Break

They sky was still dark as Matt and I rode our bikes to Penn Station early on Monday morning. I watched the sun slowly rise over the Hudson while we pedaled down Riverside Park. The industrial buildings across the river looked soft in the trickle of early light. I wore a thin pair of black-and-red gloves that my mother gave me years ago; my fingers were numb by the time we hauled our bikes down the stairs that led to the Long Island Railroad.

Technically we are on “spring break” from graduate school, where both Matt and I are studying journalism. Unfortunately, as you’ve seen from my lack of activity here, there is very little break involved in a 10-month master’s program, no matter what the season. Thirty-six hours in Long Island would have to do it.

We arrived in East Hampton around 11 a.m., dropped our bags off at the Inn, and began to explore. It didn’t matter that the grass was brown and the trees gray. The windmill standing on a grassy plain off of Main Street was crisp against the cloudless blue sky.

The wind pushed against my puffy down jacket as we rode down Further Lane and gawked at the mansions overlooking the water. We parked our bikes and walked along the beach. I could smell the ocean. It was thick and salty.

That night, my face warm with the day’s resulting windburn, we went out to dinner at a nearby restaurant—which, I thought happily as we walked down the empty street, was probably the equivalent of 4 Manhattan-length blocks from our Inn. Then I realized that I was thinking in terms of Manhattan-length blocks, which disturbed me. As did my unfamiliarity with the sky’s blackness, as I’m so used to New York City’s perpetual light. Birds had been chirping all day; a stark contrast to the ambulance sirens and subway trains usually grinding in my eardrums. It’s been too long since I’ve taken a break, I thought.

We sat at a side table in the dining room of Della Femina, a graceful Italian joint filled with flickering candles and beige tablecloths. The food arrived on our table in unassuming combinations of the familiar yet interesting. A curried carrot soup with golden raisins, lime crème fraiche, and a drizzle of a spicy oil. Seared salmon with lemongrass syrup. Matt’s warm croissant bread pudding with white chocolate mousse disappeared quickly.

The meal meandered in a slow, even tempo. The simple act of sitting, sipping wine, and talking about subjects far from graduate school was delicious.

And now, back in the city, I am avoiding the Word document that holds the final draft of my master’s project. I am attempting to tune out the rocking bass of what I can only assume is my next-door neighbor’s perpetual dance party. It has been raining all day and I can smell its wetness, soaked into the brick outside my window. It’s thin and musty, very different from the ocean.

Consumed

Lately I’ve been taken by spice.

Cinnamon, rosemary, thyme.

Turmeric, cumin, curry.

Ginger, especially, and garlic, inevitably.

I linger at the shelf of spices in my apartment, opening each bottle and inhaling. At home in Boston for New Years, my mom’s collection of vanilla beans was captivating; the paprika she brought back from Hungary, titillating. I find myself choosing recipes based purely on the pungency of their individual flavors.

My ability to detect the scent of spice isn’t remarkably new. I remember in the days after the accident when my father would hold bottles of curry or garlic powder or nutmeg under my nose and ask imploringly if I could smell anything. Nothing registered for months; each bottle filled with a monotone nothingness. But within a year that began to change. My sense of smell has been returning at an especially rapid rate for the last 6 months or so. The spice rack has registered for a while; I’m not sure why it’s suddenly consumed me.

Perhaps it is for scientific reasons: I recently spent a day at a Taste and Smell Center in Philadelphia for a project that I am working on. A doctor there told me that there was a scientific study in Germany which showed that those who sniffed spices each night before bed over time improved damaged senses of smell. Practice makes perfect.

But, really, my spiced obsession is less of a conscious decision to spruce up my olfactory neurons than the simple desire to feel alive. And detecting the cinnamon twang to a cup of coffee or the subtle wash of red wine in my mom’s braised short ribs gives a depth to my experience that is new and exciting. I used to revel in the fact that I couldn’t smell skunk, spoiled milk, sewage, or any of the many facets of New York City’s rancid summers. My friends said I was lucky. But even those, I suppose, are exciting in their own way.

So now I'm obsessed with my spice rack. How fitting, then, that I recently discovered Ana Sortun’s cookbook: Spice, Flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean.

I spent an evening at Sortun’s restaurant, Oleana, last week when I was in Boston to do research and reporting for my mater’s thesis project. She twists western techniques with Middle Eastern cuisine to create a modern menu both comforting and innovative. Her food is filled with new and unfamiliar flavors. Her cookbook is organized by spice. I love it.

I made her Spicy Fideos with Chickpeas, Kale, and Lemon Aioli this weekend. Toasted angel hair pasta is broken into small pieces and cooked in a concentrated sauce made from tomatoes and cumin, vanilla beans and bay leaves, ancho chili peppers and cocoa powder, saffron and cinnamon, chickpeas and kale.

The complicated flavor combined the scent of spices, the feel of spicy, and a texture both soft and defined; it was an exercise in smell and taste. And so good I had it for breakfast the next day as well.

