Novitiate (2017)

This movie on nuns in the making takes place when the bad old Catholic Church was on the verge of changing, and as you might imagine, fans of the old school church were none too pleased.
A movie about nuns in the '60s may not sound exciting. It may not even sound vaguely intriguing. But the filmmaker wisely depicts these young women as individuals who contain multitudes, even within such a structured setting. They’re full of contradictions as they figure out who they are and what their place is in the world—just like any young woman in any walk of life. These teenage girls, however, have chosen to dedicate themselves to God—to marry Him, as they say in the vernacular, which includes donning a white gown and veil and taking vows.  How can boys compete when the groom they are seeking is Christ?
Only nuns will take a very steep dive from grace after Vatican II.  The modernizing of the Catholic Church allowed for more lay ministers to take part in services and ministries, so donning a habit and becoming a bride of Christ was no longer the only path to church leadership.  Nuns were no longer as special as they once had been.   More women elected to serve God without taking vows. As a result of all these changes, the number of nuns has plunged dramatically.  So this chronicles the end of an era.

From the Oven to the Table by Diana Henry

This cookbook, which came out just about a month ago, is the November cookbook of the month in the Food 52 cookbook club.  Henry is a well loved cook within this group, and while this book does seem to have a fair amount of failures to it's credit within the group's home cooks, everything that we have made out of it has been great.
The overarching concept of the book is that you add the ingredients into an ovenproof pot and pop it in the oven.  When it comes out, you have a meal.
There are dozens of intriguing recipes in this book, and I will be cooking out of it for some time to come.  There are lots of vegetarian options, some of which could be the center of the meal and others that could be assembled into a meal.  There are some fussy dishes, and some that do not have quite enough instruction (like what sized pot, and whether it should be baked covered or uncovered are sometimes missing).  Read through it first, and then pick a place to start.  Recommended.

The Art of Thanks

While the history of Thanksgiving is checkered, and its Puritan New England roots are something that directly pertain to my roots, the act of pausing to give thanks at least once a year is a good tradition.  That is something that I do not do often enough.
This photo was taken one Thanksgiving long ago and brings to mind the things that matter to me.  It doesn't matter if we celebrate today or another day (although it certainly has to have what we always have on our Thanksgiving dinner table).  Everyone does not have to be there is body, but in spirit.  Ever since my youngest had cancer as a five year old, I have had to redefine what being lucky means and what gratitude entails.  It is not about having no adversity.  We all have that sooner or later.  It started for me when my brother died when I was ten.   I learned quite quickly that life is not fair, but many many people know that far sooner in life than I.  It is about the connections we make, the people we support, and the life we lead.  May yours be true and clear, today and beyond.

Exploring Raymond (2010)

Phil Rosenthal is the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond which is based on his belief that family is funny and that the comedy of those relationships is universal.  He was sent to Moscow by Sony to supervise development of Everybody Loves Kostya, the Russian equivalent and this is a documentary of his experiece there.
Rosenthal took along a small crew and approached his assignment with the bemused detachment a certain lack of curiosity about his surroundings.  Nobody will question the importance of Ray Romano and the chemistry of his cast-mates in making Raymond a nine-season smash as well as a syndication perennial. But exposure to Rosenthal reveals just how much of his self-effacing every man persona went into the central character.  Not to mention the influence of his bickering parents on the show’s Marie and Frank.  The resemblance is uncanny.  The film highlights the frustrations he has with the cultural divide, and basically feeling like they just didn't get him.  Until the moment that they did.  Fun to watch even if you were not a fan of the original show.

The Library Book by Susan Orleans

This is a masterful tribute to libraries, and, even better than that, it has a plot and a story line.  On April 29, 1986, a fire consumed or damaged more than a million books in the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library.   It was an inferno that burned for seven hours.  As you can imagine, there was a lot of flammable material held within.
The fire that nearly destroys a collection, leads Orlean to histories of libraries and Los Angeles and to an exploration of the physics of how a book burns.  There’s a suspected arsonist at the center of the story, but the hero is the library along with its collections of books, maps, menus, autographs and marionettes.
She goes on to explore the role of libraries in contemporary American life, which has gone well beyond the boundaries of books, or even things that are printed.  It includes multi-media, it has a social role, it is a place of safety and learning.  All that is beautifully laid out within this book.

