THE BIO ON THE BACK FLAP OF MELISSA CLARK’S NEWEST BOOK says she has written 29 in all, and for that feat alone, we should celebrate her today upon the publication of “In the Kitchen With a Good Appetite.” So celebrate we will: with a feast of good stories from the latest cookbook by Clark, a popular New York Times food columnist—and with a chance to win one of the two copies I bought to share with you.
Each of her 150 recipes is delightfully prefaced with what amounts to its provenance: a juicy and sometimes hilarious back story that Clark tells in as simple yet deft a fashion as the style of the dish that follows. I sat right down to chapters like “Better Fried” and “It Tastes Like Chicken” and “My Mother’s Sandwich Theory of Life,” the perfect mix of a good read and a good meal.
For me—a flavor-fearing kid who rinsed most of her entrees off at the sink conveniently positioned halfway between the Garland range and the family dinner table—Clark’s childhood tales are positively hair-raising: Summer vacations were spent touring France with her psychiatrist parents, gourmands determined to eat at every Michelin-starred restaurant there. Worse yet (or to Clark, more thrilling): The family rule was “try everything once” (presumably without running it under the faucet first). And they meant everything: kidneys and foie gras aspic and raw quail eggs and vacherin, a real stinker among cheeses.
It wasn’t just Melissa’s parents, either, who stirred the epicurean-to-be in the child. There was the matter of Aunt Sandy of Flatbush, too, a real hostess-with-the-mostest, in whose home Melissa’s parents broke their Yom Kippur fast with on sweet and sour fish prepared in what Clark (left) describes as a “shimmering aspic….a pink-and-ecru mosaic.” (Almost Aunt Sandy’s Sweet-and-Sour Salmon is one of the 150 recipes that made the new book’s cut.)
Later, the chefs she has worked with or admired in her food-writing career have added their influences, helping shape the way that Clark cooks: with ease, and with welcoming flavors.
But even early on, Melissa had a discerning young palate: Early iterations of her mother’s zucchini latkes were fed secretly to the family dog—until finally, the young recipe tester determined, mom got it right (a “smidgeon” of rosemary was the secret, and no potato whatsoever, just pure zuke). That final victorious version: page 313.
I love the story of her first date with husband-to-be Daniel, who almost didn’t make it to Date 2 after confessing that he didn’t eat dairy products.
And one of a backyard pig roast with her ex-husband; her hairdresser, and the hairdresser’s husband and their twin toddlers, who persisted in saying “hi piggy, piggy” and “oink, oink” to the dinner-to-be. Oh, dear; no way to transform that meal-gone-wrong into a recipe for publication, no matter how much spin she added. Oven Roasted Pork Butt With Rosemary, Garlic and Black Pepper stands in nicely; no pit-digging required.
But to my ear the recipes that scream “cook me” loudest are Buttery Polenta with Parmesan and Olive Oil-Fried Eggs and Swiss Chard, or Crispy Tofu with Garlicky Peanut Sauce, or Healthy Homemade Cheddar Crisps. Chapter 2, “The Farmer’s Market and Me,” is a story of the author as determined hunter-gatherer, her harvest yielding the kind of cornbread that’s rich with real kernels, or raw kale salad with pecorino and chiles and breadcrumbs, or another salad of broccoli cured in spicy, garlicky toasted sesame dressing. I could go on; but better that you buy a copy (assuming you don’t win one, below).
More Melissa Clark
- Her website, Melissa Clark [dot] net
- The “A Good Appetite” column in The New York Times
- A tour of Melissa’s kitchen with my friend Sara Kate at the Kitchn blog
How to Win a Copy of the Cookbook
YOU KNOW THE ROUTINE: You have to sing (or at least share) for your supper. Comment below to have a chance to win. But here’s this giveaway’s secret ingredient: Tell us a food memory that has stuck with you—good or bad, childhood or later. Melissa and I would love to know.
I’ll pick two winners at random using random [dot] org on Monday, September 13; entries close at midnight on Sunday. Good luck!
