I wake up, the room still dark from the heavy curtains pulled, and stay on my side for a bit, eyes closed, feeling the cool cotton pillowcase on my cheek. We sleep late these days without the rhythm of the regular school day to rouse us before we’re ready. It is one of the strange upsides of the pandemic. The boys no longer wake at ungodly hours of the morning and run impatiently to pull us from the inky depths. They sleep until the first milky light glows behind their curtain and then, most days, they play together in their room, building elaborate castles and forts and zoos while we are allowed to sleep on or at least lie in the dark with our eyes still closed.
In bed—my feet warm, having tugged off my socks earlier in the night, my whole body briefly heavy and content—something occurrs to me. We have made it to February. January, which had loomed in my mind a month ago, is behind us. Then the next thought creeps in. I thought it would feel more victorious. I breathe in, out, darkness all around. Rather than victory, it is more like we’re in a boat out to sea and the shore behind us has just slipped out of sight.
These days, I switch back and forth between setting my teeth together, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, and reveling in the comfort of our reduced existence, our quiet, gentle days, our home filled with the children’s shouts, food simmering in the kitchen, the sound of the kettle switching on. We are so lucky, we say to each other over and over again. We have food in the pantry, children who want nothing more than to be home with us all day, enough room for all of us in our beautiful apartment, a warm radiator in the living room, parents who are alive and healthy and impatient for normal life to return.
On weekend mornings, we bundle the children up and take them to the Tiergarten where we run around for a bit, their shouts echoing in the tree tops. There are so many parks in Berlin and they are all lovely in their own way, but it’s the Tiergarten that I remember most from the hazy depths of my brief childhood in Berlin and so my heart thrums and pulls like an anchor settling into sand when we’re there. I lust after that feeling like after a lover.
Sometimes I marvel that this simple fact, that I was here and then I wasn’t, will be the backdrop of every facet of my life.
***
This week is Hugo’s weeklong winter vacation and Max has taken time off from work too. This is the week they normally drive down to Austria to ski. This should have been the first year Bruno and I joined them. As much as I am desperate to leave Berlin, to travel and breathe different air, the truth is that I harbor some relief. I would have dreaded going even if I eventually would have been grateful for the experience. I have passed these maddening thought behaviors onto my eldest son and sometimes I practically tremble with guilt over it.
No, this year, there will be no Austrian ski vacation. Instead we are all at home and Max and I have traded places. It is my turn to go into the tiny office at 9:00 am and close the door gently but firmly. He stays on the other side, with them. I relinquish the task gladly, fleeing greedily into my work. Not only do I get uninterrupted time to concentrate, but I am so grateful to see them at the end of the day. I am full of patience and love, instead of humming with irritation and exhaustion. I grab at them, trying to hold them close, sink my nose into their nape and hair, but they squirm out of my arms. Hold this feeling tight, I chant to myself, hold it tight hold it tight let it fill you up.
***
I turn my attention to February, which stretches before us now. This is the next month to conquer. I won’t let myself to contemplate the length of time ahead of me. It is only about today, this afternoon, maybe tomorrow, nothing more. Narrowing my focus helps me get through the enormity, gives me the illusion that I am still in some small way in control of my family’s fate.
If January was the month of soups, then February will be the month of greens. The markets are full to bursting with frothy, creamy heads of endive, long sheaves of bitter broccoli rabe and feathery chicory, plump fennel bulbs with a nearly marble-like glow, austerely elegant radicchio, and broccoli, unusually sweet and tender. I boil and sauté the bitter greens into submission, using garlic and anchovies and a trickle of syrupy vinegar to help them explode with flavor. I sliver fennel and radicchio into punchy little salads punctuated with cold pieces of orange and the lush chew of freshly cracked walnuts. The broccoli is boiled and roasted, sautéed and cooked down to a purée and blasted at high heat.
When I keep the broccoli simple, just steamed and dressed with olive oil, the boys pluck stalks out of the serving bowl and eat them with their fingers, making pretend they are dinosaurs on a rampage in a forest.
My father taught me to love broccoli and it is the most constant vegetable at our table, regardless of the season, the default side dish when dinner is nigh and I have nothing else in sight, the vegetable that always gets picked up at the grocery store, even if it’s not on the list. What follows are the most frequent ways in which broccoli shows up on our table.
The best thing you can do with it is to simply cut it into pieces (as well as the stalk, which you must peel) and steam it until a knife sinks into the broccoli without resistance, but it hasn’t yet lost its vibrant green color. Drain and dress this with good olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.
If you have too many burners going, dump the pieces of broccoli into a roasting pan, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper (bonus points if you add either ground coriander or hot red pepper flakes or both, you crazy animal), then roast in a hot oven (390°F/200°C) until the broccoli is tender and singed. Squeeze half a lemon over and serve straight from the pan.
For a very toothsome variation on this, cover the broccoli in a few generous handfuls of grated cheese (Swiss or Cheddar) before roasting, as Abra Berens suggests in her excellent book, Ruffage. Here the hot red pepper flakes are essential. You will find yourself digging shreds of melted cheese off the pan, lips aflame, while your children look on, slightly aghast at your lack of restraint.
For a delicious pasta sauce, first melt a couple anchovies in some olive oil in a wide flat-ish pan with a lid. Add a few cloves of garlic and let them cook until fragrant and golden. Add a head of broccoli that you’ve chopped into smallish pieces, as well as the peeled, trimmed stalk. Cook, stirring well, for a few minutes. Then add a ladleful of water. Bring to a boil, cover and lower the heat. Cook until the broccoli is a khaki color and crushes easily under a wooden spoon. While this is happening, bring a pot of water for pasta to the boil. While you’re cooking the pasta, add a ladleful of starchy pasta water to the broccoli. Using your wooden spoon as a masher, crush the broccoli into a rough jade-colored purée. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve the sauce tossed with pasta, loosening with more pasta water if necessary, and covered in copious drifts of grated Parmesan cheese.
Make a stuffed pizza with purchased or homemade pizza dough by stretching out the dough to fit a small-ish roasting pan, letting the sides hang over. Steam a head of chopped broccoli, then mix it with some slivered Kalamata or oil-cured olives, or preserved tomatoes, and a few handfuls of cubed provolone piccante (red pepper flakes optional). Season with salt and pepper and a glug of olive oil, then scrape this mixture into the prepared roasting pan, pulling the sides over to cover the filling and tucking them in. Brush the pizza with olive oil, then bake at 350°F/180°C until golden and cooked through, about 15-20 minutes.
I love broccoli too. Now could you please mention what all was in that slurry you added to sprouts to bake on IG today? It was gone so fast and I didn’t catch that part. Added bonus to February— it’s a short one!