M.F.K. Fisher

Lapkritis 03, 2014 m Pusryčiai, Užkandžiai,
Komentarai (2)

Aš iki šiol nebuvau skaičiusi nei vienos Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher knygos. Kituose tekstuose esu sutikusi daugybę jos citatų, nuorodų į jos knygas, straipsnius, laiškus, bet nei pačių knygų, nei straipsnių niekada nesu atsivertusi. Nežinau kodėl. Gal nepasitaikė proga. Gal tos progos tiesiog neieškojau. Gal todėl, kad visada mieliau pasirinkdavau naujesnes knygas, tikėdamasi, kad tos naujesnės knygos bus man artimesnės. Prisipažinsiu, kad M.F.K. Fisher, bene didžiausias kulinarinio žanro autoritetas, mane šiek tiek baugino (angl. intimidated). Maniau, kad jos tekstai bus parašyti auštom frazėm, nušlifuoti, sausi, vadovėliniai. Nežinau, iš kur man kilo tokios mintys. Perskaičiusi pačią pirmą savo gyvenime M.F.K. Fisher knygą aš iškart supratau, kad visi mano išsigalvojimai neturėjo jokio pagrindo. M.F.K. Fisher tikrai, be jokios, anei mažiausios abejonės, yra viena geriausių (jeigu ne pati geriausia) kulinarinio žanro rašytoja, etalonas, pavyzdys ir nemirtinga klasika. Mano manymu, Fisher tekstus yra privalu skaityti visiems tiems, kas mėgsta kulinarines knygas, kas rašo blogus, ir tiems, kas nerašo jokių blogų ir neskaito išvis jokių knygų. Aš Jums iš anksto garantuoju, kad M.F.K. Fisher knyga bus vienas geriausių Jūsų gyvenime perskaitytų skaitinių.

Kol neskaičiau M.F.K.F, niekada nepastebėjau, kaip stipriai kitų autorių knygose yra jaučiamas jos rašymo stilius: Dorie Greenspan, Julia Child, Ruth Reichl, Molly Wizenberg, Tamar Adler, Amanda Hesser, Elizabeth Gilbert knygose ir jų receptuose maisto ruošimas – tai ne vien tik ingredientų apdorojimas tam tikra tvarka, sukuriant kažkokį patiekalą; tose knygose maistas – tai mąstymo būdas, tai gyvenimas nuo vienos vakarienės iki kitos, galvojant apie kitus pusryčius arba pietus, tai emocijos, asociacijos, prisiminimai, išplaukiantys sėdant prie stalo. Lygiai taip pat apie maistą kažkada seniai seniai rašė M.F.K. Fisher.

David Lebovitz neseniai facebook’e patalpino nuorodą į gana nemenką straipsnį apie tai, kokios atgyvenę ir moraliai pasenę yra M.F.K knygos, ir apie tai, kokia sustabarėjusi yra M.F.K Fisher proza, visiškai neatitinkanti šio laikmečio. Nežinau, kame slypi to straipsnio autoriaus gili nemeilė klasikei; gal to dergimo priežastis – paprasčiausias jo paties pasikėlimas. Nesiimu nagrinėti, kas ir kaip su tuo straipsniu. Aš kol kas esu perskaičiusi tik vieną M.F.K. Fisher knygą, ir man ji be galo ir be krašto patiko. Aš manau, kad skaitydami tokias knygas mes patys pradedame geriau rašyti, sklandžiau galvoti. Gal aš klystu. Gal tai tik hipnotizuojantis M.F.K. Fisher tekstų poveikis.

Aš įdedu kelias ilgas ištraukas iš M.F.K. Fisher knygos “How to Cook a Wolf”. Jas nurašiau, nes norėjau, kad ir Jūs paskaitytumėte, jeigu dar neskaitėte. Nebūtinai dabar tuojau pat – teksto čia nemažai, per porą minučių neperskaitysite. Bet, ištaikę gerą momentą, kai nereikės niekur skubėti, įsipilkite sau kavos ar arbatos, arba susimaišykite gerą kokteilį ir perskaitykite tas ištraukas, o paskui ir įdėtą duonos receptą (būtinai perkaitykite receptą!). O perskaitę man pasakykit, ką manot, ir ar ne tiesa, kad tai bene gražiausiai parašyta kulinarinė proza, kurią Jums kada nors gyvenime teko skaityti.

Aušra

M.F.K. Fisher | How to Cook A Wolf

* * *

It is not enough to make child hungry; if he is moderately healthy he will have all the requisites of a normal pig or puppy or plant-aphis, and will eat when he is allowed to, without thought. The important thing, to make him not a pig or puppy, not even a delicate green insect, is to let him eat from the beginning with thought.

Let him choose his foods, not for what he likes as such, but for what goes with something else, in taste and in texture and in general gastronomic excitement. It is not wicked sensuality, as Walter Scott’s father would have thought, for a little boy to prefer buttered toast with spinach for supper and a cinnamon bun with milk for lunch. It is the beginning of a sensitive and thoughtful system of deliberate choice, which as he grows will grow too, so that increasingly he will be able to choose for himself, and to weigh values, not only sensual but spiritual.

