Here we are, then, at the dusk of another summer, as the nights turn chill, and thoughts stray to the Dutch oven that has lain dormant in the kitchen cupboard through the salad days of 2010. I haven’t posted since March, which I don’t intend to make excuses for. Instead, I’m offering a rundown of the season’s edible experiences, all the way from the fiddleheads of late spring, to the culinary interludes of the New York City father-daughter trip of early summer, through the plates of the ancient pubs of Devon and Cornwall in high summer, the fresh fish markets of Cádiz in Andalucia, the smoke-scented toothiness of meat cooked over a Labor Day campfire in Algonquin, to the dinner we ate tonight—fresh burrata cheese, which to my almost apoplectic excitement, I found this week in my local deli.
But I get ahead (or rather behind) of myself. Since this is where we are now, let’s start here—in the weeks following Labor Day, as the nights draw in darker, inexorably earlier, and we look with delicious anticipation to the crispness—and the accompanying, varied warmths—of fall. It’s time to remind ourselves of why seasonality is such a perpetually captivating phenomenon, and why heat and light can’t be pleasurable without the contrasting sensations of cold and dark. The changing of seasons appeals to a primal need in us for tonality and dissonance. The prolonged brightness of summer can be exhausting. We can’t exist outside, in the sunshine, all the time. At some point everyone needs to go back inside, to look inwards, to curl up around a warm centre of some kind—whether it’s a much-loved book, a dish that your mother used to make, or a hot water bottle—and ward off the chill gathering on the other side of the threshold; to sleep, or at least, to move more slowly—“like a waterfall in slow motion”.
If this song were an outfit, it would be a dull-gold silk cocktail frock cinched at the waist, accented with dark, heavily-outlined eyes, and a late-night beehive with strands beginning to escape to frame a pixie face that’s half in the shadows. It would be sitting by a piano in a hazy bar on the Lower East Side, Old-Fashioned in hand, bemoaning a lover’s hardened heart to a room full of bohemians and slumming socialites at 2am. An exercise in exquisite melancholy and metaphysical longing, with Feist's multifaceted jewel of a voice variegating from the accusatory to the plaintive, the song is the perfect soundtrack with which to welcome the season of whisky and red wine. Mad Men is on the television. Those faithful, gnarled, chunky-heeled leather boots, that you neglected all summer in favour of fly-by-night sandals and beach-hair flip-flops, are looking wearable again. And the burrata you finally got your hands on is the perfect seasonal crossover meal—the tomatoes and basil of late summer meet the intense, creamy richness required by the soul and body preparing for hibernation.
It wasn’t always like this, though, and how quickly things change. Just last weekend—or so it seems—we were listening to songs from the new Arcade Fire album (this year’s summer soundtrack) in the hire car on our way up to Algonquin, to camp with a group of friends for the Labour Day weekend, to mark the end of summer. We pointed out the trees that looked to be turning, those that were halfway there, and the ones that had gone fully autumn-native. We started drinking (from a frankly impressive selection of intoxicating potations) at whatever hour we pleased, we neglected to shower, and we roasted heirloom carrots and meats of questionable provenance (it’s okay, we’re north of Barrie) over a campfire that would have turned a lesser sausage to cinders. 
And the “One” with whom I share my meals (as Elizabeth Robbins Pennell would have called him*) went to a friend’s house to help harvest the bounty of a drastically overburdened backyard pear tree; we ate pear salads for a week, and the One, who doesn’t bake, unaccountably produced not one, but two, Pear Clafoutis.
A month or so earlier, summer was in its dog days, and I had just returned from a trip to Cadiz, in southern Spain, with my much-missed mother, sister, and brother, who made the journey from Australia. I don’t want to say too much about Cadiz, as I suspect it’s possibly the last city in Andalucia that hasn’t been subjected to hordes of bloated English tourists, so will let photos of this ancient fishing port, and its market, suffice.
*
In Cornwall and Devon, the local pubs disproved the remarkably persistent perception that the Brits don’t know good food, with the standouts being the fresh local crab sandwich at The Golden Lion in St Isaac, Cornwall, taken on the balcony overlooking the harbour; and the terrine and cornichons at The Flask, in Highgate, London.
