The Blue Heron Changes His Mind

          In painting after painting John James Audubon has shown birds in action. His California vulture hulks on a branch, hump-shouldered, snake-necked, bald, watching, smelling, and waiting for carrion. His snowy owl twists a round head over a shrugged left shoulder. The body of his yellow-bellied cuckoo is acrobatically in motion: wings back, tail spread, beak open, neck stretched, the whole body in a yogic back arch, while his mate, a butterfly in her beak, rumples her wings and fans her tail feathers.

          In such paintings as these Audubon captures birds in dramatic movement. In reality we usually see birds in flight, as in the shadow pictures of Peterson's guide, or perched on branches like goldfinches, hanging upside down from feeders like nuthatches, or clutching the sides of trees like woodpeckers and flickers. But yesterday at a small wooded swimming hole I saw a bird in motion that would have made Audubon grab his pencil.

Danish sandwiches at another picnic by a creek
many years later

          It was a hot, motionless day. A friend and I had come in the late afternoon for a picnic and a swim at a lovely spot where a small creek tumbles down a slope with hardly a murmur between shallow banks, then suddenly swells into a pool of dark, clean, still water where the upper cliff of the mountain steepens and solid rock banks open their palms to make a bowl deep, wide, and long enough for real swimming before the passage closes and the creek leaves the pool behind to become a creek again, tumbling on through the woods. The hill above the swimming hole partially shades it with alders, maples, and oaks. The bank on the near side, softened with dried grass, offers a place just wide enough for two people to sit. That's where Tom and I spread our red picnic cloth and our picnic of cherry tomatoes, boiled eggs, white feta cheese, cucumber, a loaf of black bread (for making Danish sandwiches), and cold drinks.

Just as we arrived, before our swim, Tom had seen a fish flash out of the pool and in again. Now, as we spread our picnic, a few dragonflies zigzagged through, and some mosquitoes and flies buzzed around us, but not too many to disturb us. This peaceful, pastoral Paradise needed no more than its water, its sun and shade, and its Adam and Eve.

          But then into Paradise, exalting it by several degrees, flew a great blue heron. Flying upriver, he entered around the bend of the rock, his beak stretching out from the wide cup of his sleek neck, his great wings barely sweeping the air, his skinny legs horizontal. As soon as he came to our pool, he extended and opened his feet and held his wings in floating motion intending to land there and fish for dinner. But as he turned, he saw us and instantly changed his mind. In one unbelievable, sharp motion he drew in his left wing, twisted his body, retracted his landing-gear feet, turned, and joined flight again—downriver, gone.

          I am not a painter, but I hold in my visual imagination the extraordinary form of the great blue heron, noble, blue-grey, lissome, and elegant, making a move that was both graceful in its success and astonishingly clumsy in its execution. The lines were not beautiful and svelte, like those of Audubon's snowy owl or yellow-bellied cuckoo. The wings were unbalanced in their action—one outstretched, the other tucked in—and the lines of the body were mixed, one wing crossed over the legs, the neck foreshortened, hiding its long, fluid line, but the in-flight movement that arrested the preparation for landing and simultaneously turned the great blue heron almost instantly in the opposite direction of his intent was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in nature.

Next week: "Three and a Half Pounds of Food"

Recipes from this post: Danish sandwiches

DANISH SANDWICHES

Suggested ingredients

Tomatoes, cherry or regular

Boiled eggs

Feta cheese

Cheddar or some other hard cheese

Cucumbers

Radishes

Avocado

Goat cheese (Montrachet)

Small bits of lettuce, radicchio, etc.

Herbs: dill, basil, parsley, etc.

Sardines

Salami

Black bread

Butter

Cold drinks

Also needed: A cooler for keeping ingredients cold.

To bring

Besides the ingredients listed above, be sure to bring a picnic cloth, two glasses, a small knife, and napkins. (Clothing optional.)

Preparation

This is a sandwich picnic, but the sandwiches shouldn't be made until time to eat. Boil the eggs ahead of time. Bring everything to the picnic spot in the cooler. When it's time to eat, spread the cloth on a flat spot. (Flat and small is preferable to larger but slanted.) Kneel on the cloth and set out the food. Open the drinks. White wine is the best cold drink, but sometimes a sparkling water is better.

