November Peels
november skies rule; plenty to cook, some things to listen to, not as much to read
Bonjour, you. If you’re new to The Onion Papers, Peels are a round-up feature at TOP, a writer’s almanac that comes out on the first Monday of each month. Happy reading and clicking,
Margaux
Dear winter babies, this one was for us. Oh, so precious and short and uncompromising, day by day, until the digging moon, or the forager’s last call. November is a teaser, cracking pink at dawn, yolky orange around 8am, never a miss, as cold as pricking needles – awake! – until the rain poured from thick clouds, the sky as deep as the oceans and the aftermaths breeze warming the air. It is a quiet month, focused before the December buzz. And I love November the most for it not being December. Do remove ceiling lights from your home as it isn’t the lack of light that is hardest on you, but the contrast with your expectations for the world outside, so bright and sunny, right? As it should be. November is one for dimming, with desk, non-direct lamps. It seems, not many people like November and, I suspect, this is the real reason why I love it so much. Do layer up and go outside – I’d like to greet you, to show you the kingfisher that lives on a broken branch by the river near my home. It is duck blue, glossy with an amber neck, its wings beating fast and its body in suspension, almost static. A travelling cup is a fantastic gift to yourself, so you can use your tea and coffee breaks to prompt a visit to the birds, any of them, even sitting on the stairs by the front door counts. Inhale, exhale, seconds add up. We need winter if we fancy a touch of spring before another summer.
This month, I was also thrilled to be a guest on Sarah Duignan’s podcast AnthroDish, about food, culture and identity. With Sarah, we talked about the power of food as a storytelling device in fiction, the consequences of character development relating to appetite and economics, and the power of the kitchen in writing and real life. We had a fab time, so I hope you’ll enjoy listening to the episode too. It’s available on Spotify or on your favourite platform. I also encourage you to check out the rest of the season and Sarah’s excellent newsletter: AnthroDish Essays.
bread update
We’ve had a few cold nights in Glasgow; I’ve had a broken boiler, and I’ve learnt that letting the dough work its way up and down on its own, allowing for it to accommodate itself, but to bake with a reinforced levain as an encouragement, is the key for a good loaf of bread in winter.
[A levain is a one-off fermentation and raising agent for your bread, made of flour, water and ripe sourdough.]
Method to prepare the levain (subjective): the night before you’d like to bake, remove the sourdough starter from the fridge. Feed it with 60g of wholemeal flour and 50g of water, roughly. Go slowly with the water; this isn’t an exact science, only flour and water coming together and we’re tired. [I like to keep my starter stiff in texture.] The next morning, feed the starter with 40g of flour and 30g of water. A few hours later, proceed with making the levain, following a 1:1:1 ratio (see below for measurements).
Schedule (still subjective) and further method (for bread making):
6:20am: feed the starter with 40g of wholemeal flour and 30g of water.
11:10am: combine the levain. [I use a Pyrex bowl, so I can monitor its behaviours and close it with a lid. I follow a 1:1:1 ratio, specifically: 120g of starter, 60g strong white flour, 60g wholemeal flour and 120g of lukewarm water.] Combine with a wooden spoon, cover with a kitchen towel and close with the lid (keep it loose).
2:55pm: in a large bowl, combine 200g of spelt wholemeal flour, 200g wholemeal flour (both flours can be adjusted to your taste) and 240g of lukewarm water. Mix well with a wooden spoon, then flatten the dough in a flat crêpe and spread the levain on top. With your fingers, fold back the dough from underneath, enveloping the starter as you go, and begin kneading in wide stretch and fold movements, so that’s up and down, away and back, opening and closing the dough, working your way clockwise or anticlockwise, it doesn’t matter for as long as you circle around the dough. Shape a ball, cover with the kitchen towel and leave it to rest.
4:07pm: another round of stretch and fold. Cover with the kitchen towel. Rest.
