But I’ve spent enough time in the kitchen to know that it is impossible to make certain dishes without following instructions. With sauces, for instance, one must be precise. Cooking is definitely part science, but unfortunately I am far less Louis Pasteur in the lab than I am Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor.
Still, it had to be possible to focus on a simple recipe. I could do precise for two minutes. Couldn’t I?
Foolproof Eggs Benedict, adapted from the Serious Eats recipe by J. Kenji López-Alt
ABOUT THIS RECIPE:
Yield: Serves 4
Active Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 30 minutes
Special Equipment: Immersion blender
INGREDIENTS:
1 tablespoon butter
8 slices Canadian bacon or ham steak, cut into English muffin–size pieces
4 buttered and toasted English muffins
8 Foolproof Poached Eggs (see separate recipe)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 recipe Foolproof 2-Minute Hollandaise, kept warm (see separate recipe)
Minced fresh parsley or chives (optional)
DIRECTIONS FOR EGGS BENEDICT:
1. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat until foaming. Add the Canadian bacon and cook, turning occasionally, until heated through, golden brown, and crisp on both sides. Transfer to a paper towel–lined plate to drain.
2. Divide the English muffin halves among four plates. Place one ham slice on each English muffin half. Drain the eggs on a paper towel–lined plate and place one egg on each ham slice. Season the eggs with salt and pepper.
3. Spoon warm hollandaise over each egg. Sprinkle with parsley or chives (if using) and serve immediately.
FOOLPROOF POACHED EGGS
ABOUT THIS RECIPE:
Yield: Makes 4 poached eggs
Active Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 10 minutes
Special Equipment: Fine mesh strainer
INGREDIENTS:
4 eggs
DIRECTIONS:
1. Bring a medium pot of water to a simmer, then reduce the heat until it is barely quivering. It should register 180 to 190 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer. Carefully break 1 egg into a small bowl, then tip it into a fine mesh strainer. Carefully swirl the egg around the strainer, using your finger to rub off any excess loose egg whites that drop through. Gently tip the egg into water. Swirl gently with a wooden spoon for 10 seconds, just until the egg begins to set. Repeat straining and tipping with the remaining eggs. Cook, swirling occasionally, until the egg whites are fully set but the yolks are still soft, about 4 minutes.
2. Carefully lift the eggs from the pot with a slotted spoon. Serve immediately, or transfer to a bowl of cold water and refrigerate for up to 2 days. To serve, transfer to a bowl of hot water and let reheat for 2 minutes. Serve immediately.
FOOLPROOF 2-MINUTE HOLLANDAISE
Yield: Makes about 1½ cups
Active Time: 1 minute
Total Time: 2 minutes
Special equipment: Immersion blender with a cup that barely fits its head
INGREDIENTS:
1 egg yolk (about 1 gram)
1 teaspoon water (about 5 grams)
1 teaspoon lemon juice from 1 lemon (about 5 grams)
Kosher salt
½ cup (1 stick, about 112 grams) butter
Pinch cayenne pepper or hot sauce (if desired)
DIRECTIONS:
1. Combine the egg yolk, water, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt in the bottom of a cup that barely fits the head of an immersion blender. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over high heat, swirling constantly, until the foaming subsides. Transfer to a 1-cup liquid measuring cup.
2. Place the head of the immersion blender into the bottom of the cup and turn it on. With the blender constantly running, slowly pour the hot butter into the cup. It should emulsify with the egg yolk and lemon juice. Continue pouring until all of the butter is added. The sauce should be thick and creamy. Season to taste with salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper or hot sauce (if desired). Serve immediately, or transfer to a small lidded pot and keep in a warm place for up to 1 hour before serving. Hollandaise cannot be cooled and reheated.
Now might be a good moment to make a second confession: the first time I actually read this recipe 100 percent all the way through was when I just typed it out for this book. I tried, I really did. But as soon as I saw things like “swirling” and “fine mesh” when it came to making simple poached eggs, I got woozy. There was no way I was going to attempt to make eggs by trying to cook them in a “barely quivering” pot of water and straining them through some apparatus I couldn’t imagine owning.
