My family wound up spending the next few summers at West Point Farms. It was a magical place. But the most magical thing of all was that Mrs. Apisson was a brilliant cook. She made amazing phyllo dough and stuffed it with various savories and sweets. My favorite was something called beureks—phyllo triangles filled with different cheeses. She served them piping hot and they practically melted in your mouth. She also cooked the most delicious vegetables imaginable—so good that even a four-year-old would eat them.
Barbara (I never called her anything but Mrs. Apisson) was the first person who really taught my mother about food and how to prepare it. She was not just a superb cook, she was a superb healthy cook, back in the late ’50s and early ’60s when healthy cooking was hardly the rage. In the mid-’70s, she even coauthored a cookbook called A Diet for 100 Healthy Happy Years: Health Secrets from the Caucasus. In the book, Barbara describes herself as a woman “of Caucasus-Armenian extraction” and says that healthy eating is the reason people from the Caucasus often live to be a hundred years old. My mom paid close attention to Barbara’s preaching about organic farming and healthy eating, and the place was so informal that within days of our arrival, Barbara just took my mom into the kitchen and began showing her how things were done. Soon, my mother was going into the kitchen on her own to cook. And it wasn’t long before she was coming out of the kitchen having made her own jams and mustards and mayonnaise and yogurt and pastries with made-from-scratch phyllo dough.
My mom particularly loved a dish that Barbara made called celeriac remoulade. It was not particularly healthy, nor was it an Armenian dish; it was about as French as it could be. Barbara made it because it allowed Henri to feel as if he were back in Paris.
Barbara was not just a great cook but also a great teacher, and her belief in healthy and natural foods profoundly changed my mom’s approach to shopping and cooking. We stopped having sweets—especially packaged sweets—and suddenly our dinners were as locally focused as they could have been in those days. I never again tasted a frozen or packaged food until I went off to college and lived on frozen chicken potpies and Cocoa Puffs for most of my freshman year.
A couple of years after our summers at West Point Farms had ended, we were up in Massachusetts, visiting my dad’s family. A tenuous peace between Grandpa Irving and Steve/Sye had been made sometime after I was born; the détente went in and out over the years. Late one afternoon, I headed over to a friend’s house to play. As it started to get dark, my friend’s mom asked if I wanted to stay for dinner and I immediately said sure. She called my mom to make certain it was okay. Then she asked me if I had anything I’d really like to eat. I said: “Cold cereal.” She explained to me that she could make pasta or hamburgers or anything that was really good and I said that was fine but if I got to choose, I wanted cold cereal. She called my mom again to tell her about my offbeat request and my mother explained that she didn’t keep anything like Sugar Frosted Flakes or Sugar Pops or any kind of sugared cereal at home so she wasn’t surprised that I craved such forbidden fruit. She graciously gave her blessing—so that night, the parents and kids ate a real meal and I ecstatically gobbled down several bowls of Trix.
The next night, back at the house in which my parents, my brother, and I were staying, my mom made dinner. As an appetizer, she made Barbara Apisson’s cheese beureks (sometimes spelled boreks or bouregs; they are delicious under any spelling), which she had perfected by then. I liked them just as much as the bowls of Trix.
That was the first time I ever realized that something delicious you ate in a restaurant could also be made and eaten at home. Good food wasn’t something that magically appeared from behind closed doors (unless you had a mother who turned mud-and-eggshell pies into perfect cakes). Cheese beureks were something that normal people could cook if they only knew how.
It was a major revelation at an early stage of my development: like almost everything good in life, good food was the result of hard work.
Celeriac Remoulade
INGREDIENTS:
1¼ celery root
½ lemon for rubbing and for juice
½ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sour cream
2 tablespoons mayonnaise, preferably homemade
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
DIRECTIONS:
With a sharp knife, slice off the ends of the celery root and then most of the brown peel. Trim the bits of brown remaining and slice the root in half. Remove the spongy area in the middle by cutting it out. Rub the pieces with the half lemon to prevent them from browning. Cut the pieces in half again for easier grating. Shred/grate the celery root now (you can use a food processor with a grater attachment). Transfer to a bowl and toss with 1 teaspoon salt and juice squeezed from half the lemon. Let marinate for 30 minutes but no longer than 1 hour.