To make

Slice the tomatoes, eggs, cucumbers, and radishes into rounds, the tomatoes into halves, and the feta into thick slabs, as they do in Greece. Butter some slices of bread. Put a layer of cucumbers, sightly overlapped, onto a piece of buttered bread. Add a similar layer of egg slices. Top with feta cheese. Make another sandwich of cucumbers, topped with Cheddar cheese, topped with tomato halves. Make another of eggs and tomatoes, no cheese. Sometimes top a sandwich with an herb. Continue to create various combinations of ingredients for little sandwiches. Go for aesthetics. Eat the sandwiches open-face, as they do in Denmark.

Birthday Cake Traditions

[Today, July 20, 2020, is my birthday.  That makes this essay, written years ago for my food book, especially relevant.)

         Centuries ago, in Ancient Greece, worshipers of Artemis, the moon goddess, would make honey cakes for her on her birthday. To represent the full moon, the worshippers set the tops of the cakes aglow with candles and then, like moons traveling the cosmos, they wound through the streets of Athens to Artemis's temple with their gifts. Thus was born our tradition—in America and in Europe—of birthday cakes and candles.

          Last week I made a birthday cake for my friend Joe, who was turning 50-ish. It was a dense chocolate cake, dark as midnight, especially suitable for the glow of the full moon. But I didn't have any birthday candles, so I used a sprinkling of powdered sugar, as though the moon were new, Artemis hidden in the dark, and the stars a-glitter.

          If I had been baking this cake int England, or anywhere in Europe, I might have incorporated small gifts into the batter, a tradition that didn't migrate with immigrants across the ocean to the New World. The items found in the pieces of cake foretold the future. If it were a coin, for instance, a guest could expect wealth in life—at lest enough, one might hope, to pay for fixing the tooth one broke when one bit the coin. If a girl found a thimble, she probably went home and cried, knowing she would be a spinster all her life, but if the thimble tumbled from a little boy's piece of cake, he might have gloated at the prospects of finding a good wife. I wondered what I could whip into the batter for Joe: a nail to indicate a sturdy house in winter storms? A marble to suggest the years would roll by smoothly? A pencil eraser to erase all his troubles?

          When I was in Denmark for Christmas many years ago, I encountered a similar tradition with a Christmas dessert called risalamande, a kind of rice pudding made with milk and finely chopped almonds. (The recipe will be given with the essay about that Christmas in Denmark, to be posted on December 21 of this year.) Traditionally, the cook included a whole almond in the pudding. Whoever received it was considered lucky. When Ursula handed me the recipe, she told me, with a twinkle in her eye, that I would need a husband to help stir the rice so it wouldn't burn. Perhaps it is because I have lacked a husband all these years that I have never made risalamande. And maybe I never had a husband because I never found a ring in a piece of birthday cake. And so we see the importance of continuing traditions, as we never know what good fortune or bad we might have missed by not having g some prognosticating object tumble from our desserts.

Next week: "The Blue Heron Changes His Mind"

Recipe from this post: Dense chocolate cake

DENSE CHOCOLATE CAKE

Ingredients

7 ounces best-quality dark chocolate

1 stick + 6 tablespoons unsalted European-style butter (the high-butterfat kind, such as Lurpak or Beurre d'Isigny), cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1 1/3 cup granulated sugar

5 large eggs

1 tablespoon unbleached all-purpose flour

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 375º and butter an 8-inch round cake pan. Line the base of the pan with parchment and butter the parchment, too. Finely chop the chocolate. (A serrated bread knife does an outstanding job with this.)

To make

Put the chocolate and the butter in a double boiler or in the microwave oven. Melt gently, stirring regularly to combine. Add the sugar to the chocolate-butter mixture, stirring well, and set aside to cool for a few minutes. then add the eggs one by one, stirring well after each addition, and then add the flour. The batter should be smooth, dark, and utterly gorgeous.

          Pour the batter into the buttered cake pan and bake for approximately 25 minutes, or until the center of the cake looks set and the top is shiny and a bit crackly-looking. (I usually set the timer for 20 minutes initially and then check the cake every two minutes thereafter until it's done. At 20 minutes it's usually quite jiggly in the center. It's done when it jiggles only slightly, if at all.) Let the cake cool in its pan on a rack for 10 minus; then carefully turn the cake out of the pan and revert it, so that the crackly side is facing upward. Be very careful. This cake is extremely delicate and won't stand for much manipulation. Allow it to cool completely. It will deflate slightly as it cools.

To serve

Ingredients

The cake

Powdered sugar

Slightly sweetened whipped cream

Sift some powdered sugar over the cake. Serve the cake in wedges at room temperature with a loose dollop of ever-so-slightly sweetened whipped cream. If you use the freshest eggs, highest-quality chocolate, and best butter, you have a real masterpiece in this cake.

