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Food for Thought

Feminism and the Baked Potato

So there was a good article by Michael Pollan in the New York Times about the rise in fascination with watching others cook (i.e., professional chefs), and the decline in home cooking (also, just as a riveting aside, mentioning research that shows the rise in obesity as linked to the decline of the home meal). And there was tweeting about it—one can almost imagine this as being practically knee-jerk, a no-brainer—about how Michael Pollan wants us women back in the kitchen. Which made me immediately yelp, “You GUYS, you’re missing the point!”

Because it’s exactly at this point that feminism has gotten into a cul de sac, even a slightly resentful, surly cul de sac. I mean, you can see why the feminism of the late Fifties through the Seventies emphasized that girls aren’t allowed to do what boys do. And, I’m afraid to say, you can also see why they were encouraged by the mass media and the corporations to emphasize and campaign about this.

Look. In a patriarchal society, what the boys do automatically becomes more important than what the girls do. This means, for example, that being an investment banker becomes more important than being a nursery school teacher. Okay, we all know that one. We all bemoan that one. But do we look at the roots of it and what it really means? It means, of course, that being someone whose default setting is to beat the hell out of the other guy and be the dominant one gets more prestige and more resources than someone whose default setting is to care for and nurture others.

I daresay just about anyone out there can see where THAT got us.

So feminism, I have to say, has got to go back to work on this one. It can’t just be about doing what the boys do. It has to be about upholding the importance of what the girls do. Because it’s more important to eat and to feed your loved ones than it is to make money. Well, it is. It IS.

In other words, all you women who were forced to give up cooking for yourself and your family (and all you men, too, as a matter of fact) because you have no time anymore, do not hide out in the faux virtue of thinking that means you’ve taken a step forward out of the kitchen. Unh-uh. What you’ve done is walk into a rabbit trap with your eyes wide shut. You’ve given up something of basic importance to the achievement of your own autonomy for the convenience of a world that regards you as just something to be milked. Work long hours. Spend money from working long hours. Work longer hours to have more money to spend. Get less and less gratification in the process. Get madder and madder, and so get sold more and more crap that promises you a reward for how mad you are.

This is not feminism. This is being conned in a big, big way.

Okay, you really don’t like to cook? Don’t cook then. It’s like sex, though. There are probably some people who authentically don’t like sex, but my guess is they’re a very small group of people. On the other hand, if you’re forced to have sex, you’re going to hate it worse than cleaning out the attic on a hot day.

You get my point? There has to be freedom from constraint, there has to be leisure enough to contemplate, there has to be calm before you can know who you are and what you want. And once you do know that, my own feeling is that you’re going to love sex, you’re going to love nature, and you’re going to love FOOD. I mean, if you’re a human being. How can you help it? I mean, unless you’re so drugged up by pharmaceuticals, recreationals, audiovisuals, and terror that you can’t even feel your own self.

If that is true, stop it right now. I’m not kidding. You’re not just making your own life worse, but the lives of those around you, and the world, too.

And one way to stop that is to recast Feminism as support for those virtues of nurturing, compassion, partnership, and just all-round pleasure that have always been denigrated in our culture as ‘girly stuff.’ I personally adore girly stuff. Girly stuff needs to be reclaimed as a ruling power in our culture…before it’s too late.

So let’s start reclaiming it. Start with something easy. Let’s start with a Baked Potato.

For everyone who says cooking at home is too difficult, too time-consuming, a Baked Potato is the ideal riposte. Of course, you do have to have an hour before you eat it. At least before you eat it the first time (you should bake a lot of Baked Potatoes at once, save energy, use the leftovers for all manner of easily thrown-together meals). But with a little planning, this can be managed.

