Actor Ray Ficca, playwright Bill Cain, and director Ryan Rilette during a rehearsal for New Book.

This is a show of firsts. It’s the first play that I picked for Round House, the first time we’ve produced Bill Cain here, the first show I’ve directed here, and the first time I’ve had the chance to direct one of Bill’s plays. While at Marin Theatre Company, I produced two of Bill’s plays: Equivocation and the world premiere of 9 Circles, which also won our Sky Cooper New American Play Prize. Bill quickly became a fixture around MTC, a big part of our family, so I’m thrilled for him to be the first playwright that I’m introducing to my new Round House family.

Family is at the heart of How to Write a New Book for the Bible. Like many great American playwrights, Bill has written about his own family in this play. But what makes this play unique is that Bill hasn’t fictionalized his family – he hasn’t hidden them behind a thin veil, like O’Neill does with the Tyrone family. Instead, in New Book, you meet a lead character named Bill Cain. You learn Cain family secrets, watch Cain family arguments, and ultimately, experience Cain family loss. This is truly an autobiographical play.

Bill has done this for a very specific reason – he’s leading you by example. He’s showing you how he looked back at his own family, how he explored their lives, and the revelations that resulted from doing so. Ultimately, this play asks you to do the same. It asks you to take a deep look at your own family, at your own life.

The title of this play comes from Bill’s unique perspective as a Jesuit. Bill is many things – an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and television writer; a director and Artistic Director; and a teacher. He is also a priest. As he says in the play, that’s not something he normally tells people right away, but in this play, he had to because it’s his outlook as a priest, specifically a Jesuit priest, which informs his view of his family.

Jesuits believe that God can be found in all things. You find God by exploring your life, by paying attention, by being “contemplative in action.” One famous definition of Jesuit prayer is that it is “a long, loving look at the real.” Over lunch one day in New York, while discussing this, Bill gave me another great description that comes directly from theater – one that I’m sure you’re familiar with: “Attention must be paid.”

Bill reminds us in this play to pay attention to our own family, to our own lives. In an American Theatre article written about him just before the premiere of New Book, Bill says that “If there was the revelation of the divine in Abraham and Sarah, there’s the revelation of the family in everyone’s parents and everyone’s children. The thesis of this play is that every hundred years every family ought to add a new book to the Bible, to look back on their experiences, to recognize the darkness and claim the luminous.”

That’s our invitation to you. Whether you’re Jewish or Muslim or Catholic, an agnostic or an atheist, this invitation still applies. You don’t need to believe in God to explore your own lives, but if you do, you just might find the presence of the divine.

-Ryan Rilette

Ryan Rilette is Round House’s Producing Artistic Director and the director of How to Write a New Book for the Bible.

How to Write a New Book for the Bible is onstage at Round House Bethesda from April 10 thru May 5. The production stars Ray Ficca, Danny Gavigan, Mitchell Hébert, & MaryBeth Wise.

The Best Meal I Ever Prepared

A lot of the responses in this category involved a meal during a holiday or special occasion.

“My first Thanksgiving. The turkey was a little dry but I felt like a real grown-up”

“Roast suckling pig in my NYC apartment. 1968. Yummy”

“Chicken pieces/parts sautéed and seasoned with sea salt, pepper, and cinnamon, parsley, and rosemary, layers of American, provolone and peppercorn cheeses, and a first layer of spinach (eith raw of cooked). Sealed our marriage proposal.”

“Fresh eggs – scrambled with sliced home-grown tomatoes with sea salt. Divine!”

“My mother’s Passover dinner: matzoh ball soup, brisket, latkes with sour cream, spinach soufflé, chocolate covered matzoh brittle. My brother said ‘tastes like Mom’s.’”

“Christmas Eve 2005. Baked shrimp stuffed with crabmeat. Lamb Shanks oven braised with orzo. Everyone around the table kept saying ‘OMG’ until we laughed! And it was our Mom’s last Christmas with us so we have a lovely memory”

“Gingered Julienne of Roots and Squash, with roast baby potatoes and a seared ahi tuna in Fra Diablo Reduction”

“For the first Thanksgiving in our new house, with 12 guests: apricot glazed salmon, home-made lasagna, herb roasted turkey, sweet potatoes, side salad”

“My best holiday dinner. Beef Brisket made with onion soup mix and water. Noodle Kugel. Garden salad. Sweet potatoes mashed with butter and maple syrup. Brussel Sprouts steamed with butter and lemon. Handmade, home-made bread. Homemade strawberry pie with Cool Whip. Apple Cider”

“New Year’s Eve dinner. Stuffed Pork Loin Roast. Sweet Potato Souffle. Salad with apples, dried cranberries and gorgonzola with vinaigrette. Assorted cookies. Pecan pie”

‘Homemade cheese filled raviolis with homemade pesto with red wine and garlic bread”

“Weekly dinner at my apartment. Cavatelli pasta with shrimp, scallops, broccoli, tomatoes, and seasoning. Basically, my boyfriend knows the way to my heart…through my stomach, of course!”

“Christmas dinner: jalapeno crabcakes, rosemary herb crusted prime rib, roasted root vegetables, cauliflower au gratin”

“Crock Pot Arm Roast: Arm Roast with bone, sweet potatoes, fresh green beans, carrots, ½ onion chopped, organic chicken broth. Coat roast with kosher salt, thyme and basil, braise. Put in crock pot with juice, cook low for 8 hours. Comfort food!”

