in the kitchen with nothing-in-the-house
Multiple friends told me I had to meet Emily nearly two years before it finally happened. We both live in DC, keep food blogs, and have a mutual affinity for folklore, fiddles, and brown leather boots. But for some reason, the connection eluded us until we finally met at the opening party for Emily’s self-published Pie Almanac. One thing led to another, and last weekend I found myself in Emily’s very pink kitchen making grapefruit and pepper meringue tartlets.
Emily runs both the beautiful Nothing-in-the-House blog and Baking Company, both of which specialize in handmade pie. Huckleberry pie, vanilla bourbon caramel pie, speculoos pie, stargazy quail pie. Traditional pies, aromatic pies, bizarre pies, savory pies. We talked a little bit about pie, but talked more about it in the context of feminism, domesticity, and contemporary food blogging’s role in settling into these spaces.
Emily says, “I think about how the domestic arts were often the only outlet for women to creatively express themselves in past generations. Food traditions have had the best survival, perhaps, because food hits you where it counts — in the gut. Everyone has to eat, and I think it’s where a lot of political change can happen.”
Or as Alice Waters of Chez Panisse says, “This has to be a delicious revolution!”
This blog post is just the first installment of what I hope will be an ongoing collaboration and exploration of food and community between Emily and myself. She will be paying a visit to my kitchen too, but more on that soon. So now, in her own words, Emily will divulge the recipe for these delicious little revolutions, grapefruit and pepper meringue tartlets. The cracked pepper in the meringue really brought these tarts into a whole new category for me. Definitely give it a try and don’t be shy with spicing things up.
My friend Lora sent me this delightful recipe from French chef Rachel Khoo. Lora is a big fan of hers and her BBC Show “The Little Paris Kitchen”; she tried to go to Khoo’s home kitchen when she was in Paris (she used to open it to guests), but she recently closed it because it became too popular. I haven’t yet seen the show (perhaps it will catch on here like that other BBC show…), but these tartlets might just prompt me to do what it takes to find it here.
For what might seem to be a simple citrus meringue tartlet, this recipe is rather unique. I’ve never had a biscuit base quite like this in a tartlet — it’s similar to shortbread cookie crust, and reminded me of corn muffins (though perhaps that was just because I made them in cupcake tins — there is no cornmeal in them). I absolutely LOVE the spice and grainy-ness that the pepper lends to the meringue, and I tried out a new technique of piping it onto the curd. I’m pretty sure Jess and I simultaneously squealed when it actually worked!
grapefruit and pepper meringue tartlets
adapted from Rachel Khoo
makes about 6 small tartlets (I doubled this recipe when I made it)
for grapefruit curd:
zest and 6 T juice of 1 unwaxed grapefruit
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
3 1/2 oz. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 heaping T cornstarch
1 3/4 oz. unsalted butter, cubed and at room temperature
for biscuit base:
2 3/4 oz. unsalted butter, softened
2 3/4 oz. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
zest of 1/2 lemon
2 large egg yolks
3 1/2 oz. all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
for Italian meringue:
3 1/2 oz. sugar
2 egg whites
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
METHOD
for grapefruit curd:
1. Pour 6 T grapefruit juice in a small saucepan and whisk together with zest, sugar, salt, and eggs over low heat. Whisk in the cornstarch, stirring continuously (this keeps the eggs from curdling).
2. Once the curd is thickened (Khoo says to the consistency of puréed tomatoes), remove it from heat and whisk in butter, one cube at a time. Pour curd into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap, placing it directly on the surface of the curd. Refrigerate for at least an hour, preferably overnight.
for biscuit base:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and butter and flour 2×3 inch metal tart rings (I didn’t have any that size so I used cupcake tins).
2. In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream together butter and sugar with the salt and lemon zest until fluffy and pale in color. Add egg yolks and continue beating.
3. Sift together the flour and baking powder, and add it to the butter mixture. Continue beating until the dough comes together in a smooth paste.
4. Here, Khoo suggests piping the dough into the tart pans, but that didn’t work for me (the dough was too thick and my pastry bag was a little wonky), so I scooped dough into the cupcake tins and created a little depression with the back of the spoon for the curd to sit. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden (they will resemble corn muffins in color). Remove biscuits from the tin/tart pans and let cool on a wire rack.
for the meringue:
1. Pour sugar into a saucepan with 1 fluid oz. water and place on high heat. Bring to about 244 degrees F, about 10 minutes. If you don’t have a thermometer, you can test it by dropping a little bit of sugar syrup into a bowl of cold water — it will form a sticky ball when ready.
