Popovers and Frank Lloyd Wright

A recent road trip without children inspired these popovers.  

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The kids are gone for the week. The house is quiet. My husband and I are both sleeping through the night. We are eating what we want when we want to.  Our meals have had a lightness to them that we generally don’t have when we are sharing with kids.  It’s refreshing to not be on someone else’s schedule.  

One day, we drove out to Spring Green to eat lunch at Taliesin. It was the perfect mix of great food, history, art, and murderous mayhem in a place that was supposed to be a “cozy” love nest. If anything that ended up with 101 rooms and 18 bathrooms could ever be called cozy.

We opted not to do the tour because as much as I love Frank Lloyd Wright architecture, I wasn’t ready to immerse myself in a 2-4 hour guided experience.

Taliesin is across the road from a park on the Wisconsin River.

After ordering our lunch, we snagged a table near the window and watched a woman throwing frisbees to her dog into the river as we sipped our shandies and quietly discussed the murders.

“This is the third version of the house,” I explained to my husband.  “The first two versions burned down.”  

“Did the murders happen in the first or second house?” He asked.

“I’m not really sure.” I replied.  Our food arrived as I told him about Julian Carlton.  “No one is quite sure what happened that day.  I believe I read that the servants were fired and were supposed to be returning to Chicago.  Things didn’t go according to plan.”

I ate a bite of my cheese puff stuffed with seasonal salad.  This one contained romaine lettuce and gooseberries lightly tossed with a lemony dressing.  I marveled at the perfect simplicity of our lunch.  The cheese puff was choux pastry with shredded local cheddar.  The cheese browned more than the rest of the puff to create a lovely crispness that contrasted with the creamy pastry.  

“This is the perfect light lunch.” I explained. “I don’t know that I could ever make something like this when the kids were around and expect them to feel like it was enough of a meal.” I knew the kids would eat them the same way they eat popovers, but they wouldn’t be satisfied with just cheese puffs as a meal.

Across the table, my husband was trying a bite of the chilled peach soup before starting in on his pork and grits.  He nearly moaned with pleasure as the pureed peaches filled his mouth.  “You’ve got to try this.”  

I thoughtfully dipped a perfect russet French fry into the mustardy aioli (not a dijonaise).  “I want to knit this ceiling.”  

My husband looked at me like I was crazy.  This is not unusual for us.  

“No,” I explained.  “You’ve got to squint a little bit to see it as a flat shape.  Look at the way the white and the wood create a herringbone pattern. But pieces of wood frame the white.  Then at the peaks, you get a small red stripe above each of the wood pieces.”  

I’m not sure he ever really saw what I did, but it doesn’t matter.  I don’t have the right colors of yarn to pull it off at the moment anyway.

After an incredible lunch, we looked around the visitor center a bit.  We remarked on the low ceilings.  I’m guessing they are 7 feet tall.   I later read that this design element may have been to soothe FLLW’s ego.  Apparently the architect was short in stature.  One can conjecture about the power he felt making tall men stoop.  

We visited the gift shop and marveled at the items for sale.  On top of decorative objects, there were house numbers, ties, socks, sticky notes, puzzles, and jewelry.  We ended up with a book about the murders.  Partially because it started with a mention of Ed Gein.  

“This was a nice drive.” My husband said to me as we got in the car.  “We should do this more often.”

“How soon do you think it’ll be before mom will take the kids again?”  I asked.

We smiled at each other.  His eyes lit up and softened as he looked at me.  We both understood that it wouldn’t be soon enough before we visited again. At least we got inspiration for new meals and new ways to make popovers.

The Recipe:

Instead of making choux pastry, try these popovers.  Add shredded cheese to the recipe to recreate my lunch at Taliesin or serve plain with jam. 

If you like this recipe you might like to try Breakfast Pops, Danish Pastry, Apple Date Bread.