Making Catalan Meals In Hampton Roads (Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Making Catalan Meals in Hampton Roads (Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I have always known that it is possible to live very well without gobs of money from growing up in downtown Detroit (Michigan), Chicago (Illinois), and Madison (Wisconsin).  

If you live in a community with a library that is part of a county-city-university system with lending privileges from special libraries, you have access to many great lifestyle items, if your community supports the library financially.

In the Norfolk-Virginia Beach system, the libraries collected books, films, magazines, newspapers, and CDs and ran a low-key summer reading program for children.  With the materials that were made available to me in this library system, I could work part-time and raise a child. 

This situation was possible thanks to the hold system, which I could access online.  The hold system allowed me to just come into the library and pick up the books I wanted on the way home from work or with Florence.  Many times I picked up books and let Florence go to the children’s section to pick out items, which I could see from the circulation desk.

Norfolk has much history in it like France as a former English colony and one of the original thirteen colonies that formed the original United States.  There is Civil War history in Virginia, too, with battlefields from the Civil War and Revolutionary Wars.

I was also thankful that we lived in a vacation destination that had historical sites like Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown to visit in addition to museums.

It was a hot drive to get to these places, but we would just get in our old Nova (which means ‘no go’ in Spanish) and crank up the air conditionaing and go on our field trip.

You can tell when summer is truly arriving in the South when air conditioners start whirring.  You listened for it when you walked through parking lots, especially at grocery stores.  The heat made me want to sleep.

I felt this way at 80 degrees.  I wondered how I was going to feel at 100 degrees.  One of the truly Southern things I had done was to put us on the budget plan with the electricity company.

This plan spread out summer electric bills over 12 months instead of 3.  I wondered how I was going to hold up in sweltering summer weather.

My contemplation was cut short by our arrival at the apartment.  Pretty soon I would be making a meal and turned on the air conditioner.

Florence and Laurent sat down and watched cartoons while I made my own Homage to Catalonia (author George Orwell) meal.  Catalonia is rebel just like the South I thought.  I put on a CD with White Wedding and Rebel Yell on it and made lunch.

Using Colman Andrews’s recipes from his book Catalan Cuisine, which is the food of Barcelona and that of the Cuban elite with modifications for New World food products, I put olive oil in a pot and added minced garlic, cubed Japanese eggplant, and zucchini to begin cooking our lunch.

Once the liquid had evaporated, I added tomatoes and peppers and cooked them until the liquid had evaporated as well.  The sauce I made had evaporated.

Andrews’s recipe called for roasting chicken, but I was beginning to feel the heat in the kitchen despite the air conditioning and decided to just cut the chicken breasts and thighs into bite-sized pieces and sauté them.

The rest of the menu I put together was Spanish, too: champignons al ajillo (garlic mushrooms) and ensalida San Isidro (San Isidro Salad).  I was sure people in Catalonia probably ate these items, so I felt I could keep my Homage to Catalonia theme on track.  I had big worries in life.

I did not fret over washing the mushrooms instead of brushing them like the gourmet magazines suggested.

If I had gotten the mushrooms fresh from a seller at a mushroom cave outside Paris (France), I might have just brushed them.  However, I knew that even people with colds picked over mushrooms and might pass germs to other customers in a store or market, so I washed the mushrooms.

After I chopped the mushrooms, I cut them into thin slices and set them aside and then washed some flat leaf parsley (Italian parsley) and chopped it.  I minced the garlic despite my fatigue and put it into some hot olive oil.

When the aroma of the garlic rose, I added the mushroom slices.  When these mushrooms reduced, I added sea salt and a handful of parsley, turning everything around until the parsley slightly wilted. 

The mushrooms made a meaty tasting sauce with the olive oil that we soaked up with pieces of bread.  (The U.S. is truly blessed with wonderful raw materials for cooking.)

Laurent said he liked the mushrooms, but preferred shrimp made this way.

I looked at Laurent and thought to myself, “Napoleonic meanie!.”

I liked these mushrooms sautéed in butter and a little olive oil with steak.  I could feel my cholesterol move up with that thought.  (Roxbury County – New York comment – My McFarland genes were crying out for steak, sheet pan baked potatoes, and a shot of whiskey poured in mug of tea with honey and lemon.)

We ate San Isidro salad with lots of sliced green onions and then moved onto the main course: the pollastre amb samfaina, which roughly translated means “chicken and ratatouille.”

I sautéed the chicken, putting in the dark meat before the white, because it takes longer to cook.

When the chicken was done, I added the samfaina and heated it all the way through.  I appeared in the dining room with a colorful mound of food, which was letting off savory steam.

Laurent and Florence took second helpings of the pollastre amb samfaina.  They had forgotten that they did not like eggplant and peppers.

Laurent and I had Lavazza coffees for dessert while Florence ate an ice cream sandwich. 

Laurent walked to the bedroom for a two-hour nap.  Florence played quietly and read in her room while daddy was sleeping.

I started washing dishes and had a cognac when I was done.  I read the New Yorker magazine and Martha Stewart Living magazine while they slept and liked living in the “Sleepy South.”

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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