A Year at Catbird Cottage | Melina Hammer
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.
Melina Hammer: I'm Melina Hammer, and my newest cookbook, A Year at Catbird Cottage: Recipes for a Nourished Life, is out now.
Suzy Chase: Years ago, you began dreaming of a way to transition your photography and styling career, so you could be less beholden to the changing industry. You thought it would be wonderful to pull from your husband Jim's and your expertise from years in hospitality and make use of all the family artifacts and one-of-a-kind pieces you'd collected as a stylist. Now, how did this dream come to fruition with Catbird Cottage? And I'm curious about the origins of the name.
Melina Hammer: We lived in New York City for fairly long time. And as life has a circuitous path, we were presented with the idea of moving to the deep South, to Birmingham, Alabama, which we decided to seize upon and be courageous. And that actually was a really pivotal chapter. But when we realized that the time came to move back north, I didn't need the city energy anymore. And in fact, Birmingham and Alabama, and the abundant natural world there really created a connection for me that instilled this crucial regular experience connecting to nature. So when we moved back north, I knew that I didn't want to live in a shoebox. I wanted a regular connection to nature. And I just craved that sort of solace and peace that both of those things brought. So we began the hunt for finding a home of our own. And in a certain way, the rest is history.
Melina Hammer: Once we'd moved here, we started to consider what could be a kind of cornerstone to anchor our space. And having a sweet, wonderful friend, actually the man who married us, over for one of our first social experiences once we'd unpacked. We're having this wonderful lunch outside and he's like, "Oh, listen to this. That's a catbird." And I was like, "Wait, what are you talking about?" And that's how we got familiarized with this incredible quirky bird. It's in the mockingbird family. And it is such a smart bird. It remixes other bird songs infinitely. And it is known for singing to claim its territory, actually, for 10 to 15 minutes at a stretch. And this most often happens at dusk and at sunrise. And it is the most beautiful and lyrical and funny. It's sort of like an R2D2 sound. I won't do it because you just have to go listen. But it's an incredible bird. And we just decided, "Oh, obviously this is Catbird Cottage."
Suzy Chase: There's a line in the introduction of the cookbook where you write about your years in Birmingham, Alabama, and connecting with family farmers. You wrote, "I learned about elements never found on grocery store shelves, such as okra flowers and cauliflower leaves." Can you talk a little bit about learning how to forage in the South?
Melina Hammer: Well in fact, I began foraging in Central Park and Prospect Park. But it was in Birmingham, where nature was so adjacent, so quickly available. Whereas New York City and Brooklyn is so sprawling that I really felt like I had to extricate myself from my schedule in order to go to either of the two large parks. And it was always hard because I thought, "Oh, I only know of this one elderberry shrub. And I have no idea if right now is when it's actually in flower, or if I've missed it because the weather always is variable, right?" So in Birmingham I could zip on over to any one of a number of parks. And the nature was so lush and the spring so early, and therefore the growing season so long, that I could just dip in on any kind of casual, without thought kind of moment.
Melina Hammer: And I realized that casual approach to be able to connect to it so regularly was really valuable for me. And so I wanted to situate my life so that I could literally walk out my door and be able to be in that position. It's really quite magical.
Suzy Chase: In terms of foraging, you learned to seize on your hunches. But foraging is so much more than that. How did you educate yourself on what is safe to forage?
Melina Hammer: There are layers on how I found my path in knowing and feeling confident. And I would advise everyone to, first of all, use the incredible wealth of knowledge that the internet presents. And there are plant identification websites, there's Wikipedia. And then cross-referencing using hashtags via social media, following people who are experts in real life as well as online. Going on a mushroom walk or a foraging walk or a plant tour. All of these layers contribute to being educated and instilling within yourself an ability to feel like you know something.
Suzy Chase: And you also have a forage safety guidance section on page 25 in your book.
Melina Hammer: Absolutely. I really want people to succeed and to feel that you are empowered to be bold, but be explorative. And everybody wants to use their best common sense, but also don't let fear be your guiding force.
Suzy Chase: You're an advocate for reconnecting with heirloom ingredients. Can you give us some examples of your favorite heirloom ingredients? And why do you think they've fallen off our modern radar?
Melina Hammer: Two ingredients, which immediately come to mind, are tomatoes and quince. First of all, heirloom ingredients so often carry with them incredible flavor and a certain kind of utility that I don't feel conventional ingredients can hold a candle to. So it's exciting to me to consider that there are hundreds of tomato varieties. In fact, when we were first installing our raised beds, I was listening to a podcast and I became familiar with this young woman in Toronto. She's a teenager called Emma Biggs. She was growing 150 tomato varieties. And so I connected with her and she sent me a bunch of seeds, which was magic unto itself, right? And then I got familiarized with tomatoes I never would've come across.
Melina Hammer: For instance, there's one called Rumi Banjan. It is a tomato which hails from Afghanistan. And it is diminutive, it is rosy orange, and it is squat, and it is so sweet. This kind of variety and beauty and deliciousness is something that we should prize. Because those things, as we experience them, bring joy.
Melina Hammer: Quince is another thing. I feel like it is so misunderstood. It was quite broadly used, and still is broadly used in Asia and in the Middle East. And it's a fruit, which requires that you cook it to bring out its verve and magic. But once you do so, it's really quite a versatile ingredient and can go towards savory dishes and sweet dishes. And every time quince season rolls around in the Hudson Valley, I seize upon it. And I just love being able to use them in all kinds of applications. And they store well.