First buy your potato. This should be an organic one, not treated with sprouticide, which is a particularly hard to get rid of pesticide. This should also be one that has a nice dusky, papery skin, no sprouts, no green stuff (that green stuff means incorrect storage, and makes you a little nauseous if you eat it; just cut the green part off…but you want the skin with a baked potato so try to get one absolutely ungreen to start with). Scrub until clinging dirt unclings. Stick a knife into it in a few places so it doesn’t explode when you cook it. Put it in the oven (a toaster oven is ideal for this) at 400° for about forty-five minutes to an hour, depending on its size and how done you like it. Squeeze it gently or poke with a fork to test doneness. It won’t hurt to leave it in the oven for longer (just makes the skin even crispier), or turn off the oven and leave it warm till you want to eat it. Then EAT IT. Split it in half, mash with a fork, top with topping of your choice: unsalted butter, sour cream, hot sauce, garlic mayonnaise. You make the call.

With a salad and a piece of corn, this makes a pretty darn good meal. It probably cost you twenty cents for the potato. All you had to do was wash it, pierce it, stick it in the oven, and pull it out again. This is probably less trouble than it takes to unwrap a hamburger from Wendy’s and then throw the detritus away.

As for those extra baked potatoes you made? Many choices available to you. Dice ’em and fry ’em later with onions for hash browns. Scoop out the pulp and mash it with cheese and butter and milk, bake it later. The skins can be cut with scissors into lengths, basted with butter and hot sauce, and baked till they taste like high-class versions of potato chips.

And so on.

If you do this feeling that you’re degraded by being in the kitchen, consider this: who is actually cooking the meals you are actually consuming? Is it right that someone so much lower on the economic food chain, so dissed and overworked, is the person who provides you with something essential to your well-being? Is this the kind of culture we want? Is this the kind of culture Feminism is meant to help deliver?

I think not.

Back to the Baked Potato. We had ours for lunch. And for dinner, they’ll be hashed, served with a frittata and a tomato and chive salad.

Now, THAT’S a Feminist meal, for sure.

Men in the Kitchen

And while we’re on the subject of people being enslaved by cultural expectations that benefit someone other than themselves, we need to talk about how men get trapped good and proper by the same. What I’m thinking of specifically is that default setting insidiously underlying so much of our cultural activity that says someone’s always got to be on the top and someone’s always got to be on the bottom. That says the only way to move our culture forward is through constant competition to see who is going to be on the top, and who is going to be etc.

Take the way a Man in the Kitchen gets portrayed, so frequently, in the mass media. There seem to be only a few kinds held up for our viewing. There’s the Complete Culinary Genius, hard drinkin’, hard druggin’, and a complete asshole to the people who work with…no, excuse me, who work for him. And then there’s the Complete Culinary Fumbler, who doesn’t have a clue how to boil water. In between there’s what we might call the Complete Gourmet Fusspot who has to have a designer kitchen and three kinds of truffle oil before creating his masterworks to loud domestic applause.

All three of these images have one thing in common: they are a portrait of a completely self-centered individualist who thinks only about himself and his goals, and nothing about others and theirs.

This leaves no room for what I think of as your good, normal, healthy, food- and family-loving male, a man who not only thinks about others, but who understands that thinking about them…feeling about them…is what makes his life worthwhile. Who just wants to have a good time with his friends and loved ones and who thinks food is one of the ways to do it. You know. The kind of person I actually like to have as a friend and/or loved one. There are a lot of them around. In fact, I suspect (and I hope, too) that they are the majority out there. We rarely get to hear about them somehow. The guys who think of cooking less as a competitive blood sport, and more as a way of enjoying themselves and helping others around them to enjoy themselves too. Who know cooking is another way of expressing how they feel about themselves and their world, and another way of showing their curiosity about and involvement in that world. Of sharing all of that, too.

The first real boyfriend I ever had was like that. I was just fifteen, and he was just seventeen, and he loved food. He loved cooking and eating and sharing both experiences, and he taught me a lot of what I still know about the pleasures of enjoying the table together. He taught me how to forage for wild mushrooms, and then how to cook them with butter and a touch of garlic. He taught me that chuck blade steak was great served with a little Worcestershire sauce. He taught me that the only way to serve beef liver was seared rare and heaped with plenty of sautéed onions. And he taught me that men love to cook and are as excellent at it and at nurturing others as women are.

I have never forgotten any of those lessons. Even after all these years.

