Author: Eleanor Boockmeier

— Eating on the Floor, No. 2 —

What wine goes with scones?

It doesn’t matter in any case, all I’ve got is the last of something cheap and white. But it’s French. And you’re welcome to half of what’s left in the bottle.

I would make scones in the morning, but I’ve found that nobody in the house will eat more than a single crispy sweet corner so I’ve saved the task for the evening, for the quiet, and mostly because I knew you would be here. 

Tonight we can hear the wind howling down the chimney.

Oh Lord, you should have been here that night the other week, when I was trying to explain the idea of chimney sweeps to Faye and somehow wandered into Victorian child labor issues and all those little boys with testicular cancer shimmying up and down the old chimneys. I mean, why did they have to be nude?! I was so far off the deep end. And she was looking at me with that look. The one that said she was ready to crawl right up through the flue.  

Sometimes I wonder if I would know, if I weren’t a very good mother.

–EB

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CHERRY ALMOND SCONES, for eating at night, or in the morning. There’s really no wrong time to eat a scone.

These scones are incredibly easy. They are light and delicate, and excellent with coffee. I like mine with cherries and nuts, but they are equally tasty plain. Or try them with a 1/2 cup of dried cranberries and the zest of an orange.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup almonds, chopped

1/3 cup dried sweetened sour cherries

1 1/3 cup of heavy whipping cream

2 tablespoons butter, melted

—— optional

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. Add the almonds and the dried cherries, incorporating them into the dry ingredients.

Stir in the cream and mix the dough until it just starts to come together. Then turn your dough out onto a floured surface and knead briefly; just enough to bring the dough completely together. Pat or roll your dough into an 8″ circle.

Brush the dough with the melted butter, and if you like, sprinkle with the extra sugar.

Cut the circle into 8 wedges, and place the wedges 1″ apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake 17 minutes, or until tops are golden brown.

* A version of this recipe appears in my very favorite, go-to cookbook, The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. I received this cookbook as a Christmas gift from my mother—a great lover of all manner of cookbooks—probably thirteen-ish years ago and it pretty much taught me to cook, well.

— Eating on the Floor, No. 1 —

∞ I’m glad you decided to come, and I’m sorry that the soup is old. Though sometimes an old soup is loads better than one that’s just been born. I hope I’m aging like that. Don’t you? Like a soup, and not like a baguette.

It’s cold today, and the grey sun is trapped behind an unbroken veil of clouds. It’s only one cloud really, but it’s been smashed flat enough to cover the sky top-to-bottom, as well as side-to-side. And it’s been horribly damp, for days and days. That’s why I made the soup. 

I’m glad you came. I know I said that before. But I want you to believe me.

–EB

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A SPICY PEANUT SOUP, for cold days. Or other days too if you happen to like spicy foods. Like Wednesdays. A Wednesday would be a perfectly good day to make this soup.

This soup is a rich and delicious feast in a bowl, and it’s fairly quick to pull together. If you’re extra short on time, skip the roasted okra and top your soup with kefir and plenty of chopped green onion—Unless you want to kiss someone after eating this. If you want to kiss someone AND you are short on time…umm…Let me think. Okay, still make the soup, and then throw some chopped cilantro on at the end. Everybody loves cilantro. This recipe makes a lot of soup so don’t be timid with the size of your pot. And it will only get better after a night or two in the fridge, if you find yourself with leftovers.

Ingredients:

1 fairly sizable onion, chopped (about 2 cups)

1 tablespoon peanut or vegetable oil

1 teaspoon berbere (a mixture of spices, common in Ethiopian cooking)

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3 big cloves of garlic, grated

1 1/2 inch long piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated

2-3 medium-sized carrots, peeled and chopped (about 1 cup)

2 medium-sized sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped (about 2 cups)

4 cups of vegetable stock

———

1 large (28oz.) can of crushed tomatoes – fire roasted ones taste best, if you can find them.

1 cup of peanut butter – if your grocery store offers a peanut butter you can grind yourself, get that. The texture is awesome in this soup. If not, a regular creamy peanut butter is perfect.

——— optional

1 lb. fresh okra, cut into pieces

1 tablespoon peanut or vegetable oil

plain kefir

Preheat your oven to 400°.

Over medium heat, in a large pot, sauté the onions in the oil until they are translucent. Stir in the berbere and cayenne. Grate in the garlic and ginger. Then add the carrot and sauté a few minutes more. Throw in the sweet potatoes and the stock, and bring the pot to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes – until the vegetables are tender when pierced with a fork.

Using an immersion blender (or by transferring in batches to a regular blender) purée the vegetables with the cooking liquid. (My friend Holly, an excellent cook, accomplishes this step using a potato masher, which makes for a delightfully chunky texture.) Stir in the crushed tomatoes, and blend or mash a bit more until the consistency is to your liking. Bring the soup back to a simmer, then turn off the heat and stir in the peanut butter. Salt to taste.

To top your soup:

Place the okra in a baking dish in a single layer. Drizzle with the oil and sprinkle with salt.

Roast at 400°, about 18 min. The okra should be fork tender but still green.

Drizzle each bowl of soup with a tablespoon(ish) of plain kefir, and top with the  okra.

*This recipe came to me via my step-mother-in-law, Phoebe, when she passed along her copy of Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant by the Moosewood Collective to me, a number of years ago now. A version of this recipe appears in that excellent cookbook, under the title; West African Peanut Soup.

— Eating on the Floor, No. 0 —

∞ If I could throw open the back door of this kitchen and yell down to you standing in the alley by the grizzled lilac, beside the garden fence. If I could toss the spare key out over the railing, and if I could hear it clatter four floors below onto the pavement next to your boots — wouldn’t that be everything?

And if in the next moment I could hear the iron gate clang shut and then the sound of those same heavy boots thudding up the stairwell at a run. If in the moment after that I could see your shoulder and a bit of your coat sleeve and your hand on the green lacquered rail, moving upward all the time, in ascending circles toward the sound of my laughing voice — that would be more than everything, I think.

And if there is a feeling that is more than the feeling of more than everything, then that is the moment when you fly through the open doorway, smiling.

–EB

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