Cold Kitchen Quotes

“And the fog. The purple fog, blue fog and white fog. Film noir fog. How I love the sheer romance of it; disorientating, dominating, concealing and revealing.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“But despite heavy clouds, a feeling of contentment hangs in the air, coming from the kitchen's ability to be two things at once: to be an enclosed space that effectively opens up the world through taste and flavor and imagination. Nature comes in here. Pomegranate seeds on rice dishes, a strip of orange peel for a negroni, or a ribbon of lemon skin for a martini. A lime wedge for gin. A bowl of ripening pears. A jar of dates. Peaches roasted in rose water and stuffed with marzipan. Blackberries scattered on pancakes. Apricots cinched in chutney. Memories of melons, and the vine pergolas and fruit trees of summer, of prized Uzbek cherries carried in boxes across borders. The kitchen is an orchard.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“There is no love sincerer than the love of food,' wrote George Bernard Shaw. Yes--- except, perhaps, for the love of a dog.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“Thick, pale golden juice burst like a tiny rain cloud, tart as a lime and sweet as a peach on my tongue. Full-bodied. A trickle dripped down my index finger, caught just in time, too prized to go to waste. I let Darwin lick it.
The real thing, its brilliant sweetness, eaten miles from human habitation, acted as an intoxicating potion. Immediately, its taste unlocked the gates to other northern lands and, as the last of the sweet-sour flavor fizzed out on my tongue, overlaying images sped joyfully through my mind: birch forests, mountains, glittering lakes, snowy trains, windswept taiga. I lingered over that single cloudberry, cherishing it, more than caviar, more than whisky or truffles, more than anything else I had ever eaten, smoked or drunk before. Once it had gone, I felt only a little grief, convincing myself that the cloudberry-- surely the ultimate 'taste of place'-- was somehow a gift; I felt I had consumed its very northernness. It brought back the similar sensations of eating a pear in an orchard, a melon in a melon field, an apple in a grove, though nothing could really compare.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“Tiger-orange, and so dreamy and evocative of name, cloudberries had been on my mind for years. The first time I ever came across them on a menu, rather than in a field guide, was in a bistro on Estonia's Baltic Coast, in Pärnu, as a jam to accompany cake. As I was curious to try the preserve, the waiter agreed to bring me a spoonful, despite the cake being off the menu. Golden and precious as the amber torn from rocks at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, it gleamed.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“Without doubt, it was a single cloudberry--- wrapped, like a gift, in a gauzy spider's web. Golden-red, the color of cognac, and shaped like its cousin the raspberry, but with fatter, yet fewer, juice-filled druplets, its solitariness hinted that its life had begun as a seed dropped by a bird; a fugitive out on its own, not part of a patch. Typically found in remote and scattered locations, cloudberries elude even the best and most hyper-local of foragers. So few in number are they, that they seem unreal--- the fruits of mountain fairies or goblins.
