I Can Cook, Too

This is the title of a funny song from Bernstein, Comden, and Green’s
1944 Broadway musical,
On the Town, which is about three sailors on a 24-hour leave in New
York. One of the sailors happens upon a taxi driver named Hildy Esterhazy,
who lures him to her apartment by telling him what a
good cook http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K2xSZ... she is. I was
once married to a sailor. I cooked actual meals for him. I owned a dozen
cookbooks. I baked bread, made my own mayonnaise (just once), and made
Christmas cookies from scratch. When President Johnson invited my husband
to go to Vietnam, he decided to join the Navy instead. On the way, he dropped
me off in Cape Girardeau, where I started graduate school. He made a right
turn, I went left, and that was pretty much the end of my domesticity.




But I can still cook! I learned from my mother and my grandmother. I remember
the post-war years, when my grandmother bought headless chickens. I watched
her pluck them and pull the insides out before she cut them up and dunked
them in flour and made fried chicken. Every Thanksgiving and Easter, my
mother and my two aunts crowded into Gramma’s kitchen in St. Louis with
raw ingredients and pots and pans and knives and spoons and—voilà, a couple
hours later, the whole family gathered for the best holiday meals served
on the planet. That was real home cooking.

For the first four or five years of our marriage, my husband and I invited
his parents (whom I adored) and my parents for Thanksgiving. I cooked to
impress. One year I found a recipe for Yorkshire pudding. It came out well,
and I got lots of compliments. Another year, it was duck with orange rice.
After I cooked a mountain of rice, my mother-in-law rescued me, explained
proportions of rice to water, and took some of the rice home. Another year,
another fancy meal, and my mother and grandmother reciprocated by rearranging
my living room furniture. I don’t think I’ve prepared a Thanksgiving meal
since then. I have never in my life roasted a whole turkey. Even when my
son was living with me, if I had, we’d still be eating turkey at Easter.
Now I get myself invited to Thanksgiving dinners, and if it’s a Thanksgiving
supper, I watch Gilbert & Sullivan operettas all day. And I take nicely
nuked broccoli as my contribution to the potluck meal.

I still use a few of my mother’s recipes. One of them is for gumbo…the
Great Depression-St. Louis version. No fancy creole spices like filé. No
shrimp. My mother’s recipe (which has probably never been written down)
begins “Take 10¢ of stewing beef.” That was one pound of beef. Then a pound
of ham and a pound of bacon. Keep in mind that cholesterol hadn’t been
invented back then. When I use the recipe today, I use less than half a
pound of each meat, to which I add canned okra (which is almost impossible
to find in Long Beach), tomatoes, and mushrooms. It’s served over rice
(which I now know how to cook). This is one of those recipes you simmer
all day, so I never make it unless I’m inviting friends for dinner. It’s
big food. I send some home with them and usually get another three or four
meals myself. When I was in high school, one of my best friends was from
New Orleans. Her mother made authentic New Orleans gumbo for me, but I
didn’t like it. It was all those weird creole spices.




I still use my mother’s recipes for deviled eggs and tuna salad, too.
For the deviled eggs, Mother used to put the hard-boiled egg yolks through
a little sieve; I just mash ’em up with a fork and then add a touch of
black pepper, a bit of sugar, and some mayonnaise. The tuna salad is equally
simple—no raw celery no raw onions. People have told me these recipes are
bland. Well, I like ’em. I guess that’s because I grew up with them.




The first time I ever saw a microwave was in 1966 or 67. It belonged to
my father-in-law, who was a cereal chemist. “Oh,” said I, “I’ll never,
ever, ever try to use one of those things. That’s not Real Cooking.” Foolish,
foolish me. My father-in-law loved to take people to good restaurants.
Once it was a seafood restaurant. But I ask you—what kind of seafood do
you get in St. Louis? Mississippi catfish. Rare, imported delicacies. I
tried squid once. It tasted (and chewed) like garden hose.




Nowadays, my stomach thinks it still lives in St. Louis. When I was in
graduate school, I’d fry up a Louisiana hot sausage and eat it on a bun.
If I did that today…well, you don’t want to know. I have a friend who loves
food from all over the globe. When she accused me of not liking any ethnic
food, I accepted that judgment until my son commented, “White people’s
food is ethnic, too.” See, I grew up in the Midwest in a German family
(second and third generations) and had a Dutch grandmother, so I got used
to pot roast, mashed potatoes, overcooked veggies (a sin I don’t commit),
white bread, and vanilla ice cream. We went to Chinese restaurants (and
the movies) for family birthdays. That was a big celebration. I was in
high school before I ever saw a pizza, and the first taco also arrived
in white-bread Ferguson about that time. I had Jewish friends in graduate
school, so I learned to like Jewish food and still do. One friend, a Conservative
Jew from L.A., lived in another little town near Carbondale, the home of
Southern Illinois University. She had a seventeen-mile commute every day.
We Midwesterners thought you had to pack a lunch if you were going to drive
across a big city. This friend invited me to her apartment for tacos. She
kept kosher. I could have either the meat or the cheese.




I am lucky today to have two friends who are foodies. One is Aaron Jackson,
who is also an artist and set designer. My friend Penny Hayes is the one
I call when I need culinary advice. She used to be a volunteer cook on
the
U.S.S. Lane Victory, a World War II ship now anchored near the Ports
of Long Beach and Los Angeles, and when she was cooking there, those guys
ate good. It’s Penny who gave me the method for reheating food I bring
home from restaurants. Preheat the oven to 350-400º. While it’s preheating,
put the food in the microwave for 30 seconds to cook its insides. Then
put it in the hot oven for ten to fifteen minutes to make the outside crispy
again. Keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn. This even works for onion
rings.




All things considered, I think I’d rather watch my
On the Town DVD again than think anymore about cooking.
Bon appétit!