Home cooking

by Laurie Colwin

  Downstairs in the pantry were enormous cans of stewed tomatoes, and similarly enormous cans of tomato paste. With Juan to help I brought up onions and spaghetti plus government-surplus Cheddar cheese, in two hours I had made two huge stockpots of tomato sauce and boiled thirty pounds of pasta.

  I made my mother's old-fashioned baked spaghetti. The idea is to have much more sauce than pasta and to embed the spaghetti in the sauce. You then bake it in the oven under a thick crust of cheese. I filled four steam-table trays and was vastly relieved to see that it was a hit.

  From then on, Jean took her day off on my day on, and I had the kitchen to myself, more or less. I found cooking on Olivieri's six-burner Garland restaurant stove a pleasure, and I spent many waking hours wondering what to make for large numbers of people.

  I made chili, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, baked ziti, borscht, cabbage salad, pasta salad, vegetable stew and toasted cheese. One of the ladies' favorite lunches was baked potato, cheese, salad and fruit, a nice lunch for a winter day.

  I then got the brilliant idea to make an Irish dish called colcannon, a mixture of spring onions, cabbage and mashed potatoes. The result was not a success, and one of my favorite ladies, who wore fuzzy sweaters, beads, and had a voice like Lauren Bacall's, came up to me and said: "Lunch today, honey. A disasterr

  There were ladies who were vegetarians and others furious at

  not getting meat for lunch. Some women came up and chatted and some never made eye contact. There were ladies who helped peel potatoes and one who washed the pots every day. When I asked her why she did this unrewarding job, she said: "1 feel God has been very good to me and 1 like to pay back."

  When I was seven months pregnant, I quit—I could not stand for that long on my feet and I couldn't lift anything heavy.

  A few years later my husband and I were being given a tour of the City and Country School, in Greenwich Village. There in the kitchen, I saw a six-burner Garland stove, just like the one at Olivieri. I said to myself: "If our daughter goes to this wonderful school I will certainly end up cooking on this wonderful stove."

  A year later, the night before the annual school fair, I was in the kitchen making shepherd's pie for 150 people while two other mothers were making baked ziti (as the vegetarian dish) for another 150. That night, the pasta sauce for the ziti burnt and had to be thrown out. The next day, the man from Con Edison appeared to say that there was a gas leak and that the gas in the entire school was going to be turned off. Meanwhile, it began to rain heavily.

  By five o'clock, the gas was back on. We did not have to farm our ziti and shepherd's pie out to ten different households after all. Quantities of delicious tomato sauce had been gotten at an amazing price by a shameless mother who walked into her local Italian cheese store in the pouring rain with her two little children and tears in her eyes. The sky cleared and turned a gorgeous, clear blue. The fair was a huge success and every scrap of food was consumed.

  "Isn't cooking for that many kind of nerve-racking?" a friend of mine asked.

  But as I was browning thirty-five pounds of meat I realized that I found it extremely relaxing.

  SHEPHERD^S PIE

  10 large onions

  4 entire heads of garlic

  2-3 cups olive oil

  35 pounds chopped chuck

  black pepper

  2 bottles Worcestershire sauce

  10 pounds frozen carrots and peas

  1 gallon instant mashed potatoes

  fresh grated cheese

  serves 150

  /. Have ready four large steam-table trays — these hold around forty portions apiece, more or less.

  2. Peel and chop onions and garlic.

  3. Heat olive oil in an enormous skillet or low-sided saucepan, and begin to brown some of the meat, adding onions and garlic

 

  as you go. The browned meat should then be put aside while you brown the rest.

  4. Season with black pepper and both bottles of Worcestershire sauce.

  5. Apportion the meat into the steam-table trays and add, or rather distribute, previously frozen, now thawed, carrots and peas, and mix well with the meat.

  6. Make instant mashed potatoes, stirring with a whisk. Many people find instant potatoes nasty — I do not. You would not want them as a side dish, but on top of a shepherd's pie they are just fine.

  7. Spoon a thick layer of potatoes over the meat, sprinkle with fresh grated cheese (not the stuff in jars) and bake in the oven at 300° for two hours.

  This will feed 150 people, some of whom are children.

  CHOCOLATE

  y sister, who is in most other ways a perfectly normal person, is so addicted to chocolate that she routinely compromises her expensive dental work by eating something that I believe is called Rose Shaeffer's Chocolate Lace. This particular confection is made by covering a Jackson Pollock-looking lattice of sticky, filling-and-bridgework-pulling toffee with chocolate. My sister believes that milk chocolate is for twinks and wimps. She eats bittersweet chocolate by the pound and still remains thin.

  There are those who must have chocolate and those who can take it or leave it alone. For the afflicted there are magazines devoted to the subject, chocolate cookbooks, candymaker's instruction guides, antique chocolate molds, chocolate dipping courses. There is high-ticket imported chocolate, often in the form of a truffle and often costing only a little less than a real truffle, and novelty chocolate in the form of chocolate arms and legs and telephones. There is weird chocolate, as in chocolate-covered grasshoppers, and then there are candy bars, which those in need of a fix can find almost anywhere.

