{"id":9622,"date":"2012-01-31T04:00:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T09:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/\/wp\/?p=9622"},"modified":"2012-01-31T13:01:38","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T18:01:38","slug":"a-spoonful-of-promises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/?p=9622","title":{"rendered":"A Spoonful of Promises"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

T. Susan Chang (courtesy of T. Susan Chang)<\/p><\/div>\n

I always need a little prod in January. After the novelty of the new year wears off there I am, stuck in winter mode with a craving for comfort food and a slightly fuzzy brain.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have nothing against comfort food, but it\u2019s not the best thing in the world for the Tinky body, which tends to be \u2026 sturdy. (I love euphemisms!) And the fuzzy brain doesn\u2019t do me much good.<\/span><\/p>\n

Happily, I recently received a review copy of T. Susan Chang\u2019s A Spoonful of Promises: Stories and Recipes from a Well-Tempered Table<\/em>. It gave me the illusion of consuming comfort food without actually eating\u2014at least until I tried one of\u00a0its tempting\u00a0recipes\u2014since it talks about the place of food in the author\u2019s life.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it reminded me why I love to write about food, thereby removing at least a little of the fuzz from my brain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Susie Chang lives with her husband and her two children not too far from my western Massachusetts home, in the town of Leverett. She has even heard me sing! <\/span><\/p>\n

She writes about food a bit more lucratively than I do, contributing cookbook reviews to the Boston Globe<\/a><\/em> and commentary both to NPR\u2019s Kitchen Window<\/a><\/em> and to our local public-radio station, WFCR<\/a>. (For links to her work, visit Susie\u2019s blog, Cookbooks for Dinner<\/a><\/em>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

A Spoonful of Promises<\/em> is her first book. It features a number of recipes\u2014the author is a creative cook\u2014but most of all it shares food memories.<\/span><\/p>\n

Susie Chang recalls trying to make funnel cake in her family kitchen as a child without much knowledge of frying, with disastrous (although fortunately not injurious!) results.<\/span><\/p>\n

She talks about learning to love cooking as a young adult in New York, when cooking became her passion.<\/span><\/p>\n

She discusses her food adventures with family and friends at home in Leverett, where her family raises most of the vegetables it consumes in season.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her tone is passionate yet humorous; it\u2019s hard not to giggle when reading a chapter titled \u201cZombie Servants of the Noodle God.\u201d Many of her stories are touching as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

Having just lost my mother to old age and Alzheimer\u2019s disease, I was particularly moved by an essay in which she talks about trying to grow saffron bulbs, a present from her father, who suffers from dementia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her frustration with the delicate saffron is intertwined and infused with her feelings about her father and his illness. Like the saffron, he is a\u00a0fragile plant that she can\u2019t quite bring all the way to life yet treasures nevertheless.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading the book was a tonic and inspiration for me as a writer and a cook. As longtime readers of this blog know, I, too, like to consider food as nourishment for much more than the body.<\/span><\/p>\n

As T. Susan Chang understands, food connects us to the loved ones in our past, builds relationships for the future, and lets us learn about faraway people and places.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Spoonful of Promises<\/em> was published by Lyons Press and sells for $24.95. I interviewed Susie Chang for the Greenfield (Massachusetts) Recorder<\/a><\/em> and will try to link to that article when it is published. Meanwhile, I\u2019m sharing one of her recipes\u2014sort of!<\/span><\/p>\n

Susie’s book includes a section about her children\u2019s favorite foods\u2014and hers. One of the treasures here is a Swiss chard tart, which her son Noah loves to take to school for lunch. His bewildered classmates all want to know what the heck a \u201ccharred tart\u201d is.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I got ready to make it I couldn\u2019t find my tart pan so I made a chard quiche with a pie crust I had in the freezer instead of Susie\u2019s tart crust.\u00a0My winter farm share included Swiss chard this week so I did replicate her filling, more or less.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is what Susie says of her tart:<\/span><\/p>\n