Spicy Chinese Noodles

This comes right out of Ruth Riechl's new memoir about her time working as the editor of Gourmet magazine.

½ pound Chinese noodles, dried egg noodles, or spaghetti
Peanut oil
½-inch-long piece of fresh ginger
2 scallions
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons Chinese black bean paste with garlic
1 tablespoon Chinese bean paste with chili
1/4 pound ground pork
Sesame oil

1. Cook the noodles in boiling water until al dente (the time will vary with the type of noodle). Drain, toss with a half tablespoon of peanut oil, and set aside.
2. Peel and mince the ginger (you should have about two tablespoons).
3. Chop the white parts and slice the green parts of the scallions.
4. Mix the sugar and the two kinds of hot bean paste, and set aside.
5. Heat a wok until a drop of water skitters across the surface. Add a tablespoon of peanut oil, toss in the ginger, and stir fry for about half a minute, until the fragrance is hovering over the wok.
6. Add the pork and white scallions and stir-fry until all traces of pink have disappeared. Add the bean sauce mixture and cook and stir for about 2 minutes.
7. Stir in the green scallions and noodles, and quickly toss. Add a drop of sesame oil and turn into two small bowls. This makes a perfect snack for two.

Boundaries (2018)

After a bit of a hiatus in watching movies at home, we are back to having our youngest son pick out the movies the three of us watch, and this is a recent one.  I wouldn't have gotten it out myself, based on poor IMDB reviews and not watching enough trailers to be encouraged to get movies that I would otherwise not have heard of.
This is kind of wacky, unless you put it in the road trip movie category alongside such gems as Nebraska and Little Miss Sunshine, and then it has a home.  If you like either of those, you will be glad you watched this.  The characters are few but they are well fleshed out in a movie that is well under two hours.  They include Christopher Plummer, who is well over 80 years old,  as Jack, a ne’er-do-well barb-tongued weed dealer who reaches out to his estranged Seattle-based adult daughter, Laura (Vera Farmiga), fabulously flustered in pique angst-ridden mode after his outlaw ways get him kicked out of his senior living accommodations. Laura's son, who definitely did not fall far from the tree joins them as they wend their way to a better relationship all around.

Simple Cake by Odette Williams

This was the Food 52 Baking Club cookbook for October, and i wish that I had had something like this when my children were younger.  It is written by a good home baker, and the approach is to make easy cakes that look beautiful and can be brought to a birthday party or serve as dessert for a family dinner.
The book is a repertoire of tinkered and fine-tuned recipes that reflect the author's nurturing, easy-going sensibilities: unfussy, not overly sweet, endlessly flexible, and straightforward.   Their genius lies in how they are organized: 10 classic base cakes (Very Vanilla, Tangy Olive Oil, Cinnamon Spice) and 15 toppings (Nana’s Simple Glaze, Toblerone Ganache, Beautiful Buttercream), followed by 30 “Cake-worthy Moments” where the author illustrates the infinite creative possibilities for assembling these elements to suit any situation.  So you can mix and match cakes and frostings, do variations of each, or simply follow the basic instructions.  If you never want to make something that requires more tools than a handful of cake pans and a frosting kit, this is a great choice.

Roasted Peppers Stuffed with Ricotta and Herbs

I made this because at the end of the fall my CSA still had lots of peppers and I wanted to do a side dish that highlighted them.
I used a recipe from Diana Henry's new cookbook, From the Oven to the Table, but there are literally so many ways to make this you certainly do not need to seek that one out.
I start by cutting the peppers in half and seeding them.
I toss them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and start to roast them in a 400 degree oven until they are just getting soft.
This allows for the peppers to have a developed richness of flavor, regardless of how long the filling needs to cook.
The filling starts with whole milk ricotta, and for every 6 oz. of ricotta add an egg to it.  Then add other cheeses for flavor.  Options include goat cheese, Parmesan, grated Gruyere, the list goes on.  I used a flavored fresh sheep milk cheese in mine, which allowed for the pepper flavor to dominate.
Then add salt and pepper, a minced clove of garlic, chiffoned fresh herbs, even some steamed spinach if you like that.
Then stuff the peppers, top with panko or chopped nuts, and bake for about 30 minutes at 375 degrees.

