|
| |
|
As you will
know if you’ve visited
Ned’s memorial pages,
this cookbook
author’s beloved husband lost his life in an accident at the end of
2000. But the year prior to that, he wrote this essay about what living
with a cookbook in progress was like, because people used to ask him
this, not
infrequently.
|
|
The cookbook
I was then working on --- I wound up working on it ten years in all ---
was the book finally published as
Passionate Vegetarian.
Sweet Ned helped me with it in every possible way, from practical to
emotional to just hanging in there. And mostly, he did it with
enthusiasm, good humor, and pride in me. Plus, he loved eating. Boy,
was I lucky (or blessed) when it came to mates! |
|
One of the hardest freshets of grief that flowed through me was the
book’s publication absent him. For Ned, so much a part of it, not here
to rejoice in it, learn what its final title was, or see his wife
become, at the late age of 49, a cover girl --- hard stuff. Every award,
every positive review, every TV show --- each joy and triumph came with
a stab of missing him, of the unfairness of his absence. |
|
Because he was so much a part of the book, I rewrote the introduction to
include an essay about our life together, as told through food. I wrote,
too, of his death. But I left the main part of the book as I had written
it, in the present tense, in which he appeared frequently, and very much
alive. |
| But
at least he did know I was going to dedicate the book to him. He just
didn’t know what that dedication would be, any more than I did. |
|
--- Crescent Dragonwagon. March 2005 |
|
The perils and pleasures of life with a cookbook in progress: Ned told
all. |
| "Several
years back, CD and I were dining out, back when she had first started
her forthcoming Crescent Dragonwagon's Vegetarian Kitchen; the
title is still, as of fall 2000, tentative. (POST-NED NOTE: it became
Passionate Vegetarian,
a title selected by the publisher). |
| " ' Taste
this the ratatouille," I said to Crescent. "It's wonderful, but what
gives it that slight...? " I paused. |
| " '
...astringency?" she said, tasting. "I like it. It's kind of relishy;
I'd say it's more caponata, than ratatouille." |
| " ' Garlic?
Some herb?" |
|
" ' No, I don't think so, though there is garlic in it, a little
basil..." Another taste, reflective. "No! It's the olive oil! Maybe
Spanish? Although some Italian olive oils have that astringency, too..." |
| It might
just look like two passionate food people, out to lunch (in more than
one sense of the phrase). But this was work; research. Everything is,
for awhile, when Crescent starts a new cookbook.
(The two of us, pictured at our former restaurant at Dairy Hollow House,
in 1997).
Need Picture
here. |
|
Experiments: every course, every meal, every day |
"Breakfast
through dessert, she experimented. Not only with recipes, but with
equipment. Boxes arrived: a Weber grill; a bread-machine; non-stick
cookware. Why?
Readers had asked CD questions on
Dairy Hollow
House Soup & Bread
and she was trying to answer: 'Do you
have any recipes for bread machines?' and 'Why Pam spray, why not good,
non-stick cookware?' and 'Do you grill much?' |
| "In
The Dairy Hollow House Cookbook,
written with Jan Brown and illustrated by Jacqueline Froelich, I
got for the first time how food integrated our vision of the inn
we then owned, satisfying a deep yearning for renewal that went beyond
the physical. Though I'd experienced that renewal, I'd never really
thought about it. Crescent did, and does. (The black and white drawings
on this page are some of Jacquie's illustrations from this book). |
"And
in
Dairy Hollow
House Soup & Bread, she
opened  my
eyes to the foundations of soup, a food that's a staple in our own
kitchen. She made me think about invention, improvisation. It made me
want to get in there and start cooking (you can sample some of CD's
Recipes
on this site; you'll see, and taste, what I mean). |
|
"And what great food! I know first-hand (and -mouth) the dishes she
writes about. I still feel my emotional chemistry alter with the first
close-your-eyes-stop-everything bite of a Crescent's Classic Chocolate
Brownie. I still revel in pungent, elemental Garlic Spaghetti (a recipe
Crescent claims she wants chipped on her tombstone). I have always
considered it a luxury that she cooks for me, and so far, continues to
enjoy it, and it seems an effortless trade-off to help with the critical
tastings, and the kitchen cleanups. |
|
Where do recipes come from? Does she invent them? |
| " '
You just stay open," I have heard her tell others when they ask that
question. I see this demonstrated in each new dish. A pumpkin on the
wooden kitchen counter next to a bowl of tomatoes began her
Pumpkin-Tomato Bisque,
a dish or combination of flavors or textures at a restaurant or potluck
can set her off. "Sometimes I work it out abstractly on paper first;
sometimes I just start in the kitchen, throwing stuff in, measuring the
throws, making notes." And, yes, she does read other people’s cookbooks,
for inspiration and ideas, and if in such cases, her finished recipe
bears any, and I mean any, resemblance to the original, she
always credits the source.
