Simple Spring Supper

My love affair with The New Basics Cookbook ended, as all fanatical affairs should, when I realized that I couldn’t get by on chocolate alone. I came down from my sugar high and started eating vegetables again. For Christmas, I received my very own copy of the cookbook, but it didn’t hold the same allure. I wasn’t motivated (or skilled) enough to make the recipes on my own. And Lemon Meringue Tartlets weren’t something my mom whipped up on the weekend.

I realized that my new cookbook was a bit of an aberration in our house. My mom’s kitchen was stocked with hand-bound cookbooks; the kind compiled in church basements and sold as a fundraiser. With recipes attributed to Polish and Slavic women with barely pronounceable last names, the food was meat and potato-hearty. It was food to be cooked with enough love to stick to your bones during the long, cold winter. The recipes in The New Basics are Neo-European and expensive with ingredient lists that were embarrassingly extravagant in comparison. Fresh porcini mushrooms, tiny pheasants, and passion fruit.

Within The New Basics is a list of menus to mark a host of bourgeois occasions. “After the Flea Market”, “Brunch on the Porch,” and “Romantic First Anniversary” are just a few. Let’s take a look at “Dinner for a Cool Spring Evening”:

Sunset Melon with Salmon and Prosciutto
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Veal Marengo Roast
Sweetly Stewed Tomatoes
Potato Galette
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Raspberry Angel Food Cake
Raspberry Amaretto Sauce

Please know that by “Sunset Melon,” they mean three different kinds of melon. And in case the smoked salmon and prosciutto weren’t enough, an additional layer of beef carpaccio is optional. And this is just the first course! [Bonus points for anyone who can tell me what a Marengo Roast is without google.]

Don’t mistake my incredulity for annoyance, because what I love about this book is this variety of ridiculousness. I come so close to thinking I could cook a crazy menu like this until I realize it would take days upon days to complete. You would think that “After the Flea Market” would be a casual throw-together kind of meal, but no. And a “Cool Spring Evening” conjures up something much simpler to me. Last week it meant pizza. And I’ve got to hand it to them, The New Basics actually had an achievable recipe (though still decadent) and it was incredibly tasty. Here is my Simple Spring Supper:

A glass of red wine (to drink while cooking)
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Smoked Salmon and Chèvre Pizza
Leafy Green Salad with a Mustardy Dressing
A glass of white wine (if available, Chardonnay or Riesling)
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Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie from Rustica
A Glass of Milk

Pizza, adapted from The New Basics Cookbook:

Basic Pizza Dough
1 cup Crumbled Goat Cheese
2 Tbsp Sour Cream
½ cup Julienned Leeks
½ cup Fresh Dill, chopped
6 thin slices Smoked Salmon
Olive Oil

1. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Lightly oil the back of a baking sheet.

2. On a well-floured surface, roll and/or press the dough into the shape of a rectangle; transfer to the prepared pan. Leaving a half inch rim around the edges, cover with ½ cup of the goat cheese and dot with 1 tablespoon of the sour cream (or a little more, if you like).

3. Sprinkle ¼ cup leeks and ¼ cup dill over the cheese. Bake for 10 minutes.

4. Remove the pizza and arrange the smoked salmon over the top. Cover with the remaining goat cheese, sour cream, leeks and dill. Drizzle lightly with olive oil and bake for 8-10 minutes longer, or until the crust is golden brown.

The Magnificent Obsession

This is the story of the first cookbook in what was to become my giant stack of cookbooks. It’s true, my inner barometer for all-things-food was once quite ambivalent, but with just one book I got curious. It was an unlikely book to pique the interest of such an unassuming Midwestern fourteen-year-old, but sometimes all it takes is one. For converting me into a lifelong epicure, the grand prize goes to The New Basics Cookbook—the first cookbook I ever took to bed. Bravo!

Published in 1989 by Manhattan catering socialites Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, it is a dense 850-page volume of "essential" recipes from Grouse on Toast to Foie Gras for Two. For me, it resided in a very particular place (Southampton) and time (the end of my adolescence), otherwise I doubt The New Basics and I would have ever met. And, of course, if the orgy of conspicuous consumption otherwise known as the 1980’s had not occurred (the wild decade I was born into), than The New Basics would have never been penned.

Julee and Sheila knew a thing or two about caviar-laden cocktail parties (their previous collaboration being The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook), but The New Basics pushed party-throwing to a new level with its mathematical calculation of how many tumblers of sherry would be required for each guest. Yuppies across the Eastern Seaboard could breathe a sigh of relief! I came across my copy of The New Basics in the house of an artist who specialized in landscape paintings. I recall, based on his home décor, that he was very fond of the color gray. Though I never witnessed a party at this fashionably gray house, I have no doubt he threw them.

So how did I end up there? Well, one summer the artist rented his house to my well-to-do aunt and her family. My aunt asked if I might be interested in being an “au pair” (the more glamorous term for mother’s helper). For five weeks I would live with my New York family in their summer rental on Long Island. I would play with my four-year-old cousin, change the diapers of the toddler-aged one, and generally keep them both occupied while my aunt sipped chardonnay in the afternoons. I said yes, without a moment’s hesitation.

I was cheap and eager help. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. While my friends spent the summer swimming in mucky Pike Lake, I was flying to NEW YORK CITY—by myself!—and then spending my days on exclusive Southampton beaches getting tan. I would have gone out there for free. How then did I become obsessed with a cookbook during my summer in Southampton? I honestly don’t know. But I plucked The New Basics from its home on the top of the fridge and couldn’t stop reading.

I horded The New Basics like someone on Weight Watchers with a secret candy stash. I waited until I was alone in my room and could pore over one of the last chapters, "Chocolate, the Magnificent Obsession!" uninterrupted. Late at night, I read the recipe for Chocolate Squares with Mint Crème Anglaise so fervently, I could taste the cool, bracing mint atop the achingly rich cake in my sleep. I moved on to the cake and coffee chapter and dreamed of a table set with dozens of mini Boston Cream pies.

Reading about these desserts went beyond the realm of guilty pleasures. My enjoyment was truly perverse, as I had no intention of ever baking. I was wholly content to lie up in bed with my light on, imagining the satisfaction an Amaretto Soufflé with Chocolate Sauce would bring to my relentless sweet tooth. I didn’t need really need the actual dessert, because I was equally enthralled by the book’s authorial voice.

For the next few weeks, I couldn’t put The New Basics down. I consumed its dessert pages all summer, long after I had left the book behind in Southampton. It wasn’t until I finally moved beyond my chocoholism that I discovered what kind of cookbook I was really dealing with. Here’s a little preview for next week: Confetti New Potatoes! Smoked Salmon and Chèvre Pizza! I still love The New Basics, for all of its ridiculousness. And I will always love it for being my gateway drug to the world of cookbooks that embody a philosophy, a life, and not just a cuisine. With this book, I discovered that my curiosity about the world would find a very happy place in a stack of cookbooks.

Now, fourteen years after this summer, I’m still searching for the next enthralling recipe, but I’m also hungry for stories about life. I want to know: What’s your idea of the perfect late spring picnic? What would you have for dinner on your fiftieth birthday? And I’m still wondering (can you help me Julee and Sheila?), how much ice do I need for a forty-person open bar?