I was so sick with mono between my junior and senior years of high school that the doctors wanted to put me into the hospital. My Mom knew I’d freak and just get worse so she convinced them to give her 24 hours to see if I would get better and keep some liquids down. She and my little sister took shifts and got me to sip ice tea every fifteen minutes or so all night. The next morning Mom went to church and intended to take me to the hospital when she got home as she didn’t think she’d gotten enough liquids into me overnight. Well, when she got home, not only did I feel better, but I begged her for a grilled cheese… with Velveeta. I didn’t get it until around 2 in the afternoon after she was sure I could keep it down. I’ve had 53 laps around the sun and that was THE BEST grilled cheese of my life.
When I was eight years old, my great aunt came into the kitchen, put a piece of beef tenderloin into a cast iron skillet, turned the burner on high, and left the room. There I sat watching it cook until it began to burn and smoke. I was eight. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t allowed near a stove. But, I had to do something. I found a pot holder, and carried the pan over to the sink, and ran water into it. I put it back on the stove. Where was my aunt? Who does this? Who leaves a small child in a room with the stove on high to cook a steak? Finally, my great aunt enters the kitchen. This is the day where I learned that if you cook,stay in the room.
Whenever we’d go to visit my grandparents my grandfather would celebrate by preparing a steak dinner for us, which was an important gesture for this depression generation man. He would go to the butcher, not the grocery, and pick out some choice steaks then bring them home and proceed to grill everything that is good about a steak out of them. They were the toughest, most tasteless steaks I’ve ever put in my mouth and I HAD to eat them or he would have been completely offended. The memory of that dining room comes with the thought of excruciating periods of chewing and chewing and chewing relieved only by sips of my grandmother’s delicious mint iced tea. That was some heavenly tea.
Cheers,
On our honeymoon in Acapulco… we sampled fresh tomato Salsa for the first time (way back in 1973). My wife and I immediately fell in love with it; but couldn’t figure out the ‘odd’ taste mixed in. Eventually found out it was Cilantro! AND the love affair began…
At my graduation party from high school one of my cousins decided to include his friends from the Olympic Bobsled Team. My Mother who always over prepared every dish for every event, remains upset to this day (30 plus years) that she ran out of German potato salad after these extra six guys ate dinner! Of course it doesn’t help that all of the family still teases her about the fact that 20 pounds of potatoes just wasn’t enough!
I come from Greek origin – my parents were both born there, but to this day I love Greek food with a passion, it’s just a part of me. When I was young though, Greek food was an obscurity at school, and I will never forget the faces and sighs of ‘ewwwww!’ I would get from the kids at school. I bet most of them now would be dieing to have some homemade pasticho or spanakopita!
I come from a Polish grandmother Helen (just like MS). Only I don’t remember my grandma cooking much. I can only remember three things that I had that came out of her kitchen: pumpkin soup with kluski noodles (yum), mashed potatoes out of a box (which I thought were so much better than my mom’s homemade), and my proudest moment eating brains (with ketchup!)
I brought new born son home to farm and Mom had home cooked meal from her garden including beets cooked with tops. MMMmm
The smell of my mother’s kitchen as we turned the handle on the Foley food mill and ground apples and cinnamon into the best applesauce in town. Our own trees are full and just about ready to give it up for the sauce…I can’t wait.
My mom used to sir fry slices of beef liver (detested!) with slices of steak (yum) and onions. I never knew for sure if I picked up a slice steak or the liver – too late, you have to eat it! as we were eating Chinese family style.
Still will not eat liver.
the smell and taste of hot and gooey chocolate chip cookies, made from scratch, coming out of the oven when arriving home after a daay of school!
Blackberry jam!
whenever I ate it my teeth sounded like my nannie’s dentures :)
/e
Blackberry jam!
when I ate it my teeth sounded like my Nannie’s dentures!!!
The other day I’d sliced a couple plum tomatoes from my CSA to have along with grilled Lebanese bread. Some tomato and cucumber slices were left over and I stuck them in a jar with a splash of vinegar, with the thought to delay rotting. A couple of days later, I dumped the vinegared leftovers in the blender with a chunk of shallot, garlic, hunks of carrot and enough Bubbie’s Bread & Butter Pickle juice to make it a nice slurry. It was elegant cold soup for one…..effortlessly. A picture would reveal color, but it’s hard to texture and it was pleasingly chunky. New food memories are always in process!
