose in the crock and was rewarded with the beautiful aroma of mature lacto-fermentation. They had a little mold growth, which I skimmed off before ladling them into a jar for refrigerator storage. They're delicious right now -- snappy crisp, briny -- but I know they'll only improve as they age in the fridge.

There is one problem. Jicama is a starchy vegetable. The starch from the cut jicama has dissolved into the brine, turning it milky and unpleasantly viscous. Perhaps I should have rinsed the jicama very well after I cut it, to wash off its external starches. Without trying that method, I'm suspicious that more starches would have simply seeped out during fermentation. Or perhaps I should rinse the pickles now, before serving. But that makes me sad, because usually I treasure the brine nearly as much as the pickles (there's nothing like brine in a salad dressing!). Perhaps after I eat the pickles the starches will settle, and I can decant or siphon some clear brine off the top.

Jicama Pickles

Take two or three large jicamas. Clean and peel them and cut out any bad spots. Cut them into sticks about 1/4" wide. (Here you might try rinsing them.) Peel several cloves of garlic and pick the stems from a couple of dried chilies. Pack everything into a medium-sized crock. Mix a tablespoon of salt with a cup or two of water. Pour the water over the cut jicama just until it covers it. Place a clean, flat-bottomed weight inside the crock on top of the jicama. A half-gallon jar filled with water works well, depending on the size of your crock. The closer your weight comes to the edge of the crock, the better (air exposure = a place for mold to grow). Cover everything with a tea towel or layered cheesecloth to keep out bugs, and secure with a rubber band.

Put the crock in a dark, warmish place. Here in San Francisco, that means the cupboard over my refrigerator. If you're anywhere else that actually has a summer, you should probably seek out a relatively cool place. For the next few weeks, check on your pickles every so often. Skim off any visible mold and let them ferment until they start to smell like pickles. Transfer them to a quart jar, pour the brine overtop, and refrigerate. You can eat them now, or let them keep curing. They will only get better.

Paprikahead is Expecting

Since March when I plunked down my bags on the well-worn oak floorboards of my TenderNob flat, I've been busy making the kitchen look less like it faces on a garbage chute, and more like some chickens could wander through at any moment. My favorite thing is the pantry with its dutch door, which faces on crocks and jars and tomes.

And now -- if the old desk lamp over the stove didn't do the trick -- I can officially call it my office. My laboratory. My nursery. There's a little something in the oven, and it's due before I turn 25. The learned culinary historian Ken Albala and I are putting our crocks together and making an antiquated cookery-book, which Penguin/Perigee is being so kind as to publish, probably in early 2010.

I can scarce believe it. Does the year 2010 even exist? Let alone contain a book authored by ME? As I told the agent/author I intern for, I seriously couldn't have chosen a better lot for myself if I were eight, and that's saying a hell of a lot. I mean, at six, I knew that when I grew up I would sustain myself on lima beans, venison hearts, and rice pudding, and keep my two dozen babies dressed like 18th century nobility in an underground catacomb-house. But at seven I composed a felicentric novella and by eight I was on to poems about the rainbows on fairy wings. I haven't looked back since:

Flicker flicker
Quickly trick her
Snidely snicker
Let them bicker

Flutter flutter
Bite the butter
Spill and clutter
Tongue's a-stutter

(Glitter glitter?
Now I'll get her
Gnash and spit her
Wings are bitter!

Haven't lost the knack.

Anyway, now I can be an author writing about venison hearts and rice pudding!

The Settlement Cook Book and Apple Roly-Poly

I stood in the deserted Book Exchange yesterday afternoon, sniffing through the old books, when I noticed a battered volume covered in old yellow shelf paper. Shelf paper is always a good sign. Nobody these days has plain wood shelving they want to cover, and a book must be well-loved to merit a homemade jacket. In thin pencil on the spine were the words, "Settlement Cook Book."

