The Marriage Plot and Cocktails with Madeleine, Mitchel and Leonard

I struggled with what to make for Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot.  The book is about the difficulty and aimlessness of three Brown seniors upon their graduation.  The food in the book is minimal and not good (cafeteria food, maybe some ramen, some cheap vegetarian food experienced on a trip to India).  In the end what I came up with was an imagined impromptu cocktail hour with the three characters - Madeleine, Leonard and Mitchell.  I made something to represent each character - the classic crisp gin martini for the waspy Madeleine,  Parmesan cheese crisps to represent the depressed but brilliant Leonard and Indian spiced nuts to represent the soul searching Mitchell.  To some extent, each of these ideas was a stretch, nevertheless I think each element brings a little bit of a character to the table.  Eugenides is the author of two previous well known novels - The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex.   These two books and The Marriage Plot are totally distinct from each other - it is actually hard to believe they were written by the same author.  The Virgin Suicides is a dreamy, yet edgy novel about teen desire, while Middlesex is an epic story of a hermaphrodite.  The Marriage Plot is different still, though it is perhaps somewhere between these two - the story is somewhat small - focused on the three characters  - seniors at Brown in 1982 - and their flailing attempts at early adulthood.  The book is a bit autobiographical - Eugenides graduated Brown at the same time and followed a similar path as one of the main characters, the fellow Greek Mitchell Grammaticus.  While the characters are a bit grating in the way smart, precocious Ivy leaguers can be, the book is absorbing and it is easy to identify with their struggles to find themselves and to find themselves on solid ground.

Brown, 1982, the morning of college graduation and the morning after the last party of college, you wake up in last night's clothes, maybe in a strange place and maybe with strange stains on your dress - we have all been there before, or at least near there.  This is how Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot begins and how he introduces us to the central character of the book - Madeleine Hanna, an pretty, waspy English Literature major.  Madeleine is a mess the morning of graduation, the night before was her first night out after weeks of depression after her breakup with Leonard, her odd but charming boyfriend.  Early in the morning she is confronted with her parents, well meaning but somewhat clueless, who have come to take her to breakfast.  At the local, grungy cafe she runs into Mitchell Grammaticus, who used to be her friend.  Her parents love Mitchell and don't know that they don't speak anymore, and we as readers don't find out why for some time, but it is easy to guess that it has something to do with unrequited love.  If you think that this set up means this will be a frothy story about college bed hopping, think again - these kids go to Brown after all, so they are introspective and intellectual - there is more about Derrida and Austen here than about random hookups.  The book is not structured in a set, chronological manner - the characters weave in and out of retrospection and the present moment and while it feels like most of the book focuses on Madeleine, we also get to spend some time with Leonard and Mitchell.  Leonard Bankhead is that mysterious, quirky guy in class who is strangely, compellingly attractive.   Other guys don't know how he does it, but he is a bit of a stud.   Madeleine meets Leonard in a semiotics seminar  which in the 80's at Brown is the hot academic trend of the moment (I looked up semiotics and I still don't know what it is - this is one of those books, that for me, even though I considered myself highly educated, I felt uneducated much of the time).  As Madeleine gets to know Leonard, he becomes both more intriguing and more complicated - he comes from a working class background, is estranged from his family, lives in a run down apartment and after they begin dating, becomes paralyzingly depressed.  Madeleine soon learns that Leonard is bipolar and decided to go off his meds.  He is hospitalized and Madeleine's glamorous college romance soon becomes more adult and more dark than she had bargained for.   In contrast to the unstable Leonard, Mitchell is paragon of stability.  He comes from the Midwest, is a supportive friend to Madeleine, and he not so secretly loves her.  Apart from Madeleine, Michell's preoccupation is with God and spirituality.  He is a deep thinker and genuinely becomes engaged in the search for what he believes in.  Madeleine's relationship with Leonard is like a slap in the face to Mitchell - he doesn't understand what she sees in him.  Upon graduation, these three characters embark on different paths.  Mitchell, after working the summer in a Greek restaurant, travels to Europe and India with a friend.  He loses the friend in Greece and heads to India on his own, where he volunteers in Mother Theresa's leper colony.  Madeleine, despite Leonard's breakdown, follows him to Cape Cod where Leonard has a biology fellowship.  Madeleine loses herself and her love of literature and instead focuses on taking care of Leonard and trying to keep him stable.  Leonard takes his mental health into his own hands and tries to jigger his medications himself, to disastrous effect.  In the year or so following graduation each of the three characters comes face to face with the worst parts of themselves, and must push on despite losing a bit of their youthful sparkle.  I enjoyed the book but found some parts a bit overwritten and pompous - lots of literary and philosophical references that went over my head.   Despite this, I thought Eugenides portrait of the fraught post-collegiate effort to define yourself was sympathetic and true to life.

The Marriage Plot Cocktail Hour

Gin Martini - Madeleine
Parmesan Frico - Leonard
Indian Spices Nuts - Mitchell

So here is how I got to this little cocktail hour.  For Madeleine, her parents are the type to engage in a daily cocktail hour in their comfortable, old home.  Mitchell spends a holiday with the family and is taken in by the stereotypically shabby, waspy chic of the Hanna family and in particular their cocktail hour.  So for Madeleine, it seemed the classic gin martini was a good fit.  For Leonard, I had a harder time.  What do you make for someone who is severely depressed?  In the end, I decided to make something cheese related, because one of the cool, quirky things about Leonard that Madeleine finds charming is his knowledge of a local neighborhood Italian cheese shop and familiarity with the cheese guy.  So going with the cheese theme, I made these simple Parmesan frico, which are the perfect salty snack to pair with a martini - they are literally just crackers made entirely of cheese. Finally, reflecting on Mitchell's time in India I made some mixed nuts flavored with Indian spices. A fragrant and slightly exotic cocktail snack.  The best part - none of these take too much effort to make but are a little more special than typical cocktail hour fare.  These can be trotted out all holiday season long.

Gin Martini
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
2 and 1/2 ounces gin
olives or lemon twist

Directions:

1. In a large glass filled with ice, pour in the vermouth and gin an stir.  
2. Strain into a martini glass, garnish with olives or lemon twist.

Parmesan Frico
2 cups shredded or grated Parmesan
2 teaspoons flour
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
pinch of cayenne

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or silpat.
3. Mix the cheese, flour and peppers together with a fork.  
4. Mound about a tablespoon of the cheese onto the baking sheet, using a spoon flatten out.  Repeat with the remaining cheese, leaving a little space between the cheese piles.
5. Bake in the oven for about 5-10 minutes, until the cheese is melted but not too brown.
6. You can either leave the frico to cool as is, or to give them a Pringles-like shape, using a spatula to remove the frico immediately from the baking sheet and press onto a rolling pin. 
7. Cool completely either on the baking sheet on a cooling rack, flat, or on the rolling pin on the cooling rack. 
8. When cool, remove from the baking sheet or rolling pin and enjoy.  

Indian Spiced Nuts, adapted from Williams Sonoma website.
2 cups lightly salted mixed nuts
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/8 teaspoon cayenne

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
2. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil.
3. In a bowl, mix the nuts with the butter and spices and toss until the nuts are well coated with the spices.
4. Spread the nuts in an even layer on the baking sheet.
5. Roast the nuts for about 20 minutes, until fragrant.  Stir the nuts every 2 - 4 minutes.
6. Transfer the nuts after 20 minutes and serve either warm or at room temperature.