[C]hard tart exceeds the sum of its parts. The garlic softens and all but disappears, and the nutmeg is\u2014as nutmeg generally should be\u2014no more than an idea. The eggs and Gruy\u00e8re fuse around the greens producing spots of cheesy bronzing. For a moment, a dozen ingredients coexist in uneasy harmony in chard tart, contained within the borrowed perfection of its fluted rim. This is what we call le cooking, mes amis!<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The quiche my family enjoyed may not quite have equaled Susie\u2019s tart, but it looked\u00a0lovely and offered a\u00a0pleasing balance of flavors. And it used up most of our Swiss chard, not to mention some cheese and cream I had leftover in the fridge. This is what we call la frugalit\u00e9, mes amis!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Chard Quiche<\/a><\/strong> (only very slightly adapted from T. Susan Chang\u2019s Chard Tart)<\/span><\/p>\n

Adapted\/reprinted with permission from A Spoonful of Promises<\/strong>, copyright 2011, T. Susan Chang\/Lyons Press<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Ingredients:<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

2 to 3 shallots or 3 cloves of garlic
\n1 small bunch Swiss chard (mine was small, at any rate; I imagine one could use more, but my cheese-to-chard balance\u00a0was perfect)
\n1 tablespoon olive oil
\nsalt
\n1 chunk (about 4 ounces) Gruy\u00e8re or Emmenthaler cheese, enough to yield 1 cup when grated [Okay, sue me, but I used a bit more; I\u2019m afraid when I start grating cheese I always get carried away.]
\n3\/4 cup heavy cream
\n3 egg yolks (I used 3-1\/2 because an egg-separation mishap)
\n1 8-or-9-inch pie crust (Susie uses a 10-inch tart crust)
\nnutmeg for grating<\/span><\/p>\n

Instructions:<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Susie makes her tart crust by hand and then blind bakes it for a bit before adding the filling, after which she bakes the whole thing together at 350 degrees. I used a more standard pie crust so I just did what I usually do with a quiche\u2014filled the uncooked pie shell and baked it. If you\u2019d like to try her fabulous tart crust, buy her book; you\u2019ll love it!<\/span><\/p>\n

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.<\/span><\/p>\n

Slice the shallots into thin rings or half-rings; if using garlic, slice the cloves thinly pole-to-pole. Strip the green leaves of the chard from the stems. Slice the leaves crosswise into 1\/4-inch ribbons (discard the stems or save for soup) and rinse to remove any sand.<\/span><\/p>\n

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When it begins to shimmer, add a pinch of salt and the sliced shallots or garlic. Saut\u00e9 the vegetables until tender and just beginning to caramelize. Raise the heat to medium-high and add the sliced chard all at once. Cook together, stirring, until the chard has wilted and is once again quite dry. Season to taste and remove from heat.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coarsely grate the cheese. In a measuring cup, beat the cream, eggs yolks, and a pinch of salt together vigorously with a fork.<\/span><\/p>\n

Assemble the pie: scatter half the cheese in a scant layer over the dough. Layer the cooked chard mixture over that. Pour the yolk-and-cream mixture over the chard, and scatter the rest of the cheese on top. Grate a small amount of nutmeg over the whole thing and place the pie (on top of a cookie sheet or larger pan in case of spills!) in the oven.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bake the quiche for 35 to 40 minutes, until the surface is golden brown. Let it sit for 10 minutes to set before eating. (If you\u2019re impatient, you\u2019ll have runny but yummy quiche.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Serves 4 to 6.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I always need a little prod in January. After the novelty of the new year wears off there I am, stuck in winter mode with a craving for comfort food and a slightly fuzzy brain. I have nothing against comfort food, but it\u2019s not the best thing in the world for the Tinky body, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1469,9,42],"tags":[1752,1472,1471,1470],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9622"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9649,"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9622\/revisions\/9649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}