The poem called Patience.
The Good Things of Life February 1, 2012
Poverty rather than wealth gives the good things of life their true significance. Home-made bread rubbed with garlic & sprinkled with olive oil, shared – with a flask of wine – between working people, can be more convivial than any feast.
―Patience Gray
from Jorie Graham’s ‘To the Reader’ January 31, 2012
Here is the smell of earth being cut, the smell of four lines.
Here is the brownsweet of the abstract where her four small furrows
say the one word over.
She will take the ruler & push it down till it’s all the way in.
She will slide its razor edge along through colonies, tunnels,
through powdered rock & powdered leaf,
& everything on its way to the one right destination
like a cloak coming off, shoulders rising,
(after one has abandoned the idea of x;
after one has accorded to the reader y)―
her hole in the loam like a saying in the midst of the field of patience,
fattening the air above it with detail,
an embellishment on the April air,
the rendezvous of hands & earth―
Patience Gray & Jorie Graham January 31, 2012
I don’t think it’s by accident that I’m attracted to the work of cookery writer Patience Gray & of poet Jorie Graham. British-born Gray shared a life with the sculptor, Norman Mommens, & made a home with him among the rough landscapes of Tuscany, Apulia, & Catalonia. Graham was raised in Italy, albeit in Rome, by sculptor Beverly Stoll Pepper. Graham & Gray share a formative intimacy with the same Mediterranean geography & with the same two vocations: sculpture & writing.
Neither Gray nor Graham would, I think, identify herself as a ‘feminist.’ But each of them deals, in a very different way, with the inflections of a particularly female-bodied experience on language, history (myth) & the physical world. Both women feel deeply that the earth is at very great risk. & each go bare, bravely, startlingly, in their respective enterprises―which are ultimately spiritual enterprises, born of multiple migrations.
I love them both.
Baccalà Stufato Con Latte January 28, 2012
salt cod
p147
Baccalà Stufato Con Latte
salt cod cooked in milk
Salt cod is excellent cooked in milk. For 4 people you need:
1 kilo (21/4 lb) salt cod 3/4 litre (27 fl oz) milk
1 or 2 bay leaves grated nutmeg
5 or 6 large potatoes a little oil from a jar of preserved chillis
1 large onion garlic, finely chopped
origano (wild marjoram) parsley, finely chopped
ground black pepper 2 hard-boiled eggs
12 black olives
Cut the fish across into two or three pieces, put these in water in an earthenware pot, skin side up, & soak for 24 hours. Change the water once or twice.
Cook the pieces of fish in an earthenware vessel with plenty of water, starting from cold, with 1 or 2 bay leaves. Do not let the water boil, as boiling would toughen the fish. Once it is steaming, simmer for 5 minutes, then take the pot off the fire & leave to stand for half an hour. Drain, remove the grey skin & the bones, & flake the fish.
Peel the potatoes & onion, & slice them to the thickness of a coin. Put some olive oil in the bottom of a pan (the sole pan is good for this), put in a layer of potatoes & onion, then a layer of flaked fish, & repeat. Sprinkle with origano & black pepper, barely cover with milk, & simmer until potatoes are cooked; by this time a good deal of milk will have been absorbed or will have evaporated , & what remains will have acquired a creamy consistency. Add a little grated nutmeg & a few drops of oil from the chilli jar (see peperoncini sott’olio, p317) at this point, & some finely chopped garlic & parsley at the end of the cooking . Sliced hardboiled eggs & black olives, unstoned, can be added. (Stoned olives stain the pale cream colour of the dish.)
Pollo Alla Cacciatora Con Olive Nere January 23, 2012
Christine's sprigs of fresh rosemary
p262
Pollo Alla Cacciatora Con Olive Nere
chicken, the hunter’s way, with black olives
The chicken, tender & weighing about 1 kilo (21/4 lb), is jointed, then chopped into pieces of the same size-on the small size. These are fried in a heavy pan in olive oil in which 3 crushed but unpeeled cloves of garlic & 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary & some leaves of mountain sage (Salvia sclarea) have first been simmered.
When the pieces are golden, 2 peeled tomatoes are crushed in the pan, salt & a glass of white wine are added, & in this very scarce sauce the chicken cooks more slowly, covered, until most of the liquor is absorbed & the pieces are tender (10 minutes for frying, & 15 minutes once the wine is put in.) During the last few minutes a dozen luscious black olives, unstoned, are put into the pan.
Served on a white oval dish with the olives & the scarce sauce, which is passed through a strainer, or should be, to eliminate the aromatics, In fact, in the Osteria da Rizieri, both the rosemary & the thyme, indeed also the garlic, put in an appearance in the dish.
Fettuccine Colla salsa Di Funghi January 10, 2012
- pasta dough
p99
Ribbon Pasta with Fungi Sauce
Use Boletus edulis (porcini) or Amanita caesura (ovoli), these fungi being the undisputed best. Ovoli when immature look like orange eggs; see Fungi & Michelangelo (p208).
- 400g (14 oz) ribbon pasta
- 400g (14 oz) fresh fungi
- 1 small onion
- 1 clove of garlic
- fresh parsley
- fresh mountain savory
- olive oil
- 1 dessertspoon salsa secca (p321) or tomato concentrate
- a small glass of red wine
- 1 cup reduced veal or chicken stock
- butter
Trim the stems of the fungi at the base, & clean them by wiping with a damp cloth. Chop them finely on a wooden board with a stainless steel knife. Then peel & chop the onion & garlic clove, chop the parsley & savory, & simmer all these aromatics in olive oil in a little earthenware pot. Add the tomato conserve, & after a few minutes put in the chopped fungi, shake them about in the oil, & add the wine & stock. Cook uncovered for 20 minutes, when it should achieve the consistency of a sauce. Towards the end add a knob of butter.
Boil the ribbon pasta in salted water, strain & serve on heated plates, with the sauce poured into the centre of each plate.
The HoneyWeed Project November 1, 2011
The Book:
“Honey from a Weed: Fasting & Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades & Apulia. ” First edition, 1986. Patience Gray.
Food has become so complicated in our society. & these days we think we live in a world Alice Waters & Michael Pollan made. But behind Waters & Pollan is Patience Gray, the high priestess of cooking. & no one can touch her.
The Contender:
Two girls. Two kitchens. One weedy cookery book.
The Project:
To make *everything* in the book.
