Special Post: Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist – Q&A, Recipe, and Giveaway
I’m delighted to be able to post a special book review, author Q & A, and (of course) recipe here today. I’m also thrilled to be giving away two free copies of Bittersweet! To get a copy, all you have to do is be one of the first two people to leave a comment.
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While it’s not officially a food memoir, the recently released Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way by Shauna Niequist (Zondervan, 2010) really wants to dabble its toes in the waters of food writing.
In this collection of personal essays, Niequist, author of Cold Tangerines (Zondervan, 2007), shares how the most recent season of her life has taught her to embrace change, even the hard kind. Change, according to Niequist, is always bittersweet.
She writes:
“This is what I’ve come to believe about change: it’s good, in the way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good…change is a function of God’s graciousness, not life’s cruelty.”
While the book centers on learning to celebrate transitions and the opportunities they bring, for Niequist, a large piece of her own season of change has to do with community. And community, for Niequist, means the people with whom we form intimate connections, often across her dining room table.
Her stories are punctuated by descriptions of meals shared with her Cooking Club, celebratory dinners with friends, and summer barbecues at her family’s second home in South Haven, MI. No matter the occasion, Niequist seems to always remember what she ate and how it tasted.
Q & A with Shauna Niequist, author of Bittersweet
Q: Food is central to the experiences you’ve had in life, as well as many of the essays in Bittersweet. Can you explain the connection you’ve discovered between life’s experiences and food?
A: My memory works in food—when I think of a day or a trip or a season, the most tangible memories that I carry with me are about what we ate. That’s not true for everyone, certainly. Some people primarily remember the albums they were listening to, or what they wore. But for me, food and time around the table have always been central to me. I think that some of the best moments you can share with another person happen around the table—it’s a place where we finally slow down, look one another in the eye, and acknowledge our humanity, our need to be nourished.
Q: During this last season of bitterness, you most clearly remember what you ate and the beauty of those textures, smells and flavors. Why do you recall the sweetness of food largely from that gloomy time?
A: It was a season that felt in many ways so blank: waiting, flat, gray, like someone turned town the volume or I was behind a thick pane of glass. But that flatness was punctuated by meals—smells, flavors, colors. It was almost as if my senses only came alive when I was cooking or eating. When I look back at that season, I could feel things were coming back to life again when I started wearing color again, but for months, it was nothing but black, black, black, like I wanted to protect myself, keep it simple, not have to think. Black sweater, black boots, black everything, but still, in some moments, bright cilantro, spicy jalepenos, creamy cheese. It’s as if the only spark and color in my life was food.
Q: Food nourishes our bodies, but how does it nourish our spirits?
A: I think there’s a really healthy humility that we demonstrate when we admit our hunger—essentially, it’s a way of saying, I know I’m not a robot. I know I’m human, fragile, that I can’t just go go go forever. And for many of us, when we eat it’s one of the only times in the day when we slow down—both our bodies and our souls need that. I find myself nourished in a deep way when I allow my senses to really engage what I’m eating, rather than just shoveling it in. When I notice the texture, the smell, the way the flavors play against one another, a meal becomes a nourishing experience, instead of just nutritional fuel.
Q: What advice would you give to someone who doesn’t know how to cook, and doesn’t know how to get started?
I think reading cookbooks is helpful, and watching food shows is helpful, but there’s absolutely no substitute for being in the kitchen, knife in hand, and giving it a shot. And if you really feel like you don’t know where to start, ask for help. Last fall, I had four friends over, women who don’t feel confident in the kitchen. I chose a menu that they could use lots of different ways, and we prepared it together. They asked a lot of questions—why do you put the onion in the pan before the garlic? How do you know when risotto’s done? We talked through each one, peering into the pan together, tasting bites of risotto to test for the creamy outer layer and that tiny, hard bite in the center. There are so many things you can only learn by being in the kitchen, by understanding the smells and sounds and flavors. My two pieces of advice: get into the kitchen and ask for help.
Q: What advice would you give to someone who’s having a dinner party for the first time?
I love dinner parties! My very favorite kind of party. A few thoughts: what people want when they show up for a dinner party is to feel comfortable right away. The food doesn’t need to be ready, but you do and the house does. Before guests arrive, I try to be done getting myself ready, and I try to have candles lit, music on, and drinks and appetizers out. Even if the food for dinner still needs lots of work, even if the table still needs setting, that way people don’t feel like they’re catching you right out of the shower and that your house isn’t ready.
As soon as people come in, offer them a drink and make sure there’s at least something to eat—nuts, cheese, something easy. And then put them to work—people like to be included. Feel free to ask someone to toss the salad or cut the corn off the cobs or fill water glasses, as long as there’s music on and they’ve got a drink. Without those things, they can start to feel like they’re bailing out a frantic chef, but if it’s fun, it’s part of the party.
The single most important thing that sets the tone for your party isn’t the food or the space. It’s your attitude: if you’re miserable and stressed, even if the food is perfect, people will feel your stress…and if you’re laid-back and happy, people will have a great time even if the food’s less than perfect.
Q: Many families are too busy to find the time to eat a meal together around the table. Why is it so important for families to enjoy a meal together? How can families make this a priority?