The main objection I have to the culinary clichés about men in the kitchen is that they deny men the right to be as nurturing, as caring, and as loving as women are allowed to be. There are a whole lot of men out there who are claiming that right. And lucky for us, too. Not just lucky for their friends and family (not to mention their co-workers), but for the culture as a whole. Because all anyone has to do is just look around to see that what we need now is not more individualism, not more genius, not more applause-seeking, but a little more nurturing, a little more sharing, and a little more mutual joy.

And speaking of mutual joy. My family of origin experienced it regularly, but never more so than over a billowing golden mass of my father’s Yorkshire Pudding, which he cooked with a prime rib roast on the most special of family holidays. I personally have never been able to get my Yorkshire Pudding to billow anywhere near his heights, but my brother Peter seems to have inherited the knack, which his family now reaps the benefits of.

I asked him for his secret, and he sent me this recipe:

Perfect Yorkshire Pudding

Beat eggs, milk, salt & flour till smooth.

Melt 2 tbls butter or suet in baking dish.

Bake at 400 deg 35 to 45 min till puff and brown.

Yeah, well okay, but that recipe doesn’t explain anything. What about that billowing? So I went back to him, and he added, “The key ingredient I forgot to mention in the recipe is a nice big prime rib toast. Take care not to trim any fat from it before roasting. And I forgot to mention that it’s important to cook the Yorkshire in the drip pan used to cook the roast beast.”

Something still nagged at me, though. There was still something missing. The secret ingredient. Which was revealed at Christmas, when he called to wish the Beloved Vegetarian Husband and me compliments of the season, and I could hear my family in the background making those contented noises my family does at the end of a feast.

And Peter said, “Oh yeah. I forgot to tell you. About the Yorkshire Pudding. I only just realized I make it different every time. And every time it comes out great. I have no idea why that is. But it does.”

I know why. When Peter makes that Yorkshire Pudding it always comes out great because he makes it with love. Which gives me a very warm feeling about the way it’s possible to partner with our food and the way we feed our loved ones. Especially when we want our loved ones to feast. Men and women both, we love—or we should—to watch our loved ones feast.

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My Calming and Soothing Pasta Salad

There are those hot summer days when it tries the calmest, most patient, most down-to-earth soul to keep her temper as she reads the news—especially if she doesn’t particularly do well in weather that reaches the triple digits. So you can imagine what those days do to someone like me, who is not the calmest, most patient, most down-to-earth soul, and who definitely doesn’t do well in weather etc. In theory, and on cooler afternoons, I feel it is good to be tolerant of people who hold what seem to me to be demented, even injurious opinions, but in practice, especially when there is no air-conditioning and somehow the one fan in the attic has mysteriously disappeared…well. As I said, I’m not the calmest, most patient, etc.

So what do I do?

Here is my most recent solution, not the end of all solutions, but the one I find works for me, at least until I find a better one. I grit my teeth. I concentrate on being courteous to those around me. And I get on with it.

In other words, I concentrate on my work here and now, do the best I can, and keep going.

And in aid of that goal (especially in hot weather), I find cooking to be just about the perfect kind of meditation. I think about what I want to eat. I think about what I have. I think about what my Beloved Vegetarian Husband would like to eat. And, in hot weather, I think about how hot it is. Then I start meditatively chopping and slicing and dicing, and if, in my fantasies, this chopping and slicing and dicing is helpful to my mood, well, that’s my right to be amused as I get on with it, don’t you think?

Here is an idea for a chopping, slicing and dicing meal:

A Calming and Nourishing Pasta Salad

First off, what do I have in my larder? This is what I should have:

I cook the veggies that need it. Cool.

I make a salad dressing. As I said, for myself, it’s usually a good strong vinaigrette. For half a pound of pasta and a load of veggies, 1½ tablespoons of a good wine vinegar, or 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar, followed by 3 tablespoons of olive oil (with the wine vinegar) or walnut oil (good with the sherry vinegar). I mash a garlic clove into it. Salt and pepper.

I marinate the chopped, diced, or sliced onion in the dressing while I make the rest of it.

I cook the pasta (anywhere from a handful, as I said, if I have lots and lots of veggies, to half a pound if I don’t).