But I did check what was required for the rest of the recipe and, before going to my mom’s apartment, as I was rummaging for tools, I was struck by this vague memory that somewhere in my distant past I had bought an actual egg-poaching pan. So I went poking and probing through one cabinet in my kitchen in which I keep things that haven’t been used for decades but which I can’t bring myself to throw out and, sure enough, there it was: an egg poacher. On the dirty side, with a cobweb or two clinging to the handle, but it was there, safe and sound.
It was a small, white pan with three round indentations—nice little spots for the raw eggs to slide into. The idea is Dutch oven–like: the pan fits on top of a pot filled with boiling water and the heat from the water cooks the eggs. This seemed a lot more efficient than going free form with swirling and a wire mesh. So my egg poacher made its way uptown to my mom’s.
The hollandaise sauce recipe called for an immersion blender. This was a stumbling block, since I had absolutely no idea what that was. But I couldn’t help but notice that all other eggs Benedict recipes that didn’t use an immersion blender took twenty to thirty minutes of prep time as compared to two minutes. Solution: a call to Janis—who knows everything about food, utensils, and science (and thus the theories behind almost all recipes) and who provided a crucial bit of information.
“You have an immersion blender,” she said.
“I do?”
“Yes. Your mother gave it to you a few years ago. It’s that white thing that, periodically, you ask me what it is and I tell you it’s an immersion blender.”
“Well, there’s the problem—you’re not specific enough.”
She didn’t say anything but I was pretty sure she was shaking her head.
“Um…” I said, hoping my boyish lack of eloquence would charm her into allowing me back in her good graces, “Do you happen to know where it is?”
“In your pantry. Upper shelf, right-hand corner.”
“I have a pantry, too?”
I was pretty sure there was more head shaking on the other end of the phone but I didn’t care because, as far as I could tell, I was now all set. I had my weird white immersion blender—which was still in the unopened box—and my egg-poaching pan, cobweb-free after a good washing. All I needed now were the ingredients.
The eggs and English muffins were easy. So was Canadian bacon, although when I was ordering from the guy behind the Citarella take-out counter, several very simple questions occurred to me. I’d loved Canadian bacon since I was a wee lad but I had absolutely no idea what it was. Did it really come from Canada? Was it actually bacon? Was it always round? Was there a required thickness that allowed it to be called Canadian bacon as compared to, say, North Dakota bacon or just plain regular bacon? So I asked.
“It’s smoked pork loin,” the counter guy said. “And as far as I know, it doesn’t have anything to do with Canada. And all you gotta do is tell me how thick you want it and that’s how thick it’ll be.”
That took a little bit of the glamour out of the process, but it was still valuable information. Knowledge could be deflating but it was never a bad thing.
And now, with everything in tow, it was time to cook.
My mom’s Upper East Side apartment has a small but serviceable kitchen, like many
New York City apartments. When I got there, I went straight to work.
Since the recipe promised that the sauce took two minutes, I decided to leave that for last. Confident in my ability to pull off the non-sauce parts on my own, I ignored all the recipe’s other instructions. Deciding that the thick-cut Canadian bacon would take the longest to cook, I placed it in a skillet. Then I cracked the eggs—in a separate bowl, as previously learned—and transferred them to the poaching pan. I arranged the pan on top of a form-fitting pot filled with water and turned the heat on medium, figuring it would only take a few minutes, tops, for the eggs to poach. I then put the English muffins in the toaster oven and turned that setting to low.
Cool, calm, and collected, I spent a few minutes chatting with my mom (we discussed, to the best of her ability, immersion blenders—it turned out, of course, that she had not one but two—and other fascinating topics), and then I decided it must be time to make the sauce.
