Pickled Pink — Jodi Lewchuk

Jul 18

Jul 18 Pickled Pink

I casually slid my credit card into the bill holder and tried to look like I wasn't freaking out at the most expensive dinner I had ever paid for. I was simultaneously sighing in relief that Chez Panisse includes gratuity on the check — I can't do math at the best of times, let alone when under duress. As the server leaned in to gather my card, I adjusted the hip tie of my red wrap dress and re-crossed my legs so that one of my black ankle-strap heels peeked out from under the table. I imagined I looked confident and chic. I was trying to feel that way as well.

It was the last night of my first trip to the San Francisco Bay Area. I was just shy of a month into my Master's degree in English at University of Toronto, but a close friend from my undergrad and his partner were living in Berkeley for a year and when he invited me to visit, well, how could I say no? It had been a glorious week of coastal drives, coffee shop hangs, symphony and art galleries, hilly walks, and beach capers, all graced by the Bay's summer-in-September sweet spot of stunning weather. (I returned a few months later, in February, and managed to snag another week of blue skies and warm-for-winter NorCal temps. I like to think I bring out the best in SF.) As my friend and I are both avid home cooks and were food lovers long before the word "foodie" was a thing, my thank you for his wildly generous hospitality was dinner at the Chez Panisse café.

Chez Panisse is the now fifty-year-old renowned and revered restaurant founded by California food icon Alice Waters. It features a menu that changes daily to reflect seasonal eating inspired by the wares of ethical local producers. While generally de rigeur in much of Europe, this approach to dining was revolutionary in the United States when Waters opened her restaurant in Berkeley in 1971. My friend and his partner made yearly reservations for the 5:45pm New Year's Eve sitting on the main floor; at the time the upstairs café was walk-in, and I was over the moon when we scored a table.

Even if the daily woodcut menu from our October 9, 1996, visit wasn't framed and hanging in my kitchen where I see it every time I lift a pot or pan or the blender or stand mixer from my open shelving, I'll never forget the details of my three courses: warm Sonoma goat cheese with garden lettuces; grilled local swordfish with chanterelle mushrooms, corn, romano beans, and a grilled tomato; concord grape sherbet. (My vegan days were well into the future...)

Two other things from that night I'll never forget: our server's gracious good humour at my mortifying payment gaffe, and the abundance of beautiful foodstuffs on display for patrons to see: bowls of the seasonal fruit and vegetables being used in the night's dishes and jars of all manner of lush produce preserved in myriad ways for garnishing plates and accenting flavours.

Back in Toronto, I often hung out with my friend, J, when his then-partner, a professor, travelled to conferences. We were good company for each other: we cooked while taking turns swapping CDs in and out of their high-end stereo system (even though it make me nervous to touch it); we sat in companionable quiet for hours, each buried in a book; we took long walks in the country with their dogs; we passed pints of Häagen-Dazs back and forth while snort-laughing watching British comedy. J was a decade older than I, as he'd returned to do an undergrad degree after deciding on a mid-life career shift, and he'd taken me to all sorts of places a fresh-faced university undergraduate had no business being: Jump in the financial district, Mildred Pierce in the industrial west end, Taro back when Bathurst was the outermost boundary of what was considered Queen Street cool. J was also the first in a very long string of men I loved who were fundamentally unavailable in some way, shape, or form. I was heart-broken when I discovered he was gay, but coming to terms with our never being a "We" shattered all kinds of prejudices I had grown up with in a small blue collar city, and it was my extraordinarily special relationship with him that I credit with teaching me my heart had capacity to hold expansive, unconventional connections.

J also made me laugh a lot. Mostly when he was teasing me, mercilessly but ever-so smartly as an English grad with four years worth of literary references at his disposal would. So I gave him priceless fodder when our Chez Panisse server glided back to the table with a wry grin and slid the bill folder in front of me. "I was tempted to call friends overseas," he said with a cocked eyebrow, "but I refrained." Then with a kind chuckle he touched my elbow and said he'd be back momentarily.

My brain was a whorl of confusion until I flipped open the folder and saw my long-distance calling card in the pocket. It was navy blue and in my wallet sat in the slot directly above my credit card — which was also navy blue. In my attempt to look smooth and cool and nonchalant as I paid for dinner at one of the most famous restaurants in America, I had merely flicked my eyes downward when reaching into my wallet so as not to break conversation. And then tried to compensate Chez Panisse with a North American telephone chat plan.

I did manage to pay for dinner properly on the second try and got my menu home uncreased. After which Chez Panisse and my heart palpitations for Northern California took a back seat to the read-write-repeat grind of graduate work. Until I started my holiday shopping.