I chop the raw veggies. Or, in the case of the carrot, grate it. I mix all the raw veggies with the salad dressing, with the exception of the diced tomato (I hold that back for a bit). Leave them to marinate while the rest of the dish happens.

I let the pasta cool off. I just dump it in a colander, run some cold water on it, tossing it about with my fingers, and then leaving it to drain. As it cools, so, mysteriously, do I…

When drained and cool (both me and the noodles), I toss the pasta with the marinated veggies and the dressing. Now I add the diced tomatoes. Then I chop up as much fresh green herb as I like, and add it and toss again. I taste. Need more oil? More vinegar? More salt or pepper? I add judiciously at will.

Then I check my teeth. Ungritted? Yes, thankfully. So I have a glass of wine. Contemplate the possibilities of a different world. And the pleasures of this one.

Then I have a good evening. Turn off the news. Sit with my loved ones. And I’m happy. Because Living Well is not only the Best Revenge, it’s the Best Example, too.

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No Time to Cook

There are those times where you just have to make decisions about what you’ve got time for. And I really hate giving up making meals for myself and the Beloved Vegetarian Husband just because I’ve got a work binge on. It’s making those meals that’s a lot of my entertainment in life (at least, as long as I’m not making them in an RV, see above). I love thinking about them and making them almost as much as I love eating them. Usually.

So there I was, with only a week between trips out, and with a huge amount of work to get through, too. Well, the obvious answer is to order in fast food, or eat out, or just starve, I guess, and since none of those options is an appealing one, I just had to think of some way round. Really, the only way round is to just get as efficient and creative as you can, and cut yourself some slack when you hit your own personal efficiency and creativity ceiling.

This was the attitude I took.

I hit my own ceiling when it came to shopping. My brain was just too full of other stuff to really focus on what I might need for a series of a) varied meals and b) meals that would create leftovers that I could leave for the Husband when I was away on the next trip. Now, I know a lot of you women out there are saying, “let the guy get his own meals, for God’s sake!” and I agree, I totally agree, in fact, HE totally agrees, bless him. But the thing is, I LIKE leaving meals for him, just like (I assume) he likes getting in the wood for me every winter. I LIKE it. I could give it up, but I don’t really want to if I don’t have to. It adds something to my life.

Not to mention the fact that if I don’t do this, he reverts to cheese and salsa sandwiches. Which I do not feel is a good nutritional foundation for the long run.

Well, so here were my parameters: Not much time. Just what I had in the cupboard and fridge already. An attenuated attention span.

(It helps when you’re playing this kind of culinary game that you have loved ones who appreciate what you do, and are not given to finding little picky things to complain about to bring you down when you can’t do as much as you usually do. Although, if you have the latter, I suggest seriously thinking about either retraining them, or keeping them well away when you have key work to do of your own.)

I was so involved in my own work that I didn’t even notice what I cooked the night before. I mean, I could barely remember eating it. But I think it was good—and I know it provided some leftovers for the Husband to reheat (mashed potatoes with pesto spread in a baking dish, covered with grated Swiss cheese and baked till bubbly; carrots and parsley; salad with avocado and blue cheese).

The next day I had to finish a proofing job. Well, I am not crazy about proofing, so I take it one chapter at a time. One or two. Or three. I did this at the kitchen counter. And in between, I wandered over to the stove and the sink and made:

Vegetable soup for lunch. Chopped a couple of onions (I knew I was going to make a couple of other things, too, from those onions, so get it done all at once), put a bit of chopped onion in a pan with some melted butter and curry powder. Peeled and diced the lone potato left from last night’s potato fest, added that to the pot. A little thyme. Covered with a couple of cups of water and brought to a simmer. When the veggies were tender, I added the leftover carrots from the night before and cooked to blend flavors. There was so much of it—flavor, I mean—that I added a little more water, with the idea of leaving one extra serving for Alex for a lunch when I was away. When that was done, shoved it to the back of the stove to wait for a final enrichment with a little butter, a sprinkling of parsley and toast for lunch.

Back to the proofing. Two more chapters. Even three.

