I don't pretend to be unaware of how fortunate I am. I was born with the passions, desires, imperfections, and quirks that set me on the path to self-employment. This allows me to spend a significant amount of time at home, saving commuting time, and indulging in my divine feminine. I seemingly effortlessly buzz between adding a dash of fresh herbs from the herb garden to the simmering crockpot, baking a cake with the best junior baker I know (aka: my 3 1/2-year-old Cashie), letting the dog in and out countless times a day, switching laundry loads, attending Zoom meetings with mentors and clients, creating marketing campaigns, researching properties, negotiating contract terms, cleaning up after whichever small dependent just happened to have an accident on the carpet today, exercising, practicing yoga, staying connected with friends and family, arranging community outreach and charity workshops...the list of tasks that I oscillate between seems endless and intricate.
But I truly thrive when I feel in my flow, all of my tasks seamlessly fitting together in a time efficiency Tetris that is ineffably satisfying.
All that said, sometimes it just feels right to devote a little extra time to dinner preparation because my senses crave the stimulation. It's not healthy to live immersed in the doldrums of routine without novelty. We need novelty, I say! For me, cooking becomes an activity where I can enter a flow state. As the eldest child of a five-child, single-parent family, I spent a lot of time at home with my siblings without my mom. She had to work three jobs at times and attended college. She was literally striving to achieve the "American Dream" of climbing the socio-economic ladder, and she did it! There were sacrifices and consequences, just like there are for all actions. But one of the real upsides was my deep love of food and food preparation as a means of creating art and experiencing deep cultural/social connections.
One of my mom's many jobs before she graduated from her physical therapy program (and even quite a few years afterward to make some extra money) was waiting tables, mainly at a local favorite in NH, the Common Man in Ashland, and some of their other locations throughout NH from time to time. While the food there can be categorized as "American Fare", some of the most well-trained, talented, and culturally literate chefs that I know I met during my mom's tenure with the company. The front-of-house staff was also largely well-traveled, culturally competent, open and affirming, dazzlingly interesting, and magnetic love bugs.
Here, at a time when I felt less than as a member of a lower-class family, food entered my life and leveled the playing field. At the Common Man, you could eat delectably soft, yet chewy escargot, drenched in clarified butter, topped with just-golden toasted flaky puff pastry squares and fresh herbs from the herb garden on the patio for $10 (this was a while ago now, I am not sure what they are charging these days, but I feel pretty certain that they have continued to keep pricing as accessible as possible). Or you could have fresh local mussels, steamed and bathed in a white wine, butter, and lemon sauce with fresh herbs and crusty on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside baguette slices to soak up the juices for that same $10! And of course, we got a discount because my mom worked there so we were able to experience delicious, beautiful, multi-cultural cuisine from a pretty young age, and it acted as an elevator, bringing all people of all socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities, creeds, and cultures onto one playing field - the only place from which I believe we can experience true connection with each other.
There are many ways to do it, but I think that food is such an effective way because it's a shared, immersive sensory experience. At the same time as breaking bread with whomever is in your company (or in your environment, like people at other tables in the restaurant), through the shared experience of indulging in the senses and the inherent flood of memories and positive and negative associations that we all have with the sensory input that we are receiving together, it bonds us, even the most unlikely pairs amongst us. Each meal becomes an opportunity to experience a resonant and healing microcosm of the larger threads that connect us all - and the individual once again feels inextricably connected to all of the universe. Connection equals the antidote for loneliness, which equals the antidote for the root cause of innumerable diseases, disorders, imbalances, mental disturbances, etc.
My real love of cooking on my own began early. At 9, I had already shattered and set a glass mixing bowl on fire on my stovetop, trying to bake some recipe or other from my grandmother's passed down "Better Homes and Gardens: New Cook Book". Our neighbor Alby, who lived in the converted garage apartment at the back of my driveway, had to rush in and throw salt on the, while not raging, still ablaze pile of shattered glass and incinerated sugar on the stovetop.
Throughout my childhood, while my mom was kicking ass and taking names, making the impossible possible, I was creating foods using the inspirations from the eclectic and raucous restaurant crew that surrounded us, an unhealthy obsession with Iron Chef (the original Japanese seasons, duh?), Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares (the original UK series, obv.), all of the Chopped iterations, all the Food Network Challenge iterations, and most Food Network shows in general. But the ingredients were seemingly impossibly limited to whatever we had around in the fridge, freezer, and cabinets. I had to make constant substitutions to recipes, and over time, I began to make associations between foods with similar chemical properties, foods with similar flavor profiles, similar textures, etc. The result: a super smooth and sequential thought association between the ingredients at my disposal, with recipes that I could create with them.
I'm grateful every day for my culinary beginnings. It has made me extremely resourceful, in part helped foster a flexible mind that can handle less than my perception of the "ideal" situation, assisted in my journey to feeling fully connected to all beings, of all walks of life. And it has blossomed into something that truly feels like a creative outlet in my everyday life. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, more than I could ever convey in words, to the culinary gods and goddesses.
