by John Donohue
My parents had a complex and well-ordered division of labor in the kitchen. My mother cooked, I think most of the time. But my father always mixed drinks, did all grilling, including roasting outdoors in the New England winter, and was always the one to cook the lobsters. He first let them crawl on the floor while my brothers and I laughed and my sister screamed—great fun—and then killed them with the point of a knife while they furiously slapped their tails. Then he would make clam stuffing and bake them.
But I saw a lot of men who came home, installed themselves at the table, and shouted, “What’s for dinner, hon?” When I lived in Mexico, I met many campesinos, especially ones from indigenous backgrounds, who in all seriousness said that the ideal woman they would like to marry was one who made her own tortillas by hand. This was in the 1980s and tortilla machines had taken over for about the past decade, and those tortillas were just not the same. These young men were serious about this, and their requirements for homemade included hand-grinding the corn on a stone metate. So they really were talking about the wife as slave.
In the eastern Caribbean, men say a good wife is one who makes a good cou-cou. Curiously this has the woman grinding corn again. Cou-cou is a kind of corn mush made by slowly stirring over low heat. It takes a lot of time and patience, and it is said that if lumps form in the cou-cou, it is a sign that your marriage will not go smoothly. But of course, a smooth marriage requires more patience than cou-cou.
I did not want to be the kind of man who would allow his wife to be a corn slave. And I didn’t want to be involved with a woman who was willing to be one. But I also didn’t want to be the kind of man I have seen for years in Basque country. The typical Basque man “lets” the woman cook the daily meals but takes over for a special occasion when he thinks real skill is required. I know many American men like this, too. Sorry, fella, it doesn’t count unless you are doing it every day.
I realize that it could be argued that I want to do all the cooking in order to get all the credit, but anyone who has ever cooked for a child knows that you don’t get any credit.
But maybe I have overreacted. Just between us, I hope my wife reads this and decides to cook me something.
“I can’t cook, but I can pay.”
Recipe File
I have some strong, and perhaps eccentric, views on recipes. I believe they should be something worth reading, and not a pseudoscientific formula, which was a bad idea—made popular by people such as Fannie Farmer—that has ruined the craft of recipe writing.
Cou-Cou
In many places in the world, cooking that involves the more tedious manual labor is generally deemed “women’s work.” In the Americas, where corn is indigenous, this generally involves anything using corn, both because it is traditional and because the grinding of it is tedious. So in the eastern Caribbean, the women make the cou-cou. They also make funchi, which is the same thing without okra, and foo-foo, which is funchi with mashed bananas. I think cou-cou is the best choice because the green okra—bright green if not overcooked and slimy—adds a nice touch of color, and the crossing of native corn and African okra is a taste of Caribbean culture. Also, okra thickens the water and gives a better result than the plain water of funchi.
Take a handful of okra pods and scrape the fuzz off with a paring knife. Then slice them into disks about ¼ inch thick. Fill a fairly deep skillet (cast iron is often used) with well-salted water and bring to a boil. Add the okra disks and reduce to a low heat and cook for about 10 minutes until the okra is soft but not sliming apart.
Here’s where the good woman comes in. With the skillet still on a low heat, hold a wooden spoon in one hand and with the other pour a slow, steady stream of finely ground cornmeal into the water. You could use a coarser meal, stone-ground by hand, if you can find it, but blending it will also take more work. While adding the corn, vigorously stir with the spoon until there is enough corn to make a liquid the thickness of chocolate sauce. Too much cornmeal, and you will get lumps and ruin your marriage; too little, and it will take you forever to thicken it. So you want enough for it to be thicker but not pasty. Keep stirring over heat. Keep stirring. More. A little more. After between 5 and 10 minutes, you should have a smooth paste that lifts off the pan. Smooth it on a plate like a very thick pancake. And melt butter on top. Since there is no butter produced in the Caribbean, this may seem inauthentic, but reflecting Caribbean history, many local traditions involve imported food.
Baked Sea Bream
The Basques have an entirely different approach to culinary sexism. Dishes that involve hard manual labor are generally considered a man’s dish. Bacalao pil-pil is such a dish. Pil-pil sounds strangely like cou-cou or foo-foo, but presumably it has nothing to do with those African words. Despite the Basque habit of studying every aspect of their unique language, it is not certain what pil-pil means, nor is it certain why it works, but if you take a prime cut of soaked and poached salt cod, a thick piece with the skin still on, and place it, skin down, in a large, heavy earthen crock, add olive oil, and swirl it in a circular motion for a really long time, the oil will thicken into a creamy sauce. Clearly a man’s work.