“If I had a last meal: my husband’s sun-dried tomato pasta…he tried to copy the one I loved from the Giant Gourmet in McLean…and made a better one. Ditalini, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, feta cheese, some spices. Total yum!”

The Best Meal I Ever Ate

In this category, many of the responses revolve around a meal enjoyed while on a trip or at a special locale.

“Dumpling feast in Xian, China”

“Catfish at Bevo Mill in St. Louis. It was propped upright like it was swimming and everyone watched the waiter carry it across the room”

“Fresh seafood and pasta at a restaurant on the ocean in Palermo, Italy”

“The French Laundry in Yountville, CA. Poached lobster with baby peas/carrots, oysters with caviar, Colorado lamb, foie gras. Yum yum yum!’

“Fried chicken done right. In the Shenandoah Valley. My boyfriend rocks!”

“Le Cirque in Vegas. Butter poached lobster salad. Herb crusted rack of lamb. Side of seafood ravioli. Wedding cake (our wedding). Too much champagne. Best service ever!”

“My Uncle Vince’s handmade spaghetti and meatballs”

“A lunch in Paris when I was 25. Cost $5, a splurge. Five courses and I left satisfied but not full!”

“Peking Duck and Dim Sum at a hotel restaurant in Guangzhou, China”

“Spinach ravioli in Lucca, Italy”

“In Kinsdale, Ireland. Fresh seafood grill and prawns in Jameson’s Cream sauce, accompanied by yes: cockles and mussels (and Guinness)”

“Chili with corn bread”

“Nob Hill, Las Vegas: Best comfort food ever eaten in a restaurant. Chicken – out of this world. Mac & Cheese – unbeatable. Wine and cheese fondue. Great wine list”

“McDonald’s. Yum”

“An Indonesian Rijsttafel in Amsterdam. An incredible collection of dishes, flavors, colors, and spices”

“Green Fried Tomatoes. Fried Eggplant”

“The French Laundry, Napa. Exquisite service. 10-11 little courses. So creative, fun, exceptional! And we had the vegetarian menu!”

“I cooked a goose on the grill and served it with rice.”

“San Miniato, Italy. Truffle ravioli”

Ok, all this has made us hungry! Be sure to share your best meals with us when you come see I Love to Eat, starring Nick Olcott as celebrated chef and foodie James Beard. It’s onstage at Round House Theatre Bethesda thru November 4.

Well, life has certainly changed since we returned from Nova Scotia. I dove right back into teaching at the University of Maryland, where I’m now Interim Director of Opera. Three classes a week and administrative duties. Plus directing The Magic Flute with my students. Plus coaching the Young Artists at the Washington National Opera for their roles in the educational performances surrounding Anna Bolena and Don Giovanni. And then there was this little matter of rehearsing I Love to Eat. Not to mention getting those lines learned for real.

Sadly, cooking was the thing that had to go.

But with the arrival of Mr. Beard’s outdoor cooking books, a new routine entered our lives: Sunday as Grill Day. For the first two Sundays after we came back, I was able to fire up the Weber kettle and prepare lunches and dinners for the entire week. Since then, Tim has taken over the grill duty. It’s a great way to eat.

Grilled chicken, fish, and beef, with roast potatoes and vegetables. Packed in lunch-size Tupperwares on a Sunday lunch assembly line. I’ve been able to keep the healthy eating going even while maintaining this schedule. (Let me highly recommend the prepared brochettes that the Silver Spring Whole Foods has to offer. The Chevy Chase one doesn’t have them, but they do have Korean steak ready to go on the grill. Can’t report on the offerings in the District or Virginia.)

I’ve discovered that roasted new potatoes are the perfect finger food for the car. I sail right past Wendy’s nowadays.

So in this, my last blog entry, the only food item I have to share is the sad story of my relationship with mayonnaise.

You may remember that this whole journey began when I realized I would have to look competent making mayonnaise on stage. Mayonnaise became an obsession.

And not just any mayonnaise. Mayonnaise made per Mr. Beard’s instructions “in a large dinner plate with a fork.” No food processors here.

For my first attempt, I used the recipe provided in American Cookery (page 75). Let me definitively NOT recommend it. It calls for a teaspoon of salt for a single egg yolk. That produces some salty mayonnaise.

It also calls for a full cup of oil. It may have been my beating technique that was at fault, but I think a full cup is just too much oil. The recipe gives instructions on what to do if it gets too thick or if it curdles. Neither was a problem for me. What I had after what seemed like an hour of heavy beating (it was probably about fifteen minutes) was a salty, runny mess.

It actually worked fine for making devilled eggs, and it was nice on bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches, but it was not mayonnaise.

My second attempt’s failure I can only blame on myself: sloppy reading and a basic misunderstanding.

I had been troubled during my first attempt that the mayonnaise never got white. Having grown up on Hellman’s Mayonnaise (actually, on our side of the country it’s called Best Foods), I thought mayonnaise was supposed to be white. I didn’t know that homemade mayonnaise is always somewhat yellow. So when I turned to another recipe (in Delights and Prejudices, page 17) and saw it called for “eggs,” I thought, “Well, of course. You need the egg white to make the mayo white.” Well, no amount of beating made that thicken. Only when I read the prose above the recipe did I discover that I was supposed to use just the yolk.

