John Thorne - Pot On The Fire

ALSO BY JOHN THORNE

Simple Cooking

Outlaw Cook

Serious Pig

Home Body

POT ON THE FIRE

POT ON THE FIRE

FURTHER EXPLOITS OF

A RENEGADE COOK

JOHN THORNE

WITH MATT LEWIS THORNE

NORTH POINT PRESS
A DIVISION OF FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX
NEW YORK

North Point Press
A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
19 Union Square West, New York 10003

Copyright 2000 by John Thorne

All rights reserved

First edition, 2000

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thorne, John.

Pot on the fire : further exploits of a renegade cook / John Thorne with Matt Lewis Thorne.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-374-70159-8

1. Cookery, International. 2. Cooks. I. Thorne, Matt Lewis. II. Title.

TX725.A1 T497 2000

641.59dc21 00-038015

The chapter in this book entitled My Knife, My Pot originally appeared in slightly different form inGourmet Magazine. Everything else originally appeared in the authorsSimple Cooking food letters.

We have made a concerted effort to obtain permission to quote from copyrighted works. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following:

Andrew J. L. Blank and Judy Landis. On the Trail of Arnhemse Meisjes, by Andrew Blank and Judy Landis. Copyright 1997 by Andrew J. L. Blank and Judy Landis. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

Maurice Frechette. Hobz iz Zejt, by Maurice Frechette. Copyright 1997 by Maurice Frechette. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Patience Gray. For permission to quote a passage from a letter to us.

Mrs. Nicholas Kelley. For permission to quote a passage from a letter to us by her brother, the late Augustus M. Kelley.

Johan Mathiesen. Cioppino, by Johan Mathiesen. Copyright 1996 by Johan Mathiesen. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Maggie Rogers. For permission to quote a passage from a letter to us.

Elisheva Urbas. Cinnamon Toast, by Elisheva S. Urbas. Copyright 1998 by Elisheva S. Urbas. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Crown Publishing Group. Excerpt fromLarousse Gastronomique, edited by Jennifer Harvey Lang. Copyright 1984 Libraries Larousse. Copyright 1998 English text, The Hamlyn Publishing Group, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

For Shirley & George
with love

AUTHORS NOTE

The I that speaks from these pages is mine in every chapter of this book, except in those letters where the contributor is explicitly namedPatience Gray, Elisheva Urbas, Judy Landis and Andrew Blank, Augustus Kelley, Johan Mathiesen, Maggie Rogersand in Cakes on the Griddle, the section on making pancakes, which was written by my wife, Matt Lewis Thorne.

Matt, though, has also considered every word of every draft I have written, reacting, suggesting, amending, and, hence,reshaping what appears herein. As I noted in our first collaboration,Outlaw Cook, this means that the subjective self who speaks out of these pages is a larger, braver, much more interesting person than I am aloneand I honor her for it.

As in my three previous food books,Pot on the Fire assembles a selection of essays written over the past several years, most of them originally published in our food letter,Simple Cooking. Those who read this book with pleasure might also be interested in subscribing to it. Either write to us at P.O. Box 778, Northampton MA 01061or, better yet, visit our Web site: www.outlawcook.com

John Thorne

CONTENTS

LIST OF RECIPES

Asian Dumplings

Breakfast Dishes

Dried Peas, Lentils, and Other Legumes

Pasta and Pizza

Rice and Rice Dishes

Salads

Sandwiches and the like

Sauces, Spreads, and Condiments

Meat, Poultry, and Seafood

Sweets and Desserts

Vegetables (see also Pasta and Pizza, Rice and Rice Dishes, and Salads)

MOVING TO PARADISE
BY WAY OF A PREFACE

Everything has changed; nothing has changed. Thirty-five years ago, I attended Amherst College, just two towns away from where I now write these words, and theres something disorienting about being back. On the one hand, after all this time I hardly know the place. When I left the area in the late sixties, it was just starting to reflect the hipness of those times: a funky food co-op here, a bicycle store there, a scattering of Crabtree & Evelyn wannabes. Now the place is overripe with the hipness of today: body manipulators, nutrition consultants, coffee roasters, microbreweries, feminist gift shops. The effect is not unlike shopping for clothing at a college prep shop at the age of fifty-five: no matter what shape youre in, nothing really fits. You get to be twenty only once.

On the other hand, the atmospherethe lush, deciduous greenness of so many enormous trees; the college campus with its strange contrast of sobersided patrician architecture and motley youthful inhabitantstriggers long-buried sensory imprinting that is still dank with the humidity of adolescent angst. I take Matt for a quick drive-through tour of the campus and leave it at that. There will be no looking up old professors or revisiting old dorm rooms. Instead, I prefer to delight in our new home about seven miles farther westthe small, sweet city of Northampton.

This place, if youre unfamiliar with itthe city recently got its fifteen minutes of fame with the publication of Tracy KiddersHome Town is located more or less at the center of Massachusetts, surrounded by fertile farmland and resting beside thehere, impressively wideConnecticut River. It is the shire town of Hampshire County, with the requisite impressive granite courthouse, but, more important to us, it serves as the commercial hub for four liberal arts colleges (including Smith College, which is situated here) and the University of Massachusetts, a sprawling educational megalopolis.

So, much of the citys commerce is directed at college students and those who teach them. There are countless used-book stores, a host of coffee bars and ethnic restaurants, two independent movie houses, and a quite respectable museum of art. This is a good place to live if you like to rent obscure videos, listen to live music, buy used books or CDs, or just settle into a plush armchair at one of the coffee bars and, acaff latte by your elbow, bury yourself inWired orThe New York Review of Books.

When famed soprano Jenny Lind gave a concert in Northampton in 1851, she proclaimed the city The Paradise of America, liking it so much that she honeymooned here in 1852. I have no idea why she made that proclamation, but I do know that Northamptonites have been quite willing to agree with heron one little side street you can find a Pizzeria Paradiso and a Paradise Copy Shop. In the intervening years, Northampton has certainly come to possess many ideal metropolitan qualities. For instance, its downtown is not only walkable but inviting to walk in, even late at night. Our second or third evening here, we joined a friend at a nearby restaurant for supper and later decided to stroll a few blocks to an Italian pastry shop for dessert. It was after nine, but patrons filled the outdoor tables of the coffee bars and strollers thronged the sidewalks; the air buzzed with the sound of people having a good time.

Even so, drive ten minutes from the center of town in almost any direction and youre in the middle of farmland. Coming back from the post office the other day, I saw a huge, odd, but somehow familiar-looking truck lumbering toward me. As it got closer, I realized it was an open hopper truck, similar to ones we had seen on our trip to Maines Aroostook Countyand, like those, this one was piled high with spuds. Their soddy, tuberous aroma trailed in the trucks wake, a reminderas is the fact that garden centers outnumber fast-food joints along our Miracle Milethat this area is still largely farm country, famous, in fact, for its cigar-wrapper tobacco leaf, onions, and (hurrah!) asparagus.