“Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.”

— Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim, 62.

4:39 pm  •  26 January 2012  •  View comments

Last night’s dinner was a big success, combining the idea from Whitney Chen’s excellent piece on roasting whole fish with this side dish from Dinner: A Love Story.

I topped and tailed a bunch of green beans, then tossed them with a good quarter cup of chopped almonds and maybe a tablespoon of chopped mint (if I had more, I would have used more). I took my two boneless whole trout out of the fridge, salted and peppered their insides and outsides, stuffed them with sliced lemon, sliced shallot, and a few sprigs of thyme, and rubbed them with a quickly made garlic oil (i.e., microplaned garlic stirred into olive oil).

I heated up a little too much olive oil in the cast iron pan over medium heat, then added the green beans, almonds, and mint to the pan. After arranging them relatively evenly into a bed, and after they started really sizzling, I laid the trout over top. Then into a 400º oven for fifteen minutes, after which the fish had reached its requisite 145º internal temp.

The fish was perfectly cooked, the combination of green beans with the almonds was really wonderful, and I love that the whole thing only dirtied one pan. I ended up making some simple steam-sauteed spinach as well, so there was a little more dishwashing to do, but nothing too serious. 

12:48 pm  •  25 January 2012  •  View comments

“

Where do these
Innate assumptions come from? Not from what
We think truest, or most want to do:
Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They’re more a style
Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,
Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got

And how we got it; looked back on, they rear
Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying
For Dockery a son, for me nothing,
Nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage.
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.

”

— Philip Larkin, from “Dockery and Son”

11:13 am  •  23 January 2012  •  View comments

“Grief is, in a sense, the bill that comes due for love.”

— George Saunders, in his eulogy for David Foster Wallace. 

4:25 pm  •  11 January 2012  •  6 notes  •  View comments

Three carrots, two stalks of celery, one onion. Two cups of split peas, one smoked ham hock, eight cups of water.

10:12 pm  •  10 January 2012  •  1 note  •  View comments

“Why should a life with some unusual metaphysical feature built into it inevitably end in unhappiness and early death?”

— Nicholson Baker, The Fermata, 279.

2:20 pm  •  24 December 2011  •  View comments

“This obligation to write out one’s own mind, to express the mind’s multifariousness and complexity, is something that Wallace and Baker are very interested in. Baker’s subsequent work attests to a slow rumination on everything his eye crosses, while Wallace seems not just committed to cataloging everything that goes through a mind but the act of mental mastication that occurs at the same time. If one could call Baker and find him home thinking, one could find Wallace home thinking about thinking. His stories are above all about thinking, the pain and recursion of it, the entrapment of it.”

— Barrett Hathcock, on Nicholson Baker as the link between Updike and Wallace.

8:52 am  •  24 December 2011  •  3 notes  •  View comments

They never made it to the park. They picnicked on each other. As Leonard pulled her toward the mattress, Madeleine dropped her packages, hoping the wine bottle didn’t break. She slipped her dress over her head. Soon they were naked, raiding, it felt like, a huge basket of goodies. Madeleine lay on her stomach, her side, her back, nibbling all the treats, the nice-smelling fruit candies, the meaty drumsticks, as well as more sophisticated offerings, the biscotti flavored with anise, the wrinkly truffles, the salty spoonfuls of olive tapenade. She’d never been so busy in her life.

-Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot, 66

I can describe the state I subsequently entered as one of unrelieved busy-ness. Boy, was I busy! I mean there was just so much to do. You go here and I’ll go there—okay, now you go here and I’ll go there—all right, now she goes down that way, while I head up this way, and you sort of half turn around on this … and so it went, Doctor, until I came my third and final time.

-Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint, 137

4:33 pm  •  29 November 2011  •  3 notes  •  View comments

Run, don’t walk, to make this Halal-style chicken and rice from the Serious Eats cookbook. The rare recipe that’s as good as the write-up makes it sound. This had me immediately dreaming of variations (as shawarma! swap out the coriander and oregano for cumin and cilantro and make tacos! etc!).

11:04 pm  •  16 November 2011  •  View comments

I made this poor man’s porchetta a few weekends back, and it was a big success. My pork shoulder was around five pounds (we had seven for dinner), and yet it still cooked in about two hours. Delicious, and even with all the diners, enough leftovers in the freezer for two further meals (for our little family, at least).

11:00 pm  •  16 November 2011  •  View comments