Troll's-home Picnic

          It was a troll's home, surely, inside that grove of bay trees atop the Berkeley hills. Outside, the wind-tossed fog thickened in swirls. Inside, like gnarled fingers of old hands, twisted black trunks held back the billowing white blankets. Outside, it rained in drizzles. Inside, under the sweet-smelling tangle of leaves and branches, it merely drizzled.

          On one of those nearly horizontal trunks, a troll's table, we laid our lunch for two (none for the troll): French bread, Swiss cheese, Greek olives, and California tomato and avocado. It doesn't get any better than that. We ate standing in this little parlor on the knoll, watching the fog play thick and thin around us. When it was thin, we could see the sun glint gold on distant hills like the twinkling drop of a coin from heaven.

       Later that evening, after our walk, I found Desert Solitaire on David's bookshelf, and the conversation turned to nature writers. David said he found today's nature writers (Edward Abbey, perhaps, excluded) falling far short of Thoreau and Muir.

         "Why," he asked, "try to be Thoreau and Muir all over again?"

         He had a point. Every Russian writer who followed Tolstoy felt Tolstoy's breath on the back of his neck as he bent over his desk, pen in hand. Brahms, aware of the overpowering shadow of Beethoven, had to grit his teeth and work on. Contemporary nature writers are not trying to be Thoreau and Muir all over again but to create their own path, to forge in the smithies of their own souls their sense of truth. There was a truth in the troll's home of the morning's picnic, in the strong black trunks and twisting patterns of fog, that I want to express. If I were a painter, I would paint it, but the problem with the painting would lie in not conveying that the olives were Greek, the cheese Swiss, and the bread French. From me it would take words, even if my words were to be compared with those of the masters. 

          It wouldn't matter. Thoreau and Muir weren't at my troll's-home picnic. If they had been, they would have experienced it differently, anyway. It would take my words to convey my experience: the  fairy-tale enchantment of that afternoon in the Berkeley hills.

          

Next week: "Birthday Cake Traditions"

Recipes from this post: The picnic

THE PICNIC

Note the Provencal tablecloth in this version.

Ingredients

French bread, uncut

Swiss cheese, preferably Gruyere, unsliced

Greek olives, preferably Kalamata

California tomatoes, unsliced

California avocado, uncut

Butter (optional)

To bring

Bring the food listed above, of course. Besides that, bring a picnic loth, a small knife, a fork, a cheese clipper, and a cutting board. Bring wine, if desired (Oregon wine, or South African, maybe) and water, of course. Bring glasses and napkins.

To make

Spread a cloth under or on a fat limb of a large treee. Set out the bread, cheese, jar of olives, bright red ripe tomatoes, and the avocado. Unwrap the cheese and the butter and lay them on a cutting board. (Tuck the wrapping cut of sight.) Slice the avocado onto the cutting board, but leave the tomatoes whole. Put the cheese slicer next to the cheese and a knife next to the butter. Put a fork next to the olive jar. Break bread. Spread with butter as desired. Eat bread with cheese and avocado. Bite into tomatoes as into apples.

      A finishing touch would be chocolates. Belgian, say.

Here, I've opted to slice the tomato.

Grandmothers' Brunch

         I have a beautiful Bon Appétit cookbook on breakfasts and brunches

with mouth-watering recipes which I never make because who makes such elaborate dishes for oneself? But if I had a brunch, I thought, I could make that scrumptious German apple pancake that is baked in two frying pans and serves eight. If I had guests to eat the terrine of layered vegetables that looks so good in the picture, I wouldn't mind spending hours in the kitchen to make it. I would also make the quiche with the delightful name "fantasy quiche," I plotted, and a sort of apricot fool, called apricot fantasy, to match it. I could use my mother's hot chocolate set—tall pitcher and eight demitasse cups—for coffee. At any other occasion they would seem pretentious. But not at a brunch.

         A brunch calls for women guests—in this case, I decided, my friends who are grandmothers. Women love to talk about their grandchildren. My brunch would give them a chance to indulge that pride. They would bring pictures, and we would go around the table, taking turns to tell each other about our grandchildren.