A: Let me be totally honest: please don’t imagine that Aaron, Henry, and I are sitting down to a perfect table of lovely, home-cooked meals every night. Our schedule is really irregular, Aaron works sometimes two nights a week, and Henry’s terrible at sitting at the table for more than a few minutes. Sometimes we all eat around the coffee table. Sometimes Aaron and I sit on opposite end of the couch, feet touching, eating soup after Henry’s bedtime. I love the time we do spend around the dining room table, but I also love the time we spend around the coffee table—three is a pretty small number at that big table sometimes, so we use it more when guests come over, and I feel fine about that.
Q: What’s your favorite cookbook, and who are a few of your favorite food writers?
On bad days, I read Nigella Lawson’s cookbooks like novels. I very rarely cook from them, but I just love how she talks about food—and everything else. I find that I use Barefoot Contessa’s cookbooks a lot. I think every recipe of hers I’ve ever tried has come out delicious—they’re relatively simple, they’re fresh, and they’re appealing to a wide range of tastes. And I love Mark Bittman. I love Food Matters, and I especially love his Kitchen Express—perfect for people who want a little direction without necessarily using a recipe. In terms of food writing, Ruth Reichl and Anthony Bourdain just kill me. I love them both, as different as their voices are. I also really like Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life, and her blog Orangette.
Q: Do you have a background in cooking? Do you have any childhood memories of someone special that prepared meals for you?
I don’t have a background in cooking at all—I learned to cook little by little after college, with frantic calls to my mother and loads to downright disasters, among them a cream sauce that turned bright lavender and a marinara so garlic-y it was coming out of our pores for days. My family isn’t hugely interested in food, and we don’t have a lot of culinary traditions or foods that are tied to specific memories. I don’t totally know where my interest came from. Lynn Rosetto Kasper says that there are two kinds of people, the ones who wake up thinking about what’s for dinner and the ones who don’t. I’m definitely in the first group, and I always have been. One thing I do love is that my mom made really healthy, really fresh food way before it was the cool thing to do. I’m really thankful for that. In the seventies, she was making organic baby food from scratch, and we grew up eating very little red meat, all whole grains, and very little processed sugar.
Q: What is your favorite dish to prepare?
A: Especially in the winter, I find myself making a lot of risotto—it feels a little fancy, it’s impossible to mess up, and it’s endlessly versatile. For a friend’s birthday party recently, I did a bacon and mushroom risotto, with the mushrooms cooked in the bacon fat and cognac—really rich. But sometimes I make it with basil, peas, and lemon zest—light, clean, spring-y. Risotto is great for vegetarians, adaptable for vegans and people who eat dairy-free, and it’s gluten-free. Those are real priorities for us, because we eat mostly gluten-free and we don’t eat much red meat at home. We have close friends who are dairy-free and others who don’t eat any red meat, so I’m always on the lookout for recipes that feel substantial and fancy and still meet all those criteria.
Q: What’s your go-to/most requested/favorite dinner party/potluck recipe?
A: Easy Answer: Chicken Curry with Mangoes. I’ve made it a zillion times, and my friend Steve and my husband request it for special occasions constantly. It’s from Sally Sampson’s The $50 Dinner Party—my friend Eve bought me her cookbook years and years ago, and I love it. It’s one I use all the time. The curry recipe is really light, really fresh, really flavorful. Somehow even very picky eaters like it, and it’s easy to make, gluten free and dairy free.
Recipe: Chicken Curry with Coconut, Basil, and Mangoes
This recipe is from The $50 Dinner Party by Sally Sampson. I double the recipe for 10-12 people, and serve it with a green salad, pita bread, mojitos, and coconut and chocolate sorbets for dessert. We’re glad for leftovers, because I think it might even be better the next day.
Mix together:
¼ cup flour
2 tbsp curry powder
1 tsp kosher salt
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
Toss 2 ½-3 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into small pieces, in the above mixture.
In 1-2 tbsp olive oil, on medium-high heat, cook chicken until browned, about 5 minutes on each side. Set aside.
In 1-2 tbsp olive oil, cook until golden, about 4 minutes:
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 red onion, chopped
1 tbsp fresh ginger, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
Add chicken, and lower heat.
Add 4-4 ½ cups chicken broth.
Cook until chicken is tender and broth is reduced by ¼.
Add and simmer until heated through:
¼ cups currants or raisins
2 roma tomatoes, diced
1 mango, pitted and diced
Off heat, add:
1 tbsp fresh lime juice
3 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped
3 tbsp fresh basil, chopped
3 tbsp shredded coconut
Serve with rice.
Not big on curry generally, but this looks good. I might even convince Kev to try this one! Thanks for the recipes this fall – I’m really loving getting into the cooking/baking thing while I’m “nesting”. 🙂
I really enjoyed reading this post. I especially liked the part about how eating and admitting our hunger demonstrates humility. I’ve never thought about it like that before.
Shauna… you continue to grow and be the same all on one. It’s beautiful to see you (hear you) come alive in your stories and to watch others finding comfort in your words!
i was searching for a picture of “bittersweet” to post on my blog … and discovered you! great interview with shauna and i have the italian beef is cooking in my crock pot. triple blessings 🙂
(haven’t yet posted about bittersweet but my blog is abookchick.blogspot.com … just getting started over here in holland)
Thanks for the comment, Lee! Let me know how you like the Italian Beef!