I had always refused to eat tomatoes, but when I was in my mid-thirties a friend gave me a taste of a freshly-picked, organic tomato…..and I was hooked. I now grow several varieties every summer.
Going to my husband’s family farm in Iowa, I would always look forward to his Grandma’s super thin molasses cookies made with lard. Even now when I try to make them with the same recipe they just don’t measure up – must be the farm kitchen that I’m lacking.
My husband and two sons just got back from a trip where we flew in from Paris and drove to Rome visiting friends along the way in various places. I had always heard that my Italian friends talk about their mother’s tomato sauce. There was never a recipe – they just put in it what they had on hand. My friend Zena told me no matter how she makes it – it never tastes like her mom’s. Well, we had her mom’s sauce – it was wonderful – you could taste Italy and generations of her family in her sauce. We ate it in a converted “pig house” that Zena now uses as a summer retreat. The pig house was where her grandfather’s pig lived. It was steps away from her grandfather’s old stone house in the Italian Alps. Life dosent get any better than that!
My strongest food memory is connected to my paternal grandmother who was not a good cook by anyone’s measure. But she loved me bountifully, without any doubt ,and she loved to share with me her favorite foods. The day she conspiratorially heated up the contents of a can of the paper wrapped tamales and served them smothered with Hormel chili, then covered with a slice of Velveeta cheese is imprinted in the scrapbook of my mind. It was the kind of food my mother would never have even looked at in the supermarket.
Every 5 or so years I have to open up a can and see what emotions are triggered…
Really, really would like the book. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to win it!
When I was a small child, I got pricked by thorns from prickly pear at a family reunion. An elderly family friend took me to his house, gave me M&M’s
as medicine to make my hand not hurt any more. To this day, mI cannot eat M&M’s.
My first food love affair — a big bowl of whipped cream at The Opera House, circa 1969. Heaven!
When I was in College, I had an ice skating (okay, hockey!) accident and broke my jaw. I was on soft foods for a looonnggg time. My grandmother came to visit me in my dinky studio apartment and made an enormous batch of pasta fagioli – a hearty italian pasta and bean soup. She froze it in one-cup containers, and it got me through a cold winter with a satisfying, healthy, (and easy-to-chew!!) comfort food. Now I comfort my kids an grandkids with some modern variations to her recipe.
Food memory, good or bad – OK – this was BAD.
My mom was quite the cook and hostess and had the grandest parties. She was always trying out new recipes on me, my three sisters and extended family and friends. One 4th of July, she made a mushroom chili from a new recipe. As I recall, the recipe was not easy, she spent a fortune on all the different mushrooms and I think by the time she served it was sorry she had even contemplated that recipe. IT WAS TERRIBLE! And I can eat about anything. TERRIBLE! My aunt and uncle and cousins couldn’t eat it, we all hated it. Well, my mom was so upset about the amount of time, trouble, expense, she had gone to to make this, we had to eat it for a week until it was gone. Lunch and dinner. She actually was mad at us about something else and threatened us to go without dinner, we were thankful to do so – that kinda broke the tension and thankfully she tossed what was left of that miserable Mushroom Chili.
Food memories pop up at the strangest times and almost always lead to thoughts of my Grandmother. I was making yogurt the other day and heating my milk to 200 degrees and keeping it there for 20 minutes when I noticed how it smelled and remembered my Grandmothers Rival Soup that we would beg her to make us every time we went to visit. I had tried to make it just like her several times and mine never tasted quite the same. I suddenly realized that the key is to scald your milk and keep it warm for quite a while to get that wonderful warm milk aroma. Now I have to try again to make her soup and see if I found the secret…patience.
My grandparents used to house sit their good friends’ house for two weeks every summer, to take care of the dog and garden and about a thousand African violets while their friends went to Purdue to teach for 2 weeks. I was elected to go and keep Grandma company (and I learned to take care of the violets) while Grandpa went to work. Besides a very large vegetable garden, there were blueberry bushes, covered with gauzy fabric to keep the birds away from the berries. Oh my goodness, the blueberry pies topped with vanilla ice cream…and Grandma would make summer squash fritters almost every night for dinner, with the tender yellow summer squash, flour, egg, a teeny bit of baking soda, salt and pepper, fry those babies up and top with some butter…mmmmm…..I used to sit on a step stool at the table, making me higher up, by the window in the kitchen looking out at the garden and woods….i can still remember eating those slightly crunchy buttery fritters with moist centers of squash!!
