Setting the Table

I wrote this for our beloved local newspaper, The Provincetown Independent. The Indy, as it turns out, was instrumental in both the creation of this newsletter, and in the book I spent last year writing.

A few winters ago, the first of the pandemic, I had just started writing the occasional food column for the paper. I was nervous about my second column, nervous about the world, nervous about whether I had the right kind of mask to wear to the grocery store — nervousness always having been second nature to me, I shifted into a high gear very easily that year. I was writing about soup (also second nature stuff: I have a Peter Hunt soup tureen tattooed on my forearm, just in case I ever need to prove it to someone), kind of a sweeping remembrance of a good time in Chinatown with some dear friends I missed very much. Those of you who have been around from the beginning might remember it. After a few hours hammering away at my beleaguered laptop, I asked Sean if he’d give it a read before I sent it off for edits. 

“It’s good,” he said, with a slight upturn at the end like he was unsure. “It’s a little heavy for soup.” 

I was both mad and amused. I emailed Flynn to complain about it and ask her to weigh in. 

“Well, Sean would be right if this was about soup, but it's not really about soup, it's about food as a survival tactic,” she said.

She thought she was making a joke when she said “we should start a newsletter called Soup and Despair,” but then I started the substack and added a logo, and we agreed we’d try our best to trade weeks (“Oh fuck, I have to do something I said I wanted tooooooo,” she screamed).

We wrote about comfort food, and why recipes from the depression era are often treasured family heirlooms. We wrote about despair, and anxiety, and illness, and tried our best to use our love of food and feeding each other as a salve. We got lovely messages from friends and strangers alike telling us that they loved our words, loved our recipes, loved our idea (seriously, y’all are the best). One of those messages was from Patrick Davis, the publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Unbound Edition Press, asking if I had an idea for a food book that wasn’t really a cookbook, but an MFK Fisher-style food memoir. I didn’t realize until he asked that I’d been working on essentially that for most of my adult life.

Here’s the bit about soup. You will recognize elements of it as both the first soup we talked about and the soup that brought my Covid-withered taste buds back to life. You all know more about my life and my recipes than most people — until the book comes out. Love you guys.

Last year, I wrote the first draft of a food memoir. In December, I submitted it to my editor, and we’re set to begin revisions on it soon. It doesn’t have a title yet, but you’ll find out when it does. It’s a weird limbo between stints of working really hard on something I care a lot about, but also wanted to stop looking at every day. Wanting to dump your entire life and all its dark and tender secrets onto paper for other people to consume is a peculiar impulse.

I’m not a particularly disciplined writer and I don’t spend a certain amount of time doing it every day like some of my writing heroes. It’s hard for me to talk with much authority about the creative process, because for me it always comes in weird little flashes. One such flash came the other day, while I was thinking about how to explain it.

“There’s a marked difference between the menace of blizzard snow, icy and gravely against the window, and what’s happening here today. Today, the sun is just barely shining through the thin, gray clouds, and there’s no wind, so the fluffy, soapy clumps of snow aren’t falling so much as they are wandering around on their way down to the wood of the back deck. I woke up at 5:30 this morning, the house dark and quiet save for the sound of the faucet running in the sink so the pipes don’t freeze. I spent a few hours doing word puzzles and thinking about sleep, staring at the internet and thinking about whether the sunrise would be blotted out by clouds, texting with a friend in Europe about his flight to Warsaw and thinking about making more coffee.

Now, the snow is weaving around and I’m finishing Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor while Sean makes pancakes and bacon — a rarity on these aimless winter mornings, when we usually eat an idiosyncratic breakfast on our own and reconvene for yoga or a morning movie, which Sean always refers to as “going to the cinema.” It smells like coffee, bacon, and coconut, which Sean has bizarrely decided to toast and add to the pancakes because he found it in the cabinet next to the ancient buttermilk powder he was looking for. He spent the morning making a playlist, which we’re listening through now. Joanna Newsome’s “Peach, Plum, Pear” is playing, which I always mishear or misremember as “Beach Plum Girl,” and it makes me think about how the gentle snow I’m watching right now would be fat, irregular raindrops pelting the garden in a different season in this place I love on the end of the world. And then I think, ‘I should write this down, so I don’t forget.’ And that’s kind of how you end up writing a food memoir.”

