Ninecooks

6 BOWLS, NO WAITING

When I develop menus for families and friends to cook together, I choose several recipes and create the connective tissue that holds them together. First, I ask each Ninecooks group what they want to explore, and I build a menu around their ideas, using their own recipes or mine, or recipes from cookbooks, magazines, Food TV, old files, friends of friends, wherever. I read my favorite magazines (Saveur, Fine Cooking, Bon Appetit and Gourmet, Cooks Illustrated, CHOW) and I look for patterns in the universe. Is everyone writing about Mexican cooking, or barbecue, or lemons? And if so, should we be getting on board?

The harder part is figuring out what, exactly, will work with the equipment we have, in the time we have. Our cooking groups meet for three hours, which means a few minutes to get organized, two hours for cooking, plus time for eating and dishwashing. Within that time frame, we can do many things, but as a rule we don't bake, or attempt long-cooking stews or roasts. Of course that leaves us everything else: sauté, stir-fry, steam, grill, whip, blend, broil, boil.

If a recipe can't be made in a home kitchen, with ordinary tools and equipment and ingredients, it doesn't make the grade for group cooking. The Ninecooks kitchen has just what you have in your own kitchen: one fridge, one stove, one sink, one red Artisan Kitchenaid, one blender, one food processor, no dishwasher (no kidding).

Okay, in some cases, we do have more. More of the things that make it easy for groups to cook together. Remember that 1970s Broadway play, "6 Rms, Riv Vu"? Well, in our kitchen, it's "Six ______, no waiting!" Six cutting boards. Six chef's knives. Six graters, six measuring cups, six frying pans, six whisks, six cookie sheets.

The six-burner Viking stove has two ovens – a regular-size one with a scary infrared broiler, and a small oven that's the perfect size for baking an apple pie.

Where Ninecooks really shines is in the bowl department. It's possible...just possible...that we have more than your average number of bowls (and what is average, anyway?). We certainly have more than six stainless steel mixing bowls, more than six speckled melamine mixing bowls, glass bowls, cheap blue-and-white rice bowls from Asian markets, wooden salad bowls, porcelain bowls. One bowl, two bowls, red bowls, blue bowls.

More isn't necessary for group cooking, mind you; it's just more, and that means everyone in the group can cut, chop, slice, measure at the same time. If you're setting up your kitchen for group cooking, you don't need to buy more. Just ask each person to bring his or her own knife, cutting board, and mixing bowl.

Unless, of course, you're like me, and you just like to buy more.....

A pot is born

There comes a time in the life of every cook when the desire for the "perfect" pot, or utensil, or coffee mug, takes hold and won't let go. I'm a collector, or more properly an accumulator, of certain things for the kitchen: 1950s melamine splatterware mixing bowls; close to 200 wooden spoons and wooden utensils; cheap blue-and-white dishes from Asian groceries; and, lately, tagines, the conical cooking pots of Morocco.

I feel so fortunate to live in New England, where wonderful artisans working in clay, stone, wood and metal inhabit the forests near the Ninecooks kitchen. I'm even more fortunate that some of these artisans are friends who share a love of cooking and oh-so-kindly invite me into their studios to collaborate on – and occasionally create – the tools of my dreams.

Three years ago I designed and made my first (and only) wooden spoon, after spending an entire day in the studio of Meb Boden in Woodstock, Connecticut. Meb took me through the whole process, from selecting the block of wood (from a tree that had lived on her road), through carving, shaping, polishing, and sealing. It was the experience of a lifetime, and to this day I've never seen another spoon like mine. The spoon fits my hand, the length suits my height, and the shape and unusual patterning of the wood makes me giggle.

My next adventure in design came courtesy of my gig as a food writer for Rhode Island Monthly magazine. I took a full-day course and made a small wooden salad bowl, just the perfect size for one or two. Shaped like an old English dairy bowl, my little creation has a flat bottom that keeps it stable for mixing.