The Tillman Story (2010)

 I watched this documentary on Veteran’s Day.

I work with Veterans in my every day life at work, and so Veteran’s Day is a time that I reflect on what service, country, heroism, respect and bravery.  This movie fit the bill for that.  This is a recap of a high profile enlistment post-September 11^th, and how things went from bad to worse after his death.

The filmmaker, Bar-Lev, who previously made the documentary My Kid Could Paint That, employs the conventional documentary format of talking heads, file footage, and insert shots, but he assembles it skillfully, presenting the Tillman The Patriot narrative first, then going back to show a more complicated man, whose real reasons for abandoning his lucrative football career to enlist in the military have never been fully revealed. Along the way, Bar-Lev blasts the media for merely parroting what the authorities tell them, and effectively accuses a succession of investigative bodies of entering outright, obvious lies into the public record. Most of the material in this movie has been seen, heard, or read before, but never with this level of useful illustration. 

Tillman’s death was warped into a message about recruitment into the military, but through extreme persistence his family uncovered the truth about his death, and worse yet, the cover up, which went well up the chain of command.

The anger at the disservice to veterans through the lying is palpable and made understandable.

Mastering Pizza by Mark Vetri

This was the October selection for the Food 52 Cookbook Club, along with his book on mastering pasta.  One thing that I really like about this club is that the cookbooks are not always ones that are current or that I have even heard of.  Not that I have my finger on the pulse of cookbooks, but I am a very respectable home cook, and I give a few cookbooks as gifts during the holiday season.
This is a master class on different types of pizza dough.  The book is set up for total customization. Among the pages are almost twenty different pizza and focaccia dough recipes with dozens of variations and over forty different toppings and fillings. Vetri states, “My promise in this book is that I will help you make better pizza in whatever oven you have with whatever dough you want.” The dough is explained every step of the way, ingredient by ingredient and cooking method by cooking method, so you learn the complete process.  There are detailed explanations related to each type of dough, and the take away message from the group was that everyone made their best home pizza after reading this, regardless of what their level of experience was.  It made me want to get a home pizza oven.

Cheese Danish Slab Pie

My husband made this recipe out of Pie Squared by Cathy Barrow.  If you are looking for a cookbook that has some good technique coaching, this is a good one, and a slab pie is easy to make, less fussy than the round version, and you end up with more to eat, or the ability to serve more portions with the same effort.
This is a great sweet roll that were very popular with my family. You can use store bought puff pastry, but get one with all butter--Trader Joe's is an option.

1 sheet (200-285g) puff pastry, defrosted if frozen, but still cold
8 ounces (226g) cream cheese, at room temperature.  Whole milk ricotta can be substituted
1/4 cup (50g) granulated sugar
Pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2-3 tablespoons jam
 Powdered sugar for dusting (optional)

Heat the oven to 400F. Place a baking stone or half sheet pan on the center rack to heat. (The half sheet pan is slightly larger than the quarter sheet pan used for the slab pie. Preheating a baking stone or half sheet pan and then placing the slab pie pan on it when ready to bake helps brown and crisp up the bottom of the crust. You can skip this step if you don’t have either.)

Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit the1/4 sheet cake pan (9" x 13"). Dust lightly with flour and use it as a guide to roll out the puff pastry to size. With a sharp knife, score the surface of the pastry nearly all the way through the dough in a tic-tac-toe pattern, to mark off either 8-12 portions. Slide the parchment with the pastry into the slab pie pan and refrigerate.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, beat the cream cheese on medium speed until smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the sugar, salt, vanilla, and 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice and mix on low until completely combined. Taste the filling, and add a little more lemon juice if the flavor is dull. (The filling shouldn’t taste like lemon, but a little bit of lemon juice will add a bright note to the filling. When tasting, look for a bit of a zing in your mouth that doesn’t scream lemon.)
Use a small scoop or two spoons to plop cheese filling on top of each portion, no more than 1 – 1 1/2 tablespoons each. Less is more: Too much cheese will overwhelm the pastry and tamp down the layers, so hold back.
Use the back of a spoon to make a well in each dot of the cheese and spoon in a scant 1/2 teaspoon of jam. Place the slab pie (in its pan) on top of the heated baking stone or the half sheet pan. Bake until the cheese is beginning to brown here and there and the pastry is toasty brown, 21-23 minutes.
Cool the pie for no more than a moment. Dust with the powdered sugar. Ideally, slice and serve this pie barely warm, using a sharp scissors or pizza wheel to cut the portions along the score lines.

