Mr. Trout
Watch me cook Gabrielle Hamilton's Pan-fried Trout With Brown Butter Vinaigrette. And if you'd rather read than watch me splatter butter, keep scrolling.
I call this one the year in which I pledge to finish cooking through Prune by Gabrielle Hamilton, and instead take a full-year sabbatical. So what happened? Well, life knocked me on my ass and said, “Stay there.”
And I listened.
I took time to rest. God, did I need it.
To cry. Let’s be honest, I’ll never be done there.
And to come up with an answer for life’s most pressing existential question:
Just what the fuck was I put on this Earth for?
After going on my own odyssey consisting of EMDR therapy, a Lenten-driven TikTok detox, and developing a mildly concerning, manic obsession for ancient literature—hence, the Odyssey reference—the short and the long is…I don’t know.
I don’t know if I’ll ever know.
But I am trying to understand.
So, here’s where I’ve landed, if you will.
I have two loves.
The first, as you can probably deduce, is cooking.
The second, the one that I’m still getting used to saying out loud, is writing. As in, I want to be a writer.
‘But, Sabrina!, what does this have to do with cooking through Prune?’
I know, you’re asking it.
And the answer is, if you’re paying attention, everything.
The day she opened the restaurant, Gabrielle said to herself, Hello, Gabrielle, let’s have a conversation about what’s not happening for you.
Hello, Sabrina, let’s have a conversation about what’s not happening for you.
This decades-long justification for not writing, she said. If only I had more time, or in my case, confidence, I’d really be a writer.
Right now, I’m a home cook, cooking someone else’s food. And I can barely manage that.
But the tide turned for Gabrielle. She was able to land an ongoing writing gig for a little publication called the New York Times, go on to publish not one, but two memoirs, a cookbook, and win an Emmy for her episode on Mind of a Chef.
In her own words, “You think you’re coming to the fork in the road. You mourn for, and grieve for, and long for the path not taken, and then, they re-converge up ahead.”
This is my attempt at rezoning the landscape that is my life. City planner, here I come.
So here’s what I’m proposing.
I’ll continue to cook my way through Prune. Maybe throw in a recipe or two of my own. Maybe.
In the meantime, I’ll also be sharing a bit of writing with you.
Sound good?
Good.
Oh, and Mr. Trout says thank you.