IT WAS LOVE AT FIRST BITE

Peter Moore loved Fannie Farmer passionately!~fruitcake for the holidays~microwaved poached eggs~candied prosciutto~duck fat roasted almonds~world's largest cookbook collection~grilled chicken wings

Written and illustrated by PETER MOORE. Many years ago, Wayne Christensen and I worked at a magazine publishing company in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was a boss and I was a punk-kid editor, but he treated me nicely anyway. Thanks, Wayne! Now he’s the writer/chef/connoisseur behind this online newsletter. I’m not sure how, but we former colleagues rediscovered each other here on Substack.com, and he’s been a big supporter and enthusiast for my travel/toon-driven ‘stack The Road2Elsewhere. And I love his drool-worthy ‘stack as well. He invited me to be a guest writer for his fungi-driven site, so this is appearing in his ‘stack and my ‘stack at the same time. Kind of like two helpings! Pairs well with a Provençal rosé. Click the link for the full smörgåsbord of The Road2Elsewhere hilarity. Enjoy!

I AM AN ENTHUSIASTIC HOME COOK

Last night, for instance, I made a pasta frittata from a recipe I found in the Washington Post. Naturally, I didn’t follow all the directions. Who does that? I swapped fresh mozzarella for parmesan, chicken sausage for pancetta, and dropped in sun-dried tomatoes, because why the hell not? OK it came out of the pan a little wet and weird, but that’s part of the pleasure of home cooking: You can eat stuff the recipe inventor never could have imagined!

Which reminds me of that time I went to see Cook’s Illustrated Live, and Christopher Kimball—then the brand’s leader and ambassador—forbade us from altering Cook’s Illustrated recipes. Why? Because they had already tried every permutation of every recipe, and their way was perfect.

To which I say: Screw that!

Kimball even made fun of one home cook who complained that a recipe didn’t work, just because she swapped canned salmon for shrimp. Kimball was appalled.

I say: You go, girl!

MY LIFE AS A KITCHEN IMPROVISER BEGAN WHEN I WAS A CHILD

One Thanksgiving, my mom needed my “help” in the kitchen. She pulled a chair up to the stove, lifted me onto it, and then taught me how to use a wire whisk to stir simmering gravy. I was engulfed in turkey-gravy fumes, tasted the bubbling brew at every opportunity, and was thrilled by the intense turkey-tude of it. The stove was my pleasure dome, and I held my place there with gratitude.

But I didn’t learn to cook quite yet, because my mom aced those duties in my family. She did teach me how to make a white sauce, when I was in high school, but I had no reason to use that skill. Yet.

Eventually I graduated from college and moved out of the house. My mom must’ve feared that I’d starve to death, in the cruel (pre-Door Dash) world, because she bought me a copy of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook and stashed it among my moving boxes.

COOKBOOKS CHANGE LIVES

It became one of my most treasured belongings.

Food and memory are strongly linked for me. My wife is amazed at the number of times I connect an obscure place with a memorable meal, or even just a nice dessert. Like the delicious Moose Tracks cone I enjoyed on a family vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1997. Or those profiteroles we had with our afternoon espresso in Ravello, Italy, in 2007. We enjoyed it so much that we canceled our evening plans so we could go back to the same restaurant for dinner.

And all that began the first time I cracked open the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, nearly fifty years ago. I was probably searching for something simple—a recipe for French toast, or instructions on how to apply cheese to burger—and discovered a world of life-enriching pleasures.

Fannie wasn’t about fine dining. She was more of a just-get-me-through-dinner kind of cook. But I soon connected the dots between macaroni and cheese and a complimentary side dish of sliced tomatoes with basil, and it set my tongue to dancing in my mouth.

I was living in a boarding house in Bath, Maine, at the time, and my frozen-fish-stick-eating fellow residents were astonished when I baked cod fillet in lemon butter, whipped up a hollandaise to pour over my steamed asparagus spears, and savored it with a couple of glasses of pinot grigio.

THERE WAS A FOOD FREAK IN THEIR MIDST

This phase of my cooking life reached its apotheosis when an itinerant lobsterman rented a bedroom in my boarding house. He saw that I could handle my pots and pans, and soon began showing up in the afternoon with a bag of one-claw lobsters that were unsaleable. So while he showered off the salt brine from his day hauling traps, I propped Fannie Farmer up on the counter to coach me through drop biscuits, corn-on-the-cob, and steamed lobster. I’d melt the butter with minced garlic and a squeeze of lemon, and we’d soon be up to our elbows in shattered lobster shells.

Fannie Farmer gave me all that. I loved her passionately!

In time, I would find other cookbooks that changed my life: Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, a shelf-full of Cook’s Illustrated tomes, and a trove of Instant-Pot recipes that now sees me through each winter. And like every other tech-enhanced cook, I often seek the help of the sous chef who sits on my kitchen counter: “Hey Google, give me a recipe for sheet-pan chicken and broccoli.”

She always delivers.

Still, I treat all recipes as mere suggestions. What I want to know is: What are the basic tunes of that dish, the themes, the rhythm, so I can improvise it into something all my own?

Honestly, it doesn’t always work out.

Q: What kind of wine goes with something that’s never been made before, in culinary history?

A: All of them!

Cheers, Fannie!

Fanny Farmer: 1857-1915

P.S. She was a real person, you know. She was born in Boston in 1857, and the Encyclopedia Britannica hails her thusly: “Farmer’s lasting contribution was twofold: the introduction of standardized level measurements in recipes and the Boston Cooking School Cookbook, first published in 1896 and still a best-seller in a modernized version, frequently revised, entitled The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Its 12 editions in the first 70 years had sales totaling nearly four million copies. So I’m not the only one crushing on her!

TASTY MORSELS

Fruitcakes from The Lovely Crumb; microwaved poached eggs; candied prosciutto.

These holiday fruitcakes from The Lovely Crumb are packed with pecans, dates, glacé cherries, milk, sugar, coconut, and oat flour. No wheat, egg or alcohol is used to make them. ~Tis’ the season for fresh white truffles. After checking several suppliers online, it looks like they’ll set truffle lovers $200 to $300 per ounce this season. ~These duck fat roasted almonds are a spritzy treat for the holidays. Ideal for a cheese and meat board. ~Poached eggs are the consummate breakfast on winter weekends. Microwaved poached eggs are the simplest way to cook them. Serve them on Bays English Muffins—or not!—with candied prosciutto, with chopped fresh herbs, on salads, on a poached egg to a bowl of soup, or on top of pizza. ~Cookbook literary agent and founder of The Ekus Group, Lisa Ekus appreciates the feeling of holding a book. She has 4,239 titles on her shelves, earning her books the title of the largest cookbook collection in Guinness Book of World Records. ~If you’re hankerin’ to use your outdoor grill just one more time before the temperatures drop and the snow flies where you cook, here’s a kicky recipe for grilled chicken wings to scratch your itch. ~Retinning. While it’s a tortuous task, it’s a necessary one if a copper pot or pan is going to remain in use. East Coast Tinning can help you out.