Way back at the beginning of the season, a late-spring trip to New York City with my Da involved walking, talking and eating: fried chicken, mash, and collard greens at Miss Maud’s Spoonbread Too, fortuitously proximate to our digs in Harlem; and, at Portobello, an unassuming little Italian place down a side street in Greenwich Village, an incredibly silky, toothsome linguine with baby artichokes, in a liquidly light sauce that was almost brothlike and yet clung seductively to every al dente strand. What with the reasonable prices (considering the quality of the ingredients and the location), the checkered-cloth tables, the pair of old fellas gesticulating in Italian at the bar, and a nonno who brought a hunk of parmesan to the table and used an old-fashioned rotary grater to shower it over my tender, brothy, dish of loveliness, I couldn’t have been happier. It felt like a genuine, quintessentially authentic Italian-American dining experience, something I thought I wouldn’t find (and certainly not on my budget) in Manhattan.
Those delicate spring artichokes seem a long way off, just now, as winter lowers. In the meantime, though, as we’ve been heedlessly and hedonistically glorying in the sunshine of summer, flaunting our sandals and berries and cherry tomatoes, other old friends have been quietly ripening; all those under-appreciated, unshowy, nourishing stoics, like pumpkins and corn, beets and carrot, have been gathering in their sugars from the nutrients of the soil, to comfort us through the bitter cold. Thank God for the change of seasons.
* Disclaimer: I haven’t seen or read Eat, Pray, Love, and don’t intend to, mostly because a) Julia Roberts shits me to tears,** b) if I read every book about foodie self-discovery that crossed my path, I’d probably go off food writing forever, and c) David Edelstein, a critic I respect, called the movie "a golden turd" (in the opening line of the review!) and notes that "the food is so obviously 'styled' that it kills the piggy fun. Try not to hoot when the gaunt Roberts makes a bring-on-the-flab speech to persuade the equally slender Tuva Novotny to eat pizza, even if they get 'muffin tops'" (read the full review here). But if you’re an Elizabeth Gilbert disciple who feels the need to convert the unbelieving, I’m cautiously open to your evangelism—that’s what the comments section is for.
* “One sits at your side feasting in silent sympathy”. The Feasts of Autolycus, or The Diary of A Greedy Woman, first published 1896.
** What have I got against Julia Roberts, you ask? Well, putting aside all question of acting ability, here's Exhibit A: she made catty remarks to Jennifer Garner about her weight--IN PUBLIC. Really, Julia? http://www.laineygossip.com/Julia_Roberts_calls_out_Jennifer_Garner_for_being_too_thin_04feb10.aspx?CatID=1051&CelID=0
But I get ahead (or rather behind) of myself. Since this is where we are now, let’s start here—in the weeks following Labor Day, as the nights draw in darker, inexorably earlier, and we look with delicious anticipation to the crispness—and the accompanying, varied warmths—of fall. It’s time to remind ourselves of why seasonality is such a perpetually captivating phenomenon, and why heat and light can’t be pleasurable without the contrasting sensations of cold and dark. The changing of seasons appeals to a primal need in us for tonality and dissonance. The prolonged brightness of summer can be exhausting. We can’t exist outside, in the sunshine, all the time. At some point everyone needs to go back inside, to look inwards, to curl up around a warm centre of some kind—whether it’s a much-loved book, a dish that your mother used to make, or a hot water bottle—and ward off the chill gathering on the other side of the threshold; to sleep, or at least, to move more slowly—“like a waterfall in slow motion”.
*
The song I’ve been drawn to play repeatedly as I sense this year’s autumn approaching is Feist’s “Limit to Your Love”, from her 2007 album, The Reminder. With its heavy, dramatic, slightly discordant piano chords punctuating the verse structure, juxtaposed with a hesitant, wavering, almost folksy flute that materialises during trancelike interludes and is—to me at least—the musical equivalent of slow, thoughtful walks through autumn leaves, this track is the twenty-first century reincarnation of a poignant 60s smoky lounge number, the anguished, burnt-out cigarette end of a hippie love story. 
If this song were an outfit, it would be a dull-gold silk cocktail frock cinched at the waist, accented with dark, heavily-outlined eyes, and a late-night beehive with strands beginning to escape to frame a pixie face that’s half in the shadows. It would be sitting by a piano in a hazy bar on the Lower East Side, Old-Fashioned in hand, bemoaning a lover’s hardened heart to a room full of bohemians and slumming socialites at 2am. An exercise in exquisite melancholy and metaphysical longing, with Feist's multifaceted jewel of a voice variegating from the accusatory to the plaintive, the song is the perfect soundtrack with which to welcome the season of whisky and red wine. Mad Men is on the television. Those faithful, gnarled, chunky-heeled leather boots, that you neglected all summer in favour of fly-by-night sandals and beach-hair flip-flops, are looking wearable again. And the burrata you finally got your hands on is the perfect seasonal crossover meal—the tomatoes and basil of late summer meet the intense, creamy richness required by the soul and body preparing for hibernation.*
It wasn’t always like this, though, and how quickly things change. Just last weekend—or so it seems—we were listening to songs from the new Arcade Fire album (this year’s summer soundtrack) in the hire car on our way up to Algonquin, to camp with a group of friends for the Labour Day weekend, to mark the end of summer. We pointed out the trees that looked to be turning, those that were halfway there, and the ones that had gone fully autumn-native. We started drinking (from a frankly impressive selection of intoxicating potations) at whatever hour we pleased, we neglected to shower, and we roasted heirloom carrots and meats of questionable provenance (it’s okay, we’re north of Barrie) over a campfire that would have turned a lesser sausage to cinders. 