Anyway, this brings us full circle, back to this weekday oasis that I am about to share with you. I had a problem, a BIG problem...ARUGULA. I had just picked up week one of our summer-long CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share at Sunrise Farm in White River Junction, VT. I had easily devoured the tender heads of lettuce and crunchy, vibrant orange carrots in my daily smoothies and salads, but try as I might, I had just NOT been able to get through the massive bounty of perfectly spicy, uniquely prehistoric-esque arugula.
Arugula became the object of my pre-dinner ruminations. A stormy sea of mixed and conflicting thoughts swallowed whole any other competing musings that may try to surface, most strongly between the hours of 4-5 pm. "What will I do about dinner?", "Forget it, they'll figure it out", "I could just eat a bunch of fistfuls of the lunch meats and cheeses in the magical deli drawer", "this is what they invented takeout for", and on and on it goes.
On this particular day, while I had been just as busy as ever, I truly pined for that weekend feeling. And with this arugula predicament at the top of my mind, my thought associations slowly gelled into a meal to inspire such delight as to be heralded for years to come as the most joyous union of tastebuds and foodstuffs, ever experienced on a Wednesday.
While the impression that I left on my family may not have met my aforementioned aspiration, there was much yummying done by all that night, and all was well with the world.
Without further ado, here is the recipe for:
Gluten-Free Arugula Flatbread with Pistachio, Dates, and Fresh Herbs- A Basil Crusted Flatbread Pizza - with fresh herbed creamy scampi sauce, rotisserie chicken, caramelized onions, garlic, and dates, chopped pistachios, mozzarella, Monterey jack, and cheddar cheeses, drizzled with local honey and balsamic reduction, and topped with fresh thyme and basil.
(AKA: My Dinner Can Beat Up Your Dinner)
Courtesy of CSA membership @Sunrisefarm @WhiteRiverJunctionVT, this delightful recipe features arugula and chives.
Equipment Needed:
1 large saucepan with lid
1 medium saucepan
Whisk
Rubber spatula
Spatula
Baking sheet
Oven and stovetop
Parchment paper
Ingredients:
Crust:
Store-bought “It’ll Be Pizza” Gluten-free basil pizza dough (thawed in the refrigerator until soft). Feel free to make your own if you’re feeling ambitious.
Olive oil
Toppings:
1 Vidalia onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, ground to a rough paste (see directions below)
Olive oil (I love @kosterina Everyday EVOO)
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup chopped pistachios
4 dates, pits removed and diced
1/4 cup diced chives
1/8 cup diced thyme leaves
1/4 cup diced basil
Creamy scampi sauce:
1 stick of butter
1/4 cup cream (I used @Silk original soy creamer)
1.5-2 tbsp gluten-free all-purpose flour (I used @KingArthur cup for cup gluten-free all-purpose)
3/4 tsp psyllium husk powder
1.5 tsp lemon juice (to taste)
Salt and pepper to taste
1/8 cup finely diced fresh thyme leaves
1/8 cup finely diced fresh basil leaves
2.5-3 tbsp honey (to taste)
1 tbsp balsamic reduction (to taste)
Instructions:
Preheat the oven and prepare the crust according to the directions.
Prepare all your ingredients and keep them organized.
Garlic Paste Directions: Remove the skin from the cloves by placing the flat side of your chef’s knife on top of the clove (on top of a steady cutting board), and with moderate force, slam the heel of your hand onto the flat knife on top of the garlic. This will crush the garlic a little and make the skin easy to remove. Then cut off any fibrous ends and discard. Finely chop the garlic cloves, then sprinkle salt over the top of the evenly spread layer of chopped garlic. Again, take the flat side of the knife and using the heel of your hand again, apply pressure to the garlic and smash it between the knife and the cutting board. The salt adds extra abrasion. Continue until a rough paste has formed.
Coat the large saucepan with about 2 tbsp of olive oil and heat it to medium temperature. Place sliced onions in the heated pan and stir occasionally until they begin to brown. Then turn the heat down to medium-low, stirring frequently to prevent burning. Turn down to low after the onions are all an even caramel color, then add garlic paste. Cook until fragrant (about 2 min), add chopped pistachios and a splash more olive oil if the pan is dry. Cook for 1 more minute, remove from heat, add salt and pepper to taste, and cover.
Make the sauce. Place the stick of butter (preferably room temp but whatever temp, just heat it low and slow until melted) in your medium saucepan on low heat. When the butter is melted, add the cream and whisk together until well combined. Whisk flour in 1/2 tbsp at a time until the sauce starts to thicken. Continue whisking and add the psyllium husk powder which will give the sauce a bit more sturdiness. Keep whisking until the sauce is your desired consistency (I did mine until it resembled the consistency of pizza sauce). Whisk in lemon juice, honey, and balsamic reduction until well combined. Next, mix in thyme and basil and salt and pepper to taste. Stir over low heat for another 1-2 min, then remove from heat.
Assemble the pizza! I did sauce, chicken, then shredded cheese, then caramelized onion mixture, and date pieces on top. Bake in the oven at the temperature recommended for the gluten-free crust (mine was 475 degrees F) for 15-20 min. It’s done when the bottom crust is a little golden.
Top with more fresh basil, and drizzle honey (mine’s from @HallApiaries in Plainfield, NH), and balsamic reduction.
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