Gabrielle Hamilton and passports

Gabrielle Hamilton and passports have little to do with one another except that during the twenty-one hour span that commenced last night at 7 and ended today around 4, I saw and spoke to Gabrielle Hamilton, she signed my copy of her new cookbook and I realized that my passport expired in June yet I need it to leave the country on Monday. You can imagine that the latter is the lame duck in the "which one doesn't fit" game.

Sigh, it is always something. However, I feel immensely grateful that I a) realized this today rather than on Monday and b) live in Washington because c) was able to make an emergency expedite appointment for Monday at 10:30am. The process is said to take 3-4 hours from start to finish, so if you don't think I'll be biting my nails in the cab out to Dulles later that afternoon, you're wrong. Immense waves of relief will rush over me as soon as I successfully check my bag and get my boarding passes.

Y'all keep your fingers crossed for me!

Last night was so much fun. Tom and I went with friends to a local restaurant, Buck's Fishing and Camping, for a dinner celebrating the release of Gabrielle Hamilton's new cookbook, Prune. (The event was organized by Politics & Prose, a tremendous independent bookstore here in DC.) It's a compilation of recipes from her restaurant, and I love that it's basically a bunch of sauce-spattered notes bound in a magenta shell. It's the kind of book from which I think I'll learn a fair amount and I am excited to jump in.

Gabrielle looked just like she does in her pictures which sounds as if it should be obvious, but you know how some people in fact do NOT resemble their photos. That is just weird. Anyway, it was a lovely evening. The bubbly was flowing, the lights were dim, people seemed truly enthused to be there. Once we'd sat, Hamilton gave a brief discussion of the book and later took a few questions.

Mrs. Student here had been thinking about how much I wanted to talk to her. I had to let her know how seriously I enjoyed her memoir (Blood, Bones & Butter), wanted to ask about a particular element of it and also thought I might throw in the fact that not two weeks ago, we ate at Prune.

Because I don't eat lamb and didn't feel interested in the rabbit leg, I'd had less solid food than perhaps advisable in the presence of freely-flowing booze (each course was paired with a matched wine). Perhaps because of that or perhaps because I was just really enjoying myself, my hand shot up -SHOT UP- when she inquired if there were any questions. My tablemates, 90% of whom I didn't know from Adam, were wildly supportive of this. I found their waving arms and cheers of "She has a question! She has a question!" very sweet if not slightly odd. Maybe they'd had a few glasses too.

Gabrielle called on me, I stood up and smiled and proceeded to let her know that my question was actually a three-parter that included two comments and one query. Nerd.alert! Swear to g, someone said, "Only in DC" which, frankly, I took as a compliment.

I told her about our visit to Prune, praised her memoir as masterfully crafted and asked if its structure -particularly around the arc of experience with her mother-in-law- was premeditated or if she'd discovered it during the writing process. "Well, as I mentioned, I have an MFA and yes, this was planned very carefully. Every word was intentional." Even more impressive really.

One of her sons is named Leone, so after thanking her, I said, "Oh, and Part 3, I have a new nephew named Leone." A collective laugh swelled when I started in on point 3, but hey, I raised my hand quicker than lightning. Today it seems possible that my knowing the name of her son may have seen vaguely stalker-like, but alas.

On our way out, I stopped by to thank her again and she was so warm and wonderful and thanked me for my question. In fact, look how she signed my book:

I floated home!

Tonight, when there was nothing more I could do about my expired passport, I started making a beef stew. It was cold today, and stew just sounded perfect. Comforting. Hearty. Midway through I decided to make potatoes to go alongside. I boiled these until al dente, sliced and fried them until golden and then topped them with rosemary, salt, pepper and a generous dollop of crème fraîche. Divine.

Review of Prune (NYC)

Have you read Blood, Bones & Butter? It is a superlative memoir written by Gabrielle Hamilton, chef-owner of Prune, a New York City restaurant that just celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. B,B & B was masterfully crafted, a result of or perhaps the natural entrée into the MFA in Creative Writing that Hamilton received before becoming a chef. It's the kind of book I couldn't put down and also one that has stuck with me since. In fact, the longer I've thought about and processed Hamilton's words, the more I've gleaned and learned from them. Though Hamilton didn't attend culinary school, she opened Prune in 1999 and was awarded the James Beard Best Chef NYC award in 2011. In 2012, Blood, Bones & Butter won a James Beard award for Writing and Literature.

It goes without saying that Gabrielle Hamilton is a multi-talented woman.

As such, when I saw that she will be in DC presenting her new book, the Prune cookbook, over dinner at a nearby restaurant later this month, I eagerly wrote a friend, whose husband was as wowed by B, B & B as was I, to see if they wanted to get tickets and join T and me for the evening. Long story short, the four of us had tickets within five minutes, are looking forward to the 20 November event with much anticipation and I knew I simply had to make to Prune, finally.

Lucky me, we were, as you know, heading to NYC last weekend. Sunday morning was free, and I was as keen on seeing my dear pal Shawn (the one I took to Ghibellina last month and the one who urged me to start this blog) as I was intent on eating brunch at Prune. He's always game for anything, as is Tom, so we met on the curb out front the tiny restaurant just after it opened at 10am.

Prune is way downtown on East 1st, just north of Houston, and if you weren't looking for its magenta awning which overhangs tall, plate glass windows that allow passersby to peer into the tiny interior, you might very well miss it. I don't think Prune can seat more than twenty-five guests, and the nook of a kitchen is the sort only non-New Yorkers might wonder about, but the cramped style works in this cozy place: you're all in the experience together.

Diners and wait staff dance an intimate samba, as some devour what others deliver. A hot-pink-shirted woman with a fifties pinup coif deftly delivered a full round of drinks and dishes to our table-for-two made table-for-three. Here is T's Monte Cristo, the small bowl of currant jelly just holding onto the lip of the plate. His orange juice nestles snugly between his and Shawn's waters, Shawn's coffee and other usual suspects so often on restaurant tables. My ovoid platter of Huevos Rancheros slides neatly at a forty-five-degree angle between my own juice, the Prune (a mix of juices that does not include prune), and Shawn's Soft Scramble with Rosti. The waitress suggests he jettison his coffee cup saucer, and then the table looks as if it were made just to hold all of our dishes and the occasional elbow.

Tom wishes his warm, meaty sandwich  had been left to chart only a savory course; in this vein, he wipes all powdered sugar off the buttery bread and refuses the addition of currant jelly. I eat that from a spoon. Shawn eats his perfectly cooked eggs first, with bites of English muffin, but not its rims, here and there. The rosti will have to wait, which was a wise decision because although it glistened with an entrancing golden hue, it wanted desperately for salt, the one usual suspect missing from our table's fauna.

My huevos were terrific- the chile sauce was smoky and complex, the perfect accompaniment to beans, avocado, chips and eggs. I was full afterwards but not so stuffed that I couldn't later make room for a slice of New York cheesecake, which I bought for and ate on the train home.

At Prune I felt happy. I felt like a neighborhood regular even though I'm obviously not. The food wasn't perfect or even that memorable really. But I'd return in a heartbeat just to feel in that mix again. A blip of a moment in time in a microcosmic speck of New York. It's not every restaurant that can draw people in like that. That's what made Prune special to me and likely part of what has made it special to so many others over the past fifteen years.