Ghost Kitchens
on spaces where memory manifests
After leaving my parent’s home to go to college, I’ve lived in thirteen rental spaces over twenty-six years. Not all of them had kitchens (looking at you, freshman dorm room!), but then again, I once slept IN a kitchen for a summer because theater housing is really weird.
I love being a renter, I truly do. While on its face I (sort of) understand the value of homeownership, my satisfying, interesting but utterly unlucrative career choices have all but guaranteed that owning a house was not an option for me up to this point. And frankly I’m pretty fussy with what type of hands-on work I enjoy– while I’ll happily spend all day getting a pie crust just so, the thought of retiling my bathroom or replacing a light fixture strikes me as a deadly combination of baffling and boring as hell. I’ve never been good at doing things I don’t like.
I’m not here to convince you that renting is the best choice, only to say that it’s been the best choice for me– so far. Never say I’ll never buy a house, baby! I might. But I also might rent for the rest of my life, and I’m extremely comfortable with that idea. (If you’re about to use the word “equity”, please know that I am already asleep.)
Of course I might be this ebullient because we’re currently renting the nicest house I’ve ever lived in. After fifteen years in South Philly and three years in the Finger Lakes, we decided to move to the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia and let me tell you– it’s just the fucking best.
My favorite room in our new house is the kitchen, of course. It’s the reason I fell in love with this lovingly restored rowhouse– it’s a light-filled, spacious room, with beautiful wooden countertops and a dishwasher! The dishwasher excited Brian much more than it excited me, but then again he is a particularly gracious dish-doer, especially considering the fact that I regularly use every bowl I own (and trust me, I own a lot of bowls) when cooking just for the two of us.
Our landlord shared pictures of what the house looked like before she renovated it. I would estimate that the house is at least 150 years old, a grand old Philadelphia row home. In the years before our landlord bought the house, her pictures showed that it had fallen into some serious neglect. The house in the pictures was almost unrecognizable compared to the warm, lovingly restored space we are currently inhabiting. The contrast was especially striking in the kitchen. The pictures show a kitchen from another era, all dirty floors and metal cabinetry, slowly crumbling under the weight of passing time and passive inattention.
I don’t truck much in the supernatural– my early years spent immersed in the swamp of Evangelical magical thinking followed by my sudden exposure to the world as it actually is left me suspicious of things I cannot see with my own eyes. “Belief” is a hard concept for me, because I was sold a rotten bag of goods from the start. And yet I recognize it would be enormously short-sighted and arrogant to assume that my limited human experience can explain or even perceive the vast wonders of this world.1
So I do believe that when people shrug off their corporeal forms, they hang about on this plane, disembodied yet present in our daily lives? No, not really. But do I sometimes sense that spaces and objects have a certain energy that hearkens back to their previous inhabitants? I kinda… do. Maybe it’s all that time I spent in old theaters during my first career, feeling the empty air vibrate with the energy of past performances. These days I feel those vibrations in restaurant kitchens, in old Philadelphia bars, in the old rowhouse we’re calling home.
And it’s not just places, it’s objects too, isn’t it? The yellow bowl that Brian found on the street years ago that I now use to mix bread dough every week– what did its previous owner use it for? The small scoop with the wood handle painted a cheery red that my aunt picked up in an antique store– what did it scoop before my flour?2
I like old things– not only because I’m actively trying to get away from the single-use, disposable mindset that is doing incredible harm to our world, but because I like the notion that other hands have held these objects, that other bodies have lived in this space. I like being a little fish in the river of history. I like knowing that I’m just one person in a line of people who have chopped onions on this cutting board or rolled out pie dough on this counter. It makes me feel small, in a good way. I don’t need to be the hero of the story, I just need to be a part of a lineage– grounded in a place and time and then gone, leaving someone else to be in this place in their time.
Maybe this way of seeing the world is more present to me these days because my mother-in-law died last year and after we did the grueling work of settling the estate, I took home some of her kitchen tools. I think about her when I bake cookies on her sheet trays that still have perfect lines etched into them from cutting some sort of bar directly on the tray, or when I whisk an egg in one of her mixing bowls. I feel her looking over my shoulder when I pull out one of her handwritten recipes and make her son a chocolate chip cake for his birthday, just like she used to do. We didn’t know each other very well when she was alive, so this is my way of getting to know her now. Some days I feel like I’m honoring her by using her recipes, other days I feel she would be resentful of this stranger mucking around with her tools. I’ll never know, of course. But I think about her, so she’s there in the kitchen with me– a noticeable presence.
Cooking is by nature an ephemeral art: the final product is consumed, eliminated, and usually forgotten. And yet, something lingers– in our memories, in the tools marked with the dings and dents of our use, in the spaces where so much work is done. Food is a conduit to our spiritual, social, physical nourishment. The kitchen is a temple of our shared memories. And in this particular sanctuary, instead of lighting a candle to remember the people who have come before us, we pick up their tools and their recipes and we get cooking.
Or as Betty Fussell put it in her memoir My Kitchen Wars:
“Memories fail, as recipes do, because what’s inside the head and what’s on the plate are never the same, no matter how hungry we are to bring them together. The recipe for my grandma’s instant applesauce would have to include her thumb on the knife and the pocket in the apron on her lap.
…I can eat my father slowly in a bowl of mashed potatoes, I can dilute the vinegar of my stepmother with the blessing of oil. I can give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a two pound lobster drowning in a lake of butter as if each breath were a lover’s kiss. And if I want to, I can write about it, in the deep communion of words.”
Perhaps this is why as a teenager I loved The X-Files so much– not just for hot, skeptical Scully, but for the earnest “I Want To Believe” framework that Mulder applied to the supernatural. I, too, want to believe– it’s just I’ve seen what believing too hard gets you, and that’s terrifying.