Then back to the stove. Heated two separate skillets. In one, a dollop of sunflower oil as the base for enchilada sauce. In the other, olive oil as the base for a sauce for polenta and mushrooms. Split what was left of the chopped onion between the two and sautéed them till they were golden. Then opened a can of crushed tomatoes and puree and put half in one skillet, half in the other. Chopped garlic and added to each skillet (of course—who did you think you were dealing with, anyway?). Added three minced chipotle chilies and some of their sauce to the enchilada sauce. Added a sprig of rosemary to the polenta sauce. Salt to both. Then I needed to thin them. Leftover beer to thin the enchilada sauce. White wine to thin the polenta sauce.

Put them both onto simmer and went back to proofing. Three more chapters.

Back to the stove, gave them both a stir, turned off the heat and covered them.

That night, I dipped some corn tortillas in the enchilada sauce, rolled each one up around a little grated cheese and minced green onion, lined them all up in a baking dish, and covered them with more sauce, cheese, and onion. Baked till done, and the leftovers to be reheated at will by the Beloved Husband. We ate refried beans with this (I already had them in the fridge from another day), the beans spooned on top of lettuce, and an avocado and cilantro salad on the side.

Lunch the following day was reheated beans on top of grated carrot on a whole-wheat tortilla, the whole thing topped with more cilantro and avocado and grated cheese.

Then dinner was the polenta stuffed with sautéed mushrooms (just happened to have some lurking in the fridge), and topped with tomato/rosemary sauce and grated Parmesan. Plenty of leftovers, terrific reheated. We had it the first time with what was left of the lettuce in the fridge, mixed with grated carrot, as a salad.

I finished the proofing job right on time. Then on to packing for the next trip. But in the meantime, I thought, we’ve got to eat, and, as you know, my motto is: Anything you’ve got to do, you might as well have a good time doing.

And I’m serious about that, too.

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Personal Autonomy and Potatoes Anna

As always (and it really doesn’t matter what I’m doing, this is what I’m constantly meditating on), I was thinking about how increasing one’s personal autonomy is the only possible response to a world out of whack; if we don’t know who we are, how can we know how to work with our world? And there I was getting ready to cook Christmas dinner, which was to be (if you’re as interested as I am in what other people eat) green salad with celery and aioli/lemon dressing, roast duck, scalloped oysters, Potatoes Anna, and See’s chocolates.

I scoured my cookbooks for a scalloped oyster recipe I remembered as being heavenly: all bread crumbs (no crackers), minced green onions, garlic, parsley, with cream on top. But I couldn’t find it. Not in Julia Child. Not in James Beard. Not in James Vilas. Not anywhere. There were recipes with just breadcrumbs. There were recipes that used green onions. But none fit the bill precisely, and I knew for sure somewhere in that bookcase was a recipe that fit the bill precisely.

You probably know the end of that story. Yep. Finally I thought to look in my own cookbook, in Jam Today, and there it was, the best scalloped oyster recipe ever.

That made me laugh.

This also set me off on another train of thought, while I was throwing together my own version of Potatoes Anna. I thought about why I’d written Jam Today in the first place—not to write a cookbook, but to join together sides of life that get artificially separated: as if what you eat every day doesn’t have to do with who you are and where you fit in your world. I really wrote it to support the idea that everyone should be looking at what they’re doing (not at what everyone else is doing), and use that as a tool to understand more fully who they are and who they want to be. Because I really think that’s the only way the individual can be effective in the world, in helping move the world out of its present dead end. It’s the only way I can be effective. So that’s what I want. And that’s true of what I want from Jam Today Too as well.

So I know you’re saying, what the hell does this have to do with Potatoes Anna? And of course you have a point. So I’ll try get to that, I swear.

The way I made those oysters tells me a lot about myself. It tells me I don’t particularly like to fuss, but I like to eat. It tells me I don’t have crackers in the house, normally, and I don’t like to buy ingredients just for one special dish. It tells me…oh, it tells me more stuff than that.

And my Potatoes Anna recipe, at least the one I slapped together for Christmas dinner, tells me pretty much the same thing.