Practice does indeed make perfect.

Evening, New York

It was a brisk Monday evening. Matt and I had been walking around the city for an hour. The sun was fading and lights were beginning to glow from shop windows in every nook and cranny of the West Village. I was carrying my laptop in a bag over my shoulder and there was a cold slush coating the ground.

We stepped into McNulty’s Coffee and Tea Company on Christopher Street. The bronzed wood shop was filled with burlap sacks, glass containers of loose tea, and coffee beans that were so fresh they shone. It smelled thickly of cocoa and coffee. The scent was so rich that the flick of a finger could indent the air.

“You must love to come into work everyday,” said Matt to the man behind the counter, inhaling. “It smells so good.”

The coffee-purveyor smiled as he ground us a pound of “Java Mountain Supreme.”

“We do love it, but not because of the scent. We just can’t smell it anymore,” he said with a quiet laugh. “You get used to anything. One week here and the smell is gone.”

“Oh, sad.”

We left and took a turn through the nutty yellow rounds piled on the shelves and behind the counter of Murray’s Cheese Shop on Bleecker Street. I bought some Marcona almonds in honey and yogurt from Iceland, nestling them between the books in my bag.

Outside and around the corner, a man in a thick brown coat was wrapping a pine tree in mesh for a couple to take home. We walked by the forest-like stack of dark trees leaning against a makeshift wooden fence, some festooned with red ribbons.

I took a deep breath. A new scent.

“Can you smell that?” Matt asked, sticking his face near the pile of pine.

“Yes,” I said, surprised by the sudden and new. “It’s Christmas.”

Later that night I sat in the subway on my way back to Brooklyn. The brown paper parcel of coffee from McNulty’s was in the bag between my feet. I was trying to read my book but I couldn’t concentrate. I was too distracted by the scent of coffee.

Brooklyn Food Group; Take Four

We had the fourth meeting of our supper club, The Brooklyn Food Group, the weekend before Thanksgiving.

The days before were filled with flour and yeast. Dough rose, rested, relaxed on my windowsill and kitchen table. Sugar spilled on the floor and cornmeal coated my clothes; the oven clanked constantly. Cream scalded and tempered eggs faded to pale yellow. Whisks were plentiful. And as I sat on the subway, on my hour-long commute to school the day before the event, I couldn’t shake the scent of butter.

Four days later I would stand barefoot in my mom’s kitchen in Boston, relaxed and sleepy as I casually basted turkey and slowly rolled pie dough. Thanksgiving cooking didn’t carry such a sense of urgency.

But that night—the Saturday of the supper club—my friend Ben and I spent many frenetic hours sautéing and frying in the small confines of a sweaty Brooklyn kitchen. Twenty-three guests sat—drinking, laughing, eating—at two long tables nearby; we fed them six courses.

Ben, who is now a line chef at a wonderful restaurant on the Upper West Side, outdid himself with the savory courses.

There was a nutty beige cauliflower soup with raisins agrodolce; an autumnal salad studded with purple cauliflower, farmers market apples, pumpkin vinaigrette and a knobby stack of sautéed mushrooms.

There were basil pancakes: deep green, tender, and balanced on an orange puree of chile-pumpkin. They were topped with pickled fennel and reduced orange juice syrup. And for Ben’s final course, there were freshly made cardamom noodles with a slow-roasted lamb ragu.

My contribution—aside from the baskets of Italian bread and sea-salt focaccia, which had oozed the sweet and steamy scent of “fresh baked” into my apartment all morning—was dessert.

Pumpkin Crème Brulee; milky bronze and peppered with spice. I melted the sugar sprinkled over the custards with a small blow torch. It formed a crunchy, sweet skin to be cracked with a dessert spoon for the first bite.

It was a successful night. When I got home I collapsed into bed and have perhaps never slept so well in my life.

You can see more pictures here and here.

Fall?

The tree outside my apartment’s kitchen window is finally beginning to change color. There are streaks of yellow and a hint of red peaking through the stubborn summer green.

I noticed this yesterday morning when my computer screen became blurry with frustration and I decided to bake cookies instead. I put my Kitchenaid mixer on the windowsill and was surprised by the sudden color outside and surprised, again, by the sweet and salty smell of butter as it churned.

The night before a cold rain had pattered on my umbrella and my friend Ben made a meal of homemade pasta fragrant with cardamom and tossed with a handful of sautéed mushrooms, which tasted like October.

I suppose I knew that summer had ended. But it wasn’t until later yesterday afternoon, when I walked through the Grand Army Plaza farmers market on my way to Prospect Park and saw the piles of pumpkins and crates of knobby gourds spilling out of the stalls, that I realized that it is indeed autumn. All I wanted was apple pie.

So this afternoon I was sitting at my desk, which is covered in mounds of papers and books and rambling lists of things that I need to do, and felt overwhelmed with things to write and articles to read and interviews to schedule. So I decided to go to the grocery store. And then I decided to cook. I’m a procrastinator. What.