Beirut (2018)

This is a rare thing in a spy movie.  It is smartly written, gritty, with a smattering of corruption underlying what you might presume to be an action movie.
John Hamm plays Mason, a career diplomat.  The movie opens at a party at his house, where a friend and colleague of Mason’s named Cal comes to him and gives him terrible news—their 13-year-old ward Karim is the younger brother of a known terrorist, the man responsible for orchestrating the Munich Olympics attack. As Mason is trying to negotiate a peaceful way to extricate Karim safely, Karim’s brother’s people show up and everything goes to hell. Karim is taken; Mason's wife is shot and killed.
Mason leaves the CIA, becomes a raging alcoholic, working labor disputes in Boston.  He is contacted 10 years after leaving Lebannon and told that he’s needed in Beirut. If the city was on the verge of chaos in 1972, it is a ruinous nightmare in the early ‘80s, torn at the seams by everyone in the area who seeks to control it, including both the PLO and the Israelis. Against this backdrop of crisis, Mason is informed that Cal has been kidnapped, and now-grown Karim is the man responsible.Rosamund Pike is his handler, and together they unravel what is really going on.  The tensions and alliances of the time are well laid out and the movie is a good one.

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

If you want the short review, this is hilarious and heartbreaking.
This comic memoir is set in midwest America and centers on the author's father, a man who likes to clean his gun, listen to right wing radio, and drink from inappropriately worded mugs.  He is  married with five children and also a Catholic priest. Father Lockwood, as presented here, is a truly unusual man. Upstairs in the family home, he shreds his electric guitar in a prog-rock frenzy and sips cream liqueurs. He has a habit of yelling for no particular reason, cooks a great deal of meat and dresses either in his full priestly regalia or nothing but his underwear.
The author had left home at a young age, pursued a career as an independent poet, publishing on line and developing a following and living a close to impoverished existence.  The writing of this memoir was prompted by Lockwood’s return home after 12 years away, to live with her parents, poor and drained after a botched operation that her husband had undergone left them penniless.  During their nine-month stay, Lockwood finds herself “jotting down everything everyone says, as fast and free as it comes out of their mouths" and this is the end result.

Asparagus, Gruyere, and Pancetta Slab Pie

My first slab pie!  Pie Squared is the Food 52 Baking Club book of the month this month and if this is any indication, it is great.  I made this with a butter crust but the book suggests a lard one.  I just didn't have lard, and I am not a slave to following a recipe exactly.  It was delicious!

Filling:

 1 lb (450 gm) fresh asparagus
1 c. (225 gm) diced pancetta
5 large eggs
1/2 c. (120ml) cream
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
8 oz. (225 gm) fontina cheese
1/2 c. (50 gm) sliced scallions
herbs and pepper to taste

Butter Crust:

1 1/2 c. (160 gm) all purpose flour
8 Tbs. (113 gm) cubed butter
dash of salt if using unsalted butter
1/4 c. (60 ml) ice water

For the crust:
Ideally, weigh the ingredients.  Put the food processor bowl on the scale and weigh the flour, then the butter.  Use the blade and pulse about 15 or so times to cut the butter into the flour, leaving the butter in pea sized pieces.  Add the ice water all at once, and pulse until dough comes together, just barely.  Lay out a piece of plastic wrap and dump dough onto it.  Try not not handle it, using a bench scraper instead of your hands to form it into a rectangle.  Wrap and then use a rolling pin to get it into a thinner slab.  Refrigerate at least an hour and can stay there for days.
To bake, roll out to the size of a 1/4 cake sheet pan size, crimp the edges, and blind bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.  Remove pie weights, and assess, can put back in oven 5 more minutes to dry out.

For the filling: trim asparagus, shaving off the tough outer skin if it is not tender.  Dice the pancetta and saute until crisp.  Whisk the eggs, cream, salt and seasoning until well mixed.  Scatter the pancetta evenly across the pan, lay the asparagus on top of it alternating tops to bottoms.  Add 1/2 the cheese, add the egg mixture, and bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes on top of a pizza stone, or a steel slab.  This is the key to no soggy bottoms.