          The day before the party I wood burned a plaque for each guest

with "I love my grandchildren" in the center surrounded by the names of her grandchildren. Then I set the table with my grandmother's white tablecloth, red napkins, white plates from Sweden, my grandmother's Depression-era dessert glasses, and the demitasse cups. I set a peppermint candy and the woodburned plaque by each plate. Then, for the rest of the day and until 10:00 the next morning, I cooked.

          There was fresh snow on the ground the day of my party, casting an atmosphere of enchantment over my mountain home. My guests stayed till late afternoon.

         Alone in the house again, washing dishes, I glowed. My guests had exclaimed over the beautiful table setting and the delicious food. They had loved talking about their grandchildren and showing us their pictures. They asked questions about each others' grandchildren. They told tender stories and funny anecdotes. Love had swelled and blossomed around the table as we talked about these children and young people who have brought so much joy to their grandmothers and who are doing so well in their lives. My grandmothers' brunch resounded with faith in the future. It was a lovely, lovely morning for us all.

Next week: "Troll's-home Picnic"

Recipes from this post: 

     German apple pancake

     Mixed vegetable terrine with Béchamel sauce and red pepper purée

     Fantasy quiche

     Apricot fantasy

GERMAN APPLE PANCAKE
serves 6-8

Batter

Ingredients
8 extra-large eggs
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Preparation
Melt the butter. Grate the nutmeg.
To make
Combine the first six ingredients in mixing bowl and blend with spoon until smooth. Add melted butter, vanilla, and nutmeg, and blend. Let batter stand at room temperature for 30 minutes or in refrigerator overnight.

Apple mixture
Ingredients
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
2 large tart apples (Granny Smith or something similar)
Preparation
Grate the nutmeg. Peel, halve, core, and thinly slice the apples. Preheat oven to 425º. Warm a platter for serving.


To make
Divide butter evenly and melt in 2 10-inch ovenproof skillets, brushing butter up sides of pans. Remove from heat. Combine sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg and blend well. Sprinkle 1/3 cup over butter in each skillet. Divide apple slices and layer evenly over butter. Sprinkle with remaining sugar mixture. Place skillets over medium-high heat till mixture begins to bubble. Pour batter over the apples. Then transfer the skillets to oven and bake 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 375 º and bake an additional 10 minutes. Slide onto heated serving platter, cut into wedges, and serve immediately.

MIXED VEGETABLE TERRINE with Béchamel sauce and red pepper purée
serves 8
(My note in the margin with this recipe says, "So good you forget, when you're eating it, how much trouble it was to make.")

Vegetables
Ingredients
3/4 to 1 pound mushrooms
3 cups milk
3/4 pound cabbage (1/2 medium size head)
2 large leeks (1/2 pound)
1 large bunch spinach
1 large bunch sorrel (optional)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preparation
Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Coarsely chop mushrooms. Quarter and core cabbage, then chop coarsely. Slice leeks in half lengthwise and cut each half in 1/2-inch pieces. Wash thoroughly. Stem the spinach and sorrel and wash thoroughly. Place each vegetable in a separate bowl.
To make
Mushrooms: Combine the mushrooms with the milk in a heavy saucepan. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 3 minutes. Remove from heat and let steep, stirring occasionally.
Cabbage: Cook in boiling water until just tender, about 8 minutes. Transfer to salad spinner using slotted spoon. Refresh under cold water and spin dry. Return to bowl and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Leeks: Add to pot of boiling water and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Transfer to salad spinner, refresh under cold water, and spin dry. Return to bowl and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Spinach: Cook until completely wilted, about 3 minutes. Transfer to salad spinner, refresh under cold water, and spin dry. Chop coarsely. Return to bowl and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Sorrel: Cook until completely wilted, about 1 minute. Transfer to salad spinner, refresh under cold water, and spin dry. Chop coarsely. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and add to spinach.
Transfer mushrooms to salad spinner with slotted spoon and spin dry. Turn into separate bowl and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add mushroom liquid from spinner to saucepan with milk.

Sauce

Ingredients
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter
6 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon minced fresh tarragon (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1 tablespoon minced fresh chervil (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1 tablespoon minced chives or green onion
1 1/2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup whipping cream
To make
Melt butter in heavy saucepan over low heat. Whisk in flour and let foam 3 minutes without coloring, stirring constantly. Whisk in milk mixture and stir over medium-high heat until sauce comes to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer until reduced to 3 cups, about 15 minutes. Season with tarragon, chervil, chives, salt, thyme, pepper, and nutmeg. Pour slightly more than half the sauce into bowl and let cool sightly. Blend cream into remaining sauce; set aside.

