{"id":8139,"date":"2005-10-04T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-04T04:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2005\/10\/how-i-hit-the-hard-ball-stage-2\/"},"modified":"2005-10-04T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-04T04:01:00","slug":"how-i-hit-the-hard-ball-stage-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2005\/10\/how-i-hit-the-hard-ball-stage-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How I hit the hard-ball stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of well-meaning readers have recently inquired into the foundations of my relationship with food, or, more succinctly, the origins of this thing I call Orangette<\/strong>. As the following amply demonstrates, such seemingly harmless questions can be downright dangerous when combined with an afternoon of digging in the archives<\/a>, both online and off. What follows comes to you straight from a tattered, sun-bleached sketchbook that holds my teenage writing\u2014or, at least, the snippets of it that aren\u2019t stashed in my parents\u2019 freezer, which I once fervently believed was the only way to secure it for the ages.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Dear reader, I humbly present to you the story of how it all began, the story of how one verbose teenager in the wilds of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, found her way to the kitchen, as told in her own words.* I wrote this essay-cum-prose-poem, fittingly titled \u201cKitchen,\u201d ten years ago, when I was 17 and fresh from my first edible epiphany<\/strong>. Please, handle with care.<\/p>\n

*With long-overdue thanks and apologies to Frank O\u2019Hara, Armistead Maupin, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and Flannery O\u2019Connor, in whose works I\u2019d been thoroughly pickling myself when \u201cKitchen\u201d was born.<\/span>
<\/span><\/p>\n

Kitchen<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Fresh Ginger Cake with Caramelized Pears
From Gourmet<\/em>, February 1996<\/p>\n