After all these years believing that hollandaise sauce was some miracle concoction that only a three-star Michelin chef could master, it turns out it wasn’t much harder to make than matzo brei. The hardest part was finding a cup into which, as per the recipe, “the immersion blender barely fits.” I sorted through a few different cups and glasses and then found a fairly narrow coffee mug that was the perfect width. Into that went all the ingredients and then I turned the blender on. For those of you who have never used this remarkable appliance, it looks and operates much like a dildo. And watching it turn the various ingredients into actual rich, creamy sauce gives—or so I imagine—a similar level of satisfaction.
My glee at the wizardry of the immersion blender sent my mom into a laughing fit.
“Come on,” I said. “This is a major discovery for me.”
“Very major,” she agreed. “Like discovering the wheel.”
“How come you can suddenly speak perfectly?” I demanded. And that set her off laughing again.
The recipe specified that the hollandaise sauce had to be served immediately when ready—it could not cool down or it would turn into some other alien form. That’s when I realized that things were not going as wonderfully well as I had thought. For one thing, I’d forgotten to turn the flame on underneath the Canadian bacon, a serious hindrance to the cooking process. I instantly turned the heat under the skillet to high.
I also became aware that the eggs were not exactly cooking. The water was boiling fine underneath them but they were still runny and, as near as I could tell, still downright raw. I timidly said to my mom, “So these eggs don’t seem to be cooking.” She took a peek into the kitchen from her wheelchair and said, “They should be covered.” That’s when I saw that there was a top to the little poached egg pan. So I covered the eggs as my mom instructed and, lo and behold, they started firming up. But not before I got the “what have I spawned?” eye roll again. And more laughter.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying this,” I said. “I slave for hours and all I get is scorn.”
“You’ve been in there ten minutes,” my mom said.
“It’s the principle of the thing,” I insisted.
Meanwhile, I did not want rock-hard English muffin slices so I turned the toaster oven down to about 150 degrees F, keeping them warm but not cement-like (I hoped).
Panicking that these delays would cool my hollandaise sauce down and reduce it to the texture and taste of Silly Putty, I kept low heat under it and stirred constantly.
A few miraculous minutes later, the eggs seemed ready, the Canadian bacon was the right degree of crispness on both sides, and, amazingly enough, when I popped open the front of the toaster oven, the English muffin slices were hot but still pliable. Who needed line cooks?
I put the lightly buttered muffins on two plates, carefully placed a perfectly fitted Canadian bacon slice on top of each muffin, slid three nicely poached eggs out of the egg pocket with a spoon, and then ladled my warm hollandaise sauce on top of everything. I hate parsley and never intended to use it. And I completely forgot about the chives. No matter—I had two beautiful egg/muffin arrangements; my mom had one.
We sat down to eat. My mother’s home companion—who only wanted scrambled eggs; she wanted no part of the sauce—cut my mom’s food for her. It cut without too much trouble. Rather than dig in right away, I watched as my mom put a forkful of the breakfast in her mouth and chewed. After she swallowed, she said, “Delicious!”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“Taste.”
I did, and I must admit that she was correct. Delicious.
Food conjures up sense memory unlike anything else except, possibly, music. You can hear a few strains or lines of a song—the same way you can bite into a specific food—and suddenly be transported back into the past. The people you were with—those your memory connects with the music or with the food—are real again, not just ghostly apparitions from the past. The smells, the emotion, the visual images all reappear as if everything were happening at that moment. Biting into my eggs Benedict didn’t take me to the Grateful Dead concert at Winterland in 1971 where I found myself trapped in a beam of light coming from the ceiling, but it did take me back to the Cock’n Bull when I was fourteen years old. It made me feel as if my dad were sitting at the table with my mom and me. I could hear his voice. See his graying beard. I felt as if I were sitting on the wine-colored leather seats in our favorite booth, already anxious to head to the Coliseum to see the Rams play.
I don’t know exactly what sensations my mother was experiencing. Her aphasia had kicked back in—or at least I suspected she was pretending it had kicked back in because she did not want to share her eggs Benedict–induced flashback. That was all right with me.
A recipe is a blueprint for a finished product. It is a guide that connects otherwise unconnected individual elements, showing how to blend them together to create something whole and new. It is both science and art with a touch of magic. As with anything in life, when creating something new you run the risk of burning it or under-seasoning it or over-seasoning it or making it too sweet or not sweet enough. It is possible to follow a recipe too closely, removing any sense of creativity or personal involvement. It is also possible to stray too far from the structure and the elements that make it jell, creating the risk that the thing one is striving to create becomes unrecognizable, transformed into something different and undesired or just plain bad.
But everyone has to start, at some point, with a recipe.
This time I’d followed one to the best of my ability. And it had worked. The disparate elements had not just come together to create a whole new dish.
They had come together to provide a link to the past.
PART THREE
LUNCH
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.
—Orson Welles
My Mom’s Lunch Menu
Barbara Apisson’s Celeriac Remoulade
Louise Trotty’s Chocolate Pudding
Joël Robuchon’s Mashed Potatoes
Yotam Ottolenghi’s Quail
CHAPTER THREE
It’s relatively easy to see what brings people together to form a family. And it’s very easy to see what makes a family fall apart. It is usually harder to understand what holds them together.
My mom adored my father; when they were young, it was almost to the point of hero worship. The older she got, the more she realized she was his equal and she was able to see him for what he really was: not a hero but a flawed and wonderful man. The flaws did not alter the feelings she had for him; to the contrary, they made her love him even more. Looking back, I am struck by how much their relationship changed over the years—and it didn’t just survive, it got stronger, and they became even more intertwined. In some ways, my mother’s weaknesses when she was young—her insecurities, her lack of a definition unconnected from being a wife and mother, her inability to create an identity for herself other than the one her brothers and sisters insisted on foisting on her�
�drove my parents’ relationship for the first part of their marriage. My dad knew he had to toughen her up, to help her define herself as a separate human being. Later on, his weaknesses—his career frustrations, his compromises in certain areas, his inability to compromise in other areas, ultimately his illness—came to the forefront and added a new dimension to their already strong bond. My dad understood the specifics of the world. My mom has, in her quiet way, always understood the world as a whole. The older I get, the more like her I strive to become.
As with my mother, I have two distinct images of my dad that glow like neon reminders of the past. And as with my mom, they, too, are food- and drink-connected.
One mental snapshot captures any fall or winter Sunday morning in the 1960s through the mid-’70s. My dad is in bed watching football, a six-hour endeavor that basically involves not moving his body except for his arms to eat, drink, or clap, and his mouth to chew and to roar in appreciation or groan in dismay at the changes in score and the final point spreads. He is wearing a dark brown terry-cloth kaftan, a bit of leisurewear that made him look vaguely Roman emperor–like, and is propped up against a thick wad of pillows that rest against my parents’ king-size, freestanding, elaborately carved wooden headboard. Across his knees is a sturdy breakfast tray, on which sits a large plate of scrambled eggs, along with smaller plates that hold a bagel, sliced raw onion and tomato, slabs of cream cheese, and several slices of smoked salmon. My dad is as relaxed as he gets, laughing, reveling in the athletic performances on his enormous TV screen (a console; this was pre–flat screen) and enjoying the presence of his younger son, sprawled on one side of the bed, also absorbed in being a football fanatic, also munching on a bagel with lox and cream cheese and onions. When I am older and living in New York City, we bet on the games every Sunday over the phone and keep a careful, running track of our wins and losses. We bet real money, either ten or twenty-five dollars a game, and any debts have to be paid promptly. Sometimes my dad even lets me put twenty-five dollars down in a separate bet that he places for me with his bookie, whom he calls Big Al, even though I find out later he is much closer to an accountant than to some sort of thug. When we place these bets, I know my dad’s in his giant bed in L.A. watching his enormous TV. I’m in a similar position on my smaller, less imposing bed, watching my much smaller, less imposing TV, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, wishing someone was plying me with Ratner’s-like delicacies. To this day, conjuring up this picture of my dad makes me smile and yearn for something I rarely yearn for: my childhood.
My Mother's Kitchen Page 6