*
Earlier still, sitting on the back deck to read Dickens, looking out over the monstrous tomato plants—straining against their cage of netting like the Incredible Hulk of the garden—lunch was a jumbled bowlful of the plant’s cherry tomatoes (is there something perverse about eating the fruit of a plant while you sit and meditate on the plant itself?), chickpeas, green beans, capsicum, and goat’s cheese, with fresh torn oregano leaves from the plant that just keeps on giving. 
And the “One” with whom I share my meals (as Elizabeth Robbins Pennell would have called him*) went to a friend’s house to help harvest the bounty of a drastically overburdened backyard pear tree; we ate pear salads for a week, and the One, who doesn’t bake, unaccountably produced not one, but two, Pear Clafoutis.
*
A month or so earlier, summer was in its dog days, and I had just returned from a trip to Cadiz, in southern Spain, with my much-missed mother, sister, and brother, who made the journey from Australia. I don’t want to say too much about Cadiz, as I suspect it’s possibly the last city in Andalucia that hasn’t been subjected to hordes of bloated English tourists, so will let photos of this ancient fishing port, and its market, suffice.
*
In Cornwall and Devon, the local pubs disproved the remarkably persistent perception that the Brits don’t know good food, with the standouts being the fresh local crab sandwich at The Golden Lion in St Isaac, Cornwall, taken on the balcony overlooking the harbour; and the terrine and cornichons at The Flask, in Highgate, London.
*
Way back at the beginning of the season, a late-spring trip to New York City with my Da involved walking, talking and eating: fried chicken, mash, and collard greens at Miss Maud’s Spoonbread Too, fortuitously proximate to our digs in Harlem; and, at Portobello, an unassuming little Italian place down a side street in Greenwich Village, an incredibly silky, toothsome linguine with baby artichokes, in a liquidly light sauce that was almost brothlike and yet clung seductively to every al dente strand. What with the reasonable prices (considering the quality of the ingredients and the location), the checkered-cloth tables, the pair of old fellas gesticulating in Italian at the bar, and a nonno who brought a hunk of parmesan to the table and used an old-fashioned rotary grater to shower it over my tender, brothy, dish of loveliness, I couldn’t have been happier. It felt like a genuine, quintessentially authentic Italian-American dining experience, something I thought I wouldn’t find (and certainly not on my budget) in Manhattan.
*
Those delicate spring artichokes seem a long way off, just now, as winter lowers. In the meantime, though, as we’ve been heedlessly and hedonistically glorying in the sunshine of summer, flaunting our sandals and berries and cherry tomatoes, other old friends have been quietly ripening; all those under-appreciated, unshowy, nourishing stoics, like pumpkins and corn, beets and carrot, have been gathering in their sugars from the nutrients of the soil, to comfort us through the bitter cold. Thank God for the change of seasons.
* Disclaimer: I haven’t seen or read Eat, Pray, Love, and don’t intend to, mostly because a) Julia Roberts shits me to tears,** b) if I read every book about foodie self-discovery that crossed my path, I’d probably go off food writing forever, and c) David Edelstein, a critic I respect, called the movie "a golden turd" (in the opening line of the review!) and notes that "the food is so obviously 'styled' that it kills the piggy fun. Try not to hoot when the gaunt Roberts makes a bring-on-the-flab speech to persuade the equally slender Tuva Novotny to eat pizza, even if they get 'muffin tops'" (read the full review here). But if you’re an Elizabeth Gilbert disciple who feels the need to convert the unbelieving, I’m cautiously open to your evangelism—that’s what the comments section is for.
* “One sits at your side feasting in silent sympathy”. The Feasts of Autolycus, or The Diary of A Greedy Woman, first published 1896.
** What have I got against Julia Roberts, you ask? Well, putting aside all question of acting ability, here's Exhibit A: she made catty remarks to Jennifer Garner about her weight--IN PUBLIC. Really, Julia? http://www.laineygossip.com/Julia_Roberts_calls_out_Jennifer_Garner_for_being_too_thin_04feb10.aspx?CatID=1051&CelID=0
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