Bathed bread.

Lewisburg.

Adapting to a new kitchen is always tricky, whether it be cooking dinner at a friend's place or, currently for me, making the adjustments to a new home. Cooking is now complicated by a variety of factors: the sink's in a separate room from the stove and refrigerator¹; the only counter space is what we've provided²; and the contents of our pantry are still in boxes until the new shelves are delivered. Tomorrow, assuming all goes well.

On the upside, we've been fortunate in finding good, fresh, local food. The growers' market, which takes place on Friday afternoons, is fairly small, so the result is that the vegetables have pretty much been harvested that morning. Our new potatoes were dug the night before, and the farmer actually apologized for it. As though we were capable of discerning the difference.

So, what to do with all that fresh food? Since good bread's tougher to come by, and I've been making the no-knead recipe pretty regularly, it's seemed like a good time for sandwiches. Nice, keep-the-apartment-cool-style sandwiches. A boule, though, doesn't make for great sandwich slices, not like one done in a loaf pan. And I haven't rigged up a loaf pan enclosure for that wonderfully crispy crust just yet.

Plus, summer's a great time to fire up the grill. We'd gotten an unusual chicken - I forget the breed name - at the market, one with massive legs and, as a result, loads of dark meat. Grill plus chicken tends to mean barbecued chicken, even if a whole bird's more than the two of us could possibly eat at once.

So? I looked in one of my new books, Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything, which is essentially a different take on the same ground that Joy covers. With Bittman's usual minimalist twist, of course. Good, simple ideas; easily adaptable. The result?



Pan bagna, or bathed bread. It's a monstrous sandwich, enough to feed four, or six with a couple of hearty side dishes. Since I already had the coals going for the barbecued chicken, I took advantage and tossed on the chicken breasts and some eggplant, as well. The whole process takes a long time - overnight, at least - but without much active cooking. The day of, you've got an easily-sliced, readily-transportable, pre-made and heat-free meal. A side salad, pickles and chips, and you're all set.

Suffice to say, the following recipe's just a very basic guideline. What follows is what I made, given what I had lying about; every subsequent sandwich is going to be unique.

Pan Bagna
Serves four

Ingredients

• One 1½ lb. boule loaf
  
• Two chicken breasts, grilled, with salt and pepper
  
• One medium eggplant, in ¼-inch slices, salted and grilled
  
• One large tomato, thinly sliced
  
• Two small onions, slowly caramelized in butter
  
• Three hard-boiled eggs, thinly sliced
  
• A handful of fresh mint leaves
  
• Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
  
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Slice the bread horizontally - as if it were a giant hamburger bun - and open it up. Pull out approximately half of the crumb, trying to leave an even layer all around.
   
   
2. Fill the cavity with layers of ingredients. Since you'll eventually be slicing it like a cake, arranging layers of varying colors looks best. Pile it high, and set the top of the loaf back on.
   
   
3. Wrap the sandwich tightly in foil. Set on a plate, with another plate on top, upside down, and weigh it all down. The more weight, the better; boxes of salt or large cans work well. Place in the refrigerator overnight.
   
   
4. To serve, unwrap from the foil and slice in quarters (or sixths). The overnight pressing will have allowed the bread to soak up all of the meat and vegetable juices, while compacting it all into a stable sandwich that can be eaten with one hand.
   
   It's possible to slice it into eighths, as well, though it's tougher to keep it all together as the wedges get smaller; I wouldn't try for anything less than that. Alternately, you could reheat the entire sandwich - still in foil - in a 300F oven for fifteen or twenty minutes before slicing.

* * * * *

¹It seems as though the house was originally built without indoor plumbing; a subsequent small bumpout on the side houses everything that needs water.

²So, in other words, it's minimal. We're working on it, but for now cooking takes a significant amount of planning for anything but the simplest meals.

The central PA movie scene. Or lack thereof.

Downingtown.

Sure, we don't (currently) own a television. This makes the DVD collection somewhat difficult to put to good use, but it'll be remedied in due time. No Four Star-equivalent, so I suppose Netflix'll have to fill the void.

Could be worse, I suppose. It could be Blockbuster or nothing. Last I'd checked, they won't carry anything with an NC-17 rating. Any place that refuses to carry Crash likely won't have a great selection of envelope-pushing art films.

And Lewisburg doesn't have much in the way of movie theaters. The Campus Theatre is a sweet, Art Deco, single-screen cinema from 1941, literally around the corner from our house. They can get some interesting films - including an annual documentary film festival - but the single screen limits the selection. There's a multiplex over in Selinsgrove, and probably another somewhere north of town, but nothing that'll show anything that's not intended as a mass-market blockbuster.

None of that quashes the need for movies. We'd caught Ratatouille at the Campus, which is well worth anyone's seven bucks. (Or whatever.) With the Pixar and Disney - especially Disney - labels, I get the impression it's been unfairly pigeonholed as a "family film". As in, something that kids can watch that won't give their parents epileptic fits. I got that impression from one of Sharon's co-workers, who'd basically dismissed it as popcorn fare. Summer season filler.

But it's Brad Bird! After three¹ films, he's toeing the line of auteur. Yes, he makes films that any child can watch, but are intended to communicate to an adult audience. He has, after all, commented that "animation can do any genre; it's unfortunately limited by what people are willing to pay for. I think you could make an animated horror film. You could make an animated film about divorce if you wanted to, and make a good one."² And, as A.O. Scott writes in his review, Ratatouille "provides the kind of deep, transporting pleasure, at once simple and sophisticated, that movies at their best have always promised."