To assemble
Ingredients
Sauce
3 eggs
1/2 cup cream cheese, room temperature
1 lemon
Prepared vegetables
1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
Preparation
Cut cream cheese into chunks. Juice the lemon. Preheat oven to 400º. Generously butter a 1- to 2-quart charlotte mold or a 9x5-inch loaf pan. Line with buttered waxed paper and sprinkle with breadcrumbs.
Assemblage
Beat eggs, cream cheese, and lemon juice into the sauce in the bowl. Divide among cabbage, leeks, spinach, and mushrooms. Taste each vegetable and adjust seasoning. Layer prepared mold with the sauced spinach, leeks, mushrooms, and cabbage. Bake until puffed and browned and knife inserted in center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Let stand at room temperature for 5 minutes before unfolding onto heated serving platter. (Terrine will stay warm about 30 minutes in a turned-off oven with door ajar.)

Red pepper purée
Ingredients
1 medium red bell pepper
Reduced sauce
To make
Simmer sauce reserved from above until it is reduced by half. Strain and return to pan. Keep warm while you roast the pepper over a direct gas flame or under broiler until completely browned, about 5 minutes, turning frequently. Let stand 5 minutes in a  tightly closed plastic bag. Peel pepper. Discard stem and seeds. Purée. Add to reserved sauce. Taste and adjust seasoning.

To serve
Spoon red pepper sauce around unmolded terrine and serve immediately.


FANTASY QUICHE
serves 6-8

Pan preparation 

Ingredients
3 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
2/3-1 cup breadcrumbs toasted
Preparation
Coat a 10 1/2-inch quiche pan with butter and sprinkle bottom and sides with breadcrumbs. Refrigerate to set.

Creamy mushroom filling
Ingredients
2 pounds mushrooms
1 lemon
2 tablespoons oil
1 cup half-and-half or evaporated milk or milk
Preparation
Slice mushrooms. Squeeze lemon to yield 1 tablespoon juice.
To make
Sprinkle mushrooms with lemon juice. Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms and sauté until heated through, about 3 minutes. Reduce heat, cover with half-and-half, and simmer until liquid has almost evaporated and mushrooms are very lightly colored, about 15-20 minutes.

Cream cheese filling
Ingredients
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature, or 1 cup cottage cheese

1 1/4 cups crême fraîche

3 eggs

2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley or tarragon or combination

1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme or oregano or combination

Freshly grated nutmeg

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Paprika

Preparation

Mince the herbs. Grate the nutmeg.

To make

Combine cream cheese, 3/4 cup crême fraîche, eggs, herbs, and seasonings and blend well.

The quiche

Ingredients

1 tablespoon oil

1 egg, beaten with salt to taste

5 ounces lean boiled ham, diced (omit for vegetarian version)

Creamy mushroom filling

Cream cheese filling

To make

Heat oil in 8-inch omelet pan with ovenproof handle over medium heat. Add egg and tilt pan to coat entire bottom. When bottom is browned, run pan under broiler to brown top. Turn oven temperature to 350º. Gently slide omelet into quiche pan. Spread evenly with mushroom filling and sprinkle with diced ham. Pour cream cheese filling over top. Bake 35-40 minutes.

To serve

Twenty minutes before serving, pour remaining crême fraîche over top of quiche. Bake at 350º until crême is set, about 10-15 minutes.

APRICOT FANTASY

serves 6

Ingredients

1 10 1/2-ounce can apricot halves, drained

2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin

1 12-ounce can apricot nectar

1/2 cup water

1 package vanilla pudding mix (3 5/8-ounces)

1 lemon

1 cup whipping cream

Pecans or berries for garnish

Preparation

Drain the can of apricot halves. Juice the lemon to make 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons juice. Whip the cream. Chop and toast the pecans, if using.

To make

Mash apricot halves in small bowl and set aside. Combine gelatin and 1/4 cup nectar in large bowl, stirring until gelatin is dissolved. Blend remaining nectar with 1/2 cup water in small bowl. Prepare pudding mix according to package instructions, substituting nectar-water mixture for milk. Add hot pudding to gelatin mixture in thin stream, stirring constantly. Add apricots and lemon juice and mix thoroughly. Let cool slightly. Gently fold in whipped cream. Turn apricot mixture into 1-quart soufflé dish or spoon into 6 wine glasses. Cover and refrigerate until set, at least 30 minutes.

To serve

Remove from refrigerator. Garnish with berries or pecans.