And now for another installment in my long-running "autobiography by topics."
Today's topic is my life as a cook. I say cook, rather than chef, because my kitchen work has always been functional rather that artistic -- the very opposite of sophisticated or elegant. I am most definitely not a chef -- just a guy who can put a meal on the table. Confession: I prefer to my own food to what is presented to me at all but the most elite restaurants. I'm basically a hamburger-and-ketchup plebeian; fancy foods with exotic ingredients do nothing for my pedestrian palate. Why leeks, chives, ramps or shallots when your everyday yellow onion will do the job. Especially if it's one of those amazingly sweet Vidalia onions.
My lack of gourmet-ism originated with my family of origin, back there in 1940s Flatbush where cooking was not imaginative. Its basics were Velveeta cheese and those slimy canned Harvard beets. No frills but a sufficiency where "enough [was] as good as a feast." My mother, who presided over the kitchen, did it all, every bit of it (my father might just have starved if he had to extend himself to boil water). Mom was a functional cook and her limited repertoire of meals repeated weekly. I never knew her to try something new nor did I once see her consult a cookbook. Spices were limited to salt and pepper. Chicken was boiled, lamb chops were broiled, flounder was poached. There was too much malodorous liver and too much tongue and too many salmon croquettes. Almost all meals were accompanied with mashed potatoes. My favorite food, in those days, was noodles with a meat-and-tomato sauce (which would nowadays have been upgraded to "Bolognese"). (The word "noodles" was later promoted to "spaghetti" and has now been ennobled to "pasta.") On an occasional flush Sunday there was roast beef. The family celebrated Thanksgiving with a grand turkey and countered Yom Kippur with a defiant roast pork.
What a tedious chore it was for my mom to set out twenty-one meals a week for the five of us, but she did so without complaint.
The only memorable meals of my childhood were supplied by my grandmother Sonia. Unsurpassed blintzes, potato latkes, jams and jellies. My favorite meal in those days: black radish, onion and pumpernickel complemented with gribbinis. I have written about my love affair with the black radish here.
The first steps into cookery of my own arose out of my native frugality. When I was in college, most of my friends ate in the dorm cafeteria or in nearby restaurants but I soon discovered that with a little initiative I I could eat better and cheaper. It was a bit of a learning process, because, growing up, I regarded cooking as a kind of alchemy to which only married women were privy. In 1957, I abandoned the dormitory for a remarkably grotty off-campus apartment and discovered that I too could turn on a gas burner and transmogrify raw ingredients into food. For the next three years I lived on a hunk of meat and a boiled potato and warmed frozen peas -- at a quarter the cost of an equivalent restaurant meal! Not elegant food -- but what a revelation! It was not only an improvement in standard of living, but a demonstration to myself that I need not imitate my father's example of dependent helplessness.
My galley skills, such as they were, were also good for my social life. Dates with my girlfriend (later my wife of more than half a century) often began with me preparing a Saturday night dinner for her. Fortunately for the two of us, she was not put off by my want of culinary imagination.
Let me record a sad reminiscence about the way in which we were all hog-tied by Eisenhower-era conservatism: I did all the cooking until June of 1960, when AGP and I married. At that point, it seemed mandatory and inevitable that kitchen responsibilities should be transferred from me to her. It was, we believed, an inviolable rule of the universe that wives cooked and husbands ate. That was the way things were in that reactionary pre-feminist period -- even though my bride had until that point never prepared a single meal in her entire life. How conventional, how thoughtless we both were. However, true to the stereotype, AGP rapidly became a much better cook than I could have imagined. But what socially-constrained idiocy! How blinkered were the two of us! It's embarrassing to confess it all even sixty-plus years after the fact.
Once the three children joined us, cooking became less fun and more of an obligation -- but now a chore at last shared by the two of us. Inasmuch as we were both employed, food preparation became a weekend activity. Together we'd cook up a cauldron of beef stew or a spaghetti sauce or something else that could get us through the week. Lunches were improvised, but I was always the breakfast cook. I wish I could properly estimate the number of eggs that I scrambled or pancakes that I flipped. They would stuff a moderately-sized warehouse, I'm sure. For AGP, meals became a burden. If I remember correctly, it was not so much the labor of preparation as it was the organization that distressed her. Just gathering the ingredients and keeping the refrigerator stocked became dull boring work. Her point, and I know she was correct in this, was that even if I did I half the cooking, she had 100% of the responsibility. Things became even more complicated when the kids went through their vegetarian phases and when their complicated after school activities made orderly scheduling next to impossible.
I remember that one summer, sometime in the 70s. I announced that I would do all the gathering and cooking for two months. AGP's only task was to lie in the hammock all day and to eat whatever I produced. AGP enjoyed the vacation, but she pointed out that it our society, men could get the credit for labor that was taken for granted for women. She was once again correct in her assessment, but nevertheless I felt that I had done a good deed. I think she enjoyed the kitchen respite.
Eventually the kids left home and life became simpler. We were now "recovering parents." Food preparation became simpler and fun again. Joint fun.
Unfortunately, it was only a few years later that AGP began her long decline. Of course I took over more and more of the kitchen responsibilities. I think for the last ten years that AGP was with me, I was the head and only cook. How else would we have survived? As a result, I became more interested in the work. As I have said, I never became a chef, but I do take some pride in my general competence around the kitchen -- especially in my barbecued spare ribs, my beef stew, my stuffed cabbage (grandma Sonia's recipe) and my transcendent lasagnas.
Nowadays, in my miraculous second relationship, cooking, like everything else, is shared equally.
Gosh it's been a long haul.