Growing up on a farm in Indiana in the 50′s, generally a gastronomic desert but for the high quality of the ingredients (and my parents’ skill as cooks), the local high point in my mind were the homemade egg noodles — chicken and noodle suppers were a fund-raising staple for the Farm Bureau and the local Methodist church and were wonderful — thick hand-rolled noodles that plumped like dumplings in the wonderful yellow chicken broth made from retired laying hens — free-range being the only kind there was in those days on those farms, at least.
We grew up all over the USA, air force brats, but every summer, we were sent “home” to France, my sister and me. Our 3 aunts took care of a houseful of children, all cousins, in La Gueriniere, Noirmoutier. And there, we ate such delicious things everyday: oysters on the half shell, butter lettuce salads with arugula that grew wild everywhere on the island (flavored with home made vinegar from left over wine), potatoes we dug up ourselves, mussels by the ton! in white wine with butter, shallots, garlic, lots of parsley; gooey stinky Camembert; baguettes made down the street, milk still warm from the cow; well water so cold it made your teeth hurt. Although money was always tight, we ate well every day: we foraged, we bartered, we fished, we gathered, and we always ate very well. My aunts could really cook: every day we had some homemade dessert, tartes, sorbet, cakes, made from whatever was available. And at least once a day, the first dish for lunch or dinner was a BIG bowl of vegetable soup — puréed so we never knew exactly what was in it, always well-buttered and hot, and NOT an option: if you didn’t eat your soup, you didn’t get anything else. To this day, vegetable soup is one of my “specialties.” Thank you, Tantes Guitte, Nanou and Mimi!
When I think of good food memories, I always go back to my grandmother who owned a small grocery story and filling station, predecessor to today’s convenience stores. My grandparents lived in the back of this small store and when I would go to visit, grandmother would ask me what I wanted to eat, and I could have my choice of anything in the small store. Sometimes it was so difficult to settle on one thing, but whatever it was, she would cook it right up for me. I just loved going there.
We bought strawberries from the same Japanese berry farmers for nearly twenty years. During the summer, they grew the most delicious corn. These, along with the local oranges, some head lettuce, and apples, were the fresh fruits and vegetables of my childhood. As my mother worked, everything else was canned or frozen, for “convenience”. The fresh produce was for special occasions and Sunday dinners. The specialness of fresh food stays with me today, in every bite.
I remember the first time I had real “Pizzaria” pizza–up until then it had always been made by my mom from the Chef-Boyardee box. This pizza was a whole other thing!!–and I’ve never looked back!
I am a fan of Melissa Clark’s columns and recipes. Although I am more skilled (not really) as a baker, on several occasions I have made her Greek Green Goddess recipe which is absolutely delicious. The problem however is that even with an army of guests — I love to entertain, we always have lots left over — it is a huge dip. Not usually one to experiment (that is why baking works for me and cooking works for my husband), I couldn’t figure out what to do with all the leftover Greek Green Goddess and really hated to throw it out after cutting cups and cups of herbs, etc. In desparation and not wanting to waste food, we tried it over pasta (thinned it out with pasta broth) and guess what it has become a hit — great way to use up leftover grilled chicken or shrimp – cold or hot. I think that watching the Julia Child movie has had a somewhat liberating effect on me and finally at age 66 I am experimenting!
The food that reminds me of my childhood is pastina and egg (pronounced pastine-n-egg). My mom or dad used to make it for us when we were sick, but it was so good I’d fake illness as a child and now make it for myself when I’m craving something hot and comforting. The recipe is just eggs cracked into boiling pastina when it’s about a minute away from being done. Make it with more water if you like it soupy, less if you like it thick and dense. When the egg is cooked to your liking, add a bunch of Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper. When I make it now, I use quinoa; I pretend the health benefits of that outweigh the mound of cheese I pile on it.