He will remember, some time when he is a man, that once he decided not to eat a chocolate bar, but to let the taste of a stolen apple ride an hour longer on his appreciative tongue. And whatever decision he must make as a man will probably be the solider for that apple he ate so long since.

The ability to choose what food you must eat, and knowingly, will make you able to choose other less transitory things with courage and finesse. A child should be encouraged, not discouraged as so many are, to look at what he eats, and think about it: the juxtapositions of color and flavor and texture … and indirectly the reasons why he is eating it and the results it will have on him, if he is an introspective widgin. (If not, the fact that what he eats is not only good but pretty will do him no harm).

If, with the wolf at the door, there is not very much to eat, the child should know it, but not oppressively. Rather, he should be encouraged to savor every possible bite with one eye on its agreeable nourishment and the other on its fleeting but valuable esthetic meaning, so that twenty years later, maybe, he can think with comfortable delight of the brown toasted piece of bread he ate with you once in 1942, just before that apartment was closed, and you went away to camp.

It was a nice piece of toast, with butter on it. You sat in the sun under the pantry window, and the little boy gave you a bite, and for both of you the smell of nasturtiums warming in the April air would be mixed forever with the savor between your teeth of melted butter and toasted bread, and the knowledge that although there might not be any more, you had shared that piece with full consciousness on both sides, instead of a shy awkward pretense on not being hungry.

All men are hungry. They always have been. They must eat, and when they deny themselves the pleasures of carrying out that need, they are cutting off part of their possible fullness, their natural realization of life, whether they are poor or rich.

* * *

Indeed, it can be said that fumes linger, period. They lurk in cupboards. They drift subtly through closet doors, no matter what cunning draft you may enforce, at risk of double pneumonia, through the kitchenette. They hang in the curtains, and fall out at you two nights later like overripe shreds of dead ghost.

There is not much to do about it; you either like fried onion or hot cabbage salad enough to endure them, or you eat lettuce or green peas instead.

Or you compromise by covering one fume with another.

You can do it, according to the Stark Realism school, by lighting a crumpled piece of newspaper and dashing through the rooms with it. You can, much more effectively, pour a drop or two of oil of eucalyptus or pine on a hot shovel and wave it around. If you want to feel like a character from one of the James brothers’ looser romantic moments you can float a few drops of oil of lavender in a silver bowl filled with hot water.

And if you are somebody I do not know and furthermore do not care if I never meet, you can burn a little cone of incense.

Or you can broil the meat, fry the onions, stew the garlic in the red wine … and ask me to supper. I’ll not care, really, even if your nose is a little shiny, so long as you are self-possessed and sure that wolf or no wolf, your mind is your own and your heart is another’s and therefore in the right place.

* * *

Perhaps this war will make it simpler for us to go back to some of the old ways we knew before we came over to this land and made the Big Money. Perhaps, even, we will remember how to make good bread again.

It does not cost much. It is pleasant: one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with peace, and the house filled with one of the world’s sweetest smells. But it takes a lot of time. If you can find that, the rest is easy. And if you cannot find it, make it, for probably there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel, that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread. You should have four bread pans, which can be bought usually at junk-man’s if one of your female relatives does not have them stuck away in some cupboard under the back stairs. You might even buy the glass ones, which are very good, although les romantic. You will need a big bowl, too.

Given these props, then, and an oven that will hold the four pans, you can safely embark on what may, for the first time at least, be a harrowingly entertaining process, but will lead to many calmer, peace-bringing times.

You can forget the soggy sterile slices that pop up dourly in three million automatic toasters every morning, and instead cut for yourself, if you will, a slice of bread that you have seen mysteriously rise and double and fall and fold under your hands. It will smell better, and taste better, than you remember anything could possibly taste or smell, and it will make you feel, for a time at least, newborn into a better world than this one often seems.

M.F.K Fisher | How to Cook a Wolf

White Bread

4 cups (1 quart) milk

¼ cup sugar

4 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons shortening

1 cake compressed yeast, or 1 package dry granular yeast

¼ cup lukewarm water

12 cups sifted all-purpose flour (approximately)

From there on, when you first assemble the ingredients, the dance begins. It is one that should be rehearsed a few times, probably, but I know that it can be done with astonishing if somewhat frenzied smoothness the first time.

First scald the milk. Then add the sugar, salt, and shortening, and let the whole cool until it is lukewarm. Then add the yeast, which has been softened in the tepid water.

Start stirring in the flour, mixing it slowly and thoroughly. When the dough is stiff enough to be handled easily, turn it out onto a lightly floured board or table-top, and knead it until it is smooth and satiny.

Kneading bread means pressing it rhythmically with the heel of each hand, in a gentle rocking movement, turning the dough over on itself with each push, folding it lightly, pushing, pressing. It is calming, musical rhythm. In eight or ten minutes, when the dough looks and feels as smooth as silk, you can stop.

