Chase - Cold-Weather Cooking

by Sarah Leah Chase

Illustrations by Gretchen Schields

__________

Workman Publishing
New York

A thanksgiving of appreciation to the generations of consummate women in my family who have fired my culinary imagination and nurtured my hungry soul with good food. Stockpots of love and never ending soupons of admiration for my talented and perfect Mother, voraciously generous Grandmother Florian, elegantly Polish Graminski, and outrageously gastronomic Auntie Diane!

Copyright 1990 by Sarah Leah Chase
Illustrations 1990 by Gretchen Schields

All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproducedmechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopyingwithout written permission of the publisher.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

eISBN 978-0-7611-8513-0

Cover design by Lidija Tomas and Jean-Marc Troadec
Cover illustration by Judith Shahn

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It was during the annual Academy Awards broadcast in March that my thoughts began to turn toward writing the acknowledgments for this book. As I gradually succumbed to my also annual snooze through the greater part of the ceremonies, I made a personal pact to do my best to communicate a roster of culinary credits far more sincere and scintillating than the hypnotic Hollywood drone going on within my drowsy earshot. Here goes...

More diverse than the ingredients that simmer and stew together in my cold-weather recipes are the people who have consumed and critiqued the results of my epicurean fanaticism. Enthusiastic tasters dotting the Atlantic seaboardfrom Baltimore to Manhattan, Boston, Nantucket, and Blue Hill, Maineare to be kissed and commended for throwing calorie and cholesterol care to the wind during my copious tasting dinners. Dining on as many as twelve rich winter dishes and desserts at one sitting is a tough though tasty task. I truly appreciate your unselfish expansion of both taste buds and waistlines and the enrichment it has added to the process of creating this cookbook.

My parents, in particular, have been extraordinarily gracious in allowing my family visits to take the form of friendly takeovers of their coastal Maine kitchen. High tides of thanks for the support and understanding in permitting Babette to prepare yet another feast! My brother Jonathan equally commands a generous pat on the back for organizing the series of Blue Hill Cold-Weather Cooking tasting dinners and for letting a suspect sibling have free rein in his restaurant kitchen. In cooking together we passed the ultimate test of family harmony with both flying colors and flavors.

Those friends who shared favorite recipes with me cry out for at least one clinking together of a goblet of good red wine. Let me offer a velvety nip of Nuit-Saint-Georges to my aunt Diane (De) Madden, Al Cummings, Olga Drepanos, Sterling Mulbry, Elena Latici, the Powers family, Hammie and Ginger Heard, John Mancarella, John Roman, and Toby Greenberg. Another toast, of something crisp and effervescent, goes to Sheila Lukins for teaching me the secret of adding brown sugar to savory dishes and to John Boyajian for making my passion for caviar and foie gras affordable.

I am thrilled that artist Judith Shahn has created as arresting a cover for this cookbook as she did for the Nantucket Open-House Cookbook and that Gretchen Schields has warmed the interior pages of my book with delightful illustrations. My vivacious photographer friend Cary Hazlegrove deserves special mention for always keeping me amused and sailing even when not snapping shots for cookbook publicity. I am grateful to Workmans Lisa Hollander for designing, then laying out my long winters work more than once (!) and to my friendly editor Suzanne Rafer for continuing to perform her demanding job superbly, cheerfully, and diplomatically. Throughout all, my agent Reid Boates has remained a steady and gentle voice of sound guidance in the increasingly complex world of publishing.

Lastly, I would like to acknowledge how touched I have been by all the fans who have taken the time to write me letters. In these fast, fax times, such thoughtful candor fuels my culinary energies just as much as my travels to distant gastronomic ports.

Recipes to straddle the seasons, combining foods for summers grand finale with autumns chilly beginnings.

Warming little morsels for a chilly evenings cocktail party.

A cornucopia of vegetable side dishes to celebrate the spirit of Thanksgiving.

Luscious ways with fruit to accompany or end any cold-weather feast.

Hearty soups to fortify body and soul against deep freezes and other inclement ills.

The great culinary extravagances that are integral to the holiday splurge.

Winters warm libations accompanied by favorite cookies and sugarplums.

Breakfast fare to provide the incentive to face the world on the chilliest mornings.

Simmering stews, crackling roasts, and mounds of carbohydrates that can be guiltlessly indulged in after invigorating days outdoors.

Hearthside grilling to dispel epicurean doldrums and set the soul on fire again.

Fish dishes from a cook with a taste for astrology.

Recipes that signal the first signs of spring, yet allow for the chill of fickle March winds.

One last eclectic and ethnic extravaganza.

In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.

Doris Lessing

My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends

It gives a lovely light!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I have always been fascinated by the nuances of temperature. When I reflect upon the things that made me feel the most secure as a child, the memory of cozying up against the warm doors of my mothers double-decker oven as the evenings meal simmered comes instantly to mind. This must have instilled within me a first unconscious sense of the special interplay that exists between a sense of nourishment and degrees of temperature.

Years later, when I was to open my Que Sera Sarah food shop on Nantucket, the role of temperature again surfaced, but in a very conscious and different way. The preparations in my shop were specifically created to taste best when served cold or at room temperature. This was a calculated effort on my part to use food as both an expression and a reflection of the carefree coolness of the summer lifestyle on Nantucket. The challenge to chill became so much of a consuming passion for me that over time, both my customers and curious passers-by began to wonder what I did with myself when the days became crisper than my summer soups and salads.

In many ways this book is born out of the summer tourists queried refrain to every seasonal island shopkeeper: What do you do during the winter on that island? After a near decade of exhausting my potpourri of respondent quips such as I maintain the cutting edge on my chopping knives through my other profession as a neurosurgeon, Ive decided to be less evasive and more revealing about the warmth of my autumn-to-spring culinary existence. Besides, now that Ive recently come to my senses and left behind life in the public and perishable lane of running a daily food business (I sold my Que Sera Sarah shop in 1989), I find myself growing a little nostalgic for an audience to entertain with a more truthful answer.