That’s an easy one – stuffed green peppers. I hated them at 6, still do at 42. Cannot even sniff a bell pepper without feeling ill.
The Crispy Tofu with the Garlicky Peanut Sauce really got my attention! I have many wonderful food memories, but one that my family recalls every year is Christmas Eve at my grandparents. My grandmother’s birthday was Christmas Day and she would always make her famous Birthday Eggnog to start the celebration right. It was the real deal with eggs and cream and sugar and brandy and rum. And my father and uncles always needed that extra boost (or two or three or four) before they did the Santa Claus impersonation for us kids!
My parents came to this country in 1951, (my mom still a teenager, my dad just 21) and I was born 2 years later. My mom prepared home cooked meals of mostly ethnic food for us. I was a picky eater.
One day, when I was five, I went to play at my friend Tommy’s house after morning kindergarten. His mom made us something for lunch which was new to me. My first PBJ sandwich.
OMG it was delicious! She made it with homemade apricot jam on bread slices cut from a rustic white loaf. Wow, american food was great!
When I got home, I told my mom I wanted peanut butter and jelly for lunch everyday.
She said OK. What did I get? Welch’s grape jelly and Peter Pan on Wonder Bread, It did not compare. I ate it anyway.
An earlier comment reminded me of a dinner when I was 7 and my grandparents came to visit. My parents purchased inch thick steaks and my dad was grilling them when my mother called him into the house. He asked grandpap to watch the beautiful sirloin steaks! This grandpap did, he watched them burn to shoe leather!
my soon to be husband decided a good way to woo me would be to cook me a pot of his famous chili. he thought this would be the ticket after a long day of dragging me around the pasteurs of Kansas dove hunting, another new experience. his dad, an expert hunter and bit of a curmudgeon was another guest for supper. we sat down and all three of us doctored up our chili with the customary crackers, cheese, etc. i politely dug into the chili with a smile on my face , only to find my entire body on fire, my mouth a 5 alarm emergency. i watched in amazement as my fiance and his dad chowed down. his dad had sweat literally pouring down his face and neck but seemed to be enjoying himself, my fiance polished off his bowl and headed for seconds (and thirds, fourths…) when i took over the cooking reins, needless to say, things calmed down a few notches
My (good) food memory is all the canning my mother used to do when I was young. Everything from pickles, beets and tomatoes to jams and jellies. My favorite was always the strawberry jam since we fist got to go to the farm and pick them. I also liked the pickled beets which she served with pealed whole hard boiled eggs floating in the brine. The eggs would turn as purple as the beets!
When I was about 23, I decided to throw my first Thanksgiving dinner. I felt so grown up! I invited over an ecclectic group of friends, and my Dad was able to make it. In a wave of pride, I refused help, I could do this on my own! I was in such a hustle and bustle to get everything *perfect* on T-Day that I didn’t pay attention to small waving red flags: such as no delicious turkey smell coming from the oven. About a half hour before we were to sit down to dinner, I opened the oven. No hot breeze, no mouth watering smell. Just a cold bird laying there, no doubt culturing something microbial, my science friends chimed in. We found out the cause: the heating element in the oven had broken sometime after preheating.
We ate the rice and cranberry sauce. My guests all had good spirits about the event, but I haven’t taken on another Thanksgiving dinner on my own since then!
My uncle had just come back from working in Spain, and wanted to cook dinner for the family. He said he was going to make Paella, and when I asked (I was about 12 at the time) what was in Paella, he told me that his recipe included squid. I declared loudly that I would not be eating his dish. Later, when the dish came to the table, no tentacles or slimy looking things were in sight. I decided to try it. DELICIOUS! Later, I told him how good the dish was, and that I loved that he put in all those wonderful ‘brown noodles’ in place of the squid (thinking how nice of him to be so thoughtful). When he explained that the brown noodles WERE the squid, I was furious.
My uncle still has a wicked sense of humor. :)
I am a huge garlic and onion fan as an adult. When I think back as a child I recall my Dad who ended up dying tragically when I was only 11, had to have green onions with dinner. He would have them on the table in some vessel and then use a small bowl of salt to dip them in. I–who had yet to discoverer onions or garlic would dip the green onions in salt and lick off just the salt and never eat the onion at all.
