“Do sit down.” Mrs. Murry indicated a chair. “Would you like a sandwich, Mrs Whatsit? I’ve had liverwurst and cream cheese; Charles has had bread and jam; and Meg, lettuce and tomato.”
“Now, let me see,” Mrs Whatsit pondered. “I’m passionately fond of Russian caviar.”
Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
A new year and a new 52 Weeks of Cooking! This is my third year doing to Reddit-based challenge. I love to cook and I love books, so I decided to combine the two this year. Every week, my meal will be inspired by a book I’ve read.
For Week 1, the theme was Rainy Day.
My favorite rainy day meal is spaghetti. I love the smell of rich tomato sauce simmering on the stove while it’s cold and wet outside. A big bowl of pasta is such a cozy meal.
But when thinking of rainy day meals in books, my mind immediately went to the opening scene of one of my favorite book series growing up, The Time Quintet, by Madeleine L’Engle — specifically, A Wrinkle in Time.
The novel begins with the cliche: “It was a dark and stormy night.” But what follows is anything but commonplace. Meg Murry, an ordinary adolescent, her gifted brother, Charles Wallace, and their mother Mrs. Murry share sandwiches and cocoa with a strange woman, Mrs. Whatsit.
At the end of their meal, Mrs. Whatsit remarks, “There is such a thing as a tesseract,” This kicks off an adventure, in which Charles Wallace and Meg travel across time and space battling evil forces in search of their missing father.
The late-night meal in the first chapter has always stuck with me because of the odd characters, and the sandwich that Mrs. Murry requests: Liverwurst and cream cheese.
As a kid, I wasn’t going to eat anything with liver in the name. But as I grew up and my palate grew more adventurous, I wondered if I’d like liverwurst and wanted to try it.
For this meal, I made my own sourdough sandwich bread, using a King Arthur recipe, as well as my own strawberry jam and hot cocoa mix.
The hot cocoa mix, an Alton Brown recipe, took me two attempts, because I burned the milk powder the first time I tried to toast it. Toasting the milk powder adds a new depth of flavor, so I recommend it, but don’t walk away from the oven — it goes from golden brown to burnt very quickly.
The sandwiches are as follows:
The Charles Wallace: Open-face with strawberry jam
The Meg Murry: Cream cheese and tomato with onion powder, salt and pepper
The Mrs. Murry: Cream cheese, liverwurst, pickled onion
The Mrs. Whatsit: Tuna fish salad with pickles
The verdict? I like liverwurst. It tastes like salami and is excellent with cream cheese. I don’t know if I’d go out of my way to buy any kind of liver sausage, but if someone offered me a liverwurst and cream sandwich and wanted to talk about tesseracts over hot cocoa, I wouldn’t say no.
Next week: Cabbage.