Professor Butter Beard and Norman Rockwell’s “Back to School”
“Food is a powerful connector of who we are to who we were, to our past, to our memories, and, for me, to a different and simpler time. Even the smallest thing – a cookie – can help us understand what we feel now while reminding us of what we once felt and who we’ve become versus who we were then.” – Thomas Keller, Chef
Sometimes memories are so clear, I wonder if they may have been dreams. It was a late August sultry morning in 1970, and the lists matching students and teachers had just been posted on the back door windows of Somers Elementary School. We were a small group, only eighty of us young Mogadorians graduating into our fourth-grade year. Tensions were high. Would our best friends be seated beside us for the next nine months? Would we be tortured by the “strict, old and grouchy” teacher, or the young fresh unknown we had heard our parents gossiping about?
There were a few “whoops” when me and my mates discovered we had been matched with Miss Hendricks, the great unknown… We scampered away so the next wave could discover their fate and fled to Billy Brown’s house on Williams Avenue to celebrate with a couple ice-cold Dr. Peppers before hiking to the neighborhood pool for the day. Billy’s parents were out-and-about, and I found myself in their kitchen scouring the drawers for some hidden snacks. What I found changed my life forever.
Pecan Sandies. It was an un-opened bag, with the little ole Keebler elf wickedly beckoning me to rip open the bag and dive in. And I did. I had never tasted anything like them before. Of course, my grandmother had introduced me to Scottish shortbread, but these nutty morsels were perfectly shaped crisp disks, studded with decadent pecans, that melted into buttery crumbs on my tongue. I sat down on the kitchen linoleum floor and ate the entire package – without an ounce of guilt or even the possibility of sharing.
Now, you may ask, what brought on that vision? Art. It is always art. And the same artist comes to mind every time I start to realize that I have one week before I am standing in front of a room of shellshocked college freshmen and delivering opening lectures of ancient Spanish cave paintings and the dawn of the Italian Renaissance.
Norman Percevel Rockwell.
Rockwell was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of the country's culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the “Willie Gillis” series, “Rosie the Riveter,” “The Problem We All Live With,” “Saying Grace,” and the “Four Freedoms” series. But what I remember most are his “Back To School” series of paintings. Young boys scuffling down the road dragging their books on a stick, or the young girl outside the principal’s office with a grin and a black eye, or the young lad hard at pretending to study, knowing his best canine friend is just outside the window, wagging his tail to count away the seconds to his master and best friend’s release.
What I did learn this week as I revisited the artist and his masterworks was his connection to, and dependency on, the use of photography. Rockwell used photographs, taken by a rotating cast of photographers, to make his illustrations - and all of his models were neighbors and friends, including that little boy and his patient pup! Rockwell never kept it a secret, but for some reason this little fact has been neglected in recent decades. Although he may not have clicked the shutter, Rockwell directed every facet of every composition.
Claire O'Neill, reporting for NPR writes, “A little girl with a black eye, an elderly woman saying grace with her grandson, a boy going to war: Rockwellian scenes represent a certain sentimental America — an ideal America, or at least Rockwell's ideal. But those illustrations may never have existed without the help of photography.”
A German immigrant and young artist-photographer, Clemens Kalischer, moved to Rockwell's small town of Stockbridge in the 1920s. He was approached by one of Rockwell's usual photographers, Bill Scoville, who had a nervous condition and needed support while working. Kalischer reluctantly assisted Rockwell through the years — driving him to the White House to photograph Lady Bird Johnson, for example. But he has kept the photographs to himself and has remained quiet until recently interviewed.
According to Kalischer, the American mainstream has misunderstood Rockwell. “There is a difference between advertising and art,” he wrote in an e-mail to O’Neill. “Good artists have total control over their work and express their own vision, while searching for truth.” And, Kalischer repeatedly emphasizes, Rockwell never considered himself an artist, but rather a commercial illustrator. A new spin on an American idol.
And that is what brings me to today’s Pecan Sandies – a new spin on an American idol. I so agree with Chef Thomas Keller. One small cookie can take us on a journey through the past to the present. Keller bakes Pecan Sandies at his Bouchon Bakeries as a sensory tribute to the passion of his mother. I started with his recipe and then added a few touches from my own culinary journey. Definitely use a scale to measure the ingredients (you’ll never turn back to hand measuring), and toast the pecans with a dash of salt, or if bold, a dash of chili powder. Don’t skimp on the vanilla paste and a heavy final dusting of confectioner’s sugar. The resulting tasty morsels may just remind you of where you were when, and where you are now.
Happy “Back to School!”
Pecan Sandies
Inspired by Thomas Keller
Four dozen cookies
500 grams all-purpose flour
½ tsp fine sea salt
160 grams pecans, toasted with ½ tsp fine sea salt and coarsely chopped
12 ounces (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
180 grams confectioner’s sugar (plus extra for the final dusting)
1 tsp vanilla paste
1) Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line three baking sheets with parchment paper.
2) In a medium bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour and the ½ tsp fine sea salt.
3) Toast the pecans in a cast-iron skillet, tossing them with ½ tsp fine sea salt, until fragrant. Cool completely (I pour them onto a small tray and freeze them for 8-10 minutes). Coarsely chop them and stir them into the flour/salt mixture.
4) In a standing mixer, with the paddle attachment, mix the butter on medium-low until smooth. Add the confectioner’s sugar and mix for about 2 minutes until fluffy. Mix in the vanilla paste and then add the flour/pecan mix. Mix on low just until the dough comes together.
5) Use a small scoop to portion the dough into 1 ½ Tbsp portions. Place 16 on each tray and lightly press the cookies into 2” disks.
6) Bake one tray at a time for 12 minutes, rotate the tray, and bake for another 6 minutes until the cookies are slightly puffed and the edges are beginning to brown.
7) Set the pan on a cooling rack and let cool for 12-15 minutes before dusting the cookies with additional confectioner’s sugar.
