Free How to Cook a Moose by Kate Christensen Page B

contentment. Brendan and I had never once argued during the buying and renovating of this house; we hadn’t lost our patience or good humor or mutual excitement about the whole process. It had been a joyful, fun experience, like everything we did together—exploring Maine, discovering Portland’s restaurants, walking Dingo on the Eastern Prom, sitting and writing at the same table in perfect harmony, driving back and forth from the farmhouse, talking and singing and laughing, and, most of all, cooking together.

    For me, the kitchen is the most important room in a house. I’m always happy at a stove, stirring something; there’s no room for angst or self-doubt in a pot of chicken soup. When I’m anxious about something or stuck with my writing, chopping onions, carrots, and celery and sautéing them in a skillet is calming, centering. I love the feel of ingredients in my hands. I love to improvise, to invent and play and have fun. And I love feeding people.
    But, until recent years, cooking was a solitary activity for me. Like writing, it’s something I’ve immersed myself in alone. Being “in the pocket” at the computer or stove was my refuge, the introvert’s escape.My ex-husband and I used to joke that when one of us cooked, the other had to leave the kitchen. We could not cook together without a power struggle. (We were both firstborns, which might have been the problem right there.) For decades, my mother and sisters have lived thousands of miles away, so we’ve never had much opportunity to cook together, as a family. And I’ve only rarely ever cooked with my female friends, even though many of them are amazing cooks. We cook for one another, as an act of generosity and love, rather than collaborating on dishes.
    I assumed from the start that Brendan and I wouldn’t be able to cook together. Besides our twenty-year age difference, I was born on the West Coast, he on the East Coast. His family is old-world, traditional, proper; mine is bohemian, happy-go-lucky, eccentric. And our cooking styles were extremely different and seemingly incompatible. Both of his parents grew up in Italy, and he learned to cook from his father, who taught him a number of Tuscan and Roman dishes, like pork tenderloin with rosemary-prune sauce, peperonata, orecchiette with broccoflower and garlic, and pasta with tomato and pea sauce (my favorite, and the most soul-nourishing dish I’ve ever had, the chicken soup of pasta). And I, true to my own background, have always tended to either throw dishes together based on what’s in the fridge and cupboard, or create something from an amalgam of six or seven different recipes after doing quick, hit-and-miss research.
    So at first, we cooked for each other, winning each other’s hearts through our stomachs. I loved watching him small-dice a soffritto, or tuck sprigs of rosemary and cloves of garlic into a leg of lamb, or roll the mezzaluna, an Italian two-handled, curved chopping blade, over a pile of steamed broccoli rabe before sautéing it in garlic. Brendan, likewise, was entertained and fascinated by my ability to figure out how to make something I’d never made before. He cheered me on as I made Vietnamese pho from scratch, applauded from the sidelines as Ifried up crisp, light, gluten-free buttermilk-buckwheat blini, a recipe I’d devised myself, for Valentine’s Day breakfast. He was gracious about my failures and excited to eat my successes.
    But we were so inseparable, we were always in the kitchen together.
    â€œI’ll chop the onions,” I said one night, stepping up to the cutting board with my glass of wine.
    â€œI’ll stir that for you,” he said the next night, easing himself in at the stove while I chopped vegetables.
    Soon we were waltzing around each other with oven mitts and knives and wooden spoons.
    Then we collaborated on pork dumplings with scallion ginger sauce. I made the