Never Look Away (2018)

Why is it that every German movie that gets an Academy Award nomination is over three hours?  And always in some way deeply painful to boot?
This one, like many others, deals with the Nazi's, racism, World War II, and what lies within the souls of men.  We could do with some of this soul searching ourselves, but I digress.
This is based on the life of Gerhard Richter, the visionary German painter who grew up during WWII.  In the opening, he is a young boy confronted by a terrible sight holds his hand in front of his eyes. At first, we think he’s doing it to blot out the spectacle of his beloved aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl) being bundled into an ambulance in Nazi Germany, ultimately to her death. But the truth is more complex. As young Kurt (Cai Cohrs) holds his palm a few inches in front of his face, we see what he sees – the hand coming into close focus, rendering what’s behind it slightly blurry. When his hand drops down, the awful truth beyond remains momentarily fuzzy – creating the impression of seeing at one remove. The movie chronicles his path to becoming a renowned painter, as well as his complicated relationship with his father-in-law.  Long as all get out, but well worth seeing.

Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl

This was a book that could not be written in the immediate aftermath of the demise of Gourmet magazine.  Reichl waited about 10 years, which served two purposes (in my mind).  It allowed her time to ramp down any anger that she might have felt about having the rug pulled out from under herself and her team at Gourmet, people she recruited and worked with who were left unemployed in the most shocking way.  And the other is that enough of the players had died, so that there were less people left to offend.
This book may pull punches, I don't know the whole story, but there are a lot of less than flattering details here. Conde Naste was not a natural fit for her, but they convinced here that they were serious about revamping Gourmet, and that her ideas about the controversies in food, related to raising it, cooking it, and marketing it were all of interest to them too.  They would support her with a budget, a staff and resources, and all of that came true.  It is a great story, as you would expect from her, and I highly recommend it if you are a fan or just love a story that involves food.

Baked Rice with Olives and Feta

We have been really doing it up with the Diana Henry recipes out of From Oven to Table this month, and it has been great.
This is excellent oven-baked rice.  The formula could be used with other flavor accents.

• 300g basmati rice
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more to serve
• 2 large onions, roughly chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• Finely grated zest and juice of 1 orange
• 850ml boiling chicken or vegetable stock
• 100g good-quality green olives, preferably pitted, roughly chopped or left whole
• 150g feta cheese, crumbled
• Leaves from a small bunch of dill, roughly chopped, any coarse stalks removed

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/190C fan/Gas 6.
2. Wash the rice in a sieve in cold water until the water running through it is clear, to remove the excess starch. Leave it in the sieve to drain.
3. In a 30cm ovenproof sauté pan or shallow casserole, heat the olive oil and sauté the onions over a medium-low heat until they’re soft and pale gold.
4. Add the garlic and cumin and cook for another two minutes, then add the rinsed and drained rice, orange juice and boiling stock. Season.
5. Bring to the boil on the hob, transfer immediately to the oven and bake, uncovered, for an hour.
6. When there are 10 minutes to go, break up the crust that has formed on the top and stir in the olives. By the end of cooking time, the rice should be tender and all the stock absorbed.
7. Scatter the orange zest, feta and dill over the top, drizzle with olive oil and serve. You will find that the rice has formed a delicious crust on the base of the pan.

Mark Felt (2017)

You could say that after “We, the people,” the three most important words in American political history are: “Follow the money.” They were said by the anonymous insider who gave critical details about corruption in the Nixon White House to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
He was known only as Deep Throat, a nod to the popular porn movie starring Linda Lovelace that was released around the time that the two young Washington Post reporters, with his guidance, followed a trail that led them from a burglary at the Watergate office of the Democratic National Committee to the corruption that forced the first-ever resignation of a US president.
It is not a coincidence that this movie was made now and not before. Mark Felt, a career FBI man, identified himself as Deep Throat only after decades had passed and he was near death.  The movie reveals the depth of the reach the Nixon White House had outside the executive branch, which seems very modern indeed these days. 