Potatoes Anna, in case you missed hearing about her before, is this wonderful kind of potato cake, crusty on the outside, melting on the inside, cooked in the oven with so much butter you could have cardiac arrest just preparing it (although you pour most of the butter off later and use it again, which is the kind of thing I’m always attracted to).

Now, if you want the most perfect potato dish ever, I recommend you follow Julia Child’s recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Like every one of her recipes I’ve tried, if you follow every step precisely, you’ll have a most wonderful-tasting dish.

But me, I can usually only do that following-the-fiddly-recipe-precisely thing once. After that, it’s a free-for-all. And my basic plan is: make something that fits with the rest of my life (not yanking it in another direction through its complexity), and that is going to taste really good. It doesn’t have to taste haute. It just has to taste good. And like it was made with love.

So here is my Potatoes Anna recipe for two, which really did fit that bill.

Take two russet potatoes (which is the kind of potato I usually already have in the house). Clarify a stick of butter (which means heat at low heat, skim off the solids on top, pour the clear butter away from the curds left at the bottom…voila!)—although you can skip this step and just use a melted stick of butter if you want; the result won’t be as perfect, but so what?

Take a small cast-iron pan (mine is about six inches across and just the right size for a two-potato Potatoes Anna)…or a small heavy ovenproof/stovetop-proof skillet or dish…

Peel the first potato. Slice it thinly (I just sliced these on the side of a box grater). Heat a little clarified butter, in low heat, in the pan on top of the stove. Arrange the slices in a layer on the butter. (You’re going to turn the cake over when it’s done, so this is what will show.) Sprinkle more butter, salt and pepper, arrange another layer. Repeat until the potato is used up. Then peel the other potato and slice, and add to the skillet in the same way. Finish by pouring what’s left of the butter on top, and press the whole thing down with a spatula to get it level. Shake the pan and run the spatula underneath to unstick any sticking taters. (It doesn’t matter if it does stick, it’ll still taste good. I don’t fuss too much over how things look, as long as they work. I mean, you should see my car.)

Stick the pan in a 400° oven and bake for 30 to 45 minutes, till the bottom is all crusty and brown, and the interior potatoes all tender.

Take out of the oven. Pour the excess butter into another dish to use for something else (maybe another round of Potatoes Anna). Unmold the cake on a plate. Cut into wedges, or halves, and serve.

Aahh.

For more people, just use twice the amount of potatoes and butter, and use an 8-inch cast-iron pan.

This combines two qualities I find I admire when they’re in close conjunction, in no matter what the arena: practicality and festivity. And if you can manage to be both practical and festive in your own arena, I’d have to say you’re doing about the best of anyone around.

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But what about dessert? Shouldn’t we finish with dessert?

Baked Pears in Autumn

By now, you’ve probably got the idea that I’m not big on sweets. It’s true. I really don’t think about them much—except, of course, to long for See’s candy around the holidays (especially the dark chocolate-covered marzipan). I don’t dream about cakes, or yearn to spend a Sunday baking cookies, and my mind’s palate does not waste its time tasting phantom pies. Nope. Definitely not a dessert person. Oh sure, I’ll have some ice cream now and then, and when there’s company, I’ll serve out a dish of it with a little capful of Grand Marnier spilled on top, just to dress it up a little, at not much extra hassle to the cook. And sometimes when I’m alone, what I really want after my meal is a big piece of toasted New Sammy’s sourdough bread, slathered with butter and either honey or raspberry jam—although that probably hardly counts as a sweet to a true dessert person.

On the other contradictory hand, I have always been annoyed by recipes that say things like: “Of course, this dish is so rich, that you should serve nothing but fresh fruit to follow.” Oh yeah, sure, I think to myself when I read that. Fresh fruit. Like they’re serving that themselves.

But the truth is, I do like a little fresh fruit after a meal. In fact, a lot of lunches get finished off with an apple or a pear sliced up and put on the table between me and the Beloved Vegetarian Husband while we read our respective luncheon reading material. Or a handful of cherries. Or a bowl of just-washed grapes. Or (best) a few fresh ripe figs. I mean, if I look at it objectively, I really shouldn’t get so annoyed when I read that recommendation about fresh fruit. I really shouldn’t think of it as just Nazi calorie-policing.