Cloudberries are a distinct rarity in Britain, often more rumor than reality. I had never seen them in the wild in Scotland (though other walkers have), nor in the moorlands of northern England, where they are also reported to grow, each stem boasting just a single fruit. Notoriously hard to cultivate commercially--- needing snow in the winter, followed by the right succession of damp, sun, rain and even fog--- they grow mainly in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, where wild fruit is scant and the summer sun never fully sets.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“Unlike the pantries featured in interior design magazines, mine has no bespoke timber or marble finishes. It is, instead, a simple walk-in cupboard with pockmarked walls. And on its six shelves, painted white, the cycle of life is evident: eggs, nuts, seeds, spines, bones. A collage of primeval things born of nature, speaking of the land: oats, bark, leaves; and the sea: dulse, anchovies, mackerel. Things, now in tins and jars, that have absorbed the power of soil, oxygen, water and sun. And pickled things, suspended in time: mushrooms and cucumbers, noble-looking white asparagus spears erect in brine. Herbal and floral vinegars, sweet and fruity. Soot-black Persian dried limes, snow-white coconut milk, Sichuan peppercorns, Scottish heather honey, Japanese bonito stock, Turkish lokum, dried Polish mushrooms. A flavor atlas of the world.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“The flavors and food of the Baltics, generally reasonably priced and rich with variety and imagination, can often rival Nordic cuisine (which influences it), yet it is not held in the same esteem. I can still taste the sea buckthorn cheesecake I ate in Klaipėda-- the whole berries set in jelly on top, their sharpness slicing through the full-fat cream cheese-- and the snow-white fillets of pike perch, caught in Pärnu Bay, baked with butter and capers. The exceptional farmstead dairy produce-- in particular, herby butters packed with the power of meadow grasses and flowers. Smoked sprats, cloudberry jam, and bread as nut-brown as the soil. And I think of the birch forests we drove past and how, at this time of year, Latvians would be out tapping the thin white trees to bottle the nutrients stored in their roots that each spring filter up through their trunks, carried by the rising sap, like magic.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“Blooming next to daffodils in parks are tulips in a wild rainbow assortment of colors, with fringed, curved and lily-like petals. On the trees are clouds of white, red and pink blossom, and in the woods, now newly neon green, banks of bluebells are bolstered by the right balance of sunshine and rain. A time of earthly gifts.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“The following day we walked again. Hiking through Truso Gorge, we followed a track lined with Siberian irises, raising their purple petals to the sun, and Prophet's Flowers, a relative of borage that is native to the Caucasus, their blooms strikingly yellow with maroon polka dots. Bubbling, iron-rich waters stained the rocks bronze, a tell-tale sign of the dozens of mineral springs buried underground. Butterflies flitted, wings shining orange and pink, past flocks of sheep and their canine guards.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“And bundles upon bundles of fresh ferny herbs in shades of pine green, pickle green and pistachio green-- a whole color chart of green. Dill, tarragon, parsley and coriander, in contrast to raisin-colored purple basil.
In restaurants, what comes to the table? First, wine and bread--- in the shape of a slender Venetian gondola that has been baked in a round clay oven called a tone. The bread is crusty, but soft within, charred a bit on the bottom. Then, a dozen or more fragrant things. Rabbit soup made with walnut, pepper and garlic. Oyster mushroom and coriander soup. Beetroot quarters in sunflower oil and dill. Catfish in vinegar and coriander sauce. Bean stew and pickled vegetables. Chicken roulade in walnut sauce. Lobiani, which is a flatbread-- possibly the finest of all flatbreads-- filled with mashed kidney beans. Gebjalia, fresh cheese rolled in mint. Flowering coriander in hazelnut pesto and spicy green adjika. A whole stubby cucumber (peeled). Fermented forest jonjoli-- samphire-like, tasting of capers and with bell-shaped flowers, harvested in spring-- dressed with Kakhetian sunflower oil. Fried sulguni cheese, salty and chewy. Pink-hued Georgian trout. Tarragon panna cotta topped with blue cornflower. Matsoni, impossibly good homemade yoghurt, tart and cool, served with an inky and elegant black walnut preserve.
And heaps of herbs. Always herbs. Herbs are flavor, herbs are a whole salad bar; herbs are medicine, a salve. Invasive, weedy and rampant, like mint and goutweed, they are also pagan charms to attract friendship or fortune. Free-growing and bountiful, they have been survival food during the darkest periods of war, and verdant ornaments during the happiest days.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“In the pantry, waiting to awaken memories of flavors of Georgia, is a cache of things carried back from trips over the years: jars of neon-red adjika spice paste, packets of savory Svan salt and small glass bottles of precious Kakhetian sunflower oil, glowing yellow as buttercups.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“Springtime in Turkey and the South Caucasus is idealized for good reason. Valleys are carpeted with wildflowers and the land is one of bewildering variety. Apricot trees start frothing white blossoms, soft green buds begin appearing on willow branches and the quince orchards turn pink with flowers.