My third attempt started with a problem:  I only had one egg in the house, so I had to make it work. But the mayo began to curdle. I didn’t have another yolk to mix in (as Mr. Beard recommends in the event of curdling). So I figured I could just whip the curdles out. Adding more lemon juice seemed to help. Yes, the curdles went away. And the mayonnaise began to thicken. The lemon juice, it turned out, also helped make it whiter. So, after what seemed again like hours of strenuous beating, I had something that looked like mayonnaise as I knew it.

Looked like. Didn’t taste like. What it tasted like was lemon-flavored caulking compound. I didn’t try it around the bathtub, but I think that’s where it would have been most useful. Instead, I buried it in the forest with the clam linguine.

Later I managed to make mayonnaise pretty successfully. The best recipe is the one given in the script. Add salt and pepper “to taste” only, and use just enough oil to get the consistency you want. The amounts Mr. Beard’s recipes recommend are way too much. The two-egg version in Delights and Prejudices calls for a single teaspoon of salt, so it’s half as salty as the American Cookery version, but that’s still too salty. And the two-egg version calls for two to three cups of oil. The mayonnaise will tell you when it’s had enough oil. Stop then.

Having achieved mayonnaise, however, I still had to figure out how to make it happen in the twenty-one seconds of speech the playwright provides. Twenty-one seconds? And that’s speaking slowly.

Clearly, I needed help here. Thank goodness, the stage manager on the project, Che Wernsman, is a real cook. With her kitchen skills, she was able to teach me many things (like how a real cook chops parsley and squeezes a lemon). But it took her knowledge of cooking and her experience in theatre combined to figure out how to make mayonnaise emerge on a plate in twenty-one seconds. I won’t give our secret away here. You’ll have to come to a post-show discussion to learn that one.

Rehearsals went by much too quickly. They were the most fun I’ve had in years.  Wearing my spiffy muslin pyjamas (a rehearsal mock-up of the real silk ones designed by Frank Labovitz that I wear for the show), I got to spend three to five hours a day being an actor and a cook. It’s been one of the happiest periods of my life.

I can’t say it was as relaxing as my time in Nova Scotia. Leisurely breakfasts by the sea gave way to an hour every morning on the exercise bicycle with the script, learning lines and building up my stamina and breath support at the same time. Teaching class took the place of trips to the market. Driving the Beltway replaced strolls on the beach.

But thanks to rehearsal, I got to spend a few hours every day in a kitchen, albeit a fake one. And I got to explore the fascinating life of James Beard as I worked day after day to become him.

I face the first paying audience tonight. I only hope that we’ve managed to cook up a treat that’s as much fun to taste as it was to make. Maybe I’ll just rely on Mr. Beard’s own maxim:  “If all else fails, simply be amusing. You can get away with anything if you’re amusing.”

See you at the theatre.

This was the final entry in Nick’s journey to “become James Beard.” We hope you’ve enjoyed this series. Our deep gratitude to Nick Olcott for sharing his adventures with us.

I Love to Eat, with Nick Olcott as James Beard, is onstage at Round House Bethesda thru November 4.

September 4, 2012

As I mentioned before, the books on grilling that I’d ordered before I left for Nova Scotia were waiting for me when I got home. I got Cook it Outdoors (1941) and Barbecue with Beard (1975), which  turns out to include recipes from James Beard’s Complete Book of Barbecue and Rotisserie Cooking (1954) and James Beard’s Barbecue Cookbook (1958). (This is why it’s so hard to say how many cookbooks Mr. Beard wrote: he produced so many, and so many of the recipes keep turning up in different books under different titles.)

The 1941 book is really interesting because it reveals how very new a phenomenon outdoor cooking was at the time. The opening chapter is about how to build a huge brick kitchen outside. Only later does the book mention the “one or two portable grills on wheels” that one can find in “good cooking equipment houses.” I guess hardware stores in 1941 didn’t have rows and rows of Weber kettles.

The span of years these books reflect (1941-1975) also shows what a lasting impact outdoor cooking has had on American eating. And James Beard was definitely at the forefront of that. It’s funny to think that what he learned as a boy from his mother at picnics on the Oregon beach turned him into “Jim Beard, the King of the Barbecue,” the outdoor man credited with making it acceptable for ordinary guys to be interested in cooking.

I can’t say the books have actually given me new recipes. Most of them are pretty obvious, and many repeat things in American Cookery. Plus, a lot of them are about rotisserie cooking over the fire. I remember from my childhood what a big fad that was. The “modern” house we moved into in the 1960’s was a classic suburban rambler, complete with an enclosed patio that had a built-in grill equipped with an electric-powered rotisserie. I think it was the first thing the real estate agent showed us. No one seems to have those anymore.

I’ve really had time for only one Beard Feast since returning from Nova Scotia. But it was a doozie: I hosted a Beard Burger Bar at our neighborhood’s annual Labor Day picnic. Let’s just say, I’m now a popular guy around here.

