Spring: Decadence and Desperation

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:  when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” – Charles Dickens

Spring is back at Brown, and frankly, the idea of writing this column bleaches in comparison with the possibility of doing anything outside. An open window and Champions League soccer will have to suffice.

This week saw a real culinary experiment—pan-fried smelts with green olives—rewarded with a new favorite appetizer that far outweighed the smelly apartment that resulted. Smelts, for the uninformed, are beautifully silver finger-sized fishies with a clean taste, high protein/mineral-to-fat ratio and little of the nasty toxicity and environmental impact of the larger fish. They’re the sort of thing that makes you question why you ever eat salmon or tuna, since they’re cheaper and better for you. Anyway, a quick dip in flour, salt and pepper (egg is unnecessary due to the moisture of the fish) and a few minutes in olive oil on high heat produce a wonderful snack, flavored by salty, hot little olive halves eaten at the same time. Delicious, affordable, different, and highly recommended.

This week also saw the first lament of off-campus dining: no more lunch in the sun on Wriston. And thanks to the wonderful decade-long renovation of Faunce House, we can’t even drink burnt swill coffee while enduring secondhand smoke like we used to. How things change!

Some things, however, do not, and among those is the undeniable beauty and energy of Brown on warm, sunny days. We don’t know if other colleges experience the sort of awakening that this one does, but we doubt it…

While one of our halves saluted Nature’s rebirth in lip-smacking marine fashion, the other wallowed in a culinary winter of sorts.

The last remnants of leftover risotto and lentil soup had been abolished from the fridge and there was no prospect of an Eastside Marketplace supply run in the near future. Starvation loomed.  Eating on Thayer St. for a week would be too injurious to the wallet, while subsisting on CLIF Bars and tap water would offend both the GI tract and what was left of a damaged sense of human dignity. Thus, a pot of Desperation Soup was devised in order to survive until the weekend re-supply.

Onions were sweated in extra virgin (even regular olive oil was in short supply, necessitating the use of the good stuff).  In went the last scraps of a batch of celery, the dregs of a bag of carrots, a wrinkly orange pepper, and a lonely sweet potato.  For good measure, some peppercorns and a cube or two of bouillon.  After the vegetables browned, a lot of water was added and the whole operation was cooked down for an hour or two, with thyme and dill added sporadically.  Half a can of pinto beans and a zap from a hand-blender later, and a thick starchy goop (thanks in part to the blended-in pintos—the second half of the can was added intact) resulted.  In all, it reminded one of a Soviet winter, which was not surprising given its purpose (to provide baseline nutrition in the face of an acute shortage).  Alongside some brown rice, however, the soup provided numerous hearty meals that were actually quite tasty, thanks to the thyme/dill tag-team (closest parallel: Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan).

Lessons learned for weathering the harsh Providence winter (and, if Glenn Beck is to be believed, surviving the cruel realities of an evil socialist regime): Keep frozen vegetables for emergencies (some frozen corn would have done wonders here). Scrounge, but don’t feel compelled to use everything (a can of tomatoes was withheld—it would have made the soup too acidic and negated the other ingredients).  Spice judiciously and be patient; with enough tasting and adjusting, anything will taste good. Alternately, order pizza.

Regardless, put the paper down and get yourself outside. It’s going to rain tomorrow, and if you’re not in the sun now it might be a week before you get another chance.