For the dressing, mix together the sour cream, mayonnaise, mustard, and pepper. You may want to loosen it up with a little more lemon juice. Fold the dressing into the celery root. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours.
* * *
OKAY, THIS IS pretty simple to make. It is also the biggest surprise, for me, of all my mother’s choices for her fantasy menu. I never got attached to this dish. It’s too sour for my taste and too refined. Over the years, I’ve gotten to appreciate sour, although it’s not my favorite taste, but I’m not quite grown up enough yet for refined. But my mom loves it and it’s an important recipe to her, so here it is.
I did make my own mayonnaise because that’s what my mom used to do, and once again I was surprised by how easy it was. Even though the celeriac recipe only uses two tablespoons of the stuff, it was pretty cool to dip those measuring spoons into a jar of freshly made mayonnaise. I recommend taking the extra ten minutes or so it takes to create a jar of mayo because you can use the leftover concoction on a BLT or a tomato sandwich, which are pretty much the only other things I can imagine using that mayonnaise for, except for the once-every-three-or-four-year craving I get for a tuna fish salad sandwich.
Recipe for Homemade Mayo, adapted from my mom’s recipe found in her recipe card box and that seems to be adapted from a Julia Child recipe
INGREDIENTS:
3 egg yolks
3 tablespoons lemon juice
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon dry mustard
2 pinches sugar
1½ cups olive oil
DIRECTIONS:
Warm the mixing bowl by running it under warm water. Dry the bowl and add the egg yolks, beating for 1 to 2 minutes, until they are thick and sticky.
Add 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice, the salt, sugar, and the dry mustard. Beat for 30 seconds.
The egg yolks are now ready to receive the olive oil. Add it a teaspoon at a time while beating the mixture constantly. Watch the oil and not the sauce. When the egg yolks have absorbed the oil, add another teaspoon and not before! (NOTE FROM AUTHOR: I BASICALLY HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS WATCHING OR LOOKING FOR OR ACTUALLY DOING DURING THIS STAGE, BUT IT WORKED OUT WELL, SO DON’T BE TOO NERVOUS DESPITE THE STERN INSTRUCTIONS.)
Keep doing this until you have added ⅓ to ½ cup of the oil. At that point, you’ll see the sauce thicken and you can take a deep breath because the “crisis” point is over. If you are beating the sauce by hand, you can rest for a second. (ANOTHER NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I CONFESS, I RESTED FOR ABOUT A FULL MINUTE. THIS CONSTANT BEATING IS EXHAUSTING; ALL THIS PRESSURE AND TALK OF CRISIS POINTS DOESN’T HELP.) Then keep adding the oil, 1 to 2 tablespoons at a time, blending thoroughly after each addition.
When you have added all the oil, beat 2 tablespoons boiling water into the sauce to keep it from curdling.
Season to taste with wine vinegar, lemon juice, salt, pepper, mustard, curry, or any other spice you like. (FINAL AUTHOR’S NOTE FOR THIS RECIPE, I SWEAR: I WENT FOR SALT, PEPPER, AND A DAB OF WHITE WINE VINEGAR, MOSTLY BECAUSE I LOOKED AT VARIOUS MAYONNAISE RECIPES AND A LOT OF THEM USED WHITE WINE V
INEGAR AS AN ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT; PLUS I LIKE VINEGAR AND IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA.)
If the sauce is not used immediately, scrape it into a small bowl and cover it closely so a skin will not form on its surface.
* * *
THE CELERIAC REMOULADE recipe is Julia Child’s, from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, because my guess is that Mrs. Apisson used a similarly authentic French recipe for her version. The same era, the same sensibility, and all that. I also used it because my mom wound up becoming friends with Julia Child. They worked and taught together when my mom eventually ran the cooking school at Ma Maison and they hit it off. Julia even once cooked lunch for my mother in Julia’s home in Santa Barbara. I had moved back to New York by then and my parents were living in L.A.—this was circa 1979–1980. My mom called me, as excited as I’ve ever heard her (except for the time she once sat next to Paul Newman at a dinner party and all she could do for several days afterward was sigh and repeat sentences with the words “hunk” and “those eyes are so blue!” in them). She told me that Julia had invited her and my mom’s close friend Joan to her house for lunch and they were about to start their drive up the coast. It all seemed pretty thrilling to me and I told her to call me afterward and let me know all the details.
She didn’t call me that night or the next day. I finally called home and when my mom answered the phone, I just went, “So how was it? What did she make?”
There was a lengthy silence. Finally my mom said, in a very quiet voice, “I’m going to tell you something but you can never tell anyone.”
Well … of course I promised. And for many years I never did tell anyone what I heard. But eventually I spilled the beans, so to speak, because this story was too good not to share. After quite a few years passed, my circumspect mother gave me her official permission to spread the word.
The word was that Julia Child made a horrible lunch.
My mother said she had never been more disappointed in her entire life. The salad was overdressed, rendering the greens way too wet and soggy, and she served some kind of chicken that was too dry. My mom no longer remembers what else was served, but she does recall that it was all tasteless. Describing the lunch to me on the phone that day, she was deeply apologetic.
She kept saying, “She’s a wonderful, wonderful teacher.”
I kept saying, “But she can’t cook?”
“No, no, of course she can cook,” my mother insisted, over and over again, “but she’s a better teacher than a cook.”
We went round and round until I said, once again, “I just want to get this straight: Julia Child is not a great cook.”
My mom sighed deeply and said, “She is not a great cook. The lunch was inedible.”
I don’t think my mother ever told anyone else, other than my dad and my brother, about that particular dining experience. She felt as if she would somehow be betraying the entire food community and striking a blow against the American way of life. In later years, when I’d bring up the touchy subject, she’d wave her hand and say, “Oh, it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t inedible.” I’d just look at her until she’d shrug and nod in acknowledgment that I was remembering things correctly and then she’d say, “It was pretty bad.”
* * *
I KNEW I would not be swooning over the taste of Julia’s celeriac remoulade, but I also was aware that the recipe called for some fairly demanding knife work, so I decided to use the opportunity to take a cutlery class. I periodically thought about—and envied—my mother’s serenity when I discovered her chopping those carrots or onions lo those many years ago, but I’d never done anything about it. This was my chance to see what this serenity thing was all about.
The few days leading up to the class were anything but serene as most of my swing-thoughts—or chop-thoughts—tended toward picturing what my hands would look like with several fewer fingers than I currently had. Manual dexterity was not my strong suit. Quite a few people in my inner circle felt quite firmly that I should not be allowed to handle anything with a sharp edge. Several would add the phrase “or with a point.” One or two would probably include pencils in that equation.
But I was determined.
My mother has told me several times over the years that food preparation worked in lieu of psychiatry for her. She used her chopping and cutting time both to clear her head and to fill it with the thoughts that mattered. Dicing onions calmed her. Quartering mushrooms relaxed her. Slicing carrots into perfectly uniform quarter-inch circular pieces allowed her to focus on solving problems for her husband or her kids.
My first knife class was at Manhattan’s Institute of Culinary Education or, as it’s known to all who work and attend classes there, ICE.
I’ve mentioned my aversion to formalized instruction. And to precision. Add to that my growing fear of slicing off several digits on my left hand. So, heading to ICE headquarters—I kept picturing it as akin to Dr. No’s secret underwater den of evil—I was a bit trepidatious. But the space turned out to be fairly non-imposing, even kind of cool, with all sorts of different kitchens and workrooms and, given that it was on a very high floor at 25 Liberty Plaza, way, way downtown, it was the opposite of underwater.
My class had nine students in it, including me: five women, four men. They seemed like a reasonable and pleasant group, anxious to learn basic cutlery skills.
