All Roads Lead to the Kitchen: M.F.K. Fisher

Spaghetti w/ Almonds in Cinnamon Honey Butter {cook the books: How to Cook a Wolf by MFK Fisher} | www.girlichef.com

"...since we must eat to live, we might as well do it with both grace and gusto." ~MFK Fisher

Our latest Cook the Books selection, How To Cook A Wolf, was originally published in 1942, and concerned eating in a time of war and the food and money shortages that inevitably accompany it. Author MFK Fisher (some say the first of the food writers) revisited and revised it in 1951, adding notes and additional recipes.

You can tell from chapter titles like "How to Be Cheerful Through Starving", "How to Be Content with a Vegetable Love", and "How Not to Be an Earthworm", that humor is as much a part of Fisher's writing, as is practical advice. Both simple recipes and techniques for frugality run rampant through the pages, but nary a recipe for braised wolf or wolf's head stew, as the wolf is simply a metaphor for hunger.

When deciding what dish I wanted to make to represent this book, I flipped back through all of the recipes and marked a few. Ones that had ingredients which I had readily available. I thought it would defeat the purpose of cooking the wolf if I had to go out and spend money to make something. I've made Fisher's Tomato Soup Cake several times, and (oddly enough) it is always a hit - plus I get to play "guess that secret ingredient".

But instead of using one of the recipes in the book, I decided to pull a passage that I'd made a note of from the chapter on "How to Distribute Your Virtue". This chapter has to do with making things stretch...be it by adding half the sugar as you normally would to the pot when making a jam, baking things in the oven for future meals at the same time that you're baking tonight's dinner (saves energy), or by cooking double the amount of rice, potatoes, or pasta that you normally would since you already have the water boiling.

So, when I made Spaghetti with Pesto the other night, I decided to use a larger pot and cook double the noodles. I separated them after I drained them, and rinsed the "extra" in cold water so that they wouldn't stick together. I then tucked them away for the following day.

In some of the [notes added in 1951], Fisher mentions the things that you can do with those extra starches that you've cooked and saved on heat consumption...

"Ah, rice pudding, rich with raisins! Ah, spaghetti baked with honey and shaved almonds in a buttery dish! Ah, potatoes any way at all but perhaps especially mixed with egg and cheese and fried! Ah."

Hmmmm. Spaghetti with honey and almonds and butter. YES! I kept tossing that idea around in my head, and decided that I would not be satisfied until I tried it. Now, I didn't skimp on the butter, so this dish seemed almost decadent. Naughty, even. But lawdy, was it a delightful little splurge! But a splurge that I didn't have to hit up the market for, everything was either in my pantry, fridge, or freezer.

"I believe that one of the most dignified ways we are capable of, to assert and then reassert our dignity in the face of poverty and war's fears and pains, is to nourish ourselves with all the possible skill, delicacy, and ever-increasing enjoyment. And with our gastronomical growth will come, inevitably, knowledge and perception of a hundred other things, but mainly of ourselves." ~MFK Fisher

Spaghetti w/ Almonds in Cinnamon Honey Butter

by Heather Schmitt-Gonzalez

Prep Time: 5 minutes (using pre-cooked sp

Cook Time: 8-12 minutes

Keywords: breakfast entree pasta almonds

Ingredients (serves 2-4)

for the Cinnamon Honey Butter:

4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon honey
~1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

for the spaghetti:

2-3 ounces Cinnamon Honey Butter
3/4 cup sliced almonds
12 ounces cooked spaghetti

Instructions

making the Cinnamon Honey Butter:

Stir all of the ingredients together until well combined. Plop the butter mixture onto a sheet of parchment or wax paper and roll into a small log. Refrigerate until ready to use.

making the Spaghetti:

Preheat the oven to 350° F.

Heat a medium skillet over medium-low heat. Add about 2 ounces of the cinnamon honey butter to the pan. As soon as the butter melts, add the almonds. Toss and stir until the almonds are coated in the butter, and they have started to turn golden, 2-3 minutes.

Remove from heat and toss in the cooked spaghetti noodles.

If you like, place another small pat of the cinnamon honey butter into the bottom of a baking dish (just large enough to hold the noodles). Dump the entire buttery noodle and almond mixture into the dish. Slide into preheated oven and bake for about 8 minutes, or until hot all the way through, with a few golden bits here and there.

Enjoy warm!

notes:

You will have extra Cinnamon Honey butter left over. Use it to spread on warm biscuits, or something along those lines.

If you like, fish out a spoonful of the toasty almonds before tossing in the pasta. Reserve and sprinkle over the top before serving. This is purely for aesthetic purposes.

I'm utterly enamored with and utterly confused by this dish all at the same time. When I read the line "Ah, spaghetti baked with honey and shaved almonds in a buttery dish!" in How to Cook a Wolf by MFK Fisher, I knew that I'd never eaten sweet-ish pasta...and that I needed to remedy that immediately.

The scent reminds me of those stands at the fair that sell warm, freshly sugared nuts in cones. I can't resist those, either. Therein lies the confusion. Spaghetti is dinner (or lunch). Sweets are dessert (or a snack). But I couldn't stop eating it. So, I don't know how to classify it, but I look forward to inviting the chaos into many more meals...

Our selection for this round of Cook the Books, How to Cook a Wolf by MFK Fisher, was chosen by Simona. Submissions are due today for this round (due Monday, July 29th), so if you're fast...you can still get in on the fun!

And if you want to join us, but haven't read the book or don't have time to post this time, we'd love to have join us in our next round, which I'll be hosting, with one of my favorite novels, The Baker's Daughter by the beautiful, kind, funny, amazing writer Sarah McCoy. Seriously, I adore this woman as much as I adore the book!

This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

In May '11, Gourmet posted a list of 50 Women Game-Changers (in Food) that runs the gamut from food writers to cookbook authors to television personalities to restauranteurs to chefs to food bloggers. Some are a given. Some are controversial. Speaking the names of some brings fond childhood memories. Speaking the names of others will make some readers cringe. And of course, some of our favorites were not even included. We food-lovers are a passionate bunch of people and whether we agree or disagree, every woman on this list has earned her place for a reason. Being a woman who is passionate about food (cooking, eating, talking about, writing about, photographing), when I caught wind of Mary from One Perfect Bite's idea of cooking/blogging her way through each of these 50 women...one per week...I knew I wanted to join her. Many of these women paved the way for us in culinary school, in the kitchen, in cookbooks, in food writing, and on television and I think it is a fabulous way to pay tribute to their efforts. Some of the women on the list have been tops with me for years. Some I have heard of (perhaps even seen, read, or cooked from) before. And there are even a handful that I am not familiar with at all. I excited to educate myself on each of these women game-changers and hope you look forward to reading along. We are going in order from 1 to 50.

the "Gourmet" prompt...

5. M.F.K. Fisher- Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher invented food writing. All food bloggers would like to be her.

I don't know if I want to be her, but I surely would love to know her. When I read her name as number five on the list, it seemed to ring some bells. I just wasn't sure where those bells were coming from. Who is this woman that I should know and revere? So, of course I started searching her name of google, amazon, and my library website. I reserved a copy of every single book in our library system that was written (in full or in part) by Fisher. I realized where I'd seen her name recently. It was in a fantastic, instructional cookbook I'd checked out from the library about six months back- Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji. Fisher wrote the eloquent introduction that sets the backdrop for non-Japanese people wanting to learn the art in their own kitchen. Well, I'm a bit embarrassed that I did not know more about her before. But I am whole-heartedly making up for that now. Since I knew that How to Cook a Wolf was written during war-times (dealing with food shortages and rationing) and my library didn't have it, I ordered a copy from Amazon right away so that I'd have time to read it.