But men seem to take over even the less physically demanding fish recipes. Their culinary clubs exclude women. In San Sebastián’s culinary societies, the men fish the mouth of the river, which is in the center of town, on winter nights and catch sea bream. The fish are gutted, scaled, and baked whole in a casserole, which takes about half an hour in a medium oven.
Vinegar is put in a skillet on high heat—about 3 ounces, which is cooked down to about 1½ ounces. The juice that forms in the casserole when the fish have been baked is then poured into the vinegar. In another skillet, olive oil is heated, and 4 or 5 cloves are left in until they turn golden. The heat is reduced, and 4 or 5 round slices from a red guindilla pepper (a small, narrow, not very hot red Basque pepper) are added for 2 minutes. Then the oil mixture is combined with the vinegar mixture and poured over the fish.
This is an excellent way of making almost any fish small enough to eat whole on a plate, and one that is not too oily. Bluefish or mackerel, for example, would not work well with this recipe. Sea bream is sometimes available in U.S. markets, but it is a European fish, not caught in American waters. The recipe works very well with a small snapper. Women can make it, too, though of course they never have for me.
On the Shelf
When I was cooking for a living in restaurants in New York and New England, I was very influenced by Henri-Paul Pellaprat’s L’art culinaire moderne, Escoffier’s Ma Cuisine, and, since I ended up a pastry maker, Gaston Lenôtre’s Lenôtre’s Desserts and Pastries, which was a new book in the 1970s when I was doing such things. These books had no influence on me as a writer, but when I was young and writing for the International Herald Tribune, there was a magnificent octogenarian—the kind of American in Paris who would soon vanish forever—named Waverley Root, who wrote a food column. Few writers have had the influence on me of Root. He showed me that food was a worthy topic if approached with wit, a broad grasp of history, and an impish sense of fun. I don’t think I have ever run into a newspaper food column its equal. I still enjoy his completely arbitrary and unscientific encyclopedia titled Food.
Another food journalist I have always admired is the Basque writer José Maria Busca Isusi, who has written many books and articles on Basque food and its cultural significance. I have also been influenced by a number of novelists, usually, and not surprisingly, Spanish, French, Italian, or Chinese. Foremost among these is Émile Zola, whose novels use food to illuminate social issues. It is now some thirty years since I picked up a paperback edition of Le ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris), at one of those little bookstalls along the Seine for a few francs. I have never recovered from the impact of this book. I kept recommending it to friends, but they would read it in English and the English did not capture it. Finally, in frustration, I did my own translation for the Modern Library, but I still think nothing compares with
the original, if you can read French.
THANKS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Bringing a book like this to life requires the assistance of many people. I owe my family the deepest debt of gratitude: without them, I would never have conceived of the idea. My wife, Sarah Schenck, deserves enormous credit for her inspiration, patience, and support. My daughters, Aurora and Isis, have taught me that I am capable of more than I ever could have imagined. I hope to give them the same gift in return.
The contributors are an amazing group of writers—I was blessed to have the opportunity to work with them. The dads whom I interviewed were uniformly enthusiastic, interesting, and willing to accommodate my crazy work schedule. It was an unexpected joy to get to know all these fathers and cooks.
My agent, David McCormick, and everyone at Algonquin—including my editor Andra Miller and the copy editor Rachel Careau—were instrumental in the creation of this book. Thank you all.
This was a multiyear project, and each of the following helped me in an important ways: Joyce Harrington Bahle, Katherine Baldwin, Cecile Barendsma, Daphne Beal, Kate Bittman, Richard Brody, Paola Difonis, Elizabeth Donohue, Eileen Donohue, Jim Donohue, Tom Donohue, David Dowd, Esther Drill, Randall Eng, Boris Fishman, Andy Friedman, Dr. Steven Glickel, Adam Gopnik, Paul Greenberg, Ben Greenman, Beth Katz, Dan Kaufman, Jean Kunhardt, Mary Lester, Dan Levine, Richard Lewis, Pamela Lewy, Cressida Leyshon, Katie Long, Shauna Lyon, Bob Kankoff, Jon Michaud, Charles Michener, Merrideth Miller, Rick Moody, Emily Nunn, Ngozi Okezie, Clare O’Shea, Russell Platt, Gus Powell, Connie Procaccini, Dr. Bruce Reis, Carrie Rickey, Sam Rudy, Tracey Ryans, Sally Sampson, George and Jane Schenck, Andrea K. Scott, David Stern, Anne Stringfield, Cynthia Stuart, Robert Sullivan, Joan Tiffany, Deborah Treisman, Liza Vadnai, Peter Vadnai, Chuck Verrill, Nicholas Vokey, Sean Wilsey, and Paula Witt.
And thank you to Man with a Pan™ Personal Chef Jonathan Carr of Scarborough, Maine, for granting permission to use the title Man with a Pan for the book.
CARTOON CREDITS
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