I eat a lot of fruit, a lot of different ways. Although not for the health bit. It turns out I just like it that way.

It’s true that unadorned fresh fruit is not my idea of an after-dinner treat. But, again when I think about it, almost all my favorite home desserts are adorned fruit—one way or another. It’s decked-out fruit of one kind or another that gets passed around if I’m dining, as I often am, with loved ones and friends. Fruit that’s been just a little bit fussed with, its tie straightened and its hair brushed for company. No matter what I think I like to eat, what I do proves that, in the end, what I like to eat is fruit.

Like so: Pieces of dried fruit (mango, papaya, fig, apricot, persimmon) scattered on a plate with a few chocolate chips or jagged pieces of broken-up dark chocolate. Slices of quince paste alternating with slices of full-fat Monterey Jack cheese, to be eaten together in one luscious, squishy bite. Fresh raspberries nestled in cream, crystal brown sugar scattered on top. Strawberries dipped in sour cream and the same brown sugar. Baked apples.

My favorite, though, is baked pears. The way Martha Rose Shulman taught me how to make them, in her divine book Provençal Light, which is an example of a cookbook meant to help you eat less fat (usually my most hated form of cookbook) that turns out to help you cook simply and deliciously no matter how many calories you think you should consume. She says she learned this method from Christine Picasso. Another bit of art we have to thank a Picasso for, in my opinion, and, much as I admire Cubism in theory, I have to say that in the end this recipe has done more to improve my quality of life.

Of course, I’ve fiddled with it, and tamed it to where I don’t have to pay as much attention to it as perhaps Ms. Shulman or Ms. Picasso would like. But it’s to their credit entirely that no matter how lazy I get with it, it still always comes out right. And of course, it’s the ideal dessert for one of my favorite cooking methods: pile everything in one oven, in different dishes at different times, and have them all come out at the same time.

The other night, once I’d got the hang of it with that dinosaur oxtail of Cindy’s, I was braising an oxtail just for myself alone, in a basin of red wine and herbs, and of course we all know now how long an oxtail takes to submit to your will—i.e., a really long time. I couldn’t bear to turn on the oven just for it alone; what a waste. So I grated some carrots, put them in some cream, and shoved them in after. Then a few potatoes to bake, on the theory that I could use them later for soup or whatever (I did, too, and the whatever was delicious).

I halved a couple of tomatoes, too, scattered some rosemary on them, and put them on the lowest shelf underneath everything else.

But there was still a little room in the oven.

Looking around the kitchen speculatively, my eye landed on my overflowing fruit bowl. It was autumn, and autumn means Indigo Ray is desperately trying to find a home for all of her apples and all of her pears, all of which seem to ripen at approximately the same time. So I had a big haul, just sitting there, piled. The pears were almost ripe but not quite. And that, as a matter of fact, is the best kind of pear to use for Baked Pears.

Like so:

Take as many pears as you like and will fit into whatever baking dish you choose. Wash them, and cut a little circle out of each one’s bottom with a paring knife. As you do, fill the hole with a spoonful of honey, then quickly set the pear right side up in the baking dish. When they’re all nestled neatly, each one next to its neighbor, comfortable but not spread out, pour about an inch of water into the bottom of the dish. Scatter a few whole cloves about. You can sprinkle a bit of sugar on top, but I never bother. Put into an oven at whatever temperature you’ve got everything else going at, and bake for a really long time until the pears are wizened and crackly-looking, and the water/honey mixture has thickened. This takes about 2 hours at 350°, or about an hour and a half at 400°. Or more or less, you know, as usual. Cook ’em till they look and smell done to you.

They’re great hot on their own or with a little cream poured over, or next to a scoop of ice cream. They’re great the next day for breakfast with some of the syrup spooned over them, and a little full-fat yoghurt on the side. They’re a wonderful afterthought to the next night’s dinner. And you can just keep them in their baking dish, covered, in the fridge, all week, and spoon them out, one by one, at will.

Well, if it’s THAT kind of fruit. Well then. I definitely eat that kind of fruit for dessert, and when I do, I know I’m home.