And as soon as herbs come to life, imbued with the spirit of the green blooming hillsides, they are greeted and rallied to the table. Dill and parsley fill freshly griddled flatbreads--- qutabs in Azerbaijan, jingalov hats in Armenia, gözleme in Turkey--- often elevated by little more than a generous brushing of first-rate butter. In Georgia, coriander soup, thickened with potato, is served with dark rye bread. In Turkey, fresh mint is mixed freely with cucumbers, yoghurt and water, or with pureed broad beans. In Turkish, I am told, there is even a verb used for chopping herbs, kıymak.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“Setbacks and failure are all part of a well-balanced kitchen diet and life. I have come to know this. And it makes me think about Carla's satisfying and assured title, taken from the Bible: 'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith' (Proverbs 15:17). But it is another proverb that perhaps best sums up her well-travelled, well-fed life: 'a contented mind is a continual feast' (Proverbs 15:15).”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“Kitchens have their seasons. And in this subterranean world, hidden from rainstorms and eager winds, is a world of wheat, wine and herbs. Always herbs. Herbs with balm in their leaves and flavor in their throats. A harvest of herbs on the windowsill. Parsley, coriander, tarragon. Basil, of different varieties, Greek with its anise-clove flavor and 'Sweet Genovese' with its jumbo cinnamon leaves.
By the stove, I am chopping mint, coriander, tarragon, basil and parsley. The leaves and stems will go into a soup inspired by a region that taught me just what can be done with herbs, the South Caucasus--- that is Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. From springtime until winter, whole bouquets of herbs arrive ceremoniously to the table, sometimes so fresh that clumps of earth still cling to their pale whiskery roots. Vital as bread, drawing eyes and senses forward, they are the centerpiece of the table. Intensely fresh and fragrant, unbruised and unwilted, they are a meal, a feast. Vitamins after a long winter. Never an afterthought, a mere sprinkling, or worse, 'a pinch'. At breakfast, oozing omelettes filled with molten white cheese and blades of tarragon. At lunch, bulgur salad, always more leaf than wheat. Ice cream is mint, sorbet is basil, soda is tarragon. In warmer months, they are refreshing, health-giving and sanity-saving as the sun starts hammering down.
So today, in this kitchen of a hundred crossroads, to welcome the beginning of spring, I will bless this soup with a crop of fresh herbs.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“Taking my seat at the back of the café, I spotted salep on the menu, a warm winter drink made from the powdered dried tubers of wild orchids, specifically Ophrys speculum, which has weird furry bumblebee-like flowers. I ordered a glass. Two steel shakers, one of ginger and one of cinnamon, were set down with the cup and I sprinkled both powders onto the drink, hot and dairy-tasting. It instantly reminded me of childhood, its subtle flavor not easy to nail down: vanilla-like, reminiscent of mastic, earthy, woody, smooth as velvet. The sort of thing you'd take to sip under the covers while reading a bedtime story.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“In Edinburgh, the hoşaf, taking its name from the Persian, meaning 'delightful water', because that is exactly what it is, bubbles on. Fruit plumping up and bobbing in the pan: the apricots like wrinkly-skinned cheeks, the prunes like black onyx gemstones.
I think about the simple magic of it. How by taking a handful of dried apricots and prunes, then adding sugar, water and heat--- and time, the most important ingredient of all--- it becomes glorious hoşaf.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“cardamom-laced hoşaf with apples and cherries (par-boiled and therefore more likely to float elegantly), bubbled in apple juice and freshened with a squeeze of lemon. A pink-hued quince variation with a little cinnamon. Simple prune, rich and dark. Apricot and orange blossom, with golden sultanas boiled with a spoonful of honey. Small, slightly unripe pears, peeled, then brought sweetly alive by heat and sugar. Whatever is in season or, in times of scarcity, dried fruit.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“I cast concerns away and instead wallow in the heady rosy-lavender-ish fragrance that is rising from the pan on the stove. Intense and intoxicating, it offers a pleasing foretaste as the dried apricots, chewy as toffee, and whole jet-black prunes carried back from Istanbul bob in the simmering sugary water.