Then shape the kneaded dough into a smooth ball, and place it in a bowl which has been lightly greased. Brush the surface fleetingly with melted fat, cover with a lid or a heavy cloth, and let rise in a warm place until it has doubled in bulk. Overnight is easiest. If you press the dough gently with your finger and a hole stays there, it is light enough.

Punch with your folded fist into the soft white mound, down as far as you can go. Then fold the edges into the hole you have made, turn the ball smooth side up, and cover and let it rise again.

When it is light enough to hold the impression of your finger, punch into it again. Then divide the dough into four even parts with a sharp knife, and round each part lightly into a smooth ball. Cover them well and let stay tranquil for about fifteen minutes.

Mold each one, then, into a loaf, by flattening it, and folding and stretching and rolling and stretching and folding until it will fit lightly into a greased pan, with the last seam on the bottom and a firm smooth top where it should be.

Brush the tops with melted fat, and let rise in a warm place until they have doubled in bulk, and then bake in a moderately hot oven (400 to 425o) for forty to forty-five minutes.

When the loaves are golden, slip them from their pans onto racks on any kind, to cool.

You can stand and look at them, even the first time, with ab almost mystical pride and feeling of self-pleasure. You will know, as you smell them and remember the strange cool solidity of the dough puffing up around your wrist when you hit it, what people have known for centuries about the sanctity of bread. You will understand why certain simple men, in old countries, used to apologize to the family loaf if by accident they dropped it from the table.

M.F.K. Fisher | How to Rise Like a New Bread

Balta Duona

Recepto šaltinis: M.F.K. Fisher | How to Cook a Woolf

1 stiklinė pieno + patepimui

1 šaukštas cukraus

1 šaukštelis druskos

1 šaukštas margarino

1 šaukštelis sausų mielių

3 stiklinės* miltų

*1 stiklinė = 236 ml

Į mažą puodelį supilti pieną sudėti margariną, suberti cukrų, druską, ir kaitinti ant silpnos ugnies, kol pienas sušils, o margarinas ištirps. Nukelti nuo ugnies, palikti, kad atvėstų. Kai pienas bus nebekarštas, o tik vos vos šiltas, suberti mieles ir išmaišyti.

Į didelį dubenį persijoti miltus, supilti pieno-mielių mišinį ir maišyti, kol susiformuos tešla. Tešlą dėti ant sauso pamiltuoto paviršiaus ir minkyti 8 – 10 minučių, kol tešla taps lygi ir elastinga. Iš tešlos suformuoti rutulį, dėti į aliejumi pateptą dudenį, tešlą apversti, kad aliejumi suteptas paviršius būtų viršuje. Dubenį uždengti dangčiu arba rankšluosčiu ir palikti šiltai, kad pakiltų, 3-4 valandas, arba pernakt.

Pakilusią tešlą suspausti, kad išeitų oras, vėl suformuoit rutulį, dubenį uždengti ir palikti, kad pakiltų, 1-2 valandas. Pakilusią tešlą vėl suspausti, kad išeitų oras, iš tešlos suformuoti kepaliuką ir palikti šiltai maždaug 15 minučių.

Stačiakampę kepaliuko formą patepti aliejumi. Į paruoštą formą dėti kepaliuką, lygiaja puse į viršų. Paviršių patepti aliejumi ir palikti šiltai, kad pakiltų.

Orkaitę įkaitinti iki 210^oC.

Pakilusio kepaliuko paviršių patepti pienu. Duoną pašauti į orkaitę. Kepti maždaug 40-45 minutes, kol kepaliuko viršus taps sodrios auksinės spalvos. Traukti iš orkaitės. Formą apversti. Duonos kepaliuką dėti ant grotelių, kad atvėstų.

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AušraLapkritis 5 2014, 07:09 AM Labai skaniai 'persiskaitė' jūsų parinktos ištraukos ir tikrai norėčiau nesutikti su Lebovitz kritika autorės atžvilgiu, tiksliau jos rašymo stiliaus atžvilgiu.O man, pavyzdžiui, kaip tik toks retro stilius daug mielesnis ir šiltesnis ir kadangi nebuvau nieko apie autorę girdėjus, turiu pripažinti suintrigavo...Ačiū:) ir dar, naudodamasi proga (kadangi rašau pirmą kartą) noriu tiesiog pagirti jūsų 'blogą' kurį pastaruoju metu, save pagaunu labai dažnai peržiūrint.Jauku, stilinga ir tikiu, kad skanu:)

AusraLapkritis 5 2014, 09:44 AM

Ausra, didelis aciu uz visus komplimentus; labai malonu!o del straipsnio apie MFKF - ten ne D. Lebovitz straipsnis, o Josh Ozersky; David tik nuoroda I facebook'a idejo;

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EditaLapkritis 4 2014, 07:24 PM As neskaiciau nei vienos kulinarines knygos ir siaip seniai knyga skaiciau... Ka tik nusipirkau internetu M.F.K. Fisher How to Cook a Woolf. Labai Aciu uz rekomendacija.

AusraLapkritis 4 2014, 11:00 PM

Edita, tai prasau, nera uz ka; tikiuosi, kad patiks; dabar lauksiu atsiliepimu apie knyga;

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