Books |
Hedgebrook Cookbook: Celebrating Radical Hospitality
Denise Barr and Julie Rosten
By
Published: Dec 03, 2013
Category:
Food and Wine
A reader recently complained, “What’s with all these cookbooks? Please get back to real books.”
Dude, I’d love to.
The problems are: 1) The cookbooks I’ve reviewed this fall are terrific and irresistible. 2) These cookbooks are better than almost all of the “real” books I’ve seen this fall. 3) The good “real” books this season are 600-800 pages, and although people seem to be buying them, my informal interviews suggest that very few buyers have morphed into readers. But, yes, even my wife is sated with the fall cookbooks. This will be the last.
The irony of “Hedgebrook Cookbook: Celebrating Radical Hospitality” is that it’s not spectacular as a cookbook. The 90 recipes are middle-of-the-road American, designed to fuel high-consciousness women who lean vegetarian. Spinach pie. Chard frittata. Ginger broth with sweet potato. Tuscan kale and apple salad. Tofu with Napa cabbage salad. Grilled salmon. Cauliflower mac and cheese. Grilled portabella mushroom burgers with cilantro aioli. Vegetarian enchiladas.
The value of the recipes is in the context. Hedgebrook is a 48-acre retreat for writers — female writers — on an island. It was born in the 1980s, when Seattle philanthropist Nancy Nordhoff bought a working farm on Whidbey Island on a bay with a view across Puget Sound to Mount Rainier. Soon she had a mission: “A literary nonprofit, our mission is to support visionary women writers whose stories and ideas shape our culture now and for generations to come.” [To support Hedgebrook by buying the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
She built cabins: small, snug, just close enough to one another that the writers wouldn’t feel isolated. Of course there was a garden. And at night, the nine writers-in-residence would gather — with the cooks — for dinner, reading and conversation.
Gloria Steinem: “It’s as if women took our 5,000 years or so of nurturing experience, and turned it on each other.”
Dorothy Allison: “When I came to Hedgebrook, it was almost impossible for me to be comfortable with people who were determined to make my work easier, to serve me wonderful food and encourage me in every way possible to relax and focus on my writing. The first night there, I went back from dinner and sat in the dark almost weeping. Getting used to that determined radical hospitality was one of the hardest things I have done in years — and one of the best. Who would guess that something so simple and basic could be so revolutionary?”
Since 1988, Hedgebrook has been a refuge for 1,500 writers. More than half are women of color. Some are young and unpublished; some, like Gloria Steinem, are icons. The word is out — each year, 1,000 women apply, nine are chosen.
Wholesome. Toothsome. Food fit for Gloria Steinem. Food for thought — and feeling. Like this:
Roast Chicken with Carrots
1 whole chicken (4 to 5 lbs), rinsed
1 lemon, zested
10 sprigs of fresh thyme, divided
3 to 4 cloves garlic
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt, divided
1 tsp pepper, divided
2 T butter, softened (or olive oil)
2 onions, cut in wedges
4 carrots, cut into 1 to 2-inch chunks
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Rinse chicken and pat dry with paper towels. Zest the lemon and set zest aside. Cut the zested lemon into 6 wedges, and place inside the chicken cavity along with 4 sprigs of thyme.
Mince garlic, and mix with 1 tsp kosher salt. Remove leaves from 6 stems of thyme, and mix with the garlic, along with the lemon zest. Using your fingers or the end of a wooden spoon, separate the chicken skin from the breasts, starting at the neck. Using fingers, insert paste under the skin, working it across the breast.
Rub the whole chicken with butter (or olive oil). Sprinkle all sides with remaining salt and pepper. Place a roasting rack in your roasting pan, and scatter onions and carrots around the edges. Place chicken breast-side-down in roasting pan.
Roast chicken in preheated oven for 20 minutes. Rotate bird on its side, and roast another 20 minutes. Rotate bird to the opposite side and roast for 20 more minutes. Place chicken breast-side-up for the remaining 30 to 40 minutes. When juices run clear when cut into between the leg and thigh, the bird is done.
Remove from oven and tent with foil; let rest for 10 minutes. Skim fat off pan juices and set aside.
Plate chicken with carrots and onions scattered around, pour juices over chicken and veggies, and serve.
