The Cook Next Door

A meme! I have been tapped for a meme! How can that be?

I thought no one would -ever- ask.

But, Kate, the fine lady whose wit entertains me every day at Accidental Hedonist, did tap me for the Cook Next Door Meme, and so here I am, joining the crowd, answering the questions, and hopefully entertaining everyone with a few kernels of information about how I came to be the food-obsessed kitchen tantrika I am today.

What is your first memory of baking/cooking on your own?

I suppose that the numerous batches of pretend cookies I made on Gram’s kitchen floor with her mixing bowls, measuring cups and wooden spoons wouldn’t count for this, would they? It is a shame that they don’t count, because honestly, those are among my earliest memories at all. I used to sit under the kitchen table and play while Gram, Mom and my aunts were cooking.

At Grandma’s house, I got to stay in the kitchen, too, in my high chair next to the counter, so I could “help” cook. She’d have every burner on the stove up on high, with pots boiling and bubbling, filling the air with good smells, the oven would be going, and she’d be rolling out pie crust or kneading bread dough on that counter, and I’d have a finger in everything that came into reach.

The first things I made alone, though with supervision, were some cakes in my Easy Bake oven. The first was a two layer yellow cake with chocolate icing. I am sure it was awful (how good can a cake mix that bakes by the heat of a light bulb be?), but I gave it to my Dad and he ate every crumb. That was when I was about six.

After that, I think the first things I made on my own were batches of real, not imaginary, cookies–snickerdoodles, to be precise–around the age of ten or so. Snickerdoodles are fun, because you roll the dough into balls and roll them in cinnamon sugar, then bake them. I am pretty sure I was ten, because it was in the second house we lived in and we moved there when I was nine or so.

By the time I was twelve, I did the majority of the Christmas baking. By the time I was fourteen, I did all of it.

Who had the most influence on your cooking?

I had a lot of influences growing up. Grandma and Gram were probably my biggest influences of all; I spent the most time in their kitchens. My mother was an influence on my cooking, but not a particularly good one–she never really liked cooking the way both grandmothers did, so while she was good at it, she took no joy from it. Besides, she didn’t like to clean up if I helped her, while my grandmothers enjoyed teaching me.

Gram taught me how to be frugal, and how to take my time with the task at hand. She taught me to use my hands, not just to manipulate ingredients, but to feel them–to sense them and know how they should come together. She told me that my nose, fingers, and ears could tell me just as much as my eyes and tongue did, if I only learned to use them properly. She was absolutely right; I can tell by the smell of the seasoned metal if my wok is hot enough; the feel of bread dough tells me when it is kneaded enough, and the ptch of the escaping steam in my pressure cooker tells me if I need to raise the heat on the stove.

Grandma taught me to love the ingredients as themselves, and to cook with the freshest produce I could get my hands on. She taught me to treat food animals with the utmost respect and care, and to love them every day of thier lives, so that they were happy on the earth while they lived. She said it made a difference, and I believe she was right. She taught me to laugh in the kitchen, and to cook with a cool head and with love in my heart, because to do otherwise would result bad food. Whether I forgot to turn down the beans and so burned them because I was too angry to think straight, or whether people could simply taste the bitterness of my mood in whatever I cooked didn’t matter. The why of it was of no importance to her. The result of bad food, which not only is a waste of ingredients, but an insult to those you are feeding, was what she was getting at.

And really–Grandma’s mystical theories about love in the kitchen have also proven to be correct. I still don’t know if it has to do with simply being careful and paying attention, or if there really is a subtle energy that people can pick up in food that was cooked in a less than loving manner, but I agree with Grandma. The why of it doesn’t much matter–what matters is that I cook with mindfulness, with an openness to love and respect, for the ingredients, the techniques and those who will eat my food.

For all of the inspiration I reaped from both of my grandmothers, I have to admit that they both cooked very standard southern Appalachian foods, which are highly dependant upon salt, onions, and pork fat for flavor and not a lot else. It was all good stick-to-the-ribs stuff, and there were Germanic touches in Gram’s kitchen and British and Hungarian dishes appeared on Grandma’s table, but I never got my penchant for ethnic cooking from either of them.

My love of ethnic cuisines came from Aunt Nancy and Aunt Judy.

Aunt Nancy is of Syrian and Portuguese descent, and grew up in an Italian neighborhood in Providence, Rhode Island. She married Mom’s brother George, and came to West Virginia to live–talk about culture shock! But it was in her kitchen and under her tutelage that I learned about dolmas, yogurt, eggplant, moussakha, kibbe and baklava. And she made the best spaghetti and meatballs in the world, in huge vats it seemed. But the wonderful smell of the garlic and oregano and wine with the sausage and tomatoes was intoxicating at her house.