Think of any great director's work, and how that comment sums it up. From Akira Kurosawa to Billy Wilder to, say, Richard Linklater, that seemingly effortless combination of complexity and accessibility makes for cinema that draws you in, engages you, and brings you back again and again. Whether it be to watch the film once more or to simply to recall it, to think about it more profoundly days or weeks later. Though that may not be the surest sign of a great film, it describes one that's made a connection.

And for films that connect - sometimes with a gentle caress, sometimes with a thunderous, earth-shattering impact - there's no more reliable source than the Criterion Collection. It doesn't contain all of the greatest films ever made, though that's likely more an issue with publishing rights than anything else. Reading through the Laserdisc list - all out of print - in addition to the expanding DVD list gives a thorough picture of the films that Criterion would release, given the chance. (For example: Kubrick films other than Spartacus.) If it's on that list, you can feel assured that it's worth your time.

It's also exciting to note that Criterion has an offshoot label now: Eclipse. In order to make important films from cinema history more available and affordable, these boxed sets forgo the lavish extras, the commentaries and documentaries. Instead, they're lovely little capsules of cinema art, tiny explorations of a single director's work, whether it be the early (or late) work of a world-class auteur or the little-known side projects. Genuinely cool.

And while I'm at it, I might as well mention that it's within striking distance for the latest Cronenberg film, Eastern Promises. It's hard to know quite what the film is about, even from the trailer; the more straightforward Cronenberg's work seems at first glance, the more subtle the actual message turns out. I'm avoiding summaries and potential spoilers, figuring that I'd rather be shocked and surprised the first time through. From the trailer, it almost looks like it's retracing the steps of A History of Violence, but somehow I doubt that very much.

After all, trailers can be deceptive.

* * * * *

¹The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille. Plus two Krusty-centered episodes of The Simpsons and the fantastic Family Dog short.

²Also in the A.V. Club interview: "That's what I would like, to do something that's cool a hundred years from now."

Lewisburg - the new local.

Lewisburg.

It's official: we've moved back east. There are certainly things to be missed from Madison - dinner and drinks at Natt Spil; the jam-packed aisles of Four Star Video Heaven; Lake Louie beer - but it's time to make do with the best of what's available here. And there is a small, but entirely adequate, local growers' market on Friday afternoons.



They call it the growers' market to distinguish it from the farmers' market, which is significantly larger, though it's hard to tell who there is actually a farmer. That one's on the edge of town, partly inside an enclosed building and partly sprawling outside; there's plenty of food, but not much of it exciting. Not a single organic sign anywhere; only about a third of the produce was labeled as "homegrown";¹ none of the meat seemed to be grass-fed, or pastured, or hormone/antibiotic free - it could be, but there wasn't a sign in sight; and there were stands selling all sorts of assorted crap, from used romance novels to jewelry and coin appraisals to airbrushed t-shirts of fish² and deer. We did pick up some sour cherries and black raspberries - an east coast luxury we never did find in Wisconsin - and lingered a bit at the fish counter, but that was about it.

The Susquehanna Valley Growers' Market, on the other hand, is an all-local, producer-only market, with perhaps a dozen vendors. It sets up in the parking lot behind the municipal building, so close to our new place that we can see it from the front porch. For a market so small, the selection's remarkably good; in its third year, things seem like they're becoming well-established.



You can find: heirloom vegetables; pasture-raised poultry and pork; grass-fed beef; raw-milk cheese; baked goods; hot sauces and salsa; flowers; and hot food to eat while you meander. Our neighbors - who'd lived in San Francisco and Austin prior to Lewisburg - had recommended it to us, but made sure to warn us that it was small. Even so, we came home with a mighty haul, having spent a good while getting to know the new folks who'll provide us with our food.



Suffice to say, we're just about set for the week. We were so thrilled by the stuff we found, that I feel a need to list it all:

• Pasture-raised chicken, slaughtered yesterday.
  
  
• Pasture-raised Pekin duck, slaughtered yesterday.
  
  
• Blueberries, along with an invitation to go pick our own.³
  
  
• Raw-milk, washed-rind cheddar from grass-fed cow's milk.
  
  
• Golden beets, white beets, and red beets.
  
  
• Heirloom cucumbers, including the yellow lemon cucumbers.
  
  
• Cut-this-morning salad mix with herbs and edible flowers.
  
  
• Rainbow carrots.
  
  
• Snap beans, both purple and green with purple striations.
  
  
• Garlic.
  
  
• Fresh bulb onions.
  
  
• Eggs from free-range chickens.
  
  
• New potatoes - though I forget the name of the variety, they sounded just like Purple Vikings: purple skin with a creamy, white interior.
  
  
• Jalapeno-Vidalia onion salsa.
  
  
• Sour cherry BBQ sauce.
  
  
• Baked goods: a mixed-berry spelt scone and a spelt cinnamon roll.
  
  
• And a fresh bouquet of flowers, including Black-Eyed Susans and four different colors of snapdragons.

So it's not the Madison markets so near and dear to us, but it's what we have. And I'm happy to have it.

Plus, most of the vendors had heard of Madison's DCFM. I don't think that any of them had ever been there, but they reckoned it was a sight to be seen.

* * * * *

¹Or, in other words, local. Those big piles of watermelons sure aren't from this far north, at least not yet.

²The airbrush, that sure sign of American sophistication. For several fine examples of the airbrushed-fish style, check out the extras on the A History Of Violence DVD; specifically, the "Fish Friday" bit in the making-of documentary.

³Since the timing was all wrong for us to make a big batch of strawberry jam this year, we'll have to give blueberries a try. My mom recommended blueberry-peach jam, which sounds rather tempting.