I grew up in a small Amish Mennonite community in eastern Indiana. My mother grew a small garden behind the garage but relied on uncles for larger batches of produce to can. About four miles outside of town was a small lake for swimming. My three older brothers were allowed to hitchhike out to the lake, but I had to rely on my mother to take me there. She canned about 50 quarts of green beans each summer so–you guessed it–I had to clean a bushel at a time with the reward being taken to the lake. Around dinner time, my mother would send one of us down to the basement closet to bring something up from the larder: beans, peaches, tomatoes, plums. It was satisfying to know I had a part in this stocking up–but also ripened me for the upcoming women’s liberation movement which arrived in my college days!
Every year for my birthday, my wonderful grandmother would go pick fresh asparagus and make a huge pot of creamed asparagus. I remember it being rather like cream of asparagus soup. I always felt lucky because my birthday was early May and my older sister’s was in March and she couldn’t have creamed asparagus because there wasn’t fresh asparagus in March. Ah, the old days! Birthday cakes in my family were always angel food with orange frosting.
A food memory ? In Peru, driving through the countryside with our tour guide who asked if we’d like to have lunch at a roadside eatery known for its delicious food . Si! Por que no? His friend/owner greeted us and at each place, plopped down fresh, plump avocado halves – and then (to this vegetarian’s eye) a big bowl filled with croutons which, as I greedily chomped one, oozed the salty, fatty, bacony flavor of , of, of, what? Ham! Not croutons. Hog, like the ones we saw hanging from farmyard porches, curing in the hot sun, as we bumped along the rural roads and talked about stopping for lunch.
This time of year always takes me back to canning tomatoes with my mother. We must have spent weeks together over the years. Standing in front of the kitchen sink, swapping stories, laughing and just working in silence. I miss those times so much.
I grew up on a farm and we had marvelous food that was very simple and “local” – either Mom (veggies/fruit) or Dad (beef/pork/chickens/bees) raised it. There were some things that we kids didn’t like but never thought to say it outloud or not eat it. In our house and the homes of our friends, you just ate what was served. But the one time when we had a say about our food was our birthday. Mom always made an angel food cake but we got to choose the color/flavor of the cake and the frosting no matter how weird. It was wonderful. I recall my purple and green cake which I can see in my minds eye clearly even today. It was beautiful to a child.
My mother made me eat liver. I sat and sat at the table for what felt like hours staring at the liver. I hate liver. Finally, I wrapped it in my napkin and put it in my pocket. I excused myself to the bathroom where I thought I had flushed the liver. Apparently, it got stuck and I got caught. Thankfully, she didn’t make me eat it out of the toilet!
Having grown up in a family that was strictly meat and potatoes – no spice, no fuss! – I discovered a whole new world of garlic and herbs and sauces when I married. Many years later, looking over our vegetable garden, I find it hard to believe I could have existed 20 + years deprived of these wonderful treasures. Now growing, canning, and trying new foods all the time, I think I am still making up for a food-deprived childhood! Clark’s articles in the NY Times are great. Always look forward to reading them.
Liver and onions, which I will never make my children eat….
My mother always had an enormous vegetable garden when my brother and I were kids, and summer seemed like an endless misery of hoeing, digging, and picking things in the garden, and canning in a hot kitchen. But corn was different. I didn’t have the frame of reference to understand just how sweet and wonderful our sweet corn was, eaten right out of the garden. And corn wasn’t a religion with us like with my husband’s family. No one put water on to boil, searched out the perfect ears in the garden, shucked them while running to the house to cook them for exactly 5 minutes, and then sat down immediately to just eat ears and ears of corn. No, we ate it at dinner time, and it was cooked until everything else was ready to eat. I remember liking it a lot. But my favorite memory is of standing with my mother in the backyard shucking wheelbarrows full of corn in preparation for cutting the kernels off for the freezer. We stood there tossing the fresh green shucks over the fence. When our three cows noticed us, they always sprinted down the hill to stand next to us, eating the shucks as they landed among them. They were the first corn lovers I knew, long before I met my husband.
Moms Creamed Fin N Haddie = Fail!!!