Recipes for Trouble

Out of the corner of my eye I see two elderly ladies come onto the streetcar.

I keep an eye out for these ladies. I’m like an old lady vigilante. If there’s young able- bodied people sitting in the only three seats reserved for elderly and disabled, I give them the stink eye. Maybe it’s because my ma’s an old lady who takes the bus too.

There’s some kind of dispute over transfers going on, so I look more closely. I see one of the ladies is my neighbour, Olga. Olga’s got Parkinson’s. I can see her hands shake as she laboriously unfolds the transfer and peers at it. I get up from my seat to ask what’s going on. Olga’s powdered cheeks are flushed with humiliation.

The driver’s berating them, these two old disabled ladies coming from church. Is. There. Anything. I. Can. Do. I ask the ladies. I don’t want to offer to pay their fare. That would make it look like Olga and her friend were scamming the system.

Whatever. Just go siddown. Says the driver loudly so everyone can hear, his voice dripping with bitter scorn.

I find Olga and her friend a seat. It’s Wednesday. They’ve just been to church and Bingo at the community centre. They take three buses to get there. It’s Olga’s one day out. She looks forward to it all week.

We get off at Rusholme Drive and I walk Olga home. Her hand is warm and light on my arm.

When I get home I phone the Transit complaint line. I talk to Serge, the gruff cowboy they chose to handle human relations. Would. You. Treat. Your. Mother. Like. That. I ask Serge. If they gave me the wrong transfer, yes, yes I would. Says Serge. He’s a little over-enthusiastic about the hell he’d gladly put his blood relations through.

He says he’ll make sure my complaint is fully investigated.

A few days later, Serge leaves a message on my voicemail. Unh, this situation has been, unh, fully investigated, He says. The decision is, unh, the driver acted correctly.

The following week, I go to visit Olga. I pop in once or twice a month. We have tea, and Polish honey cake. She shows me old photos, relates another chapter from her transnational life story.

I tell her I’ve complained to the TTC. I don’t tell her about their response. She gets that flush again and goes to find her purse. She’s gone about four minutes. Comes back, spends another five minutes unclasping the bag. Pulls out a wad of transfers. I. Gave. Him. Wrong. One. I. Was. So. Flustered. She says. Here. Is. Right. One.

For her, it’s not even about the rudeness of the driver or the inadequacies of a crappy transit system. It’s that someone thought she was cheating. As an immigrant, her life is built on being a decent citizen even if the rules of citizenship make no sense. I’m sure she has lain awake fretting about this incident.

I let her show me more pictures, pour me more tea. By the time I leave, newly budding branches and the smokestack of the chocolate factory down the street are black against a smoky sky. I’m behind in the marking I was going to do that day but that’s alright. Visiting Olga is like entering a portal, going back in time. Reminding me of old-fashioned values, their stark contrast against the fluid, unmindful buzz of city life.

I leaf through drifts of paper assigning letters like decoration.

Connected to each letter is a life a dorm room a Facebook page a beating heart a family eagerly awaiting .

My fingers move across a keyboard calculating

The sun rises and falls in wider swaths each day

The drifts melt and then accumulate again

I look up from my desk and see

a lovelorn face

a wall of bricks

branches with their promises of blossoms.

Has a recipe ever performed a healing or transformative role in your life?

The earliest recipe books did not concern themselves with soup and pastry: they provided directions for magic. Papyrus relics from Egypt, written in Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew and Aramaic attest to a range of recipes for spells and healing potions.

Later, as recipe books became more tied to culinary lore, herbal and magical remedies would often appear in the margins. Sometimes, as in my mother’s Ukrainian Catholic Women’s League cookbooks, fanciful concoctions appeared at the ends of chapters, unconsciously echoing the supernatural tone of the earliest recipes ever written.

Recipe For Happiness

From Tested Recipes, published by the Ukrainian Catholic Women’s League of St Josaphat’s Parish, 1963

The other night The Gay Schoolteacher came over for dinner. His beautiful smile faded slightly when he saw me. Blood was gushing from my finger, and my oven was erupting into flames.

I was trying out a new recipe, from Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries, which I got for Christmas. Slater is food writer for The Guardian and the author of eight books. Kitchen Diaries is an account of Slater’s activities in the kitchen, over the period of a year. As such it’s a rather prosaic account of weather, shopping and cooking: lovely at first, and with great photos, and then a bit repetitious.

The bloody gash was my fault, but the fat fire could have been blamed on the recipe. It didn’t specify the size of the pot (mine was way too small), and there was too much fat in the recipe. And then there was the fact that I was seriously in the weeds with marking, and seriously not capable of cooking a meal without courting disaster.

But back to Kitchen Diaries. I do like how casual the author is. Lunch may be a complex stew but dinner might just be cooked rainbow chard tossed with olives and lemon olive oil, eaten on sourdough toast: “A supper that fills us with joy.”

Recipe-wise, the book’s a tad frustrating since there’s no separate index for the recipes: you may be intrigued by his chickpea-squash curry and you may never find it again. (which makes me wonder if I should index the recipes in my next food memoir)!

I made Slater’s chicken stew. It was quite a bit of work for a gal with teaching, marking, research, writing, and a radio interview to do. The marinade demanded six ingredients, and the chicken needed to marinate overnight (or in my case, a scant two hours). The Gay School Teacher helped me bandage up my finger, and the fire subsided without the intervention of municipal authorities.

We were pretty happy to sit down to dinner. The stew didn’t quite deliver on flavour but texturally it was perfect for a chilly almost-spring March evening, and two old friends engaging in a conversation that has spanned more than three decades. Recipe for happiness? Yeah, I think so, with mashed potatoes, some good French wine and The Schoolteacher’s spicy chocolate cake thrown in.

How do you use recipes? What cookbooks got you through the winter? What’s your magic culinary recipe these tentative, almost-spring days?

Chicken Stew
I’ve tweaked Slater’s recipe to make it easier and more flavourful. It’s also much improved the following day.

1 can cannelini or Romano beans
A large chicken, cut into 8 pieces
25 ml olive oil
50 ml balsamic vinegar
8 plump cloves garlic, peeled
3 or 4 bay leaves
2 teaspoons herbes de Provence
1 teaspoon tarragon
Grated orange zest from 1 large orange
1/4 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon kosher salt
several grinds of black pepper
6 medium leeks, thinly sliced
2 medium sized sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
1/2 litre chicken stock
splash of white wine or vermouth

Combine balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, bay leaves, herbs, orange zest, orange juice, salt and pepper in a large non-reactive bowl. Add chicken, making sure to coat it completely. Place in a cool place for 3-4 hours or overnight.

Set oven at 300 degrees. Brown chicken pieces until golden in a large non stick fry pan, shaking off and reserving the marinade before you do. Place chicken in a large Dutch oven. Deglaze fry pan with wine or vermouth, then add leeks and garlic. When softened, add marinade and chicken stock and let it come to a boil. Add the beans and sweet potato to the chicken then add the liquid. Cover, and place in oven for 1 to 2 hours or until chicken is cooked through. Add salt, pepper to taste. Serve over polenta or mashed potatoes.