Cookbooks ought
to be counted among the world’s most lofty fiction. Many things are more trustworthy: a slushy pond in April to safely support twelve toddlers; a
bottle of cold capsules with a broken safety seal. I trust piranha more.
Cookbooks can be trusted as far as they can be thrown, which, from my
back porch, with wind and adrenaline, is nearly 400 yards.
Some of
my acquaintances (two accountants and a friend in law enforcement) have great
success with cookbooks. They
cannot fathom that I remain unscathed each
time I cook without one. (My
friends are soothed by things like margin lines and tax codes. And trillion-piece puzzles of grass.)
“Your problem with cookbooks,” says my mother (a bookkeeper) “is that
you don’t know how to follow directions.”
She
shared this insight while watching me force dry, clotted dough through a cookie
press until the cylinder burst.
“What do
you mean, ‘follow’ directions, Mother?
I didn’t realize you wanted me to be a ‘follower’. Perhaps you should have named me
‘Trailer’, or ‘Snail-Slime’ … or—“
“Why
don’t you toss that dough out back and help me separate the fescue from the
crab. This puzzle is very
relaxing.”
I’m sure
I was adopted.
It isn’t
that I don’t know how to follow directions. I choose to cook without them. Reading about cooking seems so abstract. I prefer just to cook … breathlessly,
sloppily, dangerously. And when I
am finished, the food is succulent and my family cleans up the mess.
Occasionally, I resort to reading recipes. But only in emergencies like a sudden religious
holiday. Holidays require cookbook
food, because that is what “guests” come to eat. Guests are, technically,
metamorphs, like chameleons and mosquito larvae. They lie dormant during most of the year, excited by
Campbell’s soup and Milk Duds.
They think popcorn is a vegetable.
But on
holidays they mature into professional food critics who expect their meal to be
prepared under laboratory conditions using scientific method, and beakers. Guests are gratified by cooks who
emerge from their kitchens exhausted and disoriented. “Where am I? What was I
doing in there?” then serve Crème de Bif Gras Noir.
Even if
we are invited out for a holiday, I will still need a cookbook because I have
asked a terrible question: “What
can I bring?” I am always
surprised that no one asks for dangerous, breathless food.
I have
learned to stop asking, “What can I bring?” The truth is that I want to bring
nothing. I want to drive to a
house that smells like Pledge to eat dangerously and drink breathlessly and
watch my hostess suffer.
Last
Christmas, for our family’s annual Yankee Swap, I asked my sister-in-law what I
could bring, and she emailed me a recipe for “Slipped Custard Pie.”
The name
alone dripped with portend of doom.
At
first, the directions seemed innocuous enough. I found no violent cooking-verbs
like whip, beat, dice, scrape, spank,
flatten or scorch. No dramatic foreshadowing such as
“early in the day, pre-heat pressure cooker.”
In
fact, when I turned to the last page to see how the recipe ended, I discovered
a soft caramel glaze ensconced in a run-on sentence: ‘Heat sugar to soft ball
stage until strands twirl in water but do not lose their shape unless removed
with wooden spoon to which it clings but won’t stick.’
I
am a licensed English teacher. So
I edited the ending. “Sprinkle with cinnamon,” I wrote in red ink, then
returned to the beginning.
An
unexpected conflict was introduced early on: ‘Stir custard constantly over very
low heat for 600 strokes until arm drops into filling.’ Who was the author? Josef Mengele?
But it
wasn’t until I got to the ‘mystery twist’ that I became suspicious.
It said
simply, ‘Butter a second 9-inch pie plate.’
I
wondered about the first pie plate only after the recipe told me to pour
custard into one of them.
Before I
could settle the issue of which plate the filling went in, the recipe sprinted
ahead, ‘Sprinke filling with nutmeg,’ so I shook the recipe violently, “WAIT
What about the PIE plate!?”
But the
recipe only snickered.
‘Bake 35
minutes,’ it grinned, ‘until knife inserted one inch from edge comes out
clean.’
“Why ONE
inch? Which goddamn plate? AND
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY NUTMEG?”
‘When
custard is cool—‘
“When IS
that?! Five minutes? NINE DAYS!?”
‘loosen from pie plate with spatula.’
That’s
when my spatula joined the fun.
‘Loosen!?’ it said, really amused, then it just gored and slashed.
Finally, the
recipe drew itself up to its full 15 inches and delivered the Big Finish:
‘After
shaking to dislodge custard from Plate Number Two, hold far edge of pan over
far edge of crust and tilt custard gently toward Plate Number One.’
I threw
myself on the floor while the recipe spun on the countertop, fanning its pages
and speaking in tongues.
‘As
custard slips toward second crust,’ the recipe giggled, drooling, ‘pull plate
back quickly--‘
“NO!!” I
screamed.
‘—until
custard rests in crust!’
“My
custard’s resting on my shoe--”
‘Let filling
settle,’
“On my
SHOE?”
‘then
garnish with whipping cream.’
Whipped
cream is the only thing that saves a Slipped Custard Pie. But it does not save one’s sanity. The only thing that does that is a
chewable vitamin necklace tied to loved ones’ throats to sustain throughout the
remainder of the religious holiday.
Actually, trillion piece puzzles of grass can help. I find them relaxing – quite delicious
– especially served on tax codes.
Oops – could you hold on while I get the phone?
My
margin line is ringing.