6:07pm: another round of stretch and fold. Cover with the kitchen towel. Rest.
6:46pm: another round of stretch and fold. Prepare the Pyrex bowl (or container of your choice) with a layer of flour at the bottom. Tuck the dough in, sprinkle extra flour on top, close with the lid and return to the fridge.
Night.
6:02am: take the dough out from the fridge. Set it aside on the counter (lid on).
6:33am: preheat the oven to its highest temperature. In the meantime, on a wooden surface, punch the dough down to release the accumulated gas, shape the dough into a loaf. Score the loaf. Set aside and prepare a casserole, for which you’ve a lid, with some flour. Place the dough inside it.
6:42am: bake for 30 minutes (lid on).
7:12am: take the lid off and keep baking. Set a timer for 10 minutes.
7:22am: check the bread. Either return it in the oven for more baking or place it on a cooling rack.
reading, listening
My reading has been scattered by edits of my own. I brushed over one line there and there, dived back into an old book (The Iliad; Arturo’s Island) and picked a new one before abandoning it, on repeat. I’ve felt guilty for the latter – to be unfair to the authors – so I stored those books on my bedside table, as a promise to return to the pages later.
‘But her laughter ended in a childish sigh that was scarcely repressed: as if, in telling her story, she had become fond of it, and had no desire to abandon it.’
— Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante
Eventually, I read Sara Baume’s Spill Simmer Falter Wither. Summarised as ‘a misfit man finds a misfit dog,’ this one speaks to me this month. It’s a touching book about loneliness, crafted and fun.
I also listened to Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst on train journeys and walks. This is a moving novel, the fictionalised memoir of actor Dan Win, narrated in the first person and across decades, from the 1960s to Brexit to the pandemic. I grew close to Dan through the chapters, something of a quiet force and a tale of liberation. It was my first Hollinghurst novel. Should I read The Line of Beauty, or any others?
in the kitchen
Since the frost had settled, we ended the foraging season with mushrooms tortellini in brodo. I shared a recipe for those last December, but this year we gave them a tweak with the addition of dried honey mushrooms (and other things). I was testing this recipe for a separate project, so more on that in due course.
On the first night of storm Bert, we experimented with our homegrown oyster mushrooms and ended up with a very good mushrooms lasagna. Pay particular attention to the last layer, as follows:
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 peperoncino, crushed
20g chives, chopped
1 handful of oyster mushrooms, chopped
1 handful of shiitake mushrooms, chopped
1 handful of chestnut mushrooms, chopped
1 tbsp of dried porcini
1 tbsp of dried honey mushrooms
150-200ml oat cream
100g mozzarella, grated
parmesan cheese, grated
lasagna pasta sheets, store-bought, or we made ours with 200g of semola and a small gulp of lukewarm water
Prepare a battuto by chopping the onion, garlic, chive and peperoncino together and finely. Gently cook in a casserole, with a drizzle of olive oil, and, once translucent, add the mushrooms. Cook for 10 minutes or so. They will release water, so you want some of it to evaporate. In the meantime, in a teacup, pour the dried mushrooms and stir in enough boiling water to cover them. Add to the mushrooms and speed the heat to get some of that water to evaporate. Reduce the heat. Stir in the oat cream, salt and pepper to your taste, simmer for 3 minutes. Turn off the heat and set aside.
Prepare the lasagna sheet. In a baking tray, drizzle some olive oil and a small ladle of the mushrooms mixture. Layer the first pasta sheet; spread a ladle of mushrooms mixture, grate some parmesan; layer a second pasta sheet; spread a ladle of mushrooms mixture, grate some parmesan; repeat until you’re happy with how many layers you have. Spread a small, final layer of the creamy mushrooms on top. Drain and squeeze the mozzarella thoroughly, then grate at the top too. Salt and pepper to taste. Bake at 180C until the sauce will start bubbling and the top crisp.