Here are the burgers I had to offer to my neighbors:

James Beard’s Favorite Hamburger (Beard on Food, page 2)
(containing onion, cream, black pepper, cooked in butter and oil)

Hamburger Au Poivre (Beard on Food, page 3)
(covered in crushed black peppercorns and flambéed in bourbon)

Cheese Hamburgers (Barbecue with Beard, page 29)
(containing shredded Cheddar, chopped onion and Worcestershire in the burger,
wrapped with a strip of bacon)

Savory Hamburgers (Barbecue with Beard, page 29)
(containing chopped onion, olive slices, and mushroom powder,
available with or without anchovies)

and, for the unadventurous

Plain Hamburgers (Barbecue with Beard, page 28)

First, let me say that I suggested that each diner promise to buy a pair of tickets to the show for every burger I gave out, but I didn’t actually require proof of purchase. I don’t know if that will work, but people seemed pretty enthusiastic about the show. Or maybe just about the burgers.

Second, let me say that bacon seems to be everyone’s favorite food. The Cheese Hamburgers were the first to go, and it wasn’t the Cheddar that was getting people’s attention. I must admit, it is one tasty burger. The bacon also contracts around the burger as it cooks, so it makes for a perfectly round and very picturesque patty. My Cheese Hamburgers looked like photographs from a magazine spread as they came off the grill.

Third, I need to point out that not many people take to the idea of anchovies on a burger. Only one person took me up on the Savory Burger with anchovies, but she had the same experience that I did: it’s really only a good way to get a nice jolt of salt inside the burger.

Fourth, James Beard’s Favorite Hamburger is really, really good. The cream, butter, and oil, however, make it abundantly clear why he had the health problems he did. It should come with a prescription for statin.

Fifth, flambéing on the grill with bourbon is a great way to get attention at a picnic.

Last, I have to report that the secret tip for “a juicier and more flavorful hamburger” that I will reveal in the performances of I Love To Eat does indeed work. It produces a hamburger that is lovely and crisp on the outside and perfectly medium rare on the inside. The trouble is, I discovered, most people in my neighborhood don’t like their hamburgers medium rare. It was a little disappointing to have so many perfect burgers being brought back for additional cooking, but I bowed to public taste.

I really did feel like Mr. Beard at the picnic yesterday. I realized how much fun cooking for other people is, and how much delight it gives one to see pleasure and surprise on their faces when they bite into something delicious. As I will say in the play, “Entertaining is just about being yourself, enjoying your role as host.” Yesterday, I experienced that for real.

And after eating five burgers, one of each type, I went to bed feeling like Mr. Beard must have done on many an occasion. I definitely know that sensation now.

Just one more entry in Nick’s journey to “become James Beard.”

I Love to Eat, with Nick Olcott as James Beard, is onstage at Round House Bethesda thru November 4.

August 30, 2012

We did a photo shoot for the publicity shots this week so it was my first chance to really “be” Mr. Beard. There I stood in his clothes, holding poses he held, trying to smile his smile at the camera. All week long I’ve also been watching clips of him from TV appearances in the 1960’s (no video survives from his 1946 show on NBC, the world’s first televised cooking show). I had been working on his inner life. This week’s been my first expedition into exploring his outer, physical life.

I’d half-noticed it on the videos, but standing there for the photo shoot made me realize how completely differently he and I relate to our stomachs. As I’ve said before, my height and weight are remarkably close to the size Mr. Beard was most of his adult life. We both grew up overweight, so I assumed physically we’d be pretty similar.

In watching him and attempting to be him for a couple of hours, though, I discovered a big difference.  I am always trying to hide my gut. If I’m conscious of being looked at, I adjust my stance and rib carriage in such a way as to minimize the paunch. I choose clothes that I think will hide my weight, or at least not call attention to it.

Mr. Beard was quite different. He wore jerseys with horizontal stripes. Big, bold horizontal stripes. And on television (which we all know adds twenty pounds to begin with). He favored that bib apron, which made his chest look small and his belly big.  And he stood with all his weight back on his heels, his stomach protruding. I tend to stand on the balls of my feet, hoping to bring my chest up and forward and bring the gut back. Whatever private feelings he may have had about his belly, he let it show in public.  He seems almost defiant about letting it be seen. It was in many ways his trademark.

I played around with adopting his stance. I found it incredibly freeing. It was accepting and embracing the belly in a way I never had. It made me feel very big, but also very relaxed.

I looked down and realized I couldn’t see my feet. He must not have seen his own for years on end. Walking without seeing one’s feet is a different experience. I felt like a ship, plowing through the water. I felt somehow imposing when I did it. Substantial. Someone to be dealt with. It started to feel good. This is will fun to play with in rehearsal.

Less fun is the fact that today I write of the last Beard Feast in Nova Scotia. The relaxed, leisurely period of my preparation for the role was drawing to a close. We had to leave for home on August 18. So August 16 was the last chance to make a huge mess of the kitchen. The next day, I’d have to clean up and get everything packed for leaving on the morning of the 18th.

I decided I hadn’t yet ventured into one of Mr. Beard’s favorite foods, lamb, so it was time to try it. (A line from I Love to Eat: “I once ate so much lamb I nearly produced a wool crop of my own.”)

Tim loves curries at Indian restaurants, so I decided to try another of Mr. Beard’s childhood favorites, a creation from his Chinese godfather, Jue-Let’s Secret Curry Sauce (Delights and Prejudices, page 21) on some roast lamb (American Cookery, page 374). I suppose I should have realized that a Chinese curry was going to differ from an Indian one, but I wasn’t prepared for how different it was. I think of Indian curry as a bright, forward taste that jumps out at you. Jue-Let’s was a dark, complex, deep flavor. Absolutely delicious. And Mr. Beard’s suggestion of serving it with noodles instead of rice is inspired. The sauce and the lamb were perfect together.