Suzy Chase: What is your favorite thing to do with quince?
Melina Hammer: I almost always poach quince first, because poaching quince extends its life. But I can extend having it in my world for a couple weeks, up to a month. And in my book, poached quince goes both towards a very comforting and nourishing quinoa porridge that I serve guests sometimes, and it goes savory towards a roasted chicken thighs with sage and carrots and preserved lemon and quince. So it plays that sweet, savory dynamic. It's wonderful. And in fact, there's a third one in the book. It's so easy to do, and I love that it feels so impressive. It's a quince tarte tatin. And those poached quince, the same recipe, can go towards all three of those recipes and become magic in different ways articulated in each of them.
Suzy Chase: Why do you think the heirloom ingredients have fallen off our modern radar?
Melina Hammer: There is an expediency that I believe people are preoccupied with, in a general way. That said, I also feel like the landscape of grocery stores favors what can be mass produced, what can be mass hauled. And in a certain regard, that's the same expediency playing out in sort of industrial agriculture and industrial corporate setup, food-providing model. There is this guise in our modern culture that we are being given so much more, so many more choices, when in fact what's happening is this paring down and stripping away, and a compression, because it's cheaper, it's faster, and it's easier.
Melina Hammer: And the care that heirloom ingredients most often require. I mean, they don't travel well for instance. So you can't harvest tons of tomatoes in California and ship them off to New York and expect that they're going to arrive in pristine condition. There's a lot more spoilage. And therefore heirloom ingredients get hacked, and that suffers in favor of ingredients that travel better. And those ingredients almost always don't carry the same flavor, the same texture. They can't possibly have been picked when they're ripe, because they have to withstand the journey. And these things are important details as we start to really peel away the layers of, what are we eating? Where does it come from? And is it actually delicious?
Suzy Chase: I think a prime example is the apple. Growing up, I thought there was just green and red delicious.
Melina Hammer: Yes. Totally. Just this past season, I was introduced to the Calville Blanc d'Hiver, which is a French, obviously, apple that was the apple that was made originally for tarte tatin. Because for some reason after it was peeled and halved or sliced, it never oxidized, but it was a natural component in its gene makeup. And it had these gorgeous bulbous knobbiness at the base of the apple and swollen shoulders at the top of the apple. And it was very seductive shape of an apple. And it retained its firmness through baking. This is some of that sort of folklore.
Melina Hammer: Another thing that's a magical aspect to heirlooms is that they're passed down from literal human hands to the next set of human hands, because these are love stories in food and in growing foods that people cherish and want to retain.
Suzy Chase: That reminds me of this line you wrote in the cookbook, and I quote, "Ingredient discoveries birth love affairs with new dishes."
Melina Hammer: It's so true.
Suzy Chase: I love that line.
Melina Hammer: Oh, well, thank you so much. For me, even before I was really a cook, I kept falling in love with food. Working in restaurants, being an avid eater, always being curious, I just was so amazed by the diversity of what was out there and all kinds of cuisines that presented ingredients in new light or new methods. There were so many kinds of recipes or applications a single ingredient could have. And just produces this glee because then you're like, "It never ends." It's wonderful. And then I get to share that with people who come and stay with us. It's really incredible.
Suzy Chase: So last year I had Julia Turshen on my cookbook show to chat about Simply Julia, and she called you a unicorn.
Melina Hammer: Oh my goodness. Yeah.
Suzy Chase: I'm going to quote what she said on my podcast. She said, "She's an amazing photographer, but also an amazing food stylist and an amazing prop stylist. It's very rare to find all three of those things in one person. Sometimes you find two out of three. Usually someone just concentrates on one of those. But Melina does all three and does them all really well."
Melina Hammer: Wow, that's beautiful. She would prep ingredients and label them. There was so much masking tape, I can't even tell you. She had labels for everything. It was like a lifesaver, a little sort of a treasure hunt in a way. And she would drive a box of these things over each day. And she'd come into my driveway, unload the box. We'd chat for a minute. And then I'd unpack the box and I'd see, "Oh great. Here's where this goes. And these things go for that." It was really like a little treasure hunt. And then I'd put the pieces of the puzzle back together. And the guidance that she gave me before the shoot would even begin, but throughout, and this was about a five-week process that we did this almost every day, was incredible. And it actually, I think, gave us both some grounding during a time that was extraordinarily untethered and well, we were all in a purgatory. We were all in a state of limbo. And this purpose that producing her beautiful cookbook for this period of time gave us so much meaning. And I really cherish it. I think that it was one of the best things that could have happened for both of us.
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called Dream Dinner Party, where I ask you who you most want to invite to your dream dinner party and why. And for this segment, it can only be one person.
Melina Hammer: I would really love to have Mary Oliver over for dinner. Her incredible wit and brevity and her lyrical nature. Mary Oliver is a poet extraordinaire, who has now passed actually. But I feel like she would just relish every single moment and be able to share with me some things that I may not have seen or known or thought of, because of her own incredible insight to living things and everything around her.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web, social media, and Catbird Cottage?
Melina Hammer: You can find me melinahammer.com, @MelinaHammer on Instagram, and our sweet catbirdcottage.com.
Suzy Chase: To purchase A Year at Catbird Cottage, head on over to cookerybythebook.com. And thanks so much Melina for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.
Melina Hammer: Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure to speak with you.
Outro: Subscribe over on cookerybythebook.com. And thanks for listening to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book.