Something quick and easing? In a casserole, gently cook some leek and carrots with a drizzle of olive oil and two teaspoons of nutmeg. Add some boiled water and one veggie stock. Simmer an easy soup that never disappoints nor tires you.
These improvised dark chocolate and spelt flour cookies shifted a miserable Thursday into something bitter-sweet in a few stirs and beats:
180g spelt flour
100g ground almond
110g brown sugar
1 tbsp of vanilla extract
1 egg
150g oat cream
100g dark chocolate
In a bowl, whisk the sugar, the vanilla and the egg. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and ground almond. Stir in the sugar and the egg, mixing well. Add the oat cream, mixing continuously until you’ll have a workable batter. Break the chocolate into chunks and incorporate. Shape the cookies by rolling them inside the palm of your hands. Preheat the oven to 180C. Sprinkle flour in a baking tray and bake the cookies.
from The Onion Papers
A carrot makeover for the sponge:
Musings on repetitive patterns, in conversation with The Iliad:
As winter tucks in, the day’s gap inevitably narrows, and I vow to keep an eye on the sky. Send photos of the sun rising to friends. Organise around it as, if the sun will rise, it is too early to say how it will set. Look after each other.
Some memorable eggs and three recipes:
Meals are time capsules that reveal where and who we are in the world, how we live in comparison to how we did during previous meals. It feeds us as much as it shows what we have been deprived of, or what we have consumed (recklessly, at times). It is exposing. And, the more you see and are seen by the people with whom you are sharing a meal, the more you are seeing and being seen – there, crackling gently as the pan chills on the hob, something ignites, a variation of what was assumed or known before. A prompt that we don’t need to live the same way, love the same things and people, to be together. That we is plural, a broken mirror, unlucky but attractive. I invite you to call your friend that is afraid of heights and tell them about your last hike up a mountain, to call a doctor friend and talk about craft and practice with them. It tastes sweet and sour like it had never done before, imperfect, lived on and enduring – real, like old friends.
—(not) cooking for friends (as much)
looking ahead (Glasgow, GMT)
Speaking of the kingfisher, I spotted the bird in Lia Leendertz’s Almanac too:
‘We now use the term ‘halcyon days’ to describe beautiful and endless summer days, but the original phrase referred to the dead of winter. Halcyon was the ancient Greek name for the kingfisher, and it was thought it calmed the winter seas, where it built a floating nest in which to lay its eggs. The phrase refers to a period of warm, settled weather around midwinter.’
A coincidence always births a smile; seen. In the sky, Jupiter will roll close to Earth in December, stems will remain bare, and Venus will show up as an evening star. It is dimming, quieter in the sky and busy in the calendars with social commitments and other expectations, the soil wet and sticky, undisturbed, dormant – a little menacing, maybe, a reminder, at least. The winter solstice will come for us, in the Tropic of Capricorn and, on the other side, we will find longer days. Just like that, a bounce. At solar noon, on the 21st day of December, the sun will reach 11 degrees in the Glasgow sky. It will be pressuring, I anticipate its light already, speeding me, saying, ‘quick, quick,’ end business, finish this year. And well! And start again. It has always felt trivial to me that we in the West begin a year in January. Why not with the solstices; why not choosing to rise with the sun? If not with the garden, where, under the soil, there is activity, gearing up to sprout. For now, in the kitchen, it’s the moment to give those brussels sprouts another chance, in a pan by sweating some onions with some anchovies beforehand, or in a gratin; carrots, parsnips, cauliflowers, baked or puréed in a soup; spoon some (white and kidney) fagioli all’uccelletto or, still holding a spoon, a gulp of polenta will wrap a day with warmth, which you can serve either white or red, no troubles.
Margaux
Thank you for reading. I’m Margaux, a writer and cook, and this is my hybrid newsletter. If you enjoy The Onion Papers, you can subscribe and come back for seconds (Thursdays are for long reads and Mondays for annotated recipes, both come out every other weeks) <3