The vegetable I picked turned out to be a very nice choice, too: Eggplant in Foil (American Cookery, p. 518). It’s so easy: just eggplant, onion, garlic, tomato and a basil leaf wrapped up in a foil envelope and put on the grill. The flavors are bright and fresh, and it’s very low-calorie way to cook the vegetables. There’s no oil at all.

Since I’ve been back home, I’ve been experimenting with using this method on other vegetables. It works great with zucchini and asparagus, too. It would be a great thing for dinner parties, because if you get the little arrangements out of the foil and onto the plate successfully, they are very pretty to look at.

So that last Beard Feast of the summer was a complete success, and the leftover vegetables, noodles, and curry sauce made a great lunch the next day as we packed up to leave Nova Scotia and return home.

Farewell to my brief life as a full-time foodie.

Check back for two more entries as Nick concludes his journey through James Beard’s recipes.

I Love to Eat, with Nick Olcott as James Beard, is onstage at Round House Bethesda thru November 4.

August 30, 2012

It’s time, I think, to say a little about Leon Major other than his role as sous-chef. (In which he acquitted himself admirably, I must say.) But Leon’s true calling is as a director, and I am blessed to be working with him on I Love to Eat.

As I mentioned before, I’m returning to the stage after more than a decade away. And I’m scared to death.

There’s a reason for my long absence. When I started my career, I was a full-time actor. Jobs as a director then started coming my way after a few years, and for a while I balanced the two pursuits. Gradually, directing began to predominate.

Directing and acting are very different pursuits. Acting draws heavily on the left side of the brain: intuition, feeling, and a willingness to submit to the unknown are vital. Directing calls much more on the right side: dissection, analysis, and clarity of thought are key to good direction. The better I got at directing, the worse I got at acting. My last few performances as an actor were not brilliant. My right brain would not shut up and let me do my left brain do its work.

In 2000, I took a vow never to set foot on stage again unless three conditions were met:  1) I loved the play, 2) the role was right for me, and 3) there was a director I could give myself over to completely.  My right brain needed to be sure someone else was doing the critical thinking.

When I stumbled upon I Love to Eat, I knew immediately that conditions 1 and 2 had been fulfilled. And I didn’t need to look very far to meet number 3.

Leon Major is the man who pulled me, despite my great reluctance, into the world of opera. Up until then, I had seen a total of three operas in my life and had, like many people, found them long, boring, and mostly incomprehensible. So when Leon, as Director of the Maryland Opera Studio at the University of Maryland School of Music, asked me to team-teach a course with him, I thought he was insane. I didn’t know anything about opera. I didn’t even think I liked it.

But watching Leon in class, I realized what he already knew: opera is just musical theatre with really, really good music. The reason so many operas are painful to watch is the same reason so many Shakespeare plays are painful to watch: the harder the material, the greater the chance of bad productions. And just as it is with Shakespeare, opera done well is some of the most exciting theatre there is.

Leon came from a theatre background but discovered early on, as I have learned under his tutelage, that using real theatrical tools can make a huge difference on the opera stage. Someone who wants a true dramatic experience, instead of just an expensively costumed recital, can make opera exciting.  Good opera becomes an addiction, and Leon got me hooked.

(As an aside, this has been incredibly helpful in building my inner life as Mr. Beard. I didn’t see Madama Butterfly at the age of six and weep, as he did. But I love that opera now and consider one of my personal triumphs to be a production I directed in which the producer asked me if there was any way I could make the final scene less sad. She had never cried at a Butterfly before, and my production reduced her to tears from the first run-through.)

In team-teaching with Leon, I realized that he and I share an aesthetic and an approach to theatre. We don’t just finish each other’s sentences; we often begin the same sentence at the same time.

So when Blake Robison asked me whom I would like to see direct I Love to Eat, I didn’t hesitate for a second. Plus, I knew that Leon would be available, because he retired last year from the University. (I failed to think through the fact that I was to succeed him as Director of the Studio, but that’s another story.)

And thankfully, Ryan Rilette was willing to go with my choice when he took over the reins of the theatre.

With Leon at the helm, I know I can turn off my director-brain and just be an actor. Even though it will be one of the busiest periods of my life, and the luxury of being a full-time foodie will be long gone, I can’t wait for rehearsals to begin.

Which is good, because we start three weeks from Monday. Thankfully, the time on the bicycle is paying off:  I’ve got over half the script memorized.

There are just three more entries as Nick tracks his journey through James Beard’s recipes.

I Love to Eat, with Nick Olcott as James Beard, is onstage at Round House Bethesda through November 4.

August 29, 2012

It’s so sad to be writing about a Beard Feast now more than two weeks in the past. I’m still eating well here at home, and it’s all Beard-inspired, but I don’t have the time for a leisurely morning read of the cookbook and a relaxed afternoon of puttering in the kitchen. So I just have to summon up the memories. And delightful memories they are.

As the Beard Quest continued, I decided that it was time to do something with beef. I also decided it was time to attempt something that he early in life would have encountered as restaurant food, different from his family boarding house fare. Maybe something he would have tasted in San Francisco when he accompanied his mother on one of her opera and theatre excursions.

