Annotations: Week 1
Hi and welcome to the first edition of Annotations, a weekly newsletter on books, food, music, and more. Some of you know me through my Instagram or writing, others might have stumbled onto here by accident. Anyway, it is good to see you.
A short introduction. I started writing eighteen years ago now, and it has taken me to places I never expected. More than a decade as a music critic and writer allowed me to centre my work on the things that matter the most to me—literature, cooking, music, gardening, art, design, architecture.
For a while now I have missed having a more eclectic platform that connects those interests with each other, or simply lets them co-exist in the same space. Hence, the newsletter.
Let’s rip the bandaid.
I’d love to hear from you at hello@alisalarsen.se
With love,
Alisa
Currently cooking
Someone asked me to describe my style of cooking the other day. All I could think of was aromatic. The olfactory element of it is really essential. Now that the tomatoes are plump and fragrant, and Mediterranean herbs such as basil, marjoram and wild fennel at their most heady, it feels like the right time to cook this relatively simple but sublime rice dish. It is a thoroughly satisfactory process, melting tomatoes into sauce (sweating over the stovetop, windows flung open) and infusing it with herbs—a joy of the senses.
When tomatoes are ripe and sweet like this, broth feels superfluous. That is why I make a lighter ‘flavourful water’ to cook the rice with. Let the discarded herb stems and flowers flavour the water, and salt. Nothing more, nothing less.
Tomato rice
500 g ripe cherry tomatoes (a mix of yellow and reds is nice) - more if you have an abundance of garden tomatoes starting to burst at their seams
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
3 tbsp olive oil
250 g short grain rice such as Bomba
Water
Salt
Basil (and/or a mix of wild fennel fronds or fresh marjoram)
Peel the tomatoes by throwing the tomatoes in a pot of boiling water for a minute. Transfer to ice cold water, and gently peel off the skins.
Warm the olive oil in a broad, heavy bottom pan on medium heat. Add the sliced garlic. Let it get fragrant for a minute or two. Add the tomatoes and stir. Cover with a lid and let them get soft for 5 minutes.
Separate leaves of the herbs from the stems. Heat 500-750 ml of water in a pan, add 1 tsp of salt and the discarded stems. Let infuse for a minute or two.
Check the tomato sauce. It is ready for the rice when the tomatoes have melted into a sauce with soft chunks of tomato. Add the rice and stir. Add a few leaves of basil. Pour in 250 ml of the flavourful water. Stir.
Keep adding a bit of liquid at a time, every 3 minutes or so, or if the sauce is starting to feel dry. The total cooking process will take about 15 minutes, and is done when the rice is al dente - not chewy, but soft with a bite to it.
Fish out the basil leaves. Finish with a bit of olive oil and salt to taste, as well as fresh basil, wild fennel and marjoram, torn into pieces rather than chopped.
Any leftovers make for delicious arancini the day after.
Currently listening to
Having spent the better half of July in the countryside and wild nature, coming back home to the city felt a bit too much. I swapped the midsummer disco for late summer quietude, listening to it with a sleeping pooch wrapped up next to me.
Currently reading
A relatively low key summer led me to seek adventure elsewhere. Travelogues in particular, have been a source of great joy. First, I read Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya’ (2005). Anyone who has read her phenomenal ‘My Garden (Book)’ (1991) is familiar with the author’s obsessive relationship to gardening, and travels to China and Nepal to collect seeds to plant in her Vermont garden.
Travelling with a small group of botanist friends, she treks the slopes of the Himalaya, wandering between crevices, paradisiacal plains and remote villages. As they climb, the climate attunes to that of New Hampshire or Pennsylvania, then finding the familiar primroses, marigolds, and junipers as they move through the most extreme of landscapes. It is a book about the strangeness of travelling, alone and together, of otherness, the history and politics of botany and trade, of humility and vanity, of letting go and of enduring.
Second, I finally dove into the work of Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy, who passed away two years ago. In ‘Full Tilt: From Ireland to India with a Bicycle’ (1965), she records her travels by bike through Italy and Yugoslavia through Iran, Afghanistan to Pakistan and India in 1963-4. Witty and dry, but clever, open-minded, and insightful, her diary records bygone times of tradition, transition and most extraordinarily, friendship, tolerance, and understanding beyond borders, language, and religion. The way in which conversations, kindness, random details, life in remote areas and wild adventures intertwine are superb. I cannot wait to dive into her books ‘In Ethiopia With A Mule’ (1968), and ‘Between River and Sea’ (2015), on her (an avid anti-Zionist) extended time spent in Israel and Palestine.
Quick thoughts
It is time to dry herbs. Right now, they are at their most aromatic and wonderful. Whether that means bringing home a sprig or two of fresh bay leaves or thyme from your vacation to the South, or picking whatever grows wild close to you (here it is wild oregano and chamomile) — you’ll be happy you did it in a few months. Every year, I try to dry a bouquet of marjoram, my favourite herb, to flavour soups and beans in the winter. Right now, we have coriander seeds, shiso, and wormwood (for booze and tisanes!) drying hung among the bookshelves.
Talking about tomatoes. A go-to recipe of mine is Edouard de Pomiane’s tomatoes in cream, a genius piece of alchemy done in the simplest of ways. First introduced to me through the writing of Simon Hopkinson, I have made this dish countless times, usually served with a simple rice pilaf. Have a go, I promise you will not regret it.
I’ve been relishing Naz Deravian’s recipe for cucumber agua fresca this week, as we are currently struggling to get through all of the cukes the allotment churns out and the temperature out is hot-hot. It says large cucumbers, but honestly, I have found that even slightly sad-looking pickling ones work really well. Keep just a bit of the skin on for a lush green tone. Another note on cucumbers - Café Deco (my favourite London restaurant) recently launched their newsletter including a delicious recipe for cold cucumber soup with lovage.
I could listen to this episode of Time Is Away forever.
That concludes this week’s Annotations. See you next week!
x A