My mom with a drinking buddy …
… and a cooking buddy.
Everyone called the teacher “Chef,” which rubbed me the wrong way. Normally, I’m totally intimidated by uniforms and experts. I have no problem calling my doctor “Doctor” rather than Phil or Bob or Frieda. In fact, I prefer it. Calling doctors by their first names makes me think they’re too much like me and I prefer to get poked, probed, and cut by someone higher up on the food chain. And if I ever talk to the pilot of an airplane, I am happy to refer to him or her as “Captain.” I give them my blind faith that they will be able to get me from New York to L.A. by somehow making a couple of tons of metal sail thirty thousand feet in the air, so I’m happy to call them whatever they want. But I absolutely cannot bring myself to call some person in white pants, a white Three Musketeersy–looking coat, and a toque by a title. I know that kitchens are run somewhat militaristically, but it still seems off to me calling a chef “Chef” just because he is better at making béchamel sauce than I am.
Our chef/teacher turned out to be a nice guy and a good teacher. Everyone else in our class immediately started calling him “Chef” when addressing him, but I maintained my self-respect by calling him nothing or coughing into my hand and mumbling his name incoherently so he had no idea what the hell I was calling him.
His first bit of business was to tell us what he wanted to accomplish in this three-hour session and to give us a bit of his cooking and cutlery philosophy. It wasn’t quite Sartre or Kierkegaard but it was interesting—he was all about good, fresh ingredients; he thought knowledge about how best to use one’s tools was essential in any profession; and he made a passionate case for kitchen safety (yes!). Best of all, it was realistic. He broke it to us that we wouldn’t become Daniel Boulud–level chefs after three hours of learning how to handle different knives, but he did think we’d have a base of knowledge that would either suffice for our needs or be a good stepping-stone from which to go upward and onward if we so desired.
Diagram of a Chef’s Knife. I paid particular attention to the Tip and the Point, to avoid severing several knuckles. I was most comfortable with the Handle and I feel very confident in my Bolster ability.
We were each sent to separate workstations that all had folders with a few printouts tucked inside, various vegetables, different sized bowls, a cutting board, and several sharp-looking knives.
Chef—or ahemHmmnamlman, as I referred to him—asked us to look at one of the printouts, which had line drawings of different kinds of knives and labels for each of the various parts.
We were then shown what each of the knives at our station actually were, g
ot a definition of each and a demonstration of how best to use them. I ate all this stuff up with a spoon, so to speak:
Paring Knife: This baby has a thin three-to-four-inch blade that usually tapers to a point and is used when intricate work is called for—it allows for a greater amount of control than a larger knife (so better for peeling fruit, for instance).
Chef’s Knife: The ultimate utilitarian cutting tool. It can be used for everything that has to do with chopping or slicing. It’s a medium-size knife and is the least intimidating because it doesn’t look like it does anything special. It just looks like a knife.
Cleaver: This is the blade that looks like it can do some serious damage and belongs in the hands of Luca Brasi in The Godfather. It chops through meat and can be used for vegetables or to remove meat from bones. We were told it was also good for scooping ingredients into cookware. I decided I’d have to work my way up to that one.
That was it for us. There are other types of knives, of course—a boning knife, a bread knife, a carving knife, for example—and all of them can have different types of blades (curved, serrated, wavy) and handles. But the three we were given seemed sufficient to get us going.
As I stood studying my printout, our teacher pulled out a long, thin, rounded tool. I knew I had one in my knife set at home, but I had no idea what it was. Turns out it was a knife sharpener. He then showed us how to sharpen our blades on it—rubbing the cutting edge first in one direction (down), then the next (up). It had to be done at the correct angle, about a forty-five-degree slant, and carefully. Having been given one of these sharpening sticks along with our three knives, we all went to work sharpening our blades. After a minute or two, I was sure I was getting the hang of it.
Chef—Coughahemmenfffgh—then showed us how to actually cut things up.
My Mother's Kitchen Page 8