Maira Kalman: a breakfast conversation

on cake and coffee

For subscribers both free and paid:

In the coming months, Poor Man’s Feast will be featuring breakfast conversations with a wide variety of artists, writers, musicians, thinkers. It will almost always include a recipe. The first one is my conversation with the brilliant artist Maira Kalman, whose work is the very first I turn to — always — when the world is careening out of control.

Each conversation will be released for paid subscribers only and live in the archives. Free subscribers will have access to a portion of the conversation, as always. A portion of the proceeds of every breakfast conversation will be donated to a number of organizations dedicated to feeding children at both the macro and micro levels, beginning with Save the Children.

Thank you - Elissa

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Breakfast people tend to be different.

My father was a breakfast person; nothing made him happier than sitting down at a morning spread comprised of anything from scrambled eggs (with ketchup) and bacon, to coffee cake and leftover apple strudel from Mrs. Herbst, to bagels and schmaltz herring, to Spam fried in a scuffed little teflon pan that he used for nothing else. The New York Times was a given.

My mother preferred black coffee and a cigarette. They divorced when I was 15.

Like my father (and his parents, who sat down almost daily to spreads of crispbread and Bryndza cheese with a bowl of oranges), I’m also a breakfast person, as is my wife of twenty-four years; nothing in the world makes us happier than coming to the dining room table on a rainy Sunday morning with the paper, a big pot of coffee and tea (both black), and two eggs (poached) on toast (white). When I studied in England many years ago, I was deliriously happy every morning in the way that only a breakfast glutton who loves kippers can be; my first day at Cambridge, I walked into the dining room at Gonville & Caius College, and floated over to a table festooned with racks of warm toast, sweet Irish butter, fried tomatoes, beans, smoked fish, eggs, and black pudding. English people are breakfast people, as a nation. Years later, when I was teaching narrative food writing with the great Diana Henry at Glin Castle in Ireland as part of the Lens & Larder program, I discovered that the Irish really love breakfast; I could eat Jess Murphy’s brown bread every morning of my life, and be very happy. Over the years, I have eaten breakfast in Turkey, Greece, Tromsø, Chianti, Bristol Tennessee, Bristol England, the Parkhouse district of Glasgow, Parma, Florence, Pendleton Oregon, Connemara, Galisteo New Mexico, Coney Island, and a little taco joint in Corsicana, Texas, and wherever I have been, this has been true: breakfast is the great leveler. To see people sitting down and pouring themselves a cup of tea, or spooning yogurt into a bowl, or digging into a breakfast taco, or peeling an orange to eat with some hard cheese: this gives me hope.

Breakfast people tend to be drawn to other breakfast people; in the 90s, I used to read Laurie Colwin ferociously, like a starving beast, and by the time I got to the middle of Home Cooking, I knew in my heart that she was a breakfast person. Likewise, the artist/illustrator/designer/writer Maira Kalman, who elevates the mundane to the glorious in a way that — always, but especially right now — settles my heart. When I attended her show at The Jewish Museum back in 2011 (twice), I was given a very wide berth by my fellow fans.

(Maira’s Pete))

(My Pete)

Maira has an affinity for what one journalist called the whimsically neurotic, which is, in part (I suspect) why I find her work so appealing. (Also, she had a dog named Pete; I have a dog named Pete, and they are virtually identical. She famously won at auction a pair of Arturo Toscanini’s pants; Toscanini’s manager, Gatti-Casazza, stayed with Enrico Caruso at my great grandmother Esther’s boarding house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the early 1900s.) When you read her books, there are certain truths that become instantly apparent: she loves people, she loves the (deeply imperfect) world, and she loves food. Cake, especially, appears to hold great meaning for her, so much so that she, in collaboration with Barbara Scott-Goodman, wrote and illustrated an entire book about it.

Some years ago, I asked Maira where she stands on the subject of breakfast, and this is what she had to say:

You seem to me to be a breakfast person — the sort who might start their day with this particularly personal, ritualistic meal. You say in The Principles of Uncertainty that you read the obits over breakfast first thing with a cup of coffee. What else is there on your table?

Breakfast is the meal that I enjoy the most. And the one that I most like to share with other people. Lately, I’ve been eating sheep’s milk yogurt with pomegranate seeds. Very Biblical. There is usually jam and bread. A banana is eaten. And sometimes a lemon pound cake or biscotti, but we are trying to stay away from cake. Too bad.

I have a writer/chef friend who, when he travels, packs an emergency breakfast bag so that wherever he finds himself, he’s not caught short. Is there anything you must have for breakfast when you’re not at home, so much so that it might impact the rest of your day if you don’t have it?

The most important thing is coffee. Without that, we are in trouble. After that, whatever is around. A croissant. A bowl of granola. Some eggs.

You write a lot about cake. Have you ever eaten cake for breakfast?

There used to be a lot of cake for breakfast. When we are in Tel Aviv, we make a strong pot of coffee and have slices of honey cake on the terrace. It feels like a good beginning. But again, the cake element is questionable these days. That might change.

(It changed. Watch the video. - EA)

Traveling the world as you have, what have been some of the more memorable breakfasts you’ve eaten abroad?

Thirty years ago, on a ferry from Spain to Portugal, hot coffee with steamed milk in a glass. Twenty five years ago, near Siena, breakfast with my family under a tree. Almond cake. Coffee. Fruit. Cheese. Five years ago at Sissinghurst in England, a full English breakfast served with mismatched china and silver in a small bed and breakfast. Raspberry jam. Fig jam.

I’ve found that the children of breakfast people tend to grow up to be breakfast people. Is this true in your case? Did you grow up in a breakfast-loving household? Are you children breakfast people? 

I can’t remember breakfast with my parents at all. And my children meet me for breakfast. But I don’t know what they do when I’m not around.

It’s a quiet weekend morning; your schedule is open, and there’s nowhere you absolutely have to be. Do you prefer to have breakfast in or out? What would be the ideal scenario for you?

I would take a walk and hopefully end up in a place with an outdoor table. I would have my sketchbook with me so I could draw my breakfast. And hopefully there would be really, really good coffee. And no music except for classical music. But mostly the sounds of the day beginning and the clink of silverware and the murmur of conversation.

Bliss.

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Claudia Roden’s Orange Cake

Adapted from The New York Times

Baked and decorated with edible flowers and fruit by my neighbor, Melissa Murphy

With the exception of this one, we don’t eat cake for breakfast very often, although seasonally, we do eat pie, which Susan believes is the world’s most perfect food. Susan first made Claudia Roden’s (famous) orange cake a few years ago, when she wanted to bake something flourless, intensely flavored, and not chocolate. We are both great fans of Claudia Roden’s work, and found our way to Moira Hodgson’s posting of it in the New York Times, a few years back. It is surprising, and involves simmering and pureeing two whole oranges with their peel, eggs, almonds, sugar, a little baking powder, and that’s all. I’ve seen versions that include orange blossom water, but: not necessary. The cake is delicate and silky, and lends itself to berries, as in the photo above, or nothing at all, which is how we like it for breakfast with hot coffee.

A sliver for breakfast.

2 large oranges

6 eggs

½ pound ground almonds

½ pound sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

Optional: Mixed berries, edible flowers

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Wash the oranges and simmer them, unpeeled, in water to cover for 2 hours. Cool, cut them open and remove the seeds. Puree the oranges, including the peel, in a food processor.

Beat the eggs in a food processor or large bowl. Add the remaining ingredients, including the orange puree, and mix thoroughly. Pour into a buttered and floured cake tin, with a removable base if possible.

Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan before turning out.