March 11th

Stissing House, artichokes, and what I'm reading.

Fake Spring Two is upon us. As susptected, many Brooklynites are eager to show shoulders. A few weeks too early, but I share in the excitement. I threw on short sleeves faster than you can imagine.

I spent the past weekend with friends in Great Barrington. We ate too much and commiserated in our collective bloat by gabbing on the couch and playing charades (“Movie… Three words… Second word… Two syllables…”) We found that trudging in boots through two feet of snow is a solid workout, fairly akin to walking on a warm, sandy beach. Obviously, we’ve got summer on the mind.

Thankfully things are warming up. Speaking for myself, I’m feeling much lighter and more focused now that the time has changed. There’s bird activity on my street (too early in the morning, unfortunately — nature’s alarm clock), a first sign of life after the decay of winter. The trees will bud before we know it.

A reconciliation

The artichoke threw the first punch. I welcomed it, in fact, with open arms. Call it a miscommunication or call it a missed connection, but things were prickly from the start. It seemed that neither of us were willing to smooth things over.

The artichoke is friendly — known and beloved. It holds significant agricultural space, culturally… like yams or corn. So why, on our first meeting, was it so provoked?

My first taste was jagged and rough. Surely nothing worth eating should be this complicated to understand. I swallowed the first leaf and my face twisted in confusion as it dragged down my esophagus, jagged and disagreeable. Of course I was younger then, naïve to the fact that the leaves of the artichoke are not meant to be chewed. Through the years I’ve made attempts to reconcile our differences, but more often than not I find that it’s a dish with too high an effort and too low a reward. Some broken relationships, I thought, can never be repaired.

Stissing House, the restaurant in Pine Plains from Claire de Boer, does a remarkable job of avoiding being total colonial cosplay. Given the structure’s history, it’s impossible to lean into the George Washington of it all (he slept there, supposedly), but Stissing House is fairly minimalist for its size, leaning on clean whites and seasonal blooms. There were tulips everywhere I looked.

My friends and I placed our drink orders but were too distracted by our conversation to make much of a plan with the menu. When our waiter arrived to take our dinner order, flushed and impatient, we rode by the seat of our pants. Jake’s Gouda, chicory caesar, Snowdance chicken, bavette steak, and Hudson Valley trout. Among the “ummm’s” and the “maybe we try the…?’s”, someone mentioned artichoke. Well, I thought, We meet again.

The artichoke mayonnaise hit the table first, in full bloom. An O’Keeffe by candlelight. “I’m gonna be honest,” I began. “I don’t really get artichoke.” Georgia was confused. “What’s there to get?” She plucked a leaf from the center, charred and golden. It gave way from the heart easier than I expected. She dipped it in the warm mayonnaise and took it between her teeth, pulling gingerly. Her eyes rolled sweetly to the back of her head.

I took a swift gulp of my martini and went in for the kill. What I found, surprisingly, was something far more agreeable than I remembered. Like picking meat from the bones, the supple parts of the artichoke that I pulled from its leaves melted in my mouth, swimming along with the warm salted mayonnaise. We plucked and plucked until only the soft heart was left. Georgia cut it into quarters and we swallowed them greedily. For once, the artichoke and I had set aside our difference. I smiled at the fact that we were friends.

On my bookshelf

I’m on an absolute reading tear this year, catching up on some essential food writing that I’ve been meaning to get to for years. While I was home in Florida last month, I finished Keith McNally’s ‘I Regret Almost Everything’ (loved it, until all of the super random Woody Allen praise), and devoured Laurie Colwin’s ‘Home Cooking’ and its sequel, ‘More Home Cooking’.

On the car ride back from Great Barrington, I finished Ruth Reichl’s ‘Save Me The Plums’, her memoir of her time as the Editor in Chief of Gourmet. It was my favorite of her books — really riveting, and her best writing in my opinion. I can see myself revisiting it every few years. Ruth’s Substack La Briffe is my favorite.

See you next week. xx