Writers write for all kinds of different reasons: I just get turned on by people getting exactly what I mean. And those pancakes were delicious.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of the book was written in my kitchen in Provincetown. Writing inspiration, like grief, and lust, and all the other big important things, often comes at me sideways when I least expect it; usually while I’m cooking, or reading, and most infuriatingly, in the shower. I spent the whole year I worked on the manuscript cooking with the laptop open, just in case. It created a sort of Pavlovian response. The scent of onions cooking in butter has always been one of my favorite things about being alive, but now it also triggers the impulse to write, to explain, to describe. It makes slow braises turn into office hours, essentially. The last swirl of sesame oil in the pot of beef noodle soup triggers a memory, and I’m back at the keyboard, trying to find the right way to describe the sushi bar I worked in when I was 20. 

This book tells the story of my life through the kitchens I’ve lived it within. It required me to close my eyes and find myself in some of the most delicious and also painful moments of my life. It led me to describing my mother’s kitchen in categorical detail, to remembering old lovers, and to finding some patterns I inhabit without realizing it – you might not realize that you use cheese as an emotional salve, but you will after you write a food memoir. I’m excited and nervous for it to be out in the world. It’s intensely personal and very honest, like the things I like to read the most always are. 

Here’s a slow pot of soup in case you need some office hours of your own. This recipe happened because I found some beautiful beef short ribs at the grocery store, and wanted to use them in a way I never had. I am going to make this one thousand more times. A large part of the joy is smelling it as it simmers for hours. 

Listen to This Shit: I Made You A Playlist”Be Gentle” on Apple Music

Chinese Beef Noodle Soup(adapted from “The Gourmet Cookbook,” edited by Ruth Reichl)

1 - 2 ½ pounds beef short ribs7 c. water⅓ c. soy sauce¼ c. mirin 1 Tbsp. sugar6 slices of fresh ginger, about ¼ inch thick8 scallions (5 smashed with the side of a chef’s knife, the other three sliced)4 cloves of garlic, unpeeled, smashed with a knife1 cinnamon stick1 star anise1 tsp. Salt1 dried red chile (or ¼ tsp. crushed red pepper flakes)2 heads shanghai bok choy (the small green ones), or the equivalent of any other greens you have on hand¼ lb. dried egg or rice noodles (or instant ramen, which is what I used)3 plum tomatoes, quartered1-2 tsp. sesame oil

Combine short ribs, water, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar in a big, heavy stockpot and bring to boil. Reduce to a simmer, and skim the foam off the top (this is the key to a beautiful, clear broth later). Add ginger, smashed scallions, garlic, cinnamon, star anise, salt and chile. Simmer, covered, until the rib meat is tender, 2-3 hours. Let ribs cool in broth, uncovered for 30 minutes. (You can do everything up to this step in advance, and chill the whole pot overnight, if you want. I did, and it made removing the excess beef fat a breeze.)

Transfer the ribs to a cutting board. Remove the meat from the bones and give it a rough chop, or just shred it with your fingers.

Meanwhile, bring a smaller pot of water to a boil for your noodles, and cook them how you like them. If you’re using instant ramen like I did, cook them 15 or 30 seconds less than you normally would. 

Strain the broth, or just dig around with a slotted spoon until you’ve removed all the aromatic bits, and are left with the liquid only. Skim off as much of the fat as you like. Add the chopped meat, and tomatoes, and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Add your bok choy or other greens and simmer until they just turn bright green. Taste your broth for seasoning – you probably won’t need more salt, but you might want it. I added a splash of rice wine vinegar because I like the broth to be a little sour. Add the sesame oil and the sliced scallions at the very last moment. Put the noodles into the bottom of your serving bowl, and add the soup on top, making sure to distribute the greens and meat, and serve piping hot.

Serves 2, with plenty left over for tomorrow.

You’re reading “Soup and Despair,” a (sometimes) weekly newsletter by Sarah Flynn and Rebecca Orchant. It’s about food, feelings, and surviving the dark times. If someone forwarded you this email, it’s because they love you and they want you to eat. You can subscribe to it too!