2. While sugar syrup is cooking, begin to beat the egg whites and salt with a mixer. Beat to a light froth, before soft peaks begin to form. When sugar syrup is done, drizzle it into the egg whites while beating. Add the pepper and continue to beat until the egg whites are glossy and stiff.
to assemble:
Place a scoop of curd on each biscuit. Scoop meringue into a pastry bag and pipe onto the curd decoratively. Place the biscuits under the broiler for about 1 minute (watch carefully!) until meringue is just slightly browned on the tips.
Enjoyable post, loved the story and the photos!
thank you!
This post is some serious eye candy! And I don’t even know where to start with those tartlets…
for littlest mermaids!!!
“We talked a little bit about pie, but talked more about it in the context of feminism, domesticity, and contemporary food blogging’s role in settling into these spaces.”
I absolutely cannot wait to read more about this conversation. I’ve wondering also, in my own blogging life, how feminism and domesticity can SET a blog space. The alliance doesn’t have to be uneasy (and isn’t in my home life), but perhaps because so many blogs become about buying things and about using specific products/foodstuffs/tools to gain access to the good life, food blogs often feel retro where they could be or once were radical.
Thanks for starting this conversation!
Yes! Kate! I couldn’t agree more. Would love to talk about this with you too! (And you two, Kate AND Jess). Sometimes I struggle with the idea that many food & lifestyle blogs (perhaps even my own at times) present a rather traditional view of domesticity and gender roles. I don’t see this as anti-feminist, necessarily, but I also want to make sure I am including it and other radical ideas (and how they are in dialogue w/ my “domestic” life) in my writing and approach. Let’s talk more!
great conversation, friends, and one that needs to keep going. Six Orange Carrots posted a similar question in a blog post last fall: http://sixorangecarrots.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/offered/
the comments are great to read, and i wrote a lengthy one myself:
as much as i enjoy reading (and writing) blogs, i can’t help but often feel like many of us are trying to prove that our cooler-than-martha-stewart selves are worthy of mass public consumption, approval and envy, replete with pictures of our meals, floral arrangements, homes and creative ventures. it’s a highly curated life, and for who? do we need to validate our own worth and cater to our own insecurities by presenting our life to strangers (and friends) as this beautiful thing to be desired? it’s enough to make any intelligent blogger shove it off and live life for real, instead of living life as you’d wish to present it through an online window.
thoughts?
I have similar wonders and reservations. I stopped blogging (used to have a blog a bit like yours called Good Egg) in part because I couldn’t resolve those questions. Right now, my Pie School tumblr is just a collage of stuff I post because I know I should have a blog, which creates a different but related concern for me–this feeling of adding to the chatter without starting a conversation. I don’t want to start blogging again until I can figure out a way to use the memoir/photo/recipe form to have this conversation. Domesticity, feminism, pie and punk rock. We can do it all.
Another thing: how I lose interest in all my favorite blogs (favorite because they’re smart and well-written) when the narrative arcs toward marriage and children. A story that was about a woman making her own life becomes a story about using those skills to create a domestic heaven for her family. Which is okay! Just not as interesting to me. I’m thinking specifically about the Orangette and Gluten-Free Girl blogs. I admire both writers a lot, but at some point during their development as domestic goddesses I lost interest. The last issue of Gastronomica has a fascinating article about retro- and anti-feminist narrative trends in food blogs. I’ll dig it up for you if you haven’t read it yet.
Ah, yes. All of this. One way that helps me feel engaged and inspired in my blogging is in incorporating historical background into the narrative of each recipe. It enables me to do research and reading (which I love), and feel that I am contributing something that is more than just about me. Other ways I’ve found to do this are through profiles, interviews with other women (and men too) bakers, and collaborations (and conversations!) like this one. But it is so so easy to fall into the domestic goddess one-upmanship, and I do have to check myself from time to time. I’d like to bring in more of these ideas in my narrative, but it does feel hard, even risky?
