Weekly Dish

This summer, my sister came to stay with us. Nine years my junior, Elizabeth is the baby of our family; our two brothers occupy the middle territory, sisters flanked on either end. That makes me the oldest. By the time baby number four came along, my parents were well into the throes of a life structured around sporting seasons: our white mini-van scooted from one field to the next, and later, one town to the next, as my brothers batted and kicked and threw their way through boyhood and on into adolescence.

So, soon after my eighth birthday, when my mom announced that a baby was on the way, I faithfully knelt beside my bed every night and prayed for a sister. Now, as is true of most siblings I’m sure, there were certainly days I understood why people often said you should be careful what you wish for. Especially as I ventured into the teenage years with a toddler close on my heels, prying into my make-up cabinet, my telephone conversations, and my many purses, I often wondered what in the world I’d been thinking. Compounding the dissonance caused by our age gap, she moved into my room right about the time I started high school. She was seven, went to bed early, and wanted to sleep as bodily close to me as possible. I was sixteen, cultivating a fierce independence, and wanted nothing more than to be left alone.

Then, I left for college, and somewhere along the way, we became the greatest of friends. We’ve tried to retrace our steps, to figure out where and how we made the transition, but now, it’s hard for me to remember a time we didn’t talk often about any and everything.

When she decided that she wanted to be around for the first few months of my daughter’s life, I was delighted. When she said she’d also like to learn her way around the kitchen while she was here, I was even more excited. David and I have taken turns teaching her what we know and what we like to make — she and David have made biscuits, loaves and loaves of bread, scones of several kinds, and stacks of cookies. My contributions to her culinary prowess tend to lean more towards the dinner side of things: at my request, she’s made risotto, crab cakes, shrimp scampi, and scads of salads. She’s gotten better at slicing and dicing, become quite adept at simply dressing a salad, and learned her way around a frying pan.

Mostly, though, she’s cultivating her taste in food, which, as far as I can tell, is one of the best ways to ensure success in the kitchen: to know what tastes good. She comes back from our grocery store with a pungent, creamy wedge of blue cheese and a crisp apple, or slices up an avocado and tops it with a squeeze of lemon and a good handful of salt. True, when it comes down to the doing, she’s more baker and I’m more cook — she’s precise and measured to my haphazard and experimental. But what we share is a love of simple, fresh ingredients, enhanced by other simple, fresh ingredients, and that means that either of us can go into the kitchen and whip up a quick snack or meal that the other one will love.

This salad requires neither great skill nor great know-how, but I have to tell you, when Elizabeth and I threw it together as one of the last summer lunches we’d share, it felt like a most fitting end to the time we’d invested in sharing kitchen space.

What remains true for me — and one of the things I love most about cooking — is that the creation of food means the creation of memories. When Josie is older and I tell her stories of her first summer in this world, those stories will involve Harry Potter, her dad’s manic baking, her Aunt Elizabeth at the stove, and a kitchen full of love and laughter.

And that, friends, is what summers, kitchens, and sisters are made for.

A word about salads and dressings: every cook certainly has her salad preferences, and I tend to be rather finicky about mine. I like the greens salted, rather than the dressing (so no salt in my dressing recipe). And, I’d just as soon have as much “topping” as greens, so the fruit/vegetable/cheese combination carries its fair share of weight. Also, I prefer a tangy dressing to an oily one, so my proportions may seem a bit off. Most vinaigrette recipes call for twice as much oil as vinegar, but that’s too much oil for my taste. Adjust as you see fit.

Sisters Summer Salad

Salad greens, to cover two plates
1 peach, diced
1 avocado, diced
2 handfuls sea salt
A healthy smattering of cracked black pepper
2 ounces of creamy blue cheese
Balsamic vinaigrette (recipe follows)

Lay half of the peach and avocado on each bed of greens; sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper (the cracked pepper really makes this salad — don’t skip this step!) Scatter the blue cheese atop each salad and drizzle with vinaigrette. Enjoy with someone you love a lot (like your sister).

Simple Balsamic Vinaigrette

1/4 cup good balsamic vinegar
2 T. honey
1/3 cup olive oil

Whisk the vinegar and honey vigorously to incorporate. Drizzle the oil slowly into the vinegar mixture, whisking all the while.

Posted: Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 9:39 am Filed under: Family, Salad, Summer, Fruit, Quick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.