Damon Lee Fowler

On this day twelve years ago, the indomitable cooking teacher and cookbook author Marcella Hazan left us. That she did so on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels was no mere coincidence. She had a lot in common with that warrior angel, being a fierce and uncompromising defender of the principles of sound cooking—and not just of the kitchens of her native country, but of any kitchen.

A scientist by nature and training, she was possessed of an endless curiosity that was governed by one overruling standard: taste. How it was done, how it smelled, and how it looked when it landed on the table all mattered. But in the end, all those things served the one thing that really mattered to her, which was how it tasted when it landed on her tongue. Read More 

A sure sign of summer in a Southern kitchen is a bowl or window ledge full of vine-ripened tomatoes from the garden. But an even surer one in mine is a jug of cold soup in the refrigerator. From early June (May when we lived in Savannah) until well into September, there's at least one such jug or bowl of a soup that's as good cold as warm. Though it can be heated to warm us on the odd cool evening, it's mainly there to have cold, to soothe and stir heat-blunted appetites.

At the moment, there are actually two: this summer's first batch of vegetable soup (still not quite like my grandmother's, but getting there) and a summer squash puree with leeks and thyme.

I don't really follow a recipe anymore. It's the same basic formula Read More 

30 June 2021: Summer Squash and Pasta

Last week I was finally able to visit my parents, whom I had not seen since December of 2019. It was bittersweet: Finally seeing and actually touching them was undiluted joy; witnessing the toll that age and pandemic isolation have taken was heartbreaking. Hearing it in their voices on the telephone, and in regular reports from my brother, was one thing, but experiencing it in person was something else altogether.

One of the single saddest things of all was that my mother is no longer able to do the thing she loves best: garden. Her large vegetable garden plot is now indistinguishable from the rest of the yard. And there was not one single green vegetable to be found in that house.

Still, it was good to actually see them and, if only for a few days, take some of the burden off my brother, and do things Read More