Equal Parts

I find most chef shows fun to watch, but not necessarily inspiring to me as a home cook. It has nothing to do with the complexity of the dish, but rather the pacing of the chef and the cameraman. Both are oftentimes too fast and the lessons too abbreviated, and so I watch more as entertainment than a study. Chris Fischer, on his new show with wife Amy Schumer, presents the opposite. He shows his experience in a calm, attentive, and easygoing manner that results in simple, inventive, and approachable dishes. Perhaps this is only because of the premise — the show is called Amy Schumer Learns to Cook, and he is her teacher — but I get the sense he is working in his natural style. As I watch I think to myself, that’s the kind of home cook I want to be.

Fischer is a trained chef who cooked in some of the world’s most famous kitchens (Babbo, The River Café) before returning to his home on Martha’s Vineyard, following in footsteps dating back twelve generations, to take over operations on his family’s farm. I hate to say it, but I knew none of that until a couple of years ago when I read that he married Amy Schumer, which prompted me to buy his cookbook. The Beetlebung Farm Cookbook is deeply personal in the most literal sense (what other cookbook name drops the author’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather?) — an actual genealogy, diary, and archive, with recipes. I rarely cook from it, but inspiration is the point. It’s a reflection on simple cooking drawn from the surrounding land, and every time I flip through it I am ready to pack my bags and move to Northport immediately.

One time I watched an Amy Schumer comedy special on a morning flight and laughed so hard it felt offensive to my fellow passengers. Similarly, on the cooking show Amy pushes the boundaries of appropriate jokes for cable television (always reminding the viewer the show airs after 10pm). Chris provides some instruction, but Amy turns all chopping duties back to him after she claims her normal chopping looks as though it were being filmed in slow motion. Instead, Amy provides poorly-measured cocktails and phone calls to her famous friends (like Jennifer Lawrence). Chris tries to sell the world on the use of fennel at each meal (Amy rejects it every time) and steals herbs from neighboring, unattended gardens. All signage is handwritten with Sharpie on cardboard likely torn from boxes of their quarantine deliveries. The nanny/cameraperson is always laughing, and occasionally their adorable baby Gene appears in a miniature chef’s hat. The show is a gem, my favorite creation to come out of this lockdown.

And then there’s the food, mouthwatering and unfussy, in the style of Chris’s cookbook. I’m into the simple salads and slaws, always inclusive of fennel, and the candied fennel ginger scones, which I’ve written into my imaginary cafe menu. Soon I intend to try his Greek salad dip and white rice cooked like pasta (hoping this will save me from my decades-long desire for a rice cooker). In one episode, Amy poetically describes a speck and brie sandwich she bought at a train station in Italy while en route to Oktoberfest with her sister, with nostalgia reminiscent of the baguette I enjoyed on a bench just outside Notre-Dame de Paris when I was twenty years old. They get that food equals memory.

Then there was a sandwich with roasted shallots, fennel, leeks, onion, and cabbage, plus feta, on toasted rustic bread. Yum! In my head I started riffing on that idea almost immediately. In the spirit of simple cooking drawn from my surroundings, yesterday I took inspiration from my local refrigerator and made a tartine spread with baba ganoush and roasted cauliflower. This I served on Roadhouse bread, a very special bread from a mix of rye, wheat, and cornmeal flours, with a little bit of molasses. It’s dark, dense, crusty, and deeply flavorful, and Jeff and I love it so much we served slices in the bread baskets at our wedding dinner.

In the chef’s style of Chris Fischer, I have no formal recipe for this. Be instinctual, and go with your gut. Have fun!

ROASTED CAULIFLOWER TARTINE WITH BABA GANOUSH

Separate a head of cauliflower into florets; I usually chop it in half, cut out the core, and then pull apart the pieces. Season with olive oil, salt, pepper, and cumin, and roast at 425 for about 30 minutes, until cooked through and blackened in some spots. Toast two slices of your favorite bread (such as Zingerman’s Bakehouse Roadhouse bread). Add a healthy spread of baba ganoush to each slice (we are partial to Steve’s brand from the grocery store or takeout from a local Middle Eastern restaurant), then top with some of the roasted cauliflower.