Home cooking

by Laurie Colwin

  Usually when you lift the lid of a casserole that has come straight from the oven, some fragrant steam escapes. This did not happen, although it did not immediately occur to me that this casserole had not come straight from the oven, but had been sitting around outside the oven getting lukewarm and possibly breeding salmonella.

  Here is what we had: the casserole contained a layer of partially cooked rice, a layer of pineapple rings and a layer of

  breakfast sausages, all of which was cooked in a liquid of some sort or other. Each person received one pineapple ring, one sausage and a large heap of crunchy rice. We ate in perfect silence, first in shock, then in amazement, and then in gratitude that not only was there not enough to go around, but that nothing else was forthcoming. That was the entire meal.

  Later as Richard and I sat in the Pizza Express finishing off a second pie, I said: "is that some sort of Scottish dish we had tonight?"

  "No," said Richard. "It is a genius dish."

  Several years later on another trip to London, Richard and 1 were invited to a dinner party in Hampstead. Our host and hostess lived in a beautiful old house but they had taken out all the old fittings and the place had been redesigned in postindustrial futuristic.

  At the door, our hostess spoke these dread words: "I'm trying this recipe out on you. I've never made it before. It's a medieval recipe. It looked very interesting."

  Somehow I have never felt that "interesting" is an encouraging word when applied to food.

  In the kitchen were two enormous and slightly crooked pies.

  "How pretty," I said. "What kind are they?"

  "They're medieval fish pies," she said. "A variation on starry gazey pie." Starry gazey pie is one in which the crust is slit so that the whole baked eels within can poke their nasty little heads out and look at the pie crust stars with which the top is supposed to be festooned.

  "Oh," I said, swallowing hard. "In what way do they vary?"

  "Well, I couldn't get eel," said my hostess. "So I got squid. It has squid, flounder, apples, onions, lots of cinnamon and something called gallingale. It's kind of like frankincense."

  "I see," I said.

  "It's from the twelfth or thirteenth century," she continued. "The crust is made of flour, water, salt and honey."

  I do not like to think very often about that particular meal, but the third was worse.

  It took place in suburban Connecticut on a beautiful summer evening. The season had been hot and lush, and the local markets were full of beautiful produce of all kinds. Some friends and I had been invited out to dinner.

  "What will we have, do you think?" 1 asked.

  "Our hostess said we weren't having anything special," my friends said. "She said something about an 'old-fashioned fish bake.'"

  It is hard to imagine why those four innocent words sounded so ominous in combination.

  For hors d'oeuvres we had something which I believe is called cheese food. It is not so much a food as a product. A few tired crackers were lying around with it. Then it was time for dinner.

  The old-fashioned fish bake was a terrifying production. Someone in the family had gone fishing and had pulled up a number of smallish fish—no one was sure what kind. These were partially cleaned and not thoroughly scaled and then flung into a roasting pan. Perhaps to muffle their last screams, they were smothered in a thick blanket of sour cream and then pelted with raw chopped onion. As the coup de grace, they were stuck in a hot oven for a brief period of time until their few juices ran out and the sour cream had a chance to become grainy. With this we were served boiled frozen peas and a salad with iceberg lettuce.

  Iceberg lettuce is the cause of much controversy. Many people feel it is an abomination. Others have less intense feelings, but it did seem an odd thing to have when the market five minutes away contained at least five kinds of lettuce, including Oakleaf, Bibb and limestone.

  For dessert we had a packaged cheesecake with iridescent cherries embedded in a topping of cerise gum and light tan coffee.

  As appears to be traditional with me, a large pizza was the real end of this grisly experience.

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  But every once in a while, an execrable meal drags on way past the closing times of most pizzerias. You straggle home starving, exhausted, abused in body and spirit. You wonder why you have been given such a miserable dinner, a meal you would not serve to your worst enemy or a junkyard dog. You deserve something delicious to eat, but there is nothing much in the fridge.

  You might have egg and toast, or a glass of hot milk, or toasted cheese, but you feel your spirit crying out for something more.