Then came tagines. For the past....oh....nine months or so, I've been collaborating with my friend Bob Fishman (pictured above, in his studio). A potter for more than 30 years, Bob's been teaching me about the properties of the stoneware clay he uses – how it handles thermal shock, how it cures, how it wears, how it takes glaze, and how it cleans. I'd bought some red clay tagines at a "going out of business" sale last summer, and it was clear that the pots were a bit fragile. I showed the pots to Bob, and we began to talk about how to create a more pleasing shape in a more durable material.

We made three or four in our first round. Here's the one I designed and love, though it's entirely Bob's handiwork. (If I'd made this myself on the potter's wheel, I'd still be trying to get the clay to "center"!) It's unglazed on the outside, and glazed in a rich white on the inside.

Now Bob is working on his own tagine ideas, a bit more refined than mine. He's testing glazes and surface design, and I'm going to write some recipes that he can include with the pots.

The #1 Cooking Group gets a chance to take my tagine collection for a test drive in mid April, when we try a few recipes based more or less loosely on Moroccan cooking. Jessica, one of the original nine cooks, often makes preserved lemons using Paula Wolfert's classic instructions, and she's suggested that we try some of her favorite ways to use them:

• Chicken Provencal with preserved lemons replacing half (or all) of the olives
• Pasta with fresh tomatoes and preserved lemons
• Black/French/green lentils with spicy turkey sausage and preserved lemons

Yum to all that! I'll add a fish recipe to the menu, so we can learn the technique of building a "platform" of celery sticks or sugar cane in the bottom of the pot to keep the fish from sticking.

In my cellar-that-looks-like-a-restaurant-supply-store, I have five tagines: three from Morocco, made of glazed terracotta; one Le Creuset, with a ceramic top and cast iron base I can put directly on my gas stovetop; and the one I designed in Bob's studio, which is stoneware that goes into the oven. When all the #1 folks get together, we cook for 18 people (nine cooks and nine spouses), so we'll do some recipes in our standard pots, too. It will be interesting to compare how the same recipe tastes when cooked in the traditional tagine vs. a Dutch oven.

Jessica's sending along her recipes, but we cook in just three weeks, so the preserved lemons have to get going right away. When we cook together, we can each start a jar of the traditional, thirty-day lemons, but I'll also make a batch of Five-Day Preserved Lemons, from Paula Wolfert's Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, which work well for those of us who haven't quite planned ahead.

Herb garden dreamin'

For five months each year, Ninecooks' cooking groups can step out the front door and harvest fresh herbs for our recipes right from the garden. I know, the herb garden doesn't look like much right now. That white stuff along the edges of the path is snow, and what's behind it is a kind of frozen mud-and-mulch concoction, so prevalent in Rhode Island at this time of year.

In the past couple of weeks, fooled by the freakishly warm weather that has alternated with snow storms this winter, dozens of crocus and daffodil bulbs have begun sending up shoots. And I, spying something green in the garden, forget entirely that mud season precedes planting season.

It's March, and just like all true gardeners, I am wildly optimistic. 

In my imagination, each plant grows straight and tall, without bald spots in the middle. In my imagination, the culinary herbs boast a robust flavor, and never bolt to seed before I've harvested the leaves. In my imagination, the dozen fraises des bois plants sag under the weight of the sweet, tiny strawberry fruits that stay on the plants all summer and are never eaten by the rabbits. In my imagination, the deer, Japanese beetles, mildew and mold spores, and inconsiderate oil delivery guys go somewhere other than my garden for the summer.

In a few weeks I'll take inventory of the perennial herbs I put in last year, in hopes they all survived the winter: three French thyme, two sage, three lemon thyme, Greek oregano, sorrel, chives and garlic chives. Two lavender plants seem happy in their sunny spot. Anise hyssop, which we use for tea, is abundant and impossible to stifle, as are the spearmint and chocolate mint. There should be plenty of bronze fennel, too; it's a self-seeder.

