Year: 2015
Ahhhh, finally
This post is to point out something that, well, if you’re reading this, you’ve probably already noticed: Orangette, the old gal, got a facelift.
The feel of this site is important to me, as I know it is to you, and I hope you’ll find the new look as clean, calm, and pleasant as the old one. The whole idea here was not to add tons of bells and whistles and shiny things, but simply to make this site easier to use and more useful for all of us. You’ll see that we now have a real, honest-to-goodness recipe page, and that recipes are categorized not only by ingredient(!), but by season(!), by course(!), and even occasionally by holiday. (You’ll also see that I am still building that recipe page; 500+ posts is a lot to categorize.) We also have a books page, and an events page, which I will update on an ongoing basis. And recipes are now printable! And you can pin stuff! And if you ask me a question in the comments section, I can reply directly to you! I’m beside myself. I owe a towering debt of gratitude to Sam Schick and Eli Van Zoeren of Neversink, pals and wizards alike.
I would be honored if you would take a look around and make yourself at home. While you’re at it, please reset your bookmarks and whatnot to orangette.net. And thank you, thank you so much, always.
xx
December 10
I come to you today for three reasons: 1) it is so windy outside this morning that my entire house will shortly be carried away (to Oz, I hope) and I want to leave you something to remember me by; 2) there is a fat, freshly baked loaf of banana bread on my kitchen counter that is not for me, and we all know how this will end if I don’t occupy myself; and 3) though no one needs encouragement to buy more stuff, I enjoy a nice holiday gift guide. What follows is a quick, and possibly too late to be useful, tour of some of my favorite things to give and receive, accompanied by a selection of photographs…
Read moreDoop dee doo
A couple of years ago, late one winter morning, we were out running errands in the neighborhood, and we stopped into La Carta de Oaxaca, on Ballard Avenue, for an early lunch. June was still in a high chair and not yet fully proficient at chewing anything with crunch, so we ordered their sopa de pollo for her, a rich, brothy chicken soup served in a bowl big enough for mixing cake batter, with the meat still on the bone and big hunks of zucchini, carrot, and chayote. I shredded the meat onto a plate and chopped up the vegetables with the side of my spoon. She ate with her hands, the juices running fast down her forearms, which were then still…
Read moreNovember 6
This one goes out to my friend Natalie. One night early last month, she and hers were over for dinner, and I made an applesauce cake with caramel glaze for dessert. As they left, she asked about the recipe, and she’s been patiently waiting for me to post it ever since. In the intervening weeks, our kitchen faucet sprung a leak – a leak that must have actually sprung a month or two before that, because by the time we noticed it, it had thoroughly saturated all the wooden surfaces below and around it, making them buckle and curl like waves on an ocean, a special ocean that smells like rot. We called Natalie and Michael, because they are handy…
Read moreOctober 23
Last night I got to spend some time with my friend Sam. We hadn’t hung out, just the two of us, for a while – maybe not since June was born, if I really think about it. Sometime in the next month, Sam will become a dad. We’ve somehow been friends for nearly a decade. When I got into his car last night, he had R.E.M.’s Out of Time in the CD player. “Texarkana” was on. We got stuck in traffic, because it was rush hour in Seattle, but it was okay, because we were talking about being kids listening to R.E.M., Automatic for the People especially, and all the Big Feelings we were just starting to know then, feelings set…
Read moreOn short notice
It’s hard to start a post when I’m bored with the photograph(s) I have for it. The alternate title for this post is “A Life Fraught with Difficulty, by Molly Wizenberg.” But I am never bored with beans. I don’t remember how I first learned of Molly Stevens and her classic All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking, but if you’ve been around here for any length of time, you will know that it is a longtime favorite. I bought it shortly after it came out, sometime in 2004. I was in graduate school then, planning to become Michel Foucault, albeit with more hair, fewer turtlenecks, and a vastly inferior command of the French language. Like anyone who has tried to read…
Read moreWhile you’re not looking
I went through a period a few years ago when I couldn’t cook a pot of dried beans worth a damn. Every bean came out waterlogged and falling apart, like a rained-on newspaper, and on the rare occasion when every bean wasn’t waterlogged and falling apart, it was only because a few holdouts had a mouthfeel closer to gravel. I did everything I was supposed to do: I soaked them, brined them, cooked them without salt, cooked them with salt, cooked them at a simmer, cooked them so a bubble only rarely broke the surface. Every way, the window of time in which they were just right, tender but not yet reduced to mush, was narrow at best. Occasionally I hit it, but…