|
"But before
she starts developing and testing recipes, she first works out an
overall framework for each
book. I know it's happening; without talking about it much she looks
worried, distracted and cranky. I remember when she first started this
one, asking her "How's it going?" Gloomily she replied, "Twenty pages in
three days, of which maybe, maybe, two paragraphs are good." |
| "This is
because her cookbooks blend recipes with an abstract, intellectual
consideration of food and culture (she spent days cogitating on "What
makes an entree an entree?"). Her lushly sensual pleasure in cooking,
and her perception of cooking as connection with the earth, with history
and other people, are part of the mix. |
|
How are the recipes developed and tested? |
|
"But the
books certainly are centered around recipes. She, and me, our friends,
neighbors, and entire community (or so it seems at times) get involved
in making sure those recipes work. There are recipe-tasting dinners,
where dishes are tasted, analyzed, discussed, each rated. (I still
regret missing being a guinea-pig at the legendary chocolate cake
taste-off from
The
Dairy Hollow House Cookbook. |
|
" 'Tell us
what you'd say in the car going home after the party," CD begs. "Whether
or not you like something and why. If I was certain of this recipe, we
wouldn't be testing it." We nibble and discuss. "More raisins." "No,
fewer, but more cinnamon." "Sweeter." "No, I like it this degree of
sweet." Then, it's back to the cutting board. Sometimes she nails it on
one try. At other times, it takes three or four shots to get a recipe
right, or to what she thinks is right. |
|
"What's the
pay-off? Well, book sales, of course, but beyond that, the number of
readers who write or e-mail her (at
crescent@dragonwagon.com)
to say, "I love the way every single recipe in your cookbooks works." Or,
because her cookbooks are more than just recipe collections, things
like, “I think the only time I’ve ever laughed out loud reading a
cookbook is when I read your intro to Virginia’s Lemon Bars.
(POST-NED NOTE: In the case of
Passionate Vegetarian,
more than one reader has written CD that they cried reading the book.) |
|
When will the
new book be out? |
"By 1999, our part of Crescent Dragonwagon's Vegetarian
 Kitchen
was complete. Cranky and euphoric periods of writing were over, hundreds
of recipes were tested, anecdotes remembered, recounted and sprinkled
throughout, ideas organized and reorganized. At last, the book was
mailed off --- on two enormous cartons --- to Workman Publishing, the
same house that so attractively produced and enthusiastically promoted
Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread. |
|
"The new book will be brought out in 2001. POST-NED NOTE: it actually
came out at the end of October, 2002. Now it is being edited,
illustrated, printed, and bound. After all these years of writing,
thinking, and cooking, we are psyched and ready, can't wait for it to be
here. |
| "And I
am getting ready for the next cycle. After taking about six months off
from culinary writing to pursue some of the other genres she loves, and
to work with me on the
The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow,
the next cookbook project is starting. |
| "A hint...
cornbread. Sacks of stone-ground meal, yellow and white, appeared
in the kitchen only recently. |
| Ned Shank,
1999 |
|
|
©Dragon,
Pen & Inc. 2000-2007 :: Last Updated:
03/05/07 ::