I would LOVE to read that Gastronomica piece, Kate! I wrote a paper in grad-school about some of these issues–food blogs, feminism and and looked at/interviewed women from 3 different food/lifestyle blogs (pre-baby Orangette being one of them). It’s just a preliminary study (and was also difficult as I am friends with one of the women), but I’d be happy to share if you’re interested.
I would love to read your thesis. I have access to JSTOR for the moment because of my UW gig–I can send a PDF but not a link (wish I could link so everyone could read it!). Jess, would you like this article too?
You incorporate your scholarly interests into your blog in order to keep the one-upmanship at bay…I love that. It makes sense on so many levels. For me, that would be a continuing exploration of how poetry and cooking intersect. I think they come from the same basic impulse–to make something that has and gives life, to make something that sustains me physically/mentally, to just MAKE SOMETHING. Every day. As continuing construction of a sacred self and a resistance to the commodification of our lives. Food is a way to engage and resist the marketplace. Poetry is a way to bypass it altogether. To use the making, also, as a way to study form, which brings me closer to your historical & folklore studies. The pie, the lyric, the tart, the tale, the container and contained.
I often use process as a metaphor for the other, as in “I’d never get mad at a blueberry pie for being a cherry pie. Why would I get mad at my poem for not being a Jack Gilbert poem?”
Another question I’m obsessed with is how does a woman who is an artist–a woman artist–make a life? How does she pay her bills, have a family, and write every day?
Of course we only show our best selves online. It would be self-defeating not to. How do we complicate those “better” versions of ourselves so they don’t run off the with the story?
loved this!
thanks, morgan!
We had such a lovely afternoon in the kitchen and these words and photos capture it so beautifully. Jess, you make everything look so good!!! Will you be my personal life photographer??
in exchange for a lifetime supply of pie? YES.
DEAL.
I have been to this house so many times for shows and events. I didn’t realize that another DC food blogger lived there!
Can’t get enough of rad ladies talkin’ to other rad ladies (or dudes)! The continuation will be fun to read.
I definitely feel the comments on one-upmanship and curation, and there is something related that I struggle with in my own blog and that challenges me in others’. That is, I find myself getting frustrated when bloggers don’t somehow acknowledge the choices available to them, or the work they put in, or that maybe some of their readers seriously struggle to do what the blog makes look so effortless (and I mean struggle in the financial, time, and space sense, not the skill sense). It’s why I stopped reading a certain real popular food blog so many years ago: there was a palpable self-love that didn’t admit any sort of hard work or luck or privilege about being able to blog in the first place, and it felt dishonest.
But then again, people shouldn’t be forced to discuss their privilege, and that’s not the mark of a good blog anyway! I just feel that somehow, there’s a creeping lack of truth or self-awareness (and maybe this gets back to the curation thing?) that makes it difficult for me to feel connected to some domestic arts or lifestyle blogs. It’s really complicated! Especially since this is a conversation that I don’t necessarily feel equipped to start in my own blog, which leads me to wonder whether I’m part of the problem.
Anyway, super looking forward to the next installment!
Great points Kari, and I share that sense of reluctance to have the conversation on my own blog. Thanks, Jess, for hosting it here!
I wonder how much of this slickness has to do with the medium we’re working with. Blogs offer us the ability to use beautiful visual tools right alongside our writing. If we ignore these tools, readers will likely ignore us. Is it going too far to center this effortful look of effortlessness on photos? When I get that pang of lifestyle envy/inadequacy, it’s usually triggered by photos, not writing. Which, I admit, I don’t usually read so carefully when it’s interrupted with a visual version of the narrative.
Right now the personal essay is often used in the exact opposite way of what we’re describing here–it’s a form that demands the writer “show her work” and her rough edges, otherwise the essay fails to rise above fluff. Also, no pictures (generally speaking). I would never ever write in my blog the way I write my personal essays. Way too intimate for the internet. Essays, also, seem less interested in talking back to the reader–they take place as intimate conversations instead of over, say, dinner for eight. Writing a blog feels more like telling a story to mixed company. When they’re done right, a blog entry is an invitation to conversation, often with strangers AND friends.
So if the blog form asks us to use a dinner table voice instead of a midnight phone call voice, what does that tell us about curation (in the sense that Kari outlined above)?