Read moreAs ever
A couple of weeks ago, I got up earlier than usual, while the light was still blue, and baked a cake. We are having a very adult fall – not adult in the sense of, I don’t know, the adult film industry, but in the sense that we now have a child who is enrolled in a real school. I remember only bits and pieces of my own first year of school, but I do remember operating under the happy illusion that my parents were bonafide adults who had things figured out. Having now crossed over to the other side of that illusion, I can report that, whoa, hey, it’s an illusion! June is no fool, but she’s content to play along as…
Read moreSeptember 6
I’ve never been to Chez Panisse, the restaurant itself, the part with the nightly prix fixe menu. But I first went to the Cafe at Chez Panisse the summer that I was twenty, working at Whole Foods in Mill Valley, California, and living nearby at my aunt’s Tina’s house. I went with my cousin Katie, who was also at Tina’s that summer, and her saintly then-boyfriend Rob, an un-date-y third-wheel kind of date. We made a reservation, got (too) dressed up, and ordered the Menu du Jour, a three-course meal for the current steal of $30 – though it must have been $25 then, at most. We threw down. I remember the first course with a clarity that surprises me.…
Read moreI changed my mind
Two Mondays ago, the night before the moving truck was due to arrive at my mother’s new (Seattle!) house with everything she owns, Brandon suggested making a celebratory dinner. My mother, it was agreed, would choose the menu. After a moment’s hesitation, she requested steak and Caesar salad. We headed out for groceries. I’m not going to go into great depth about the steak. I don’t know. I feel bored just thinking about writing it. You know how to cook steak. Right? You don’t need me. If you don’t know how, or if you want to try another method, I can tell you that we use Renee Erickson’s instructions (for indoor cooking, not grilling) on page 195-196 of her dreamy…
Read moreJuly 29
Today is our eighth wedding anniversary. It’s also the 11th birthday of this blog, the first day of our first-ever corporate tax audit, and the day that my mother officially moves to Seattle. It’s a lot of Big Adult Stuff, and I have lots of feelings, including immense gratitude for our accountant. But most of all, I’m glad that these two wide-eyed pups, the ones in this shot circa 2007, decided to take the great leap that is marriage, that they’ve kept at it, showing up, cooking, eating, building, building some more, figuring it out, duking it out, and loving, loving, for eight whole years. And I’m glad that this blog made it all happen. Thanks for being along for…
Read moreWe’ll go from left to right
I promised cookbooks, and I shall deliver cookbooks. No more nostalgia! No more old photographs! No more zoning out with Danzig videos on YouTube because a man in a Danzig t-shirt just walked into the coffee shop where I am writing and reminded me of the song “Mother ’93“! I will be useful. Four years ago, when we moved into the house where we now live, I started keeping a small collection of cookbooks on top of the refrigerator. Most of our books live in June’s room, on the wall of shelves there, but that’s down the hall from the kitchen, and I wanted to have my most-used, best-loved, most-consulted books within reach. I rotate them as new books come…
Read moreJuly 10
My mother tells me that she had always loved the house. She used to drive by and admire it. When I was thirteen, it came on the market, and she and my dad snatched it up. The house was built in 1948, old for Oklahoma, painted brick with wrought iron and ivy. It needed a lot of work, and they tore out walls and opened it up, changed everything. It was their biggest, finest collaboration, and they made it exactly what they wanted. It was weird in ways, or maybe quirky is the better word, with a mirror on the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom and Pepto-Bismol pink wallpaper in the dining room. But mostly it was beautiful, obscenely beautiful, full of…
Read moreJune 26
I am feeling profoundly (or, as my fingers tried to put it, “feely profounding”) inarticulate today in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage. I keep thinking of my uncle Jerry, the first gay person I ever knew, whose death to AIDS in 1988 spurred me to activism as a young kid with moussed bangs and a Silence=Death sweatshirt, and in whose memory June carries one of her middle names. I wonder what he would say today. I’m grateful, relieved, elated, and beyond, that June will grow up in a world that’s very different from what I knew in 1980s Oklahoma. It also feels like a fitting time to reread John Birdsall’s whip-smart Lucky Peach piece, “America, Your Food…
Read moreOne Tuesday, late-morning