It will surprise no one to know that as an English lit nerd, I've gifted many a book. During my university days especially, my Christmas shopping ritual required making the pilgrimage downtown by Toronto transit to Dundas station and walking the block north to Edward Street and the World's Biggest Bookstore. For thirty years, its 3 storeys, 64,000 square feet, and 20 kilometres of bookshelves drew readers of all kinds. And for a student on a budget, the aisle displays in each genre section, piled high with hardcover coffee table and specialty titles marked down to bargain prices, was the Promised Land. Cookbooks, automobile retrospectives, gardening encyclopedias, travel pictorials, poetry collections, crafting how-tos — there was no family member or friend I couldn't hook up with something from the WBB.

In December of 1996, I was doing my Christmas the shopping the day before I was scheduled to take a train from Toronto to Windsor for the holiday break. The harsh overhead fluorescents guided my way through the cookbook aisles, where I was browsing for something unusual and fun for my mom. The face-out cover of a large-format book, its beautiful photograph of glass jars filled with jewel-toned contents, fruit and herbs and flowers strewn artfully amongst them, caught my eye. Coming from a family of prolific canners, one of my intentions for life after grad school was to begin making my own jams, jellies, compotes, chutneys, and other condiments to accompany the cooking I also saw myself doing a whole lot more of once my time wasn't held captive. And as I flipped through the pages of Georgeanne Brennan's The Glass Pantry, published by the creative Chronicle Books, I knew I had found an inspired source.

Though there was no question I would buy it, I stood there, rapt, poring over the pages in each of the four sections, one dedicated to every season. And as I turned the final pages in Winter, I felt my heart stop and then begin a hammering beat. There was a lovely photo in the bottom corner of the page — thin slices of some sort of allium (I hadn't even read the recipe title yet) suspended in a rosy liquid. But it was a name in the recipe headnote that had leapt off the page and caused the pounding in my chest: Chez Panisse. As it turned out, the recipe for Pink Pickled Shallots had been given to the NorCal-based author by one of the chefs, who made it often at both the restaurant and home to accompany meats. I thought back to that magnificent wood sideboard on the main floor, groaning with produce and jars. Well, I knew what I was giving my friend J for Christmas…

I arrived home in Windsor on December 22. If I was going to get a jar of shallots to Berkeley, California, in time for the last mail delivery before the holiday, I had to work fast. My mom indulged my singular mission and was accomplice and sous chef as I ventured out for supplies and then set up shop in her kitchen for bathing finely sliced shallots in a brine of red wine vinegar, sugar, water, bay leaf, and thyme sprigs. Once the sealed jar was sufficiently cooled, we nested it in a box with packing foam and headed to the Purolator depot.

Overnight shipping would deliver the gift to my friend J's doorstep on the morning of December 24. It cost me $60 to make it happen. The book itself had set me back $26.95 and the actual Pink Pickled Shallots? The jar held about $5 worth of ingredients. But the joy in my heart while making J a recipe from that magical place where we had shared a memorable dinner and that had been my introduction to farm-to-table local eating? It was, as the saying goes, priceless.

Though I cook with shallots regularly, I hadn't thought about the Great Holiday Pickling Escapade in years until last week when I was browsing Instagram, noting what the producers at my local weekly farmer's market were bringing to their stalls. And when I saw that County Left Farm would have fresh, plump, vibrant shallots on offer, the memory came flooding back. They were beautiful, with their magenta outer layer and spiky greens still attached — a completely different experience than ones I typically buy already de-stalked, enclosed in their outer papery skin. I bought a bunch and used one bulb that night, shaved into a warm potato salad where its oniony-garlicky twang danced alongside capers and a mustard vinaigrette. I eyed the remaining bunch, wondering what it weighed. My scaled registered almost exactly 1 pound, which is what I needed to pickle a pint. So that's what I did — twenty-six years after I made that first jar in homage to Chez Panisse.

As I scattered pale-pink slices of sour-sweet shallots over a platter of freshly made baba ganoush for dinner the next night, I revelled in all the ways love makes itself known. It can be in a grand gesture, like lavishly hosting a friend in one of the most beautiful places in the world or picking up the check at one of its most famous venues. It can be in an impulsive act, like shipping a jar of tiny onions over 4,000 kilometres. And it can be in the quiet moments of reverie in one's own kitchen, amazed at all the ways that food builds bonds: between us and the Earth from which it comes; between us and those we cook for and eat with; and between us and what lies buried in the far corners of our hearts.