Inside, Mrs. Simon Kander smiles placidly at me, "Very Truly Yours," and I recall that she often sits on well-papered shelves with the likes of Irma Rombauer and Fannie Merritt Farmer. But I don't yet discover her real design -- I slip a dollar in the box and run with my treasure. It's only hours later, back in the city, that I slide the shelf-paper jacket from the book and gasp.


Two-by-two, noses in their cookbooks, are a couple dozen cute little cooks, marching towards a large heart on the horizon and the words, "The way to a man's heart." Come, my apron-clad, man-seeking companions, let us take the road laid out before us as it winds its way through our iceboxes and ranges, through our pies and pickles, through the capillaries and arteries of a manly chest to the heart that lies beating within it. It's a hilarious grotesque, a creepy relic of coy humor, and a fabulous treasure for my shelf.

Mrs. Simon Kander, née Lizzie Black, compiled the first edition of her cookbook in 1903, a charity project to benefit a community of Russian Jews in Milwaukee. That edition also bears the subtitle, "The way to a man's heart," but instead of antlike marching cooks, it depicts a lady playing the flute. Mine is the 30th edition, from 1951. The book is falling apart, and I might need to work some curatorial magic to get it in good enough shape for my own shelf. Since Mrs. Kander herself was German, the cookbook includes kuchen and matzos and spritz krapfen -- and, of course, clear signposts pointing its readers to manly hearts. Is it the Apple Roly-Poly? The Wine Syllabub? Rinktum-Dity?

Apple Roly-Poly
p. 345

Make Plain Pie Crust or Biscuit Dough. Roll out 1/2 inch thick. Spread with chopped apples or jam, raisins, sugar and cinnamon; roll like Jelly Roll. Place in a small baking pan, spread butter over all and add 2 cups of cold water, and bake in a hot oven, basting often, with the sauce in the pan, until done. Serve hot.

(Kander, Mrs. Simon. The Settlement Cook Book. Milwaukee: The Settlement Cook Book Co., 30th ed., 1951).

Oatmeal Raisin* Browned-Butter Muffins

The Grand Dame of Southern Cooking was a Communist. Her name is Edna Lewis, and I was thrilled to stumble across her cookbook, In Pursuit of Flavor, at Goodwill today. She writes, "In those days, we lived by the seasons, and I quickly discovered that food tastes best when it is naturally ripe and ready to eat." And unlike Alice Waters, she started cooking professionally all the way back in 1949. She makes her own baking powder, and braises meat in a clay pot, and advocated seasonal food long before the West Coast jumped on the slow food bandwagon. She fed William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. And, yes, worked for The Daily Worker.

Here's the thing, though. I'm not really pitting one culinary genius against another. Unlike other caustic celebrities, the heroes of cookery play a good game of wholesome charm. Think of a kitchen full of the likes of M.F.K. Fisher, Alice B. Toklas, James Beard, Julia Child...? My heart just melts like butter on an oatmeal muffin. Which reminds me to tell you that oatmeal muffins are improved twelvefold by the addition of half a cup of browned butter -- but that does NOT mean you should refrain from topping them with extra butter when you split them open all steamy from the oven.

Browned-Butter Muffins

Melt 1/2 c. butter over low heat. While it slowly gilds to a honey-wheat color, whisk together 2 cups white flour, 1.5 tsp. salt, 2 tsp. baking soda, 1 T. cinnamon, 3 c. rolled oats, and 1 cup of raisins*.

In another bowl, whisk 3 eggs, 1/2 c. honey, and 2.5 c. kefir or yogurt (some part of which may be old sour milk, water, or other bilge).

Pour the browned butter into the oat mixture and toss it about till evenly coated. Stir in the liquids and let the batter sit and thicken up for an afternoon or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter and flour 18 muffin holes. Bake till golden brown on top, some 25 minutes or so.

*In retrospect, the raisins effectively sucked up the moisture like sponges. I much prefer a muffin riddled with caverns of tart berry juice. Add frozen or seasonal berries instead -- just before filling the muffin pan if you don't want grey batter.