In American Cookery (page 266), I discovered Beefsteak à la Mirabeau, which he described as a “once commonplace specialty … still seen occasionally on menus in some of the older restaurants in Oregon and California.” In trying to research the origin of the name (which I never did discover), I learned that the recipe appears in The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, Fannie Farmer’s original 1896 work, which Mr. Beard considered a landmark in the development of American food. Perfect.

Beefsteak à la Mirabeau is a fussy dish that does indeed feel very old-fashioned. As I ate it that evening, I could easily picture the young Jimmy Beard, wearing his best checked suit, sitting in an over-decorated San Francisco restaurant circa 1913, eyes wide as the platter was placed before him. It may have been this meal that hooked him on butter.

It’s just a little rich: the steak gets broiled, then slathered with garlic butter and topped with anchovies and olives. Over this comes a tomato sauce which contains as much butter as it does tomato paste.

Mr. Beard suggests accompanying it with fried potato balls and stuffed tomatoes. The tomatoes (American Cookery, page 552) were a welcome addition, but fried potatoes seemed too much. So I made mashed potatoes instead (American Cookery, page 566), thinking they would be lighter. Who was I kidding? His recipe calls for a tablespoon of butter for each potato. I used over a pound of butter in that meal for four.

I think I’m the only one who consumed his full quarter-pound share, though. The nice thing about the dish was that it lent itself to customizing. One person ate just the steak with olives and sauce, no garlic butter or anchovies. Another ate it with butter and anchovies, no olives or sauce. A third had the olives, anchovies, and sauce but skipped the butter. I alone experienced it in all its buttery glory.

Enjoyed with what in the script Mr. Beard calls “a great, gutsy red wine” that Leon and Judith Major had brought, the meal was quite a triumph. Even Judith, the audience I was hoping most to impress, declared it a complete success. Beard Feast #6 was a gratifying evening.

Just 4 more entries as Nick tracks his journey to James Beard.

I Love to Eat, starring Nick Olcott as James Beard, is at Round House Bethesda through November 4.

August 26, 2012

I was working on my lines this morning – an hour every morning on the exercise bicycle with the script balanced on the handlebars – and I realized that I say the same thing twice in the play: “Sometimes in the kitchen, it all goes boom.”

(I also realized that I’m going to end up fitter than Mr. Beard ever was. What with healthy eating and exercise, I’ve moved two notches in on my belt in the three weeks since I started this experiment. At my costume fitting for the show, I told designer Frank Labovitz and costumière Rachel Schuldenfrei that they would hear me say something no actor has ever said before: “Remember, I need this costume to make me look fat.”)

But back to it all going boom. Sometimes, despite your best intentions, things really do go awry when you’re cooking. I’ve had two notable disasters during my Beard Quest.

The first was Welsh Rabbit.

In Delights and Prejudices (page 19), Mr. Beard reminisces fondly about the dish as his Chinese godfather Jue-Let would make it for Mother Beard’s boarding house guests. I decided to continue my chronological exploration of Mr. Beard’s food life by making it. (The previous page also gives Jue-Let’s recipe for Terrapin Stew, but as a faculty member of the University of Maryland, I could not countenance that.)

We had a lot of wonderful local cheese from the Nova Scotia dairies, so I chose a good sharp Cheddar and followed Jue-Let’s instructions, as recorded by Mr. Beard.

At least I thought I was following the instructions. The recipe states, “As the cheese begins to melt, stir in 1 pint good beer….” Well, I added the beer after the cheese had finished melting. Instead of a lovely creamy goo, I got a grainy glop. Instead of a smooth blend of beer and cheese, I got a runny mess of cheese clumps suspended in beer. The recipe warns against letting it get stringy or leathery. There was nothing about it getting granular. It didn’t actually taste so bad, but the look of it poured over toast was distinctly unappetizing. When, in the play, I give advice on how to deal with a kitchen failure (“Hurl it out the window!”), I’ll be thinking of that Welsh rabbit.

My second disaster was something that should have been easy: linguine with clams. I could have followed Mr. Beard’s recipe (American Cookery, p. 590). But instead I read the title and flashed back to college, when I lived in a group house where clam spaghetti had been a staple of our diet. I was sure I could just whip it up from memory.

I still don’t quite know what went wrong.

Maybe the canned clams I used weren’t good. (When I’d made chowder the week before, I’d worried I didn’t have enough fresh clams, so I’d bought canned as a backup.  I hadn’t used them.) After the fact, I looked at the can and discovered the clams were from Indonesia. So that could well have been the reason. I don’t think clams are meant to travel the globe.

Or maybe it was a mistake to use Riesling as the wine. I’d bought a Nova Scotia Riesling to try and hadn’t really liked it. So instead of drinking it, I put it in the clam sauce. Well, if it was bad in the glass, it was worse in the pot.

And once again I used shallots instead of onions. I’ve grown very fond of shallots during this experiment, but I’ve discovered they’re not right for everything. They have a sweetness that is different from the pungency of an onion.

Altogether, the clam sauce could only be described as “disgusting.” I was tempted to hurl it out the window, too, but feared it would smell the next day. So I buried it deep in the woods. I hope no foxes got sick from it.

Still and all, two disasters in two weeks isn’t that bad. Considering the strides forward I’ve made, I think I can consider my overall progress pretty good.