This spoonable, fruity concoction is an attempt to feed the heart what it misses, and to bring some color to the table.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“A litre of frozen sea buckthorn juice, fiercely orange, as orange as marigolds in full bloom, is defrosting in the sink.
Sea buckthorn grows along the coast on sand dunes in Britain, but it is rarely used here--- unlike in Russia and Central Asia, where it also thrives, and is offered as a standard addition to hot tea in cafés. Legend hints that warrior-rulers and conquerors such as Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great, who stormed across the steppes of Central Asia and Mongolia, tanked up their armies on the berries, and perhaps their horses, too. Sea buckthorn's Latin name, Hippophae rhamnoides, means 'shiny horse', and some historians suggest that in ancient times, after a battle, when the horses were left to graze, they would come back with glossy manes, having feasted on sea buckthorn. Others link the name to the mythical flying horse, Pegasus.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“I had heard that the local pirozhki are sometimes filled with herbaceous horsetail, which apparently tastes like celery and has long been revered for keeping remote villagers going during times of famine. In the summertime, bakers fill their cakes with northern berries--- cranberry, cloudberry and serviceberry.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“The kitchen has long been a place of submission and serfdom for a great many people, especially women. But it can also be a source of power, somewhere a timid hand can become brave.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“These are all winter melons. This one is called "old lady melon." It is very sweet, very soft,' Karim said, running his hand over the melon's tight folds.
Round as a football, heavy and full, its skin was ribbed like thick corduroy, its wrinkly stalk curved as a coat hook. Taking his knife, Karim carved a sickle moon from the seaweed-green melon, exposing, almost indecently, the melon's flesh, creamy as magnolia. In the middle, a tightly packed jelly-ball of seeds-- unlike watermelons, which have their seeds scattered throughout-- managed to hold its form despite the cut. From this strange melon came a uniquely robust fruitiness, mixing overripe pear with Bourbon vanilla. He held up the melon proudly, an example of the fruit in its prime, the cross-section of its seed house, glistening in the sunshine. In Uzbekistan it is the trader who decides when a melon is ready. There are no stickers ordering the buyer to 'ripen at home'.
He handed me the slithery wedge and I tried to unpick the flavors as grievous wasps landed drunkenly on the scattered rinds. First, sherbet. Then a little honey mixed with almond extract and, finally, pineapple and the smoothness of rum.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“The scent, though, is its own feast. In the cutting and cubing of it, more of its hard-to-pin-down ambrosial smell is dispensed, rising up like fresh-cut grass melding with cool iris. Batting away the temptation to eat a few coral-red wedges over the sink, I indulge, instead, in the anticipation of pleasure, imagining how, when I finally get to it, the melon's singular watery crunchiness-- it is a cousin of the cucumber-- and its copious juiciness will be sorbet-like on the tongue, as fresh and awakening as a glass of soda.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels

“In Turkey, better cooks than me do not waste the rind, instead soaking the strips in water laced with pickling lime, then boiling it in sugar syrup for melon-rind jam. Sometimes, confectioners candy the rind into glacé sweets. So intense is the sugariness of certain Turkish melons that vendors pitch them to customers by calling out, 'Sherbet, sherbet!' Some of Turkey's finest, most-prized, and largest, melons are found in Diyarbakir, the de facto capital of the country's Kurds, in the south-east. Dovecotes there, especially by the banks of the Tigris River, where vine fruits thrive in the alluvial soil, hint at the location of melon fields. Nitrate-rich guano (manure) from pigeons and doves is said to heat and enrich the ground, thus adding to the uncommon sweetness of the often tiger-striped melons. Camels once brought these weighty fruits from the field to the city. There is much to learn about Turkish melons.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels