by Maya Angelou
“Who would have thought that a smart and pretty woman like you could cook like this? This table looks like the real thing. If you had told me, I could have picked up some tamales.”
She walked in carrying a plate filled with the doctor’s dream comestibles. When he saw the platter he lost all sense of propriety. He plucked a tamale and put it on his plate. When he unwrapped the hot savory from the cornhusks, his face was a study in hope and apprehension. The long cornmeal tamale lay on his plate, and he waited a few seconds just in case it wasn’t as good as he wished. Then he lifted his fork and cut a bite and put it in his mouth.
As the flavored cornmeal and the seasoned meat filling melted, he began to smile. Then the smile widened and he started to laugh. He made no eye contact, so he wasn’t sharing the laughter. He was just enjoying himself with himself. When he finished the tamale, he looked at M.J. Looked at her as if he had never really seen her. Looked at her and realized that this woman who pleased him in many other ways could also cook tamales to make his heart stand still.
I was not at all surprised when M.J. told me that later that night he said he wanted to talk about a longtime commitment.
Tamales de Maiz con Pollo
(green cornhusk tamales with chicken filling)
MAKES I DOZEN TAMALES
2 whole chicken breasts
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
½ cup minced onions
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup fresh parsley
½ cup fresh cilantro
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 ¾ cups masa
1 cup warm water
¼ cup lard
24 fresh cornhusks
Wash chicken breasts, and cut from bone. Slice chicken into pencil-thin strips.
In large sautê pan, sautê chicken in oil for 15 minutes, or until done, and then remove from oil.
Sautê onions and garlic in oil until translucent. Return chicken to sautê pan, and add parsley, cilantro, cayenne pepper, and ½ teaspoon salt, and season with black pepper. Set aside to cool.
In heavy pot, mix together masa, water, remaining salt, and lard, and stir and cook over medium heat until very creamy and smooth, about 20 to 25 minutes. Cool to room temperature.
Trim the thick bottom part from cornhusks and wash well, removing any silk. For each tamale, take 2 cornhusks, pointed part at top, and paste together at one side with some of the masa mixture. This makes the husk wider. Now spread 1 tablespoon of the masa mixture on the inside about 1 inch from the bottom and extending about 2 inches up the husk. Top with 2 teaspoons of the filling. Fold husk around filling, paste with a little more masa, and then fold bottom toward top, making envelopes. Tie together with kitchen twine.
Stand up in a steamer, and steam for 1 hour. Tamales may be frozen and reheated over steam.
THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION’S Study and Conference Center was a large mansion snuggled into the hills above Bellagio, Italy. Fifteen artists at a time from around the world were invited to the enclave. Selected artists with companions had to make their way to Milan airport, and then magically they were swept up by tender arms and placed in a lap of luxury that few popular movie stars or rich corporate chiefs even dreamed existed. A chauffeured car picked up the invitees and drove them carefully fifty miles north to Bellagio. There they were deposited at the Center, which stood atop a high hill. Its buildings were low-slung and meandered over carefully tended acres only a few miles from the Swiss border. Within those elegant walls, forty-eight employees cared for thirty guests and the retreat center’s director and wife. Each artist had a commodious suite.
Once ensconced in this graciousness, the artists were informed of the regimen. Breakfast was ordered nightly and served each morning by footmen. Lunch was served informally at midday. Artists could sit at will in a casual dining room and choose food from an elaborate buffet. The time could have been passed off as an ordinary lunch save that each table sported a handwritten menu of foods offered and the company was served at the buffet table by the uniformed head waiter and the tailored butler.
The artists were addressed as dottore, which meant that their scholarship was respected. They were told that dinner was formal, and that was an understatement. Dinner was an event of meticulous structure. Guests were expected to dress each night and were directed where to sit by a placement, which lay on a hall table at the door of the drawing room. There must have been an exemplary social statistician in the Center’s employ because in the four weeks when I was a resident, no one ever sat twice between the same two people.
Jessica Mitford and I were invited and found ourselves to be the only female artists. We had brought along our husbands, Robert Treuhaft and Paul du Feu, but the staff, so unused to female scholars, could not bring themselves to address us as they addressed the thirteen male scholars. So they called us signora and our husbands dottore.
One evening during a lull in the ten or twelve conversations plying the table, the director reminded the guests that Thanksgiving was approaching. He then asked if anyone had a good recipe for roast turkey and corn bread dressing. I waited, but no one moved. I said, “I do. I have a recipe.” I spoke it before I thought.
Everyone beamed at me except my husband, Jessica, and Robert. In a second, their faces told me I had done the wrong thing. Company never volunteers, never offers. Nonetheless, the director said the butler would come to my suite mid-morning to collect the recipe.
I broke my writing schedule to recall and write the recipe. I handed the missive to the butler. Within minutes he returned and said the chef wanted to see the dottore who had sent him the recipe. I followed him down a flight of dark stairs and, without a hint of change to come, stepped suddenly into a vast noisy, hot, brightly lit kitchen, where a fleet of white uniformed cooks were stirring steaming pots and sizzling pans. The butler guided me over to meet the head chef, who wore a starched white toque. His surprise at seeing me let me know that he had expected Dottore Angelou to be a white male, and, instead, a six-foot-tall daughter of Africa stood before him ready to answer his questions. He did shake my hand, but he then turned his back rather rudely and shouted to another cook, “Come and talk to this woman. I don’t have the time.”
The second cook tried his English, but I told him we could speak Italian. He said, “Signora, we want to follow your recipe, but we have never made corn bread or corn bread dressing. We need your help.”
I asked for cornmeal, only to be offered polenta. I asked for baking powder and was told they didn’t even know what that was. When I described the work of baking powder, I was shown a large slab of moist yeast. The polenta was an orange powdery meal many times brighter than American yellow cornmeal.
During the Easter seasons, my mother always used yeast to make hot cross buns. I figured I could use it as the riser for my corn bread.
I gave my jacket to the butler and listed the other ingredients I needed. He put men to work, and in seconds I was able to put a pan of polenta corn bread into a hot oven and the turkey’s neck, gizzard, liver, and wingtips to boil. I added celery, onions, a stick of cinnamon, and garlic to the pot.
When the bread came from the oven, hot and smoking, the head chef was standing near me. We both looked at the orange brown crust. His eyes widened. He said, “Bella.”
I said, “This is the bread my people eat.”
The chef asked, “Who are your people?”
I answered, “ African Americans. My ancestors came from Africa to America.” The chef said, “Every person in America except the Indians had ancestors who came from some other place.” I couldn’t argue that.
He asked, “What makes you different from other Americans?”
I said, “My skin is black. That tells me and everyone who sees me who I am.”
He raised his voice. “Roberto, Roberto, come.”
A small dark-skinned cook came from the rear of the kitchen.<
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The chef said, “Here is Roberto. He is from Sicily, but because of his color should I call him an Afro-Italian?”
There was a burst of loud laughter. We had been speaking in Italian and everyone had heard our conversation and enjoyed the fact that the chef was putting me on.
I decided to stop the razzing and get on with the cooking. I quickly diced an onion and sautéed it in a large pan. I drained the stock and mixed some with the onion and crumbled corn bread in a large bowl. No one offered to help me, so I took the raw turkey and stuffed it with dressing. I laced the turkey’s cavity and placed it into a roasting pan. I cut the oven down and set the turkey to roast.
I finely diced another onion and sautéed it and made gravy using the cut-up meat and the rest of the stock. I put a drop of the gravy on my thumb and tasted it for seasoning.
When I looked up, I realized the chef had been watching me for the past twenty minutes. His face told me he had been watching with approval. He asked, “Would you like a smoke?” I said, “Yes.”
His nod told me to follow him. He shouted to the cooking staff, “Watch her sauce, and keep an eye on the turkey in the oven.”
We walked out into an alley. He gave me a strong French cigarette and lighted his own and mine. He breathed in deeply and exhaled loudly, and although he never said a mumbling word I knew his invitation to me to join him in a smoke was his way to show his approval.
That night when the exclusive intellectual assemblage had gathered around the dining table, the chef entered followed by his sous-chef, who carried a fine brown turkey.
The sous-chef lifted the platter and bowed to the chef, who gave a small bow, then reached out his right hand to me and asked me to stand. All the scholars and their mates and the director applauded the turkey, the chef, and me.
I learned that day that a respect for food and its preparation could obliterate distances between sexes, languages, oceans, and continents.
Roasted Turkey
SERVES 15 TO 20
One 15-17-pound turkey
1 tablespoon salt
Corn Bread Stuffing (p. 118)
½ cup melted butter
Preheat oven to 325°F. Wash turkey thoroughly, and pat dry.
Rub turkey’s neck and body cavities with salt. Lightly fill body cavity with Corn Bread Stuffing. Tie legs together with string. Stuff neck cavity lightly with stuffing. Draw neck skin over cavity to the back, and fasten with a skewer. Fasten wings behind back by bending tip ends under.
The turkey can be roasted in open pan or closed roaster, or wrapped in foil. Open-pan method is preferable and is described here.
Place turkey, breast side up, on wire rack in shallow pan. Insert roasting thermometer between thigh and body, avoiding bone.
Cover bird with cheesecloth dipped in melted butter. If cheesecloth dries during cooking time, spoon some of the drippings in pan over it.
Roast until thermometer registers 190°F, or until drumsticks can be moved up and down easily. When bird is done, remove cloth. Place turkey on a large hot platter. Let stand for about 20 minutes before carving, so the meat will absorb its own juices.
Corn Bread Stuffing
SERVES 8 TO 10
Turkey neck
Turkey wingtip
Turkey gizzard
Turkey liver
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 stalks celery, diced
1 small onion, diced
1 pan cooked corn bread, cooled (use Crackling Corn Bread recipe on p. 27, but omit cracklings)
4 tablespoons dried sage
1 tablespoon dried oregano
3 large eggs
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 9 × 9-inch baking pan.
