How to Cook a Wolf

We've been at war for over four years now. I first read MFK Fisher's "How to Cook a Wolf" 10 years ago, when I tore through the one-volume compilation, "The Art of Eating," during a particularly boring summer in suburban New Jersey. A lot of the children's books I read growing up also had World War II in the background, nothing really intrusive or disturbing, but the characters were always talking about buying victory bonds or hoarding sugar ration cards or collecting tin for the army. So Fisher's advice to those who were scrimping and sacrificing didn't seem odd, just very quaint and earnest, and not something that would ever be relevant in my lifetime.

So now we are at war, but you would never know it to look at what we eat and how we eat. Food and foodie culture have come to mean so much more than nourishment, and even more than status and money. Pork and other fatty meats feel like an obsession in New York, and people seem almost proud, rather than just happy, to eat at a place like Momofuku or Fette Sau, where vegetarians and dietary restrictions in general are shunned. In some ways, New York's trendy love of unrestrained food is part of a general movement towards slow food, the kinds of food our grandparents ate, before people got obsessed with calories, sugar, and carbs. But in other ways, especially in a city like New York, the food trend of absolutely no restraints feels weirdly macho, with each eater out to show they can eat more, in quantity and quality, than anybody else. It's silly of me to complain, since I'm not the kind of eater this culture is mocking. I mean, I go around declaring that vegans must be bad in bed. But reading "How to Cook a Wolf," and eating a meal inspired by it, has been making me think about the kind of satisfaction Fisher describes, and whether the culture I live in knows that kind of satisfaction.

At one point, MFK Fisher describes a friend who is very poor but still very fond of giving dinner parties. At Sue's "wolf-dodging" dinners, she would serve "little bowls of chopped fresh and cooked leaves," a "common bowl of rice," giving you a "soup dish full of sliced catcus leaves and lemon-berries and dried crumbled kelp." The food was good, not because "she wandered at night hunting for leaves and berries; it [was] that she cared enough to invite her friends to share them with her, and could serve them, to herself alone or to a dozen guests, with the sureness that she was right." MFK Fisher is the last person to suggest eating is an unimportant activity. But what she does suggest, which would be heresy in our foodie-culture, is that what we eat may not be quite so important.

"How to Cook a Wolf" was our reading for this month's book club dinner. (It's true, I belong to yet another food club, a book club that focuses on books about food and wine.) Maaike, the host, decided to serve a simple meal in keeping with our reading, costing less than $25. She was almost embarrassed to serve it: a hot, heaping bowl of spaghetti with butter, cheese, and fresh sage she couldn't stop herself from adding; some peas and baby onions from a frozen bag; and big wedges of iceberg lettuce.



Obviously, I am not one to advocate deprivation for deprivation's sake. Just because our president doesn't call on us to sacrifice in any way for a war only he believes in doesn't mean I'm going to self-ration my sugar to feel morally superior. But Maaike's "Wolf"-inspired dinner was as satisfying as MFK Fisher promises. There was red wine and good conversation and lots of laughter. The food was good; it didn't need to be anything more.

Mi lindo Peru

Koreans hate eating alone. Food is a social activity, which is as it should be, but what it means is that it's very rare to see a woman eating alone, even in a fast-food outlet. There's a Korean saying, better not to eat at all than to eat alone.

Obviously, I don't agree. But eating alone in a fine restaurant, in a restaurant with white tablecloths and murmuring couples and celebrating parties, is still hard. Last November, I ended up in Lima, Peru, alone for the night before my flight back to New York. My hostal ended up being across the street from the famed "Astrid y Gaston," a restaurant I had been reading about on Chowhound.com. It's celebrated for using traditional Peruvian ingredients in inventive ways, and I was dying to try it. But I had never eaten alone at a good restaurant before. Was this the right first time? The fact that my hostal was so close was clearly a sign from God, if I believed in God.