Abandoning Our Allies

Today, Veteran's Day, is the only other holiday besides Christmas and New Year's that we celebrate on the day, no matter where it falls within the week.
Here we are, at a point where no matter what the president does, Republicans eventually come around to support him.  It is alarming and disgusting.
Today, on the 101 anniversary of the end of WWI and the day that all veterans of all wars are honored, I reflect on what we have done to soldiers who wear the uniform by abandoning our allies in Syria to be slaughtered.  We are no longer a nation who's word can be relied upon.  We are fair weather friends, who will sell out an ally without even a hint of remorse.  No looking back to consider the damage we have wraught.
This reputation puts our men and women in uniform who are abroad at greater risk.  We don't have Europe's back and likewise they do not have ours.  Our reputation aborad has been melded with that of the commander in chief, and it is a disservice to all those who serve their country.

Roasted Carrot, Apple and Lentil Salad

Yet another recipe from Food52 cookbook of the month, From the Oven to the Table.  This is good days later, and if you love lentils, double the amount because they are delicious.  Spectacular!

• 350g carrots
• 1½ tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 250g cooked puy lentils
• 1 chili diced
• 1 preserved lemon, diced
• 1 apple, matchsticked
• 2 Tbs. lemon juice
• 10 mint sprigs, torn
  
• ½ small bunch of coriander, leaves picked

For the dressing

• 2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
• 6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large garlic clove, finely grated
• 1cm piece of grated ginger
• ¼ tsp honey
  
  
  

1. Heat the oven to 220C/200C fan/gas 7. Trim the carrots, but leave a bit of the tops on. If you can’t find baby carrots, halve or quarter larger ones lengthways. Don’t peel them, just wash well. Put in a single layer in a roasting sheet add the olive oil, salt and pepper, then toss to coat. Roast for 25-30 mins until tender. Be careful not to overcook.
2. Make the dressing by putting the vinegar in a bowl and whisking in all the other ingredients with a fork. Season. Put the lentils in a broad shallow serving bowl with half the chili and a third of the preserved lemon. Season, then toss with about a third of the dressing. Halve and core the apple and cut into matchsticks. Throw into a large mixing bowl with the lemon juice and add the carrots. Add the rest of the preserved lemons and chili, along with two-thirds of the herbs and the remaining dressing. Scatter the rest of the herbs over the lentils, and put the carrot and apple mixture on top.

The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal

This is a tale of family dysfunction and some outright treachery mixed with selfishness, that is somehow candy coated enough to read through without making you flat out angry at any one.
Told from the point of view of three women, the novel begins in 1959 on a farm in New Stockholm, Minn., where sisters Edith and Helen grow up. Edith is unassuming and obedient, bakes award-winning pies, marries early, stays in town. Helen is a rebel, steals her first beer at age 15, studies chemistry in college, marries the son of a beer magnate.
Years pass. The sisters do their things. Edith works in a nursing home, raises a family, earns some notoriety when her pies get a big write up in a Minnesota paper, and people travel from miles around to try her famous pie. Helen, meanwhile, rises to the helm of one of the country’s largest breweries.
Edith was just not born under a favored star, because she can never quite make ends meet.  When her daughter is killed in a car accident with her husband, she is left to raise her granddaughter Diana, who turns out to have a touch of what Helen had, only as a craft brewer.  There is a lot of beer imagery and some history of where we have been and where we are, all wrapped up in a pretty good story.

Baked Fennel with Parmesan and Crushed Red Pepper

this is another one from From the Oven to the Table, and it was less universally loved than my stuffed acorn squash dish.  I loved the velvety texture, but might leave the cheese off next time and add some cream instead.

Fennel bulbs--how many you need depends on the size.  Henry's recipe calls for 4 but what is pictured is one bulb.
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 Tbs. fennel seeds
3 tsp. crushed red peppers
olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 c. parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Cut the bulbs into chunks, trim the fronds and toss with olive oil, fennel seeds, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper.
Cover with foil and bake for 20 minutes.
Sprinkle on the cheese, and bake uncovered an additional 15 minutes until fennel is tender.

