Laurie Colwin

Because of this  rainy weather, the most sensible thing to do today is to stay indoors and cook and read and laze about.  I, personally, have done too much of that lately, being out of work and all. But I was talking to a friend about this and she mentioned making some lamb soup from a Laurie Colwin recipe and it made me want to pick up my Laurie Colwin books and either start reading or start cooking or both.

Laurie Colwin was a fiction writer and also wrote a column for Gourmet Magazine in the late 1980's and early 90's.  I was a huge fan of both her stories and her food essays.  She died, sadly, at the age of 48 of a heart attack, suddenly and much too young.  But she left behind a great stack of books, so her legacy continues.

You can still buy her books, and you can often find them used, but it is worth searching out her two volumes of food essays,  "Home Cooking" and "More Home Cooking."  There are recipes but you really read them for the prose, for the witty asides about food and people and for the community of those of us who love both pursuits, reading and cooking. Just now I just sat on my bed and read an essay I had never read before, about picking raspberries.  It's lovely.  In an essay about roasting chickens, she discussed free-range chickens and their deliciousness and their free-range eggs, years before the whole free-range movement was even heard of. Laurie Colwin believed that what you ate should be good, no matter what it was.  Beets, shortbread, soup, picnics, finicky children, she tackled all subjects and gives them all credence.  Her cooking isn't fussy and doesn't involve a lot of ingredients. 

Her Cornbread and Prosciutto Stuffing is a family tradition in our house.  I have made her Nantucket Cranberry Pie dozens of times, there is never a scrap left (and yet I still have to explain that it is a cake, not a pie.)  She makes an excellent argument against picnics and an excellent argument for making your own bread. Laurie Colwin's "recipes" are often just general notes: put the lamb shank in the pot with an onion and some garlic cloves, cover with water and let it set for hours on the lowest possible burner.  That's it.  But it works.  

Find one of her books, whether it's from the library or a book store. Make a cup of tea (or pour a glass of wine) and curl up and read.  You will be happy.