Born Mary Frances Kennedy in Albion, Michigan in the year 1908, her family moved to Quaker community in California, though she was raised Episcopalian. Her father was a journalist, so Mary Frances was exposed to writing and a love of literacy at an early age. She married her first husband Alfred Young Fisher, whom she met while studying at the University of California and later wrote Long Ago in France: The Years in Dijon in remembrance of their years living in the "gastronomical capital of the world." She gained an appreciation on how to live well- economically and consciously. In the midst of various jobs, she loved to read and was inspired by an Elizabethian cookbook she found at the library. In turn, she began writing essays on food, eating, and cooking. Many critics thought that her first book, Serve it Forth was written by a man since her writing style differed so much from other women writers of her time. Fisher actually wrote around thirty books and there are more written about her, in tribute to her...not to mention compilations of her work. One of her best know books, How to Cook a Wolf, published in 1942, is a series of chapters or "essays" on "how to live and dine sanely and pleasureably during wartime and within tight budgets." Although this was written during WWII, her words still ring true in the world of today.

worth further exploration: (books) How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher, A Stew or a Story: An Assortment of Short Works by M.F.K. Fisher gathered by Joan Reardon, An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher by Anne Zimmerman, Long Ago in France: The Years in Dijon by M.F.K. Fisher, Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher by Joan Reardon

Reminiscent of pumpkin or carrot...people can't quite figure out what's in this cake. Perhaps it's the shape of it, like a loaf of quick bread, that perplexes people. It is moist and dense without being heavy. Sweet, yet laced with warming spices and studded with fruit and nuts, this loaf cake pairs as perfectly with afternoon coffee or tea as it does served as a dessert to a light meal. Tomato Soup Cake is one of those cakes I'd always heard talk of, but never tried. While initially I was going to go with something light, simple, and seasonal as is the style of Fisher, once I saw this cake in How to Cook a Wolf, I couldn't get it out of my head. I knew I needed to try it. While no cooking time was given and frosting was not included in the original recipe, neither was hard to figure out. She did say it was great "plain with coffee, or frosted with a covering of cream cheese and powdered sugar and a little rum if possible..." Sadly (for me), I was out of rum, but that didn't matter. I also love that she says: "This is a pleasant cake, which keeps well and puzzles people who ask what kind it is. It can be made in a moderate oven while you are cooking other things, which is always sensible and makes you feel rather noble, in itself a small but valuable pleasure."

This cake contains no eggs and very minimal butter in the conscience of war-time shortages and rationing.

Tomato Soup Cake

adapted slightly from How to Cook a Wolf by MFK Fisher

yield ~10 slices

cake:

3 Tbs. butter, room temp.

1 c. sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

1 can condensed tomato soup

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

⅓ tsp. freshly grated nutmeg

⅓ tsp. ground ginger

⅓ tsp. ground cloves

2 c. all-purpose flour

1½ c. (total) raisins, yellow raisins, chopped dates, chopped walnuts & pecans

frosting:

4 oz. neufchatel

1 Tbs. powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 325° F. Cream butter and sugar. Grease and sugar a loaf pan; set aside.

Combine baking soda with tomato soup...it'll be all bubbly and hard to turn away from (chemistry!). Sift spices and flour together in a separate bowl. Alternately add liquid and dry mixture in a couple of additions until just combined. Fold dried fruit and nuts in to batter. Scoop the thick batter into prepared pan, smoothing the top. Slide into oven and bake for ~60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack until cool enough to turn out of pan. Replace loaf on rack until almost cool.

Beat cream cheese and powdered sugar together and smooth across the top. Serve slices of slightly warm loaf cake alongside a cup of coffee or tea...a cold glass of milk. Also good at room temperature or even cold.

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (7/3/1908-6/22/1992)

"...there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself. When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts." ~M.F.K. Fisher (How to Cook a Wolf)

Who is cooking along with these 50 Women Game-Changers?