Another Year (2011)

The director, Michael Leigh, is so British.  His films have empathy, penetrating observation, and an instinct for human comedy.
The film begins with Tom and Gerri, a North London couple who have been happily married for years. The sort you are thrilled to be invited for dinner with, and slow to leave their house when the evening ends.  That's also how Mary (Les­ley Manville) feels. She has worked for years in the office of Gerri, a behavioral counselor. Many people have a friend like Mary: unmarried, not getting any younger, drinking too much, looking for the perfect spouse as a way of holding any real-world relationship at arm's length.  And she is needy with a capital N.  How Geri and Tom tolerate her is a credit to them--until Mary steps over an invisible line.  Through her own fault, Mary is no longer welcome, and while she recognizes that it happened, she still can't quite grasp the magnitude of what she has done.  She goes from the periphery of Geri and Tom's life to the outside looking in.  A brilliant if somewhat cerebral film.

Supper Club by Lara Williams

It is hard to put my finger on exactly what this book is and what it is not.  The generation described here is millennial, and the voice feels akin to another author of this age, Sally Rooney: colloquial, precise, at once uneasy about its place in the world and determined to stand up for itself.
This is women cooking, in all that the idea of it contains.  Spiritual, craft, home, it is all wrapped up here.  The supper club of the title could be read as a feminist take on the anarchic men’s group in Fight Club. What girls do with toxic estrogen rather than what boys do with toxic testosterone.  But not quite, that isn't exactly right.
It begins when, after university, Roberta gets an entry-level job folding clothes at a fashion website and makes friends with a new colleague, Stevie. “We discussed our menstrual cycles and our favourite films and our most hated male writers.” This is the intimacy she’s always craved. The two young women move in together and Roberta has an appreciative audience for her cooking at last, creating elaborate feasts every night. Then together they dream up the idea of making this more communal and more subversive, spiraling to a point of lost control.  I lost sight of the good and so did Roberta's boyfriend.  When to put the brakes on is a question that is contemplated here.

Acorn Squash Stuffed with Muschrooms and Grain

The cookbook in the Food 52 Cooking Club this month is Diana Henry's From the Oven to the Table.  She does this in mini pumpkins, but I had acorn squash and so that is what I chose to stuff.

2 small of 1 large acorn squash
1 oz. dreid porcini mushrooms
1 lb fresh cremini mushrooms
10 scallions
2 cups cooked grains (I used buckwheat groats for their earthy flavor, but farro, barley, or lentils even would work)
1 clove garlic, minced
salt
pepper
olive oil
grated gruyere (optional)
cream (optional)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Cut the acorn squash in half, seed, rub with olive oil, and salt and pepper.  Place on baking sheet cut side down and roast until tender, about 30 minutes.
Put the dried mushrooms in a bowl with enough boiling water to cover them, and let sit.
Slice cremini mushrooms and toss with olice oil, salt and pepper, and roast along side the acorn squash for 30 minutes.  This is a good use of an already hot oven, and the mushroom flavor is unbelievable.  In yet another pan roast the scallions for about 10 minutes after tossing in olive oil, salt and pepper.
Chop the scallions, chop the rehydrated dried mushrooms, and add them plus the mushroom liquid, the garlic, and the roasted mushrooms to the grain and stir, flavoring to taste.
Stuff the squash, sprinkle with cheese and/or cream and put back in the oven to reheat, about 20 minutes.

Vietnamese Caramel Salmon

This is the best salmon out of my kitchen in a long time.

• Salmon fillet cut into 4 pieces
• 1 tablespoon coconut or extra-virgin olive oil
• Fine sea salt to taste
• 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons Asian fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon grated peeled fresh ginger
• Finely grated zest of 1 lime
• Juice of 1/2 lime
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• Sliced scallions (white and green parts), for garnish
• Thinly sliced jalapeño, for garnish
• Fresh cilantro leaves, for garnish

Directions
1. Set an oven rack 6 inches from the heat source (usually the second rack position, not the one closest to the heat source), and turn on the broiler.
2. Brush the salmon fillets all over with the oil and season them lightly with salt.
3. In a 12-inch oven-safe skillet set over medium-high heat, combine the brown sugar, fish sauce, soy sauce, ginger, lime zest and juice, black pepper, and 1 tablespoon of water. Bring to a simmer.
4. Place the fish, skin-side up, in the skillet. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, without moving it, until the fish is cooked through halfway, 4 to 6 minutes.
5. Spoon the pan juices over the fish and transfer the skillet to the oven. Broil until the fish is just cooked through and the skin is caramelized in spots, 2 to 5 minutes for medium rare, depending upon the thickness of the fish (thicker ones will take longer).
6. Transfer the fish to a serving plate and garnish it with scallions, jalapeños, and cilantro. Drizzle with the pan sauce, and serve.