I tried calling to make a reservation, got a busy signal, and promptly gave up. But then I ended up at a bookstore looking at Peruvian cookbooks, and found one by a Gaston. When I asked the nice young clerk if it was the same Gaston of "Astrid y Gaston," he started flipping through the pictures, sighing and smiling: "Que delicioso!" Another sign! I invoked M.F.K. Fisher, the patron saint of all women eating alone, gritted my teeth, and marched towards the restaurant. It wasn't open for lunch, and it looked so closed up, I almost gave up again, but the security guard looked friendly and I blathered at him in broken Spanish until he let me into their office. The two young women there and I had such a hard time understanding each other, but there was a lot of smiling and finally a dawning of understanding on my part that yes, there were no tables available, but they could make me a solo reservation in the lounge.

So now I had a reservation, other people who would expect me to show up, but as I got dressed later that day, I still considered just eating at the cafe down the street. I had just gotten off of a 4-day trek on the Inca Trail, had no nice clothes, and the only shoes I had other than my mud-covered boots were my mud-covered Converse sneakers. The moment I walked into the restaurant, I wanted to hide. It was beautifully lit, modern, one of the chicest restaurants in Peru if not South America. I was led to a low table in the lounge, where I tried to tuck my feet into themselves. Just being in the lounge, tucked away from the open dining room, I felt sort of unwanted and hidden away. The waiter quickly brought out some snacks--olives, a spongy, feta-like cheese, and delicious garlic and oil dip--and I was so grateful to have something to do. I recognized a couple from the trail, and they recognized me, but they didn't take pity on me and ask me to join them. I kept eating.

And then, Hans, the angel head bartender, noticed me. "What are you doing, sitting there alone? Come sit at the bar!" I almost tripped over myself rushing the two feet to the bar. He told me about the different pisco cocktails, helped me pick my menu, and basically made me feel incredibly welcome. I chose a potito sour, a yeasty almost beer-like cocktail, then a tiradito to start, like ceviche with with long strips of fish rather than cubes.



Then a blue corn ravioli filled with parmesan scallops in a light, slightly astringent broth.



And of course, dessert, rice pudding fried into little donuts with an intensely flavored passionfruit sorbet. Hans really approved of this choice.



The whole meal was concluded with the most beautiful petit fours: tiny alfajores, which are cookies sandwiched with dulce de leche (caramel), and candied aguaymanto, which are tiny husked tomato-like fruits.

The other bartenders didn't speak English as well as Hans, but they smiled at me constantly, happy to see me so happy. Hans would talk a bit between drinks he was mixing, offer me tastes of different cocktails, and explain what I was eating. What I loved about this meal was that all of them seemed to respect my deep desire to have good food, even if alone. They were friendly because they were happy for me, but they didn't see eating alone as something to be embarrassed about, to cover up with a lot of chatter. I was still eating alone, and amazingly, I was happy doing so.

About this blog

Being single, living alone, and loving food, I sometimes feel like the world is conspiring against me. Groceries are sold in value-packs. I only have one pair of hands to carry groceries home. No one is buying me a Le Creuset dutch oven or a Cuisinart food processor off my wedding registry. It's hard to justify opening a bottle of wine just for myself, though I do it anyway. And sometimes, you just can’t get around buying one really big fish.

Eating out has its own challenges. I’m slowing getting over the awkwardness of eating alone in sit-down restaurants, with the help of M.F.K. Fisher, but even in hole-in-the-wall places, eating alone means I’m facing only one kind of curry, instead of three or four.

Of course, I love cooking for other people. I’m the daughter of a woman who equates feeding with love, and there’s nothing like having friends around my dinner table tucking into food I’ve chopped, browned, and simmered all day. I have people over for dinner almost once a week, whether it’s my best friend for a clean-out-the-pantry meal or my supper club of gourmands.

But most of the time, I can't just feed other people to deal with my leftovers, or my other challenges eating and living alone. This is how I'm figuring it out, how I'm learning to adapt recipes and be frugal, without compromising quality or variety.

And no matter how much I complain about not being able to buy 6 kinds of cheese in one go, there are things I love about eating alone. No one is vegetarian in my house. No one is telling me he doesn’t eat anchovies or olives. I can try some elaborate new recipe without worrying that I’ll make anyone sick other than myself. I can eat in my underwear, which is often necessary when the oven’s been on for hours.

It makes me happy.