the cookbook
When I first started cooking I also began to write down the recipes. I was still learning how to write with a fountain pen between the draconian lines of a clairefontaine notebook. My fingers were nimble from years of sewing and knitting and woodworking at a Rudolf Steiner school in Australia, but my mind was too distracted for cursive writing that needed to fit on six different lines. Every letter was a struggle. I was slow, but wildly determined. I had arrived to France at age twelve, after a long hiatus, and I stayed awake until midnight rewriting my day’s lessons. I couldn’t write quickly enough in class, I didn’t have any friends yet, and so in my closet-sized bedroom I wrote until my hands were sore. I took breaks, looking through the window at the church looming over our apartment building. As a result, writing recipes was a slow process. I wrote four or five recipes, and then I tired. There was a recipe for vanilla cake, one for a niçoise salad. My handwriting was tiny and compact, furiously cursive. There were illustrations for each ingredient. A small orange carrot, little dots to indicate flour, a spoon. This was my first foray into recipe writing.
This summer Sarah and I decided to make a cookbook together. Our close friend was getting married in November and we couldn’t think of a better gift. We both love to cook and write, and we thought the task would be simple enough. Over a dinner of green curry and lemongrass-fried rice, we discussed the first outlines of the project. We decided the book would be divided into categories: breakfast, dips and sauces, stews and soups, salads, meat and fish, grains and vegetables, desserts, and eating alone. I still remember the excitement of that first night: we sat cross-legged on my futon typing a list of our favorite recipes, some our own creations, others from blogs and cookbooks, and we reminisced about those nights in college when our kitchen turned into a chugging factory, producing apple pies, scones, and failed chocolate babkas. We had shared a kitchen for one semester, and we both had vivid memories of each other’s cooking. I recalled Sarah’s intense tuna-tomato spaghetti sauce and her garlic mashed potatoes and the midnight chocolate espresso cake she made for my birthday. She had skipped class to bake it. I asked my artist and writer friend Elena Megalos to draw the illustrations. I knew she would create the strangest, most magical and marvelous drawings.