Still Life (2013)

This is all about lonely people living lonely lives and dying alone.  It begins with three funerals, of different faiths, at which there is only one mourner, the same in each case. He is John May (Eddie Marsan), a short, boxy, middle aged man who not only attends such funerals but also arranges them and even writes their eulogies.  This is his job, but it has also become something of a mission, even an obsession. May works for a council in south London where he’s assigned to arrange for the burials of people who die without any relatives or intimates to assist with their passage out of this life. There seems to be a steady stream of such folk, since May has been employed for over two decades. And the government evidently has the funds to allow him to pay for proper funerals, each with a clergyman, music, a good casket and a decent burial--up until when it doesn't.  The second half of the movie is what John May sees as wrapping up his career and moving on.  Enjoyable in a slightly dystopian way.

Gods of the Upper Air by Charles King

This is a book about the influence of Franz Boas, who lived from 1858 to 1942, and his trainees on how we view people across the planet.  His views on race, culture, and the intellectual potential of women diverged radically and presciently from the conventional wisdom of his day.
When Boas began practicing anthropology in the 1880s, after abandoning physics, Western societies generally embraced a hierarchical classification of races and the notion of race and gender as biologically fixed. Thanks to Boas and his circle, anthropologists today reject the belief that social development is linear, moving from “primitive societies” to “civilized ones.”

The book is a well written portrait of Boas and some of the diverse women he helped train at Columbia University, King suggests that they transformed anthropology—and Western thought more broadly—by unmooring cultural differences from biology, viewing cultures holistically, and according equal value to non-Western societies.  Boas’ students were Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ella Cara Deloria. Each one contributed groundbreaking anthropological research. While Mead may be Boas’ most celebrated student, Benedict was Boas’ chief acolyte, and successful in her own right . Hurston became the Harlem Renaissance’s star contrarian, whose novels were rooted in her anthropological fieldwork. Deloria, of Yankton Dakota Sioux and European descent, was able to be both a scientist and a native of the culture.  They seem very modern in their thinking, which reflects how much they changed views from then to now.

Green Goddess Dressing with Romaine, Avocado and Nasturtium

This recipe is a variation on one in Suzanne Goin's cookbook 'Sunday Suppers at Luques', which has been the Food 52 Cookbook Club book to explore all year long.  The original recipe called for watercress in the dressing and cucumbers in the salad, which is one way to go.  I went with a last of the season nasturtium substitution.

• 1/2 c. mayonnaise
• 1/2 c. olive oil
• 1 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 1 cup packed nasturtium leaves, cleaned, tough stems removed
• 2 tablespoons tarragon leaves
• 3 tablespoons minced chives
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 2 salt-packed anchovies, rinsed, bones removed
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon champagne vinegar
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions

1. Puree the parsley, watercress, tarragon, and chives in a blender with the garlic, anchovies, lemon juice, and 1/2 cup oil.
2. Whisk the herb puree, vinegar, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper into the mayonnaise. If the dressing seems too thick, thin it with a little water. Taste for balance and seasoning.
   I only used about half of the dressing for the salad, tossed it with the greens, topped with sliced avocado and nasturtium blossoms.  

The Biggest Little Farm (2019)

Having grown up with a mixed picture of farming, where on the one hand there was the Old MacDonald Had a Farm kind of fantasy about how cute everything is mixed with the reality of my father's stories about growing up on a farm.  So the one thing I do know is that it is a lot of hard work, with long hours and no days off.  The movie's  main characters (one of whom is also the filmmaker) left urban life and got into farming because they had this mixed idea as well. The reality of farming is that there are a lot of factors that are out of your control, a fact telegraphed in the movie's ominous flash-forward opening, which heralds a Biblically-scaled natural disaster that the farmers will have to survive somehow.
But all in all, this is a very likable, if sometimes a bit too polished and vague, exercise in environmental philosophy and rural nostalgia, about a couple of well-off, upper-middle-class professionals (respectively, a documentary filmmaker and a chef and organic food blogger) who decide to chuck it all and go back to the land, conquer adversity, and do pretty well for themselves, all things considered.   I would recommend it, as I think it covers a lot of the realities while having more than a bit of luck.