I come to you today, June 13th, a fine summer’s day on which you probably have no desire to turn on the oven, to talk about roasted chicken. More specifically, I want to talk about Thomas Keller’s Favorite Simple Roast Chicken, which I prefer to call TK’s Hot Buttered Chicken. I have long been a devotee of the Zuni Cafe recipe for roasted chicken. I imagine many of you feel the same way. Zuni’s recipe, which Judy Rodgers wrote with a rare and reverential thoroughness – may she rest in peace, and may more cookbooks be written like hers – relies on three things: using a small-ish bird, salting it a day ahead, and cooking in a crackling hot oven,…
Read moreHere was an opportunity
One evening last week, my friend Sarah sent me a sudden text that said only, “Yotam Ottolenghi. Carrot and Mung Bean Salad from Plenty More. Just do it!” These kinds of vital communications are why humans need one another: so that we know what to eat next. I was skeptical about the mung beans: I know they’re used to great effect in many cuisines, I know, I know, but a certain aura of patchouli and tie dye hangs over them. Still, I was willing to reconsider. I took down my copy of Plenty More from the top of the refrigerator, where my favorite and most-used cookbooks live. (Hey: another time when I mentioned this fridge-top collection, one of you asked…
Read moreMay 22
About eight months after we opened Delancey, a customer named Eric Peterson sent an e-mail to Brandon, and the subject line read, I want to make pizza at Delancey! Eric was working at a local pizza place, but he wanted to learn another approach – to learn the chemistry behind good dough, how to make sauce from scratch, how to manage a wood-burning oven. His five-year plan was to open a small wood-fired pizza restaurant in Leavenworth, a mountain town roughly two hours east of Seattle, and he was ready to put in the time to learn what he needed to know. I called his references and wound up talking to an older guy with whom Eric had once worked…
Read moreYes yes yes
Last November, I got an e-mail from a fourth grade public school teacher in Sitka, Alaska, inviting me and Brandon to be part of a classroom project he was planning. The project would be called the Perfect Pizza, and it would go like this: the students would spend some time studying pizza and writing about pizza, and along the way, we’d chat with them once or twice via Skype about what makes great pizza great. As the culminating event of the project, Brandon and I would come to Sitka in the flesh, ta daaaa, where we would make pizza with the students (Brandon), talk writing with the students (me), and give a reading at the local library (me). We of…
Read moreMay 7
One Tuesday evening in March, I went somewhat accidentally to the town of Edison, Washington, and bought a pack of graham crackers. Two weeks later, I drove back deliberately, 75 miles each way, just to buy more. Thanks to Renee Bourgault and her wonderful Breadfarm, I got to tell the story, and share the recipe, on (the newly redesigned! fancy!) Saveur.com.
Read moreYou win
When I moved to Seattle, I lived a gray shingled apartment building on Northeast 67th Street, a speedy bus ride to the UW, where I had just started school. My apartment had deep-pile carpet the color of weak tea and a floodlit view of a parking lot, but it was mine, mine mine mine mine mine mine mine. Even getting a utilities bill was exhilarating: it was in my name! I bought cheap produce at the stand a few blocks east, found a good Thai curry place a few blocks to the west, and got takeout from an Indian restaurant down the street. I started this blog in that apartment in 2004, and I lived there when I met Brandon…
Read more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In three months, this site will be eleven years old. Three nights ago, I got to stand on a stage in New York in front of hundreds of people I admire – including Martha, THE Martha, who looked foxier, and younger, than anyone – and accept a James Beard Award for this blog. I was so nervous, so totally electrified with terror, that my right eyelid twitched for six days leading up to the ceremony. I hope I never forget what it felt like, after so much hoping, to hear my name called. I hadn’t planned a thank-you speech – if you take your umbrella, yadda yadda, it won’t rain – but once I was up there, everything felt oddly…
Read moreI like to imagine
The only bookshelves in our house are in June’s room, one and a half walls of built-ins that bracket the space like a capital L. The previous owner had used the room as an office, as far as we can tell, and we planned to do the same. We set my desk under the window. I had just started writing Delancey then, and I pounded out the early chapters there – or, more often, avoided pounding out the early chapters by watching nuthatches flit around the giant evergreen outside. At some point, we decided that having a baby would be good idea, and to make room for her, we moved my desk to the dining room, replaced it with a crib, and hung…
Read moreMarch 31