And I’d had some triumphs. Not just in cooking, but in customizing the kitchen, too.

I discovered a solution to my counter ‑ and sink – height problem. A plastic storage bin (the kind you buy at office-supply stores to put files in), placed on the counter upside-down with a cutting board on top, provides a chopping surface of the perfect height. I measured it and sent the dimension to the set designer. I don’t know about the real Beard kitchen, but the Round House version is going to be custom-made for a tall guy.

The same plastic bin, right-side up on top of the counter next to the sink, serves as an ideal dishwashing tub. I could wash, rinse, and put the dishes in the drying rack without breaking my back.

Which was good, because my sister’s visit had come to an end, and I was back to doing the dishes.

Check back for more entries as Nick continues his James Beard  journey.

I Love to Eat, starring Nick Olcott as James Beard, is onstage at Round House Bethesda thru November 4.

August 25, 2012

I’m back home now. Physically, at least. Mentally, I’m still on the Southern Shore of Nova Scotia, listening to the sea and smelling the scents wafting from the grill.

It helps that I’m outside on my deck in Takoma Park on a beautiful day, sitting in the same mosquito-proof, screened gazebo we had in Nova Scotia. (The Coleman Co. makes a wonderful collapsible model. I highly recommend it.)

An even better aide de memoire is the fact that I actually am grilling something as I write. Since coming home, I’ve been doing nothing but grilling. My Beard books on outdoor cooking were awaiting me, and I’m delving into that side of his oeuvre now. (More on that later.)

Instead, let me cast my mind back to those halcyon days outside Lunenburg, when I could play Mr. Beard all day long, without the inconvenient interruption of going to work.

(First – a quick story about the trip home. Isn’t it funny how when you’re learning about something, it suddenly pops up everywhere? On the drive from Lunenburg to Digby, we pass the sign for a little town named Kempt, which bears as its slogan “100 Years of Strawberry Suppers.” We always mean to take the detour to find out what that’s all about, but every time we’re rushing to meet the ferry schedule. This year was no exception. So I used the iPad in the car to Google “Kempt strawberry suppers” and the first thing that popped up was a food blog called “Kempt, for a Life Not So”. The featured recipe was for Strawberries and Biscuits with Basil Crème Anglaise.  Andrea, the blogger, gave due credit:  the crème anglaise came from Julia Child, the biscuits from …. James Beard. (He seems to be everywhere for me these days.)

Anyway, back to the shore.

Food wasn’t the only entertainment available. There’s the annual Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival, which brings together amazing musicians from all over North America for four days of non-stop concerts and workshops all over town. Anyone interested in the rich musical tradition of this part of the world should definitely attend. French, Scottish, Irish, and English folk traditions met and mingled here, and the expulsion of the Acadians took that mixture to Louisiana, where it merged with other cultures to become Cajun music. (I never realized until I started coming here that the word “Cajun” comes from the word “Acadian.”) So in Lunenburg, you can hear everything from ancient Gaelic airs to hot zydeco to the hippest contemporary singer-songwriters.

But an outdoor music festival really means only one thing to a foodie, even a neophyte foodie:  food stalls. The variety wasn’t huge, but it was choice.

The local ice cream (Nova Scotia is also a prime dairy region) was loaded with butterfat. Mr. Beard would have approved heartily. (No pun intended.)

The scallops grilled on a skewer with a strip of bacon snaking its way between them were a dream. Particularly when the vendor gave us some free because they were “overcooked.” Well, if that’s overcooking, I’ll ask for everything to be overcooked. (We did try some from the vendor’s next batch. He wanted the scallops seared and just warm in the middle, with the bacon flexible and moist. The “overcooked” scallops were cooked all the way through, and the bacon crispy. Both versions were delicious. I know because I ate several of each.)

But the real discovery was sausages. Cooked over a grill, piping hot pork sausages simply taste like summer. Sadly after the ice cream and scallops, I could only manage to eat two.

What’s more, oddly for an outdoor music festival sponsored in part by a brewery, there was no alcohol available. And no alcohol means no beer. What is a sausage without beer?  (As the evening progressed, I began to suspect that the thermoses I saw other music lovers toting were not filled with hot chocolate.)

So we decided that supper the next night would have to be a sausage feast. I haven’t called this a Beard Feast, because I didn’t really make any of his recipes. But I think he would have approved of our avid embrace of local products.

In addition to local sausages, we bought the local sauerkraut. They must exist elsewhere, but this is the only place I’ve ever encountered roadside sauerkraut factories. Small, low buildings on the edge of a farm where you can buy kraut made with cabbage grown right behind the factory. It’s an entirely different entity from the stuff that comes out of cans, of which I’d never been particularly fond. I would occasionally have sauerkraut on a hot dog, but I’d never think of ordering it in a restaurant or eating it at home. Even when I lived in Germany, I didn’t eat sauerkraut.

Well, Lunenburg’s own Krispy Kraut will convert anyone. The cabbage has a wonderful al dente texture, and its inherent sweetness interacts playfully with the sour taste of the vinegar. You can get it made from green or red cabbage. We got both, naturally.

The local farmer’s market provided the sausages, made on a farm only a few miles away. We were late arriving, so the stand only had three varieties left:  a hot Italian pork sausage, an Armenian lamb sausage, and a spicy lamb sausage. How to decide? Don’t! We got all three.