A surprising number of tools in my kitchen were trashed picked on the streets of Philadelphia when I was a broke line cook. What a boon. But for real, who throws away a perfectly good (and expensive) Calphalon saucepan, complete with a lid? I’ve had that thing for over a decade at this point, and it’s still amazing. I also nabbed a set of vintage Pyrex Butterprint Turquoise nesting bowls set out for trash day years ago. I’d shake my head over this absolute bonkers decision on the previous owner’s part, but their loss is my gain! (hair flip)
Recommended Reads:
Kate Lebo on Making and Remaking Recipes On and Off the Page, by Kate Lebo for LitHub
On Pandering by Claire Vaye Watkins for Tin House
My Kitchen Wars by Betty Fussell
COOKBOOK RECIPE CORNER
Michelle’s Chocolate Chip Cake (vegetarian, contains butter & eggs)
Yes, I KNOW I changed the format of this newsletter to include cookbook recommendations instead of recipes a while back, but in honor of my mother-in-law I thought I would share her Chocolate Chip Cake recipe, as interpreted by me. It’s my newsletter and I’ll recipe if I want to!
As you can see from the photo below, cooks of previous generations tended to be a little… sparse? on recipe details. You may be tempted to do crazy things to this recipe like reduce the sugar or use yogurt instead of sour cream. Resist the urge! This cake is perfect as-is. Don’t fret, McB boys: I swear I didn’t change a thing, just clarified for modern cooks.
YIELD: one 9”x13” cake, which I cut into 24 squares
EQUIPMENT: stand mixer or hand mixer, a 9”x13” baking pan (don’t have a pan with these exact dimensions? Use this handy guide!), sifter (optional but I’m a huge fan), spatula, 4 medium-sized bowls, parchment paper, non-stick cooking spray
INGREDIENTS:
for the cake:
11 tablespoons (yes, I agree that this is an annoying measurement) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar (I’ve had success using 1 cup white sugar + 1/2 cup brown sugar, but don’t tell the McB boys this)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/3 cups sour cream
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
for the mix-ins:
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips or (ssshhhhh) a mixture of dark chocolate and milk chocolate chips is also nice
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 350° Fahrenheit. Liberally spray a 9”x13” baking pan with cooking spray and then line with parchment paper, leaving some overhang on the longer side of the cake pan. (It’s okay if the pan isn’t fully covered with parchment, you just want to make a lil sling to lift the cake out)
Place softened butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, or if using a hand mixer, simply place in a large bowl.
In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In yet another bowl (I told you I use a lot of bowls) whisk together the sour cream, eggs and vanilla extract.
Beat softened butter and sugar on medium high until light and very fluffy, about 4 minutes— stopping a few times to scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl.
With the mixer running on low speed, add half of the flour mixture followed by half of the sour cream mixture. Repeat with remaining flour and sour cream mixtures, stopping the mixer before they’re fully incorporated.
Using a sturdy spatula, stir together the batter, making sure to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl thoroughly so the mixture is fully homogenous.
Make the mix-in: In a small bowl (yes, ANOTHER bowl) stir together 1/2 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon.
Pour half of the batter into the prepared baking dish. Sprinkle half of the sugar mixture and half of the chocolate chips over the batter. Cover with remaining batter. (The batter will be pretty thick, so you might need to use a spatula or an offset spatula to nudge it into the corners. If the batter is too sticky for the spatula, just get the spatula a little wet and that should make things easier for you!) Sprinkle the top of the cake with the remaining sugar mixture and chocolate chips. Lightly press down on the chocolate chips to ensure they stay in place while baking.
Bake for 35-45 minutes (my oven is on the colder side so it took me the full 45, yours will be different!), rotating the cake from side to side and from the bottom rack to the top rack of the oven halfway through the baking process. The cake is done when the sides start to pull away from the pan slightly and a cake tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out free of crumbs. (It might have some melted chocolate on it, but that’s okay!)
Allow to cool completely in the pan, and then use the parchment sling to carefully lift the cake out and onto a cutting board to slice.
PLAYLIST*:
Chicken Pussy, Bongwater
Mother’s Been a Bad Girl, Unloved
Space Girl, Shirley Collins
*all music mentioned in the newsletter collected in this handy Splatternalia with Sara May playlist
HOT OFF THE STOVE:
Since we last spoke, dear readers, the last of my freelance recipes have been published. Now that I’m feeling settled into the new job, I am once again submitting for publication— so, you know: hire me!
Torta di Carote (Italian Carrot Cake) for The Mediterranean Dish
Garlic Aioli for The Mediterranean Dish
As for not-for-publication cooking, I’ve been settling into my new kitchen and exploring the vibes. I’m working more these days (at a job that I absolutely adore), so this leaves less time for intensive projects. I have managed to make at least two tomato tarts (so far) this season, a steep decline from my weekly tomato tarts of last summer. Speaking of tomatoes, we planted one teeny-tiny sungold plant in the spring and it has simply exploded into a monster of epic proportions that rains cherry tomatoes on us daily. I’m not complaining, but damn. That thing is EXTRA.
Otherwise we’ve been enjoying our neighborhood so much— quickly becoming regulars at Attic Brewing, devouring the amazing jerk wings (and rice & peas and collards) from Jamaica D’s and thoroughly enjoying bonkers juicy chicken tendies and classically perfect turkey clubs at McMenamin’s Tavern.
Splatternalia original artwork by the indomitable Hannah Taylor. Check out her stuff here and support her by commissioning work, buying prints and/or attending her gigs!
This is lovely and I feel the exact same way about renting!
I freeze cherry tomatoes. Cut them in half, lay out out a cookie sheet and stick in the freezer (yes, room in the freezer required). When they're frozen, I toss them in a container. They make a fantastic chili during a winter storm.