Place washed turkey parts in 4-quart pot. Add enough water to cover. Add salt, boil, and then let cool.
Into a large sautê pan, put oil, celery, and onion, and sautê until tender. Let cool.
Crumble corn bread, and add sage, oregano, and sautéed onion-and-celery mixture.
Strain turkey parts, reserving broth. Chop neck, gizzard, and liver meats. Pour broth and chopped meats into corn bread mixture. Add eggs, and mix well.
Add some stuffing to turkey cavity and some to neck cavity (see p. 117). Spoon rest of stuffing into greased baking pan, and cook for 30 minutes.
MISS ANNABELLE ROSS WAS A SWEETLY sympathetic figure. In her sixties she was prematurely old and had the manner of what southerners call a settled lady. Yet she was a coloratura soprano with Porgy and Bess, which meant that she was a member of a highly trained, largely young cast of opera singers who could, and did, belt out the blues just as easily as they sang bel canto Respighi, Verdi, and the art songs of Purcell.
She was not the only older singer in the group, but the others over age fifty entertained themselves by playing stud poker, keno, and cut-throat pinochle, which they called pig knuckles. They also drank their portion of gin martinis, Black & White scotch, and Jack Daniel’s whiskey.
Miss Ross played no games, nor did she drink or smoke. Until she was called on stage she sat closed inside her wall of niceness looking lost and very sad. I was twenty-six years old, and because I doted on my grandmother who doted on me I had a tender feeling for older women, the grandmotherly type.
Porgy and Bess was appearing at the Teatre Wagram in Paris, and I was the principal dancer and sang the role of Ruby. I doubled singing blues and calypso in nightclubs after the curtain fell at the opera.
I watched Miss Ross and wondered how I could raise her spirits. One early evening I went to Fouquets Restaurant on the Champs Elysées. I asked to speak to the maître d’hôtel. My presence shocked him. He had not been summoned by many six-foot-tall African American girls.
He asked me in French if I had ever visited a first-class restaurant. I replied, “No, but I am young and certainly I will do so in my life.”
He nodded. I told him about Miss Ross. I described her age and her loneliness. I said I didn’t have much money but that I’d like to bring her to his restaurant for one great dinner. It might be her first and last time to have a superb French meal. His countenance softened and he called two waiters and repeated my story. I was invited inside to a table where the four of us sat down and pored over the menu.
The experts chose a pate to start, then molded eggs polignac for our second course. We would be served veal medallions for our entree. A waiter showed me my bill. I was amazed at how little I was charged. Then I realized the maître d’ had reduced the price because of my story.
On the designated night, Miss Ross and I got out of a taxi. We had dressed in our best and made ourselves up to go out for a fancy Parisian evening.
We were greeted at the door as if we were royalty. Every waiter made his way by to say hello. Obviously our tale had been told to the entire staff. The maître d’ seated us and within seconds there was a crowd of waiters around the table bringing still and carbonated water, serving bread and butter, and placing salt and pepper and mustard.
To my surprise, Miss Ross was a refreshing dinner guest. She told charming stories and had a ready repartee. When the meal was served, I sat at attention to observe how she would enjoy her two-star dinner.
She tasted the pate. She said she really liked that. She had long been partial to liverwurst but preferred it on white bread with a thick slab of raw onions and lots of mayonnaise. The molded eggs polignac also delighted Miss Ross. The staff sent approving nods around the room as the veal was served because Miss Ross made a slight smacking sound and rubbed her hands together.
She tasted the meat. “Now this is good.” She took another bite of the medallions. The nearest waiter recorded her approval and sent her reaction to his colleagues.
Miss Ross said, “This is close to perfect. These people can truly cook.”
I was reminded of my mother’s actions in restaurants. When she was particularly pleased with a dinner, she would send a glass of wine to the chef. I didn’t think I had enough money fo
r that gesture, but I was floating in self-admiration until I heard Miss Ross say, “All this needs is a little Tabasco.”
I looked at her, knowing that I had to dissuade her from asking the waiter to bring her the spicy sauce. But as I turned, Miss Ross was extricating a slim bottle of Tabasco from her purse.
“This is going to make this meat right perfect. I mean perfect.”
She shook the bottle over the medallions, then she closed the bottle and placed it back in her purse.
The waiters were horrified. Although stricken, at least they were able to move around the restaurant. The maître d’hôtel was so shocked, however, that he disappeared from the floor, and I confess I wanted to join him.
I have grown a little since that incident. I’ve come to believe that each diner should be free to flavor her dish as she wants it. For no matter how wonderfully trained the chef, no matter how delicate his or her sensitivity, taste buds are as individual as fingerprints. Mine are mine and yours are yours and vive la difference.
I offer you here my veal medallions recipe. BYOT (bring your own Tabasco). It’s optional.
Veal Medallions
SERVES 6
1½ pounds thin veal escallops
All-purpose flour
3 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 cups mushroom buttons
1 cup fruity white wine