Too Many Cooks Quotes

“My mom was never much of a cook---her style of cookery mostly involved cream-based canned soup and processed cheese---but her spaghetti salad was something of a delicacy in my town when I was growing up. The combination of spaghetti, ham, cubed cheese, and Miracle Whip doesn't sound as if it should go together, but somehow, when combined, the result is downright delicious. Maybe it's the fact that every bite reminds me of my mom, but when I crave something comforting and familiar, it's the first thing that comes to mind.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“Cut the bullshit. Your little ingénue act---it's pathetic."
Her words sock me like a punch in the gut. As much as I hate lying to her face, as much as I've been dying to tell her the truth, to have it out once and for all in a big, messy fight, I'm not sure I'm ready for this. The steely look in her eyes, the tightness of her jaw---she'll crush me.
"Okay. Fine," I say, the courage building inside me. I can do this. I have to. "Let's cut the bullshit, then." My eyes drift toward her cabinets. "Maybe we should talk over a glass of wine. Unless that would be bad for the baby."
I wait for her to take the bait, but she just stares at me.
"There is a baby, right? You wouldn't make something like that up. Only a crazy person would do that. Only someone who was truly horrible, all the way to her core."
She clenches her jaw. "You have no idea what you're talking about."
"Yes, I do. And you know it."
"Watch yourself."
"Why? So you can steamroll me like you steamroll everyone? You don't even love him."
"You have no idea how I feel. About anything."
"I know your marriage is one of convenience. That you sleep in separate bedrooms. That you're having an affair with a guy named Jacques."
"And I suppose that makes you an expert on my love life."
"No, but it means I know you don't have Hugh's interests at heart."
"What do you know about his interests? You think you can parachute in, five years into our marriage, and decide you understand how or why any of this works? You think a month or two of screwing means you know more about him than I do?"
"I know he doesn't love you. I know he never did."
"Well, la-di-da. Here's a newsflash: It takes more than love to make a relationship work."
"But you can't really make a relationship work without it, can you?"
"You can if you want to."
"Only if both people do. And Hugh doesn't. Not anymore."
"Is that so? Then tell me, why did he just spend more than a week with me, discussing our future?"
"Because you created a phantom pregnancy without consulting him? Because he's trying to do damage control?"
"Ah, I see. Is that what you keep telling yourself?"
My face grows hot. "It kills you that he'd choose me over you."
She throws her head back and cackles. "Is that what you think? That he'd choose you? Christ, you're even more naive than I thought."
"He loves me," I say. "He said so."
"You know what else he loves? His career. And how do you think you fit in with that? Let me answer for you: You don't."
My hands are shaking. "What about you? You're having an affair with some French guy named Jacques. How do you think that will play with Hugh's constituency? Let me answer for you: Not well.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“While Hugh glad-hands with his constituents, I continue strolling around the fair, on a quest for clotted cream fudge. I find some at a small stand next to the Ferris wheel, and, with what little cash I have left, I buy three flavors: traditional, peanut butter, and chocolate. The traditional, I discover, is not traditional American fudge, which would be milk chocolate, perhaps studded with with toasted walnuts. Instead, this version is blond in color, with a milky, burnt-sugar flavor, like a square of caramel, only less sticky and with a soft, velvety texture.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“I breathe in the fresh summer air as I pass a table covered with all sorts of cakes---Victorian sponge, Madeira, Battenberg, lemon drizzle. Again my mind drifts to my childhood, this time to the Michigan State Fair, which my family would visit at the end of every summer. It had all sorts of contests---pie eating, hog calling, watermelon seed spitting (Stevie's favorite)---but the cake competition was my favorite challenge of all. Every year I'd eye the confections longingly: the fluffy coconut cakes, the fudge chocolate towers filled with gooey caramel or silky buttercream, the cinnamon-laced Bundts topped with buttery streusel. The competition was divided into adult and youth categories, and when I turned twelve, I decided to enter a recipe for chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream and peanut brittle.
My mom was a little befuddled by my participation (her idea of baking involved Duncan Hines and canned, shelf-stable frosting, preferably in a blinding shade of neon), but she rode along with my dad, Stevie, and me as we carted two-dozen cupcakes to the fairgrounds in Novi. The competition was steep---pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, German chocolate cupcakes, zucchini cupcakes with lemon buttercream---but my entry outshone them all, and I ended up taking home the blue ribbon, along with a gift certificate to King Arthur Flour.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“As soon as we emerge from the tube and walk through the limestone archway on Borough High Street, we are bombarded by purveyors of everything from fresh vegetables and buttery pastries to goat's milk ice cream and soft, eggy strands of pasta. Hugh lets me wander up and down the aisles, and I stop to watch one vendor stir a three-foot-wide paella pan, offering up piping hot bowls of tender prawns and rice to a throng of hungry customers.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“I spend the day finalizing the seed bread and also making a variation with dried sour cherries, which add a lovely sweet-and-sour tang and yield a loaf that would be equally delicious topped with cheese or slathered in fresh jam. Since both loaves will keep for up to a week in the refrigerator, I leave half of each in Natasha's fridge and decide I'll take the rest home with me. In my head, I'm already concocting uses for both: a smoked trout spread for the plain version, and a whipped vanilla-bean ricotta for the one with cherries.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“I will never be someone who gives up wheat or grains (give me gluten or give me death), but I'm surprised at how delicious the nut-and-seed-based bread is and how much of that is down to Natasha's guidance. Unlike with most of the recipes, she had a lot of specific instructions with this one ("Almonds and hazelnuts, coconut oil, and a mix of seeds---try sunflower, pumpkin and sesame. Maybe some flax. A little honey as well, but no more than a tablespoon").”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“I fry the croquetas, dropping the breaded balls of smoky ham and creamy béchamel into the hot oil. The oil foams and sizzles as I plop in each ball, and the kitchen fills with the smell of deep-fried bacon. Using a skimmer, I scoop out the crispy croquettes, each one a deep golden brown, and lay them on paper towels to drain while I fire the next batch.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“Spanish olives
Boquerones
Apple and Manchego salad with toasted walnuts
Tomato and watermelon salad
Green bean salad with apricots and jamón Serrano
Tortilla española
Croquetas de jamón
Squid and shrimp a la plancha
Grilled hanger steak with salsa verde
Raw sheep's milk cheese with quince paste, chocolate-fig jam, & fruit-and-nut toasts”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“I decide to make a massive tortilla española, since that's something I can prepare in advance and serve warm or at room temperature. I add a Manchego and apple salad to the list, along with a watermelon and tomato salad and shrimp and squid a la pancha. For fourteen people, I will need a few more vegetable dishes---maybe some roasted red peppers stuffed with goat cheese and a green bean salad with apricots and jamón Serrano---along with a few more hot, meaty dishes, like ham croquetas and grilled hanger steak.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“From what Natasha described, the sesame chicken is a variation on oven-fried chicken, with a crisp, garlicky coating speckled with sesame seeds. My first attempt is a total disaster involving burnt sesame seeds, unappetizing flecks of fresh garlic, and more oil than is in all of Saudi Arabia. Whatever the chicken is supposed to taste like, I know this isn't even close.