I didn’t make an apple pie. But it was something warm and burnished and felt like fall: vegetable and barley soup topped with a soft-poached egg.

Now, go back to work Molly.


Vegetable Barley Soup with Poached Egg
inspired by Gourmet magazine, November 2007

1 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon chopped thyme
1 can diced tomatoes
1 qt vegetable stock
3/4 cup barley
6 cups spinach
1 tablespoon white vinegar
4 eggs, or one per serving

-Cook onion and garlic with a half teaspoon of salt in oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir every so often until pale golden, 10 minutes.

-Discard stems of mushrooms and slice thinly. Add mushrooms and thyme to onions and cook until soft, 5 minutes.

-Stir in tomatoes with their juice, stock, barley, and a half teaspoon of salt and pepper each. Simmer, covered, for 15 to 20 minutes.

-Add spinach, stir till wilted, 1 minute. Season to taste.

-Meanwhile, bring a saucepan of water to simmer with a tablespoon of vinegar.

-Break one egg at a time into separate cups, and then slide into the water, one at a time. Poach until whites are firm, 2 - 3 minutes. Transfer to paper towel, and then serve on soup.

Holding my nose

So I haven’t cooked for myself in over a month. Thank you, graduate school.

The lack of activity in my kitchen, however, has not stopped my olfactory neurons from dancing around in my head. More scent has returned in the last two months than in the last two years combined.

And, frankly, it’s driving me insane.

It feels at times like my nose is going haywire. I’m hit by a smell—often new, sometimes indefinable—and I can’t concentrate. There are moments when I can hardly think beyond the thick, malodorous stench of a simple can of cat food.

--

A whiff of cologne on the street near my apartment stopped me in my tracks.

I opened a stiff old book at the library and its mildewed pungency sent shivers down my spine.

I sat near the water off of Hunts Point in the south Bronx, and found myself breathing through my mouth because the air smelled so briny that I felt sick.

The only thing I retained from a recent lecture on the ethics of journalism is the shower-fresh deodorant of the man next to me.

And just last night I stared at the stick of butter in my hand—still cold and in its wrapper—not believing that anything could so reek of salt and sweet cream.

--

My sense of smell is by no means fully back. Many things continue to exist purely in the textural and visual. But the world is certainly coloring itself in a different, thicker way.

And I’ve come to the conclusion that this is wholly due to my mood.

It’s been clear to me since the beginning of this whole loss-of-smell thing that the re-growth of my damaged olfactory neuron was strongly related to my memory and experience. The smells that returned first had everything to do with moments of happiness. The bad have stayed away or just slowly eked their way back into my consciousness.

And, right now, I’m happier. School is challenging. My apartment has large windows and a cat that only yowls when extremely grumpy. Fall is seeping back into the world and the newspaper’s pages crinkle just so.

If it means that sometimes I have to breathe only out of my mouth—like this afternoon, when I sat on a sunny bench in Union Square trying to read but couldn’t process anything besides the spicy scent of the pasta a woman was eating nearby—I’m OK with that. It’s rather exciting, actually.

All That

I stood at the corner of Fulton and Broadway early yesterday morning. It was dark and drizzly; my black sandals were speckled with mud from an unsuspecting puddle. Water dripped off the stone porch of St. Paul’s Chapel behind me.

I was there to cover a memorial service for the sixth anniversary of 9/11. St. Paul’s Chapel—just a block from Ground Zero and an hour before the ringing of church bells echoed in memory of the first plane crash—was a solemn space. A sense of quiet reflection pervaded the crowds walking past me on the street.

I waited on the sidewalk for a friend from graduate school, taking a moment to collect myself before I began this reporting assignment, and ate an apple. It was one that I bought from the Brooklyn farmer’s market last weekend, crisp and cool with a gnarly stem.

And as I ate—watching the neon-vested crossing guard wave at a little boy across the street, the women with shiny hair and tipsy black heels and the men in business suits on blackberries walk by—I remembered a line from a piece that Joan Didion wrote when, at age thirty, she decided to leave New York for L.A. She speaks about her early days in the city, just a few years after college, when she was late to meet someone but bought a peach on Lexington Avenue and stopped to eat it on the corner.

I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later—because I did not belong there, did not come from there—but when you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs.

That essay—Goodbye to All That—lodged itself in my mind a long time ago. Joan Didion, as I have written before, is a favorite.

But right then—in front of the chapel that gave shelter to dust-covered passersby as they ran from the collapsing towers six years ago—that image of a young woman eating a peach, struck by the knowledge that there is a cost to life in New York City, resonated sharply.

Perhaps it was because, now one month into an intense graduate program of journalism, I am having more trouble than usual getting Didion out of my head. Perhaps it was because the effects of grief surrounded me, putting everything in broader focus. Or, perhaps, it was simply because I was there, on the street, eating an apple.

But, I stood there for a few minutes, waiting to begin reporting, and nothing tasted more apple than that apple, and nothing felt more New York than that damp New York sidewalk.