I remember the first time I made ravioli from scratch, with a very herb-heavy marinara, I made certain she stopped by to taste it. I grew my own garlic, oregano, basil and rosemary for it all summer, and had Dad buy me red wine to put in the sauce, so it was all very fragrant.

Aunt Nancy’s first words when she came into the house were, “Oh, my God, girl, you got it right! I could smell it down the street–and it almost made me cry, ’cause it smelled like my old neighborhood in Providence!”

She tucked in and ate a good plateful, her eyes rolling in the back of her head. “You used the garlic just right–cooked it golden and didn’t burn it.” I remember her lopsided grin. “I guess studying cookbooks turns out pretty well after all, doesn’t it?”

Aunt Judy cooked French food for us; she was sworn handmaiden to Julia Child. She was known for dirtying every dish in Gram’s kitchen when she came to visit, but no one really gave a damned, because everything she made was fantastic. She gave me my first taste of chocolate mousse and taught me to make quiche Lorraine. She taught me how to go hunting down ingredients and to be utterly fearless in the kitchen.

“Have you ever made quenelle before?” I remember asking, as Aunt Judy gamely massaged the minced meat mixture. “No, honey, but I have the recipe and I saw Julia making it on the TV, so I reckon it will turn out fine.”

“Do you know what it is supposed to taste like?” I asked as I watched her shape the meat with two tablespoons into little ovoid meatballs which she then dropped into a golden broth that she had simmered from stock the day before.

“It is supposed to taste good.”

Not only did she give the confidence to take up a cookbook from a cuisine I had never tasted and charge forth into the fray without fear of failure, she got me hooked on Julia Child and MFK Fisher.

Do you have an old photo as evidence of an early exposure to the culinary world and would you like to share it?

Personally, I have no photographs of me from childhood; those all reside at my mother’s home. However, the next time I visit her, I will see what I can abscond with and bring back to scan, so we will have to take a raincheck on this question for a while.

Mageiricophobia – do you suffer from any cooking phobia, a dish that makes your palms sweat?

Pastry dough and pie crusts used to terrify me. Over the past year or so, I have worked diligently to get over my phobia and start making good pies. At this point, I have discovered that not only do I make very flavorful, flaky pie crusts (I use half lard and half butter, in case you are wondering, and absolutely no icktastic artificially hydrogenated vegetable shortening), but that I can do so by rubbing the flour and fat together by hand, with my fingertips. This blows me away, as I used to have a touch with pastry that was as deft as a bull stomping a bullfighter under his hooves. And, not only is the pastry dough behaving decently, and tasting good, the pies are really starting to look very nice, too. I’ll have to post about them sometime, because, well, I seem to have gotten over my phobia.

Which means, I need to take on something else that I thought was too hard for me. Probably, I will work on cakes. Or maybe I will take up making real smoked barbeque. Or I will tackle sushi.

But I think it is good for me to fear something in the kitchen or at least respect it enough to hold it in awe. It keeps me humble and keeps me from being insufferably cocky.

What would be your most valued or used kitchen gadgets and/or what was the biggest letdown?

Okay, I promise not to write about the Sumeet. Scout’s honor. (Yes, I was a Girl Scout. Yes, it was fun, but I hated the cooking classes we did–they were lame.)

Other than the Sumeet, my favorite kitchen item is my Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker. How can I not love something which enables me to produce a stew or chili or pot of beans that tastes like it has cooked the entire day within an hour or so? I mean, between it and the Sumeet, I can cook any ethnic comfort food dish on the spur of the moment. That is an amazing thing.

I can also make stock in the thing.

And when I get a bigger one, I will be able to can salsa and jelly and other fine things.

The biggest letdown–hm. I think it would have to be my Kitchenaid blender. It is really kind of lame, and I should probably get rid of the thing. In fact, I am not certain why I still have it except I like to make Irish Cream shakes now and again.

Name some funny or weird food combinations/dishes you really like – and probably no one else!

There is no question about this one–I love a hot bologna sandwich, meaning, that I like thick slices of good beef bologna (kosher is best), fried in a skillet (you have to slit the slices on the radius to keep them lying flat), sometimes with onions, until it is crispy. Then, you douse it in hot sauce, and then you serve it on a bun, sometimes with mayonaisse and the cooked onions or with raw sliced onions, and a fresh tomato.