I fine-tune the recipe all week, swapping out the fresh garlic for powdered and preheating the oiled pan in the oven for a good ten minutes before baking. For what I hope is my final adjustment, I marinate the chicken pieces overnight in a dry rub, leaving them covered on a big sheet pan in Natasha's refrigerator Wednesday night.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“I tweak one of my favorite recipes for chocolate mousse to match Natasha's vague description, using both rum and crème de cacao, along with a dash of coffee, to heighten the chocolate flavor. I'd originally developed the recipe with François Bardon back in Chicago as the filling to his famous chocolate charlotte, a towering confection of velvety chocolate mousse surrounded by fluffy ladyfingers, the whole thing capped off with a billowy layer of whipped cream. But for this version, I streamline the process and adjust the ratios of chocolate, cream, and eggs so that it's more in line with what Natasha's grandmother might have made.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“Then I grab the butter and flour and start on the banana bread, a recipe I've made so many times I know it by heart. I've made numerous variations over the years---sometimes adding chocolate chips and crystallized ginger, at others drizzling a lime-coconut glaze over the top---but no matter what tweaks I make, licking the streaks of golden batter left in the bowl is pretty much mandatory.
Once I've poured the batter into the pan and stuck it in the oven, I finish cleaning up the kitchen, dusting the bits of flour off the counter and washing the bowls and spatulas. The caramel-laced scent of banana bread wafts across the kitchen, filling the room with its sweet perfume. If I had to draw up a list of the best baking smells in the world, banana bread would, without question, rank in the top five. Possibly the top two. I'm not sure why its smell is so intoxicating, but one whiff and I'm ready to attack that baking pan like a cheetah on a fresh kill.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“I pop into Barrett's, ducking beneath the bright-red awning into the tiny shop, which is packed with fresh cuts of everything, from delicate lamb chops to meaty pork roasts covered in thick layers of fat. Mountains of fat sausages beckon from within the glass case, in more varieties than I could ever imagine---wild boar and apple, venison, chicken and sage, beef and garlic. A musty funk fills the store, giving the place an air of rustic authenticity.
I order three Cornish hens (or, as the British call them, poussin) and then head back toward Pomona, the small food shop I visited this morning, remembering the fresh, crusty loaves of bread on their shelves. I grab a loaf of challah, its braided crust shiny and golden brown, along with some celery, an onion, some mushrooms, and a few spices. Before I pay, I also throw a bunch of speckled bananas, a pot of Greek yogurt, and some flour and sugar into my basket. The ingredients are slightly different here than they are back home---"self-raising flour," "caster sugar"---but I'm sure I can re-create the banana bread I developed for a famous morning-show host back in Chicago. It's one of my most popular recipes to date, and I'm sure it would taste great with a cup of tea.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“The Cornish hens were filled with a fragrant stuffing that seemed to be laced with mushrooms, celery, and...was it sage? I think so. And the bread. It was rich and eggy, like a challah or a brioche. The skin on each of the birds was crisp and salty, with pops of...garlic, I think. And paprika. The sweet kind, not the spicy one.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“Yes, well, we figured you wouldn't have anything in the house, so these are things at the very minimum we thought you would need."
I scan the basket, which, among other things, contains a pot of wild boar paté, a jar of organic Manuka honey, a package each of wild Scottish smoked salmon and venison salami, a tube of geranium and neroli hand lotion, and a lamb's wool hot water bottle cover.
"Yeah, it looks like you covered the basics...”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“Everywhere I look, everywhere I turn: salad. Potato salad. Pasta salad. Tuna salad. Ham salad. There aren't any leafy green ones, although some, like my aunt's beloved cottage cheese lime Jell-O salad, are decidedly green. No, the bowls lining the tables and windowsills are filled with the kinds of salads I grew up with in Michigan, most containing some combination of proteins and carbs, the ingredients bound up with a spoonful of mayonnaise or its zesty cousin, Miracle Whip, my mother's all-time favorite condiment. She told me she'd never met a recipe that couldn't be improved by a spoonful of Miracle Whip. That, and maybe a dash of rum.”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks

“Jennifer Slattery lived three doors down, but was still occasionally peeing her pants in the third grade, and Melanie”
― Dana Bate, Too Many Cooks