Well, as I get to say in I Love to Eat, “Oh, my heavenly tastebuds!” Those sausages, paired with that kraut, joined by some leftover potato salad, made for a true feast. I even had the right mustard, which I’d brought back from Germany, both sharp and semi-sharp. I also had German horseradish, both the unadulterated and the creamy kind. (I love the Thomy brand products that come in tubes like toothpaste.)

Plus, there was beer at our sausage feast.

Check back for more entries as Nick continues his James Beard journey.

I Love to Eat, with Nick Olcott as James Beard, is onstage at Round House Bethesda thru November 4 only.

August 22, 2012

Now, I may seem to be contradicting myself here a little bit. But bear with me.

When I condemned junk food, I meant junk food I can get all the time. Remember, my major point was about food being an exciting experience. So junk food that you can only get in a specific place and under certain circumstances is a whole different thing.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about poutine. If I were Canadian, I’d have to condemn it. But I only eat it once a year, while I’m on vacation in Nova Scotia. If I lived there and ate it all the time, I’d be suffering from every illness that killed Mr. Beard.

For those who have never been to this paradise, let me explain. Poutine is French fries, topped with a scoopful of cheese curds, covered with brown gravy. It is simply the perfect thing to eat after a day at the beach. Or with a beer late, late at night. It’s the perfect comfort food, Quebec’s gift to the world.

I’ve seen fancy versions of poutine on restaurant menus, including a poutine with truffles. Oh, please. Don’t be silly. Poutine only tastes real when bought outdoors, preferably from a food truck. My favorite is the converted bus that sits at Crescent Beach outside of La Have, Nova Scotia.

So. I did eat poutine. Once. As I do every summer.

On the trip back to Washington, I was determined to alternate between seeking out high quality restaurant food and finding good, honest local road food.

For lunch in Digby, Nova Scotia, on our way to the ferry, we decided to go the fine dining route. We knew that our motel in Bangor, Maine, that night was next to a truck stop reputed to have the best truck stop food in the East. So we passed up the fried seafood truck we usually stop at in Digby and went into town to a little pie shop that had lately branched out into serving lunches. Reviews on TripAdvisor were very good.

What a mistake. The lunch was all right, but not great. Tim had a scallop soup (Digby is renowned for its scallops). The scallops themselves were acceptable (not as good as mine), but the broth was thin and flavorless. I chose the pan-fried haddock, since I hadn’t yet tried cooking that. It was a tiny, flavorless filet. We did have pie afterwards, however, and that made up for it. Peach and strawberry/rhubarb. Lesson:  go to a pie shop for pie, nothing else. We regretted not having stopped at the seafood wagon.

We regretted it even more that evening in Bangor at the enormous truck stop. Still mourning the missed stop at the seafood truck in Digby, I ordered fried seafood. We’re in Maine, I thought. It’s sure to be fresh and tasty. Wrong. Not only had the seafood been frozen; the breading had as well. I might as well have been eating a Swanson dinner. Tim wanted to order grilled fish, but this 24-hour restaurant turns off the stoves at 10 pm. But not the fryers. All night long, deep-fried food is the only option. I learned to read reviews on TripAdvisor a little more critically:  most of the rapturous reviews for this truck stop were about the quantity, not the quality of the food.

So from then on, as Tim drove, I studied reviews on the iPad and plotted our route by restaurant possibilities. We had good luck and located some great places, but I found myself for the first time thinking critically about their offerings and wondering about improvements.

At the fun and funky Hot Suppa in Portland, Maine, I loved the spinach with sautéed garlic that came with the Cuban pork sandwich. The garlic wasn’t really sautéed, it was flash fried. It was as if the spinach had tiny garlic potato chips in it. Crispy and pungent. Yum.

So when I had the rapini with sautéed garlic with the veal chop at J. Gilbert’s Wood-Fired Steaks and Seafood in Glastonbury, Connecticut, I couldn’t help thinking how those crispy little garlic chips would have been with that succulent veal. As it was, the moist sautéed garlic was good, but too much like texture of the meat, and the flavor didn’t pop out. A contrast, an interplay between textures and flavors would have been so welcome. (Thoughts like this had never occurred to me before.  It used to be, “That was good,” or “That was bad.”)

Now, what possessed me to order fried calamari at a restaurant in Middletown, New York, remains a mystery. Maybe I was still longing for the fried seafood I’d passed up in Digby. Maybe because it was an Italian restaurant and I thought they’d know how to handle calamari. But that far from the sea? What was I thinking? It was the truck stop food all over again. Tim was smarter. Spaghetti Bolognese was right up the restaurant’s alley.

So we made it back home with a mixed culinary record on the road. For dinner, we did what we always do when we return from travel: we went to our neighborhood Ethiopian restaurant up the road in Silver Spring. It’s a chance to reconnect with the ethnic and culinary diversity we’re so lucky to have in this region.

But things have changed at our local hangout. While we’ve been gone, a new owner has taken over. A new guy’s behind the bar. Will the food change? To test it, we order what we usually have. It tastes basically the same, but I’m detecting small differences. Is the food really different? Or am I just tasting with a more informed palette?

Mr. Beard is definitely having an effect on me.

I Love to Eat, with Nick Olcott as James Beard, is onstage at Round House Bethesda thru November 4.

Check back for more entries as Nick continues his journey to James Beard.