This is a West Virginia thing. I admit it openly and I figure that folks can be grossed out by it all they damned well please. Zak makes faces every time I wax poetic about it, but dammit, he can’t talk, he eats canned tuna mixed with mayonnaise and applesauce which is messed up because while there is no dairy product in it, it tastes like cheese. Damned freak.

But anyway, if you start out with good bologna (and yes, such a critter does indeed exist), and a good bun and good hot sauce (Louisana Red Hot was the kind I grew up with) it is fantastic. The browned bits of the bologna get a lace of crispiness on them, and the meat is rich and greasy, and the onions (I prefer them raw) add a scintillating top note. The hot sauce binds it together, the mayo cools things down and a good not-mushy bun makes it all perfect. And if you have a big old homegrown beefsteak tomato slice–that is the be-all and end-all of redneck cuisine goodness.

It makes my toes curl just to think about it.

What are the three eatables or dishes you simply don?t want to live without?

The Holy Trinity of the East: garlic, ginger and scallions.

Any question you missed in this meme, that you would have loved to answer? Well then, feel free to add one!

Three quickies:
Your favorite ice-cream?

Mocha. A mixture of chocolate and coffee. How can anyone even ask me that without knowing?

You will probably never eat?

I will have to agree with Zarah Maria on this one and answer: brains. Prions do not give me a thrill.

Your own signature dish?

I reckon the Cakes of Aphrodite have gotten me the most fame, though I do have a couple of brownie recipes which have gotten me offers of marriage, adultery, kept womanhood and other things too risque to mention. And then, there is the Whorehouse Spaghetti, which is ersatz puttanesca–I am known by the name of that dish and not my own name by at least a handful of people. And, of course, there is my Chicken with Garlic Sauce–that is pretty famous, though not infamous, like the other dishes. And my hot and sour soup is pretty unique, too.

Oh, and lasagne. People ask me for the recipe and I have an awful time remembering which version they ate, so I can give them the recipe. But depending on what I make–roasted vegetable lasagne with gorgonzola bechamel, or lamb sausage and pesto lasagne–I can always give approximate recipes. But it is a dish that changes with the season, with what I have in the fridge and who is going to be eating it.

So, I am allowed to add a question, because, well, the meme says so. So what will I add to this fine bunch of thoughts?

How about this? Who do you think are the top five chefs/authors and educators who have changed the face of American cuisine and food habits?

Listed in no particular order, I would have to say James Beard, Julia Child, Alice Waters, Fanny Farmer and unfortunately, Ray Kroc. And yes, I know he is not a chef or an author or a food educator, however, with the success of McDonald’s, which he largely engineered, he has probably, more than anyone else in the past century, changed the way in which Americans, and now, the rest of the world, eats.

And not for the better, I might add.

Pass this meme on to three other food bloggers:

Christina at The Thorngrove Table
Dagmar at A Cat in the Kitchen
Owen at Tomatilla

Now, Owen is on vacation, so I don’t expect he will jump right on this–in fact, I figure everyone has plenty of summery things to do, but I am terribly curious about what these three splendid cooks and writers have to tell us about their backgrounds in the kitchen.

4 Comments

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1. Hehe – I still have a working Sears Easy Bake oven my mother sent me when I was an apprentice in Germany – and the “pattypan” woodburning stove I learned to cook on that’s a miniature replica of my grandmother’s woodburning stove. I used to make my own kartofelpuffen on that little stove, and scrub it down with a piece of the charcoal brick my grandfather cut off my grandmother’s for me.

   My children used to bake in the Easy Bake oven, and it’s set on a shelf for the next batch of kids. Sadly, I’ve lost the matching mixer that used to go with it, although I still have the mixing bowls and baking pans – and, oddly, the beaters to the mixer.

   Comment by Noddy — July 6, 2005 #

2. My Easy Bake died in a flooded basement twenty years ago or so. I was very sad, as I wanted to save it for Morganna, but it was not to be.

   I remember you talking about the miniature wood-fired stove when you visited us–that sounds so terribly cool. I would bet that there are collectors out there who would pay a pretty penny for it, but of course, I would never suggest you sell it. It is too much a piece of history and should be passed down as a legacy to your grandkidlings, whenever they may be.

   Comment by Barbara Fisher — July 6, 2005 #

3. Oh no, not another meme 🙂 I still havn’t written the last one…. I feel ashamed… But I promise that I will write both of them. 🙂 But not today, maybe in a few days…

   Comment by Dagmar — July 7, 2005 #

4. Oh, Dagmar, don’t feel ashamed–it is summer! Enjoy it! Get to the meme when you get to it…I’m just nosey is all.

   Comment by Barbara Fisher — July 7, 2005 #

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