Food, Family and Memory

It's autumn and that means....

Max's Fresh Raspberry + Pear Bundt Cake with Buttercream Frosting

This cake was the result of what I didn't have.  I wanted to make a cake for my son's birthday, but it was late in the afternoon and I didn't have time to drive to the store.  So I decided to just wing it in the kitchen, which always leads to the new and unexpected.  Plus, the birthday son isn't a stickler about his birthday cake and in truth doesn't even like sweets.  This gave me permission to experiment. 

So I guess I should call this Max's Fresh Raspberry and Pear Cake.  I'm honoring him. This cake is dense, moist, filed with hunks of fruit, and in my estimation, delicious.  I'm fairly certain that it's also not on any diet plans. I serve it topped with Buttercream frosting, the kind that you make from a SINGLE BOX of powdered sugar (recipe on the back of the blue box -- you add to the powered sugar a cube of butter, a 1/4 cup of whole milk and a teaspoon of vanilla.  Beat with the blender.  Works every time). 

Let us begin....

My dad lived part-time in Sag Harbor and made the drive from the city every weekend in every type of weather. I would visit him and my stepmother every summer, and we’d stay put for the weekend, usually poolside. My dad and I would swim back and forth and read books and nap. He would do his Sunday puzzle and I would nudge him for clues; I would read books he gave me and he would nudge me about which part I was up to. Because to me, my dad was part Phillip Roth and part John Updike, I read Phillip Roth and John Updike. Because we both loved to punctuate the headier reading with murder mysteries, he would toss me his copies of Lee Child or Lawrence Block, and I would gobble them up like candy. I still have the water swollen copy of Annie Proulx’s Shipping News that he accidentally tossed into the water in order to save me from a hovering bee, and I remember how he had said he envied my getting to read it for the first time.

But what would any return home to the family be without the requisite favorite foods? Besides the inevitable Saturday night Maine lobster dinner, the most memorable part of the summer food wise, in addition to the musk melons and the corn and potatoes and other fresh fare at the roadside markets, were the little blue and white checkered bags of chocolate chip cookies that one could find only at Kathleen’s Bakeshop.

Alessandra, a neighbor of ours in Umbria, is a wonderful cook.

That’s a redundant statement, as virtually everyone in Umbria cooks well. Wait, let me qualify that — virtually every woman in Umbria is a wonderful cook. Boys were urged by their mothers to do other things — careers and such — whereas the girls fashioned ravioli with their nimble fingers before they learned to walk.

Anyway, Alessandra once served us an appetizer of various flora — zucchini flowers, sage and basil leaves — that were dipped in the lightest, most elegant batter I have ever tasted and then flash fried. They were appetizing indeed. When I pressed her for the batter recipe, she said, “It’s simple to remember — everything is one.”

As I struggled to comprehend this Zen concept, she scribbled the recipe on a napkin, which I still have.

Nat King Cole holds some magical power over me. I was shopping the week before Thanksgiving when I heard it--

That most mellow of voices (along with Frank and Bing) transfixes me. I hear it, and I'm instantly struck with holiday cheer, which for me, means shopping for foods such as cranberries, pomegranates, and, of course, chestnuts.

Here's the thing with roasting chestnuts. The actual roasting and removing of the nut from its shell is a lot less romantic than it sounds. Every year growing up it was the same thing: We would enthusiastically purchase a big bag of fresh chestnuts, roast them, and then puncture our fingers in a desperate attempt to eke out the tiniest piece of chestnut we could find that wasn't studded with sharp shards of shell or tinged with mold.

Thank goodness someone came up with bottled chestnuts. My mom first bought them a few years ago and sent me some. I removed the bottle top and, in 5 seconds flat, was eating a chewy, moist, chestnut devoid of shell and mold. Bottled chestnuts can be found at most organic markets and Italian specialty markets. I also like Trader Joe's vacuumed-packed chestnuts.