  Here is the answer: rosti. Rosti is a Swiss grated potato dish. In reality it is an excuse for eating a quarter of a pound of butter. While your loved one is taking a hot shower or mixing a drink, you can get to work.

  Take off your coat and plunge one large Idaho potato into boiling water. By the time you have gotten into your pajamas and hung up your clothes, it is time to take it out—seven minutes, tops. This seems to stabilize the starch.

  Gently heat a large quantity (half a stick) of unsalted butter in a skillet. It should foam but not turn brown. Grate the potato on the shredder side of the grater, press into a cake and slip into the butter. Fry till golden brown on both sides.

  The result is somewhat indigestible, but after all, you have already been subjected to the truly indigestible. You will feel better for it. You and your companion—or you yourself (this recipe makes two big cakes: if you are alone, you can have both all to yourself)—^will begin to see the evening's desecrations as an amusement.

  Because you are the better for your horrible meal: fortified, uplifted and ready to face the myriad surprises and challenges in this most interesting and amazing of all possible worlds.

  CHICKEN SALAD

  Chicken salad has a certain glamour about it. Like the little black dress, it is chic and adaptable and can be 1 taken anywhere. You can dress it down and feed it to a

  child, or dress it up and serve it at a dinner party. You can accessorize it in an interesting way and astonish your friends at lunch.

  In the old days, chicken salad was served either to children, or at tearooms to ladies who had been shopping and wanted a light lunch. If you remember your Nancy Drew mysteries, you will recall that Nancy and her chums, wearing their sport frocks, would jump into Nancy's roadster and after chasing a nasty thief or smuggler, would stop at a tearoom and eat chicken salad and homemade rolls with iced tea. This old-fashioned chicken salad, which is composed of white meat of chicken, celery, a hint of onion and mayonnaise, is hard to find these days. It should come not as a crustless sandwich, but on a plate with a skinned tomato and some stuffed celery.

  Fancy chicken salad has crowded the market, for we live in the age of the takeout gourmet shop. It is now possible to get

  HOME COOKING

  chicken salad in styles previously unimagined (and often for good reason): with kiwi fruit and water chestnuts, blanched almonds, diced lemon and watercress, or prunes, mushrooms, black olives and pears.

  Some of these are just as awful as the bland, unidentifiable stuff from the local deli, but some of them are inspired. I can never imagine exotic chicken salad being eaten by men, although they always seem to like it. Rather I envision a plate of chicken salad being presented to a beautifully dressed woman wearing a hat and a string of pearls. It can be said of chicken salad that it is stylish and ladylike.

  I love chicken salad in its three incarnations: for children, for ladies' luncheons and for grown-up dinner parties. Needless to say, any of these can be happily eaten by anyone.

  The child's chicken salad, best served on white toast, is the simple kind described before: chicken, onion, celery and mayonnaise.

  The ladies' luncheon variety is what might be called New York Chicken Salad, in honor of the enormous varieties of chicken salad from the large number of fancy shops. My particular favorite sounds impr
obable but is extremely popular: chicken, pecans, golden raisins, chopped scallions and dill, bound with a curried mayonnaise. The mayonnaise doesn't have to be home-

  made but homemade mayonnaise is always wonderful. The curry you must make yourself of one teaspoon each of ginger and turmeric, half a teaspoon of cumin, one quarter teaspoon of cinnamon and clove, and half a teaspoon of dried mustard and paprika—this is not an authentic curry but it is good.

  For a grown-up dinner party 1 like a room-temperature chicken salad with funghi porcjni. 1 have never been lucky enough to get my hands on any fresh funghi porcini, but dried will do. While the chicken breasts are poaching, the dried mushrooms are soaked in water. Then the mushroom liquor is strained through a coffee filter to remove the grit and set aside. The cooked chicken is cut into shreds and tossed with the mushrooms, olive oil, chopped scallion, salt, pepper and a teaspoon or so of the mushroom liquor. This makes a perfect summer dinner.