\u00bc cup unsulfured molasses
\u00bc cup sour cream
\u00bd stick unsalted butter, melted
\u00bc cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
2 tsp grated peeled fresh gingerroot
\u00bd teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
1 cup all-purpose flour
\u00bd teaspoon baking soda
\u00bc teaspoon salt
2 medium firm-ripe pears
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
\u00bc cup sugar
3 tablespoons water
1 \u00bd teaspoons Cognac or other brandy
3 tablespoons heavy cream<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Midnight, and we converge upon the kitchen: Mom<\/a> for poached pears, Burg<\/a> for rice pudding, and me for fresh ginger cake with caramelized pears<\/a>. Lately I\u2019ve been really identifying with the kitchen, the way it\u2019s always warm in the pantry, its shelves lined with bottles or bags labeled \u201cRaspberry Apple Butter\u201d or \u201cCranberry Beans\u201d or \u201cQuaker Barley,\u201d the way there are cookbooks laying open on the butcher-block island, the way it smells good after dinner and in the afternoon when the refrigerator is cold and full. It\u2019s been this way since Christmas with me, eagerly thumbing through the new issue of Gourmet<\/em> in search of a recipe to read about, soak in, taste without tasting. But the recipe for fresh ginger cake with caramelized pears demands immediate attention, tonight. So we go to the store after dinner and come home with a backseat full of bags: gingerroot, a dozen eggs, a bottle of molasses with a sweet-looking granny on the label, a pint of heavy cream, a tub of sour cream, and pears (firm-ripe).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
We all think alike. Burg is at the stove with the double boiler, then opening the pantry for rice. Mom is at the sink, peeling pears with her new vegetable peeler, leaning over the recipe for \u201cPears Noir\u201d from her California Heritage Cookbook<\/em>. I am making the cake I can\u2019t stop thinking about. Me, I want fresh ginger cake with caramelized pears at midnight with the rice pudding and the poaching pears still on the stove and the kitchen warm and the cake and caramel and pears warm and the marble tabletop cold under my elbows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Rice pudding is fine, but it\u2019s not for me. It is Burg\u2019s once-a-week-or-so fun, later to be Tupperwared and tucked into the fridge for occasional spooning. The poached pears will tomorrow be coated in bittersweet chocolate and served to the guests who will sit and laugh in the dining room with my parents. But the cake is mine. Cake: I like it on my tongue, the word\u2014not just the stuff itself\u2014but even better in my throat, my stomach. Cake<\/em>. It can only mean something good.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
I never thought I would like rice pudding, anyway. Something about the dairy and the rice; they shouldn\u2019t be together. But I\u2019ve changed my mind. I wonder if it is my father\u2019s rice pudding that\u2019s done it\u2014only three tablespoons of sugar, and amazing\u2014or maybe my uncle\u2019s rice. My father\u2019s brother Arnie sends the rice from Nanuet, New York\u2014basmati rice, straight from India, still in the little burlap sack with the handles and the big red block letters spelling out the name of a town I can\u2019t pronounce. Arnie is fun. He calls for Burg and speaks slowly slowly and it makes me crazy if I\u2019m in the middle of something because it seems to take hours to get him over to Burg. The word \u201cHello\u201d in and of itself takes a good minute. But Arnie is fun. He looks like Burg and has a dog that\u2019s nearly as tall as he is. So I like rice pudding because of Arnie and the rice, and after all, it is my very own father\u2019s rice pudding, although really, I don\u2019t think I\u2019m biased at all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
And the poached pears; I like them too. Well, picture it: you\u2019re lying in an overfluffed bed in the upstairs bedroom of a bed-and-breakfast in Cape Neddick, Maine, just before Christmas, and there’s snow piling high on the ground outside, but it\u2019s warm up there, under the canopy, in the bed. It\u2019s eight o\u2019clock. There\u2019s a knock at the door. You roll out of bed. At your feet is a silver tray with one cup, a silver coffee pot, a cream pitcher, and a sugar bowl. You pick it up, close the door, rest the tray on your bedside table, pour yourself a cup of blacky-brown coffee, and you sink back into bed under the comforter and return to your second volume of the Tales of the City<\/em> series, and it\u2019s a good morning because on the page Mona is discovering her roots in a whorehouse in Nevada with Mother Mucca, and gynecologist Jon Fielding is wooing Michael again. And then, of course, there\u2019s breakfast at nine. First, there will be pineapple scones, still warm from the baking sheet, and a cloth-lined tin of cinnamon muffins and apple-spice bread. Then a poached pear, buoyed by a pool of Grand Marnier cr\u00e8me anglaise. Then a warm plate with a small poached egg on a bed of pur\u00e9ed spinach, with caramelized apples and a crispy little phyllo purse filled with sausage, ricotta, and mushrooms and baked until flaky outside and melting inside. This is breakfast on this almost-Christmas of your 18th year. You sigh and decide to stay seated right where you are until tea at 4:30 (cranberry linzer tart; ready?).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
So yes, I like poached pears. Because I was in Maine that Christmas, and I ate everything and then another scone an hour after breakfast because I can never get enough, it seems. Because poached pears landed squarely in the middle of the breakfast to go down in history, the breakfast that set me afire, afire with the love of the food<\/em>! Aaaaah-men! And hence this midnight meeting in the kitchen, this preoccupation with cake and caramel and fragrant winter pears.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
To the kitchen. This cake will be incredible\u2014mark my word\u2014and I will grate this ginger even if the milk that runs out from under the grater makes me feel a little queasy. It will be that<\/em> good. It will be delicious, yes. In the oven, my cake makes the kitchen smell full and alive, and the pears bubble in the pan with sugar and butter and cream. Midnight, and the kitchen is clicking and burbling and whirring. Soon we all lean into the soft, brown cake cooling on the island, and we pour pears and caramel soft and all butterflow onto the cake and melt onto the floor with it on our forks and in our mouths even better than the word \u201ccake\u201d itself on my tongue I ever dreamed it would be. Midnight, and we melt in the kitchen and check ourselves with the candy thermometer and declare that we\u2019ve reached the hard-ball stage, and we pour ourselves into bed. <\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of well-meaning readers have recently inquired into the foundations of my relationship with food, or, more succinctly, the origins of this thing I call Orangette. As the following amply demonstrates, such seemingly harmless questions can be downright dangerous when combined with an afternoon of digging in the archives, both online and off. What follows comes to you straight from a tattered, sun-bleached sketchbook that holds my teenage writing\u2014or, at least, the snippets of it that aren\u2019t stashed in my parents\u2019 freezer, which I once fervently believed was the only way to secure it for the ages. Dear reader, I humbly present to you the story of how it all began, the story of how one verbose teenager in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow I hit the hard-ball stage | Orangette<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2005\/10\/how-i-hit-the-hard-ball-stage-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How I hit the hard-ball stage | Orangette\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A couple of well-meaning readers have recently inquired into the foundations of my relationship with food, or, more succinctly, the origins of this thing I call Orangette. 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