Kate, I just managed to get my hands on that Gastronomica article you mentioned in the earlier comments. Very interesting read, but your point about the medium (and appropriate voice) isn’t really addressed there; I wish it had been. The author questions readers’ complicity in diluted or anti-feminism based on a lack of critical questions in comments and on their very presence as blog followers. And while I do definitely think the author has a point about a likely lack of awareness in the readership, commenting can be so confrontational or personal that I, for instance, have never felt comfortable voicing when something seems wrong or backwards; on the other hand, I almost always comment when someone writes something self-aware and awesome, but maybe those comments could be interpreted as pandering. I’m not sure what that gets at as far as your curation question goes, but for me, the difficulty has something to do with the blog medium’s motto that “You can do this too!” and one of many subtexts that might go something like, “But you can’t, actually, because I’m already doing it.”
Anyway, Mandy and Emily have nice points below about a strong community of women being potentially one of the most feminist take-aways of blogging, although there’s not always a good or easy point of entry with the medium. The immediacy of photos and writing coupled with a fear of alienation might make it difficult for many (myself too) to feel or be included.
Such a great post and collaboration! I think it’s wonderfully feminist for women to support, encourage and champion each other instead of becoming competitive or dismissive. I read an article in Bust about women in blogging. I can’t find it anywhere but it talked a bit about the possibility that the images of perfect food and expertly curated artisanal items that we see everywhere on lifestyle blogs can create a feeling of inadequacy in women similar to the images of “perfect” bodies that are everywhere. “My floral arrangement will never look like that!” I really do appreciate the work and skill that goes into professional styling but sometimes it does feel like there is any substance or REALNESS there.
Also! I ADORE Rachel Khoo! Her show and cookbook are so great!
Very true, Mandy. The strong community of women is potentially one of the feminist aspects of food and lifestyle blogging. Is this the article you were thinking of? http://bitchmagazine.org/article/better-homes-bloggers
it’s from Bitch, but I know that I personally always get them confused…
YES! Thank you! So glad you know it and that I was able to read it again. Such a great piece. Love this…
“Click through enough of them and you’ll start wondering: How is it possible that so many women and their toddlers spent their Saturdays in blanket forts made from vintage quilts found at a swap meet? And does the world really need more Instagram shots of early-morning trips to the flower market? One may get the impression that the Stepford Wives have swapped their pastel sun hats and starched blouses for sewing-machine tattoos and Rachel Comey shoes. The pastels; soft-focus and color-saturated photo filters; optimistic, sunny tone; and tendency to address readers as “sweeties,” “darlings,” and other diminutives characterize many of the most visible lifestyle blogs. Coupled with the focus on domesticity and the home, bloggers start to resemble a contemporary, superwoman version of a stereotypical 1950s housewife.”
This post and articles like this are great reminders to practice mindfulness when reading the internet. It’s easy to forget that things are carefully curated and not always representative of full reality.
I think it can be considered a touch anti-feminist to be always presenting perfection. No one is perfect and it would be nice to celebrate and honour the imperfect parts of life a bit more
Just wanted to chime in and say how awesome and important this conversation is. The reasons you’ve given are the main reasons why I have never started a blog, though I’ve certainly thought about it plenty of times. It’s also why I don’t read blogs – because it’s so easy to fall into that trap of comparing myself to people. I do like to read blogs of people I know in real life, just to keep up with what they’re up to (and perhaps because I know they’re actually normal human beings.)
On the other hand, I treasure my old livejournal entries as memories, a kind of scrapbook. And I miss having an outlet for writing. I like Emily’s description of it as a practice space. So, I don’t know… maybe I’ll get back to it someday..
Thanks for sharing, Bradley. Totally agree on all of your points. There are many reasons I enjoy reading and writing blogs, but one of the biggest is I’m inspired by it. The envy or the “trap” of comparing myself to others certainly comes up, but I think that arises in life in all manners of circumstances anyway. Overall, I think the benefits I accrue from sharing and learning from others outweighs the downsides, although there are times when I think of all of us do well to step away from it all and take some deep soul/brain/heart breaks to tap back into what’s really essential for us personally, outside the influences of others.
So well-put!
These sound amazing! Also, you have such lovely photos. I just came across your blog and am in love!
Thanks for the sweet words, Josie!