  Then there is the perfect chicken salad, the salad that embodies the qualities to which all chicken salads aspire, it is an idealized version and its preparation might stand as a method for making all others:

  PERFECT CHICKEN SALAD

  2 smallish chicken breasts

  1 egg yolk

  Va cup light olive oil

  V4 teaspoon dried mustard

  1 small clove garlic, minced

  pinch of salt

  juice of V2 lemon

  1 sprig fresh tarragon, finely chopped

  2 scallions thyme

  serves 2-4

  /. First of all, the chicken breasts (bone in) must be poached very slowly and tenderly. The water must not boil but smile, as the French say, for an hour and a half or more. The result is chicken that is tender and almost custardy. It is never stringy or chewy. Save the broth.

  2. The meat is skinned and taken off the bone and put into a bowl. Some of the broth is ladled over the meat. The bowl is covered and put into the refrigerator The next day the meat is removed, the chicken jelly is scraped off and the meat is cut up. The chicken is moist and slightly gelatinous.

  3. Then you make a mayonnaise of the egg yolk, olive oil, dried mustard, garlic, salt and enough lemon juice to thin it.

  4. Add to this the tarragon, scallions and thyme — it is pointless to make this if you don't have fresh herbs. Pour over the cut-up chicken.

  5. The result is ambrosial.

  Now that you have made the chicken salad, what do you do with the stock left over from poaching the chicken breasts? You can freeze it, or use it as the base for almost any soup, or you can reward yourself for being the cook and make yourself the following treat:

  LAST-MINUTE SOUP

  for 1 person

  one cup jellied stock, two asparagus chopped up,

  some little pasta

  one egg,

  juice of half a lime,

  and black pepper

  Let the stock come to a simmer and add the asparagus and pasta: you can steal your child's pastina, or pasta stars. When the pasta has cooked, stir in a beaten egg and the lime juice. Add fresh black pepper and eat at once.

  EASY COOKING FOR EXHAUSTED PEOPLE

  I am not a fancy cook or an ambitious one. I am a plain old cook. A while ago I was a person who liked to have friends over for dinner, and now that I have a

  child I am someone who is responsible for three meals a day plus snacks. And since 1 like to make things a little difficult for myself, I don't like the idea of my precious angel eating any old bread, so I bake my own.

  Three meals a day seven days a week, even if you love to cook, is enough to get a person down, especially if the person has anything else to do such as pick a child up from school, write a novel, have time for such necessities as shopping, to say nothing of keeping up with friends and an occasional conversation with one's mate. Therefore it is smart to have under your belt a few really easy things that virtually cook themselves.

  What you want is an enormous return on a small investment. Almost the only situation in which this is possible is cooking.

  A long time ago 1 realized that every winter I developed an intense craving for boiled beef. I used to slake this desire at the

  Ukrainian National Home restaurant, or at the old Luchows, which made an admirable boiled beef and then cooled it to a jell and served it as "Beef auf der Neuen Art. " It never occurred to me to make it myself, but of course it is one of the great easy things to make, as it cooks itself, presents interesting leftovers and can also be subsequently turned into soup.

  1 use a cut of meat called eye of chuck, a roundish loaf-shaped cut with almost no fat on it. It goes into a pot with three cloves of garlic, a sprig of rosemary (or not, if you don't like rosemary), some coarse black pepper and a couple of veal bones. What you really want is a calf's foot, but these are hard to find. The idea is to nourish the stock with all that rich veal gelatin. The meat is barely covered with spring or filtered water. You cover the pot and cook it in the oven at about 250° for three hours or so, until just tender. Then you add half a small green cabbage cut into wedges, a big carrot cut into chunks and a yellow onion, also cut into chunks. You can add turnips if you like them—I don't—and one large Idaho potato, peeled and cut into medium-size pieces. Cook for another hour or so, until the meat is very tender.