And then, around the third weekend in May (I'm supposed to wait until Memorial Day here in Zone 5, but I'm too impatient), I'll plant the "basil field" with up to 30 Genovese basil plants, some Thai basil, and a few other varieties (Lucia turned me on to lime basil last summer, and Marcia and I bought lettuce-leaf basil that was great for wrapping cheese and tomatoes).

I'll also put in at least nine flat-leaf Italian parsley, one good-sized rosemary, and a six-pack of dukat dill, a low-growing variety I bought last year at the Danielson farmers' market. More thyme, which I use more often than any culinary herb. I'll try cilantro again, though I never have good luck with it; same with chervil and summer savory, which is perfect in bean soups. And when the soil heats up, I'll direct seed nasturtium, because summer salads wouldn't be peppery and festive without nasturtium blossoms.

Maybe this is the year for some sungold cherry tomatoes, too. Hmmmm. Back to the seed catalogs!

Artful things, part II

After the recent post about food and art, this arrived by email from my friend Ken Beck, who is as good a cook as he is a painter, and whose paintings often make us look at food and kitchen items in new ways:

I have long maintained that painting and cooking are very much alike: the only difference, really, is that you get to eat the one and enjoy it in the here-and-nowness of life, while the other you more or less have forever to live with and perhaps learn from. What one learns through painting, I believe, is to experience through looking and relating. And isn't it the same with cooking?

Artful things

Here we are – the nine cooks of Ninecooks. Not really, no, but I love this saucy image, a gift by and from our much-loved and mega-talented son-in-law Nick Bertozzi, illustrator, comic book artist, winner of the 2003 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic, whose first graphic novel will be published next year (image reproduced here with Nick's permission). The drawing hangs in the Ninecooks kitchen, along with a painting of a festive and fun Marian Burros-inspired kitchen icon by Rhode Island artist Mary Harman, one of the original nine cooks, and several pieces on the theme of nine whisks, by my husband Ted.

So, a few random thoughts about art and kitchens:

1. Laurie Colwin, in her wonderful 1988 classic Home Cooking, wrote in an essay called The Low-Tech Person's Batterie de Cuisine that all you really need in the kitchen are two knives, two pots, two spatulas, two frying pans – well, you get the idea. Why not two pieces of art? I know that in many kitchens, the little bit of wall space we have gets covered with shelves or cabinets to house that batterie de cuisine. But every kitchen has room for art: two postcards on the fridge; two wine bottle labels on a little bulletin board. Art sets the stage for everything else that happens in the kitchen. And that brings me to.....

2. The other day Peter Edwards, a personal chef, world traveler, and all-around smart guy, spent four hours camped out at my kitchen table, where we shared some black bean soup and swapped stories and ideas. At one point, as I was telling him about how we decide on "themes" for our cooking group sessions, he asked, "Have you ever done one on food and art?" Hmmmmm, I thought. The #1 Cooking Group did make bouillabaise from a recipe written and illustrated by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, but that really wasn't food and art, though it was darned good soup. Peter's vision was more concrete: take a still life, and cook something using all the foods in the painting! He's thinking Renaissance, of course, like dead pheasants draped over the edge of a kitchen table laden with vegetables and ornate pastries. Or Cezanne, maybe. But not me. Instead, I'm reminded of a long-forgotten still life that Ted and I had wanted to buy in the early 1980s, but couldn't afford, which brings me to.....

3. Our first purchase of "food art" – by which I mean art we bought specifically to create a mood in our kitchen – was a painting titled "Four Quart Stainless Steel", by Ken Beck, a Boston artist, anthropologist, and phenomenal cook (and the painter of that still life we remember from 25 years ago). The subject is an old stainless steel pot, one of the last that his father sold door-to-door when Ken was growing up in a north-of-Boston suburb. The pot (in the painting, which hangs in the living room because it turned out to be too large for the kitchen) sits on a burner, with just a suggestion of the gas flame below. On cold winter days, we can almost smell the aroma of soup or stew or a New England boiled dinner. So that brings me back to.....

Art and food, and Peter's idea for a future cooking group get-together. Time to hit the art books and find a delectable still-life. Ideas, anyone?