Early Friday morning, I boarded an airplane to Washington, DC, and on the way there, using my Motherly Time-Management Skills, I managed not only to sleep for two hours, but also to read one New Yorker and the entire current issue of Lucky Peach. I was in DC for a conference, and to celebrate my nephew’s fifth birthday (Lego-themed party! Lego-shaped candy! BTW, IMO, the blue ones are best; avoid yellow). But this morning, back at my desk, I’m still thinking about that Lucky Peach. In particular, this Jeremy Fox story and this endive story. But really, the whole issue was great, so smart and so weird, that I even mentioned it to the nurse in my dermatologist’s office this morning. That’s a strong endorsement. Somebody should…
Read moreThe bean doctor
I believe everyone should know how to doctor a can of beans. I also believe that, having said this, I have become my father. I also believe I would do anything, anything, absolutely anything to get R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly,” which lodged itself in my head as I was typing those first two sentences, back out of my head again. Spread my wings and fly awaaaaaaaaaay I come from a family of bean doctors. The beans we ate most often were baked beans – Bush’s brand, I think – to which my dad added brown sugar and Worchestershire sauce. We ate them whenever my mom was out for the evening, usually with boiled hot dogs. It felt…
Read moreDoing it right
I believe in everyday cake. I may have remembered to floss four times last week, up from my usual count of zero. I may have had avocado toast one sunny morning at Vif, with za’atar, aleppo pepper, preserved Meyer lemon, and celery(!). I may have even rediscovered R.E.M.’s superlative Green after forgetting about it for twenty years and then sung along loudly and with feeling to “World Leader Pretend” and got goosebumps during the bridge like I used to when I was seventeen. But nothing makes me feel like I’m really living, really doing it up right, like having a cake on my kitchen counter on a weekday. About a week ago, my friend Shari posted a photograph of a cake on Instagram and…
Read moreWhile the house is quiet
Today is our Sunday, and everyone but me is napping, sleepy after a lunch of cheese toast and cucumber salad. While the house is quiet, I should probably be doing tax paperwork and résumé reading and other sacred rituals of small business ownership, but: – I’ve never felt confident about picking favorites: my favorite movie, favorite song, favorite food, favorite whatever. I don’t have many favorite anything. But I do feel confident about saying this: Michael Chabon is my favorite novelist. His first novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh has been my favorite book for two decades, since I first read it at sixteen years old. He also wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which won a Pulitzer Prize,…
Read moreShe knows
I first met Lecia a handful of years ago, and I tyan’t remember how. We saw each other around, and then one year, maybe 2011, she took a leap and invited us to her family’s New Year’s Day party. We stood on the deck and talked, and the sunlight was warm enough that I didn’t wear a coat. I guess that was the start of something, but for me, our friendship got its footing while I was pregnant and she, a former nurse, cheerfully withstood my cross-examinations about epidurals and other hot topics of the day, and it has grown in the months and years since, over many meals that June and I have eaten at her table. Lecia is…
Read moreEt voila
Yesterday morning, on my way into the restaurant, I stopped at the studio where I’m taking a pottery class and found that a little slab mug I made for June was out of the kiln and ready. I had glazed it in what was supposed to be a matte turquoise but came out more like forest green, and the handle was crooked, because I had rushed it. But in my hand, the glaze felt as smooth as a washed silk button-down I remember my mom wearing in the eighties, so I decided to get over it. I surprised June with it when I got home in the afternoon, and she thanked me with this gasp-and-swoon thing she picked up somewhere,…
Read moreThat itch
I woke up this morning with that itchy feeling I get when I’ve gone too long without writing. I have a writer friend who once told me that she didn’t feel right if she wasn’t writing regularly, that she woke up each morning needing to write, and until very recently, I didn’t really believe her, because it never felt that straightforward to me. (I also wanted, uh, just a little bit, to reach out and strangle her with my bare hands; she made writing sound so easy.) I never felt that kind of imperative to be a writer – or, really, to be anything in particular. Writing sneaked up on me. But now that I’ve been at it for a…
Read moreWe adopted the habit
Oaxaca! As I said, I’m no expert, but I can tell you what I liked. I hear that some of you are hoping to travel there, and I hope what follows is helpful. This was our second time going on vacation with our friends Brandi and John. If you can find two people you enjoy and won’t want to stab after ten days in close quarters, I highly recommend it. Traveling with friends has allowed us to feel more bold, for better or worse, about long drives on mountainous roads in foreign countries, and about traveling without making a lot of plans, doing exhaustive research, or knowing the local language. Also, at the beach, two of us invariably want to…
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