  You can serve this the way the French do by serving the broth as the soup course, and then the meat and vegetables. Or you can serve it as the slobs do, and put everything into a big soup plate, and set the table with forks, knives and soup spoons. Some people like mustard, and some like horseradish, and some people, like me, like very hot Indian lime pickle which goes nicely with boiled beef.

  If you have any broth left over, you can use it for soup stock, or you can poach some lentils in it, slice up the leftover meat and have lentil and beef salad for lunch. Or you can slice up whatever meat is left over and make sandwiches, or cut it into strips and marinate it in a little olive oil, red pepper flakes, scallions and lemon juice. Served with sliced cucumbers and leftover rice this makes a tasty dish.

  If you are a vegetarian, or run with vegetarians, a delicious,

  almost work-free dish is a vegetarian chili. It is not authentic but it is good.

  Until recently the very idea of vegetarian chili made me queasy. Awful recipes for it abound in health-oriented cookbooks. This summer, at a little family-run restaurant called Chelsea in Great Harrington, Massachusetts, I tasted vegetarian chili for the first time and found it delicious. The trick, the owner told me, was to use four kinds of beans.

  At home, I set to work. 1 used small red beans (kidney beans are too coarse for this dish), aduki beans (tiny little red beans from the health food store), black beans and urad dal—tiny black lentils you can find at the Indian store.

  On the bottom of a kettle put a bay leaf. Then wash one cup of black beans, one cup of little red beans and half a cup each of aduki beans and urad dal. Needless to say, these proportions are flexible. This will feed three or four people. Put the beans in the pot and cover with the cut-up contents and the juice of a large can of Italian plum tomatoes, three cloves of garlic chopped, one chopped onion and one large medium dried chili (available in Mexican or Spanish groceries), washed and seeded. Add chili powder to taste, and water if necessary. Put the pot on the stove at the merest simmer and leave all day, stirring from time to time. The beans need not be soaked. As Buster Holmes, owner of Buster Holmes's Restaurant in New Orleans, points out, beans don't get mushy unless you soak them first.

  Before serving you can stir in a little olive oil, to make them creamy. Or not. Serve with rice or cornbread.

  Now you have two extremely easy main dishes. A salad is of course the product of a few seconds' work. But what for dessert?

  In his memoir In My Father's Court, Isaac Bashevis Singer mentions his mother's baked pears—long baked with a scrap of vanilla and cinnamon, and a curl of lemon peel. For these pears I use a tagine pot my cousin brought me from Morocco—a dish of medium depth wit
h a conical top, both earthenware. While I have never made a tagine—Moroccan stew—I have baked ap-

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  161

  pies and pears with great success in my tagine. Any earthenware dish with a cover will work as well.

  Set whole Seckel pears in an earthenware dish, sprinkle with sugar (or vanilla sugar—sugar that sits around with a vanilla bean in the middle). Put in one-half cup of water, one cinnamon stick and one curlicue of lemon peel. Cover and bake at 300° for one and a half hours.

  And, unless you want to live on cold cereal, there's nothing easier than that.

  *

  HOW TO GIVE A PARTY

  I have never thought of myself as much of a party-giver, but it turns out I have given my share over the years. By "party" I mean a gathering of more than eight

  v^hose eventual destination is not the dining room table: in short, there are parties, and there are dinner parties. And v^hile I know^ there are such things as large parties which feature an evening meal, in my household this is called "having people over for dinner" and the number, except for Christmas Eve or Thanksgiving, is usually six or under.

  A party by its nature is free-floating. People are free to float about your rooms grinding cake crumbs into your rugs, scattering cigarette ash on your v^ood floors, scaring your cat and leaving their glasses to make rings on your furniture. This sort of thing is enthralling to some potential hosts and hostesses, horrific to others. Most people feel a combination of these things: the idea of a party fills them half with horror, half with excitement.

  But no matter how you dread them, parties must be given because events must be celebrated: birthdays, book publications, engagements, homecomings and so on. Birthdays, espe-

  cially, come year after year and one must know what to do about them. Those of us who have no servants like to keep things simple and still show people a good time. This is easier to do than one might think.