  I like chocolate but 1 don't love it. I think it is nice every once in a while. I am however a sucker for fudge, which, in my opinion, is chocolate in its most sublime form. On the other hand, 1 do not like chocolate cake or ice cream and I find the taste of chocolate mixed with liquor just plain awful except in the case of the chocolate-covered cherry, which is the food of my childhood.

  In some form or another, chocolate figures in every American's childhood. I remember walking home from school with a candy bar in the days when Three Musketeers really had three pieces. I remember my first taste of Rocky Road ice cream, which my sister adored and I hated. To this day my idea of the perfect dessert is a slightly undercooked chocolate chip cookie made from the recipe on the back of the chocolate morsels' bag. I remember the kind of chocolate pudding that formed a tough skin on the top, and the instant kind that did not.

  We did not have chocolate cakes for our birthdays but chocolate played an important role in the cakes we ordered. They were always the same: yellow cake with split layers, the layers alternatingly spread with mocha and apricot jam. The middle layer was marzipan, and the whole thing was covered with bittersweet chocolate icing and decorated with sugar roses, not buttercream, because my mother believes that buttercream turns in the hot weather, when all of our birthdays take place. We always found bakers to make this cake, which would have been insipid without that dark, not too sweet icing.

  The world is full of chocolate lovers and 1 have come to rely on three recipes to help those who invite them for dinner: flourless chocolate cake, steamed chocolate pudding and chocolate bread pudding, which when it bubbles over fills the house with what Mary McCarthy describes in The Groves of Academe as "a rich smell of burning." The smell of chocolate bubbling over and slightly burning is one of the most beautiful smells in the world. It is subtle and comforting and it is rich. One tiny drop perfumes a room as nothing else.

  A recipe for a perfect flourless chocolate cake appears in

  Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking. It calls for almonds ground to a powder in the blender, confectioner's sugar, bittersweet chocolate, some very strong coffee, egg yolks and egg whites. It is baked in a springform pan and the egg whites make it rise ever so slightly. As it cools, it slumps. The texture is of the finest fudge or the densest mousse. It is a pure, rich cake with a clear, cooked chocolate taste. All it
needs is a little raspberry jam to glaze it and some whipped cream. Ice cream would kill it.

  Steamed chocolate pudding is a throwback to a cozier time in American life and is definitely worth making. The 1964 edition of The Joy of Cooking has one recipe for it—an elaborate one containing six eggs and nuts, not my idea of a good time. But the 1943 edition (the one with the recipe for gumdrop cookies which begins: "Good for soldiers' boxes as they keep fresh and do not crumble") contains the real winner—a plain, easy and sincere steamed pudding, made as follows:

  OLD-FASHIONED STEAMED CHOCOLATE PUDDING

  serves 4

  2 ounces unsweetened chocolate

  V2 cup sugar

  i egg

  1 tablespoon butter, melted and cooled

  1 cup all-purpose flour

  V2 teaspoon baking powder

  V2 cup milk

  /. Melt chocolate. Let cool.

  2. Sift sugar.

  3. Beat egg until light. Add sugar to it gradually and beat until creamy.

  4. Add melted chocolate and then butter.

  5. Sift flour. Resift with baking powder. Add to the egg mixture in three parts, alternating the thirds with the milk in three parts. Beat until smooth after each addition.

  6. Pour into a buttered pudding mold. Cover with waxed paper tied down with a rubber band and steam in a kettle for one hour.

  This pudding tips nicely out of its mold and looks like a baked hat. It is delicious with a raspberry puree, or with whipped cream. Some people like it sliced with a little jam. Steamed puddings have a wonderful satiny texture: half a pudding, half a cake and the nicer half of each.

  As for chocolate bread pudding, there is nothing more consoling on a horrible cold night. Any standard cookbook has a recipe for bread pudding, to which you simply add chocolate to the milk and egg. The version I first ate was made of lightly toasted bread spread with sweet butter and set in a dish. The egg, milk and chocolate was poured over it, and the whole thing stood soaking for an hour before baking in a 300° oven for forty-five minutes.

  When it comes to chocolate, I prefer the simplest and plainest. To this end I have made chocolate meringues, which must be made when the weather is nice, and chocolate wafers, which taught me a lesson.

  These wafers come from The Settlement Cook Book by Mrs. Simon Kander (copyright 1926). I have my mother's copy, which is falling to pieces and has written on the endpaper the telephone number for Charlie's vegetable truck service from 1947.

  CHOCOLATE WAFERS

  2 ounces bitter chocolate

  1 cup sugar

  V2 cup butter, melted

  2 eggs

  V2 cup flour

  V2 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1. Melt chocolate.

  2. Add sugar and butter.

  3. Add the yolks of eggs into the beaten egg whites and stir into the chocolate mixture.

  4. Add flour and vanilla.

  5. Spread on a well-buttered pan. Place in a 350° oven but gradually decrease the heat to 300°.

  6. This recipe does not tell you how long to bake. I would say about ten to twelve minutes. Cut into squares while still warm.

  I made these cookies to serve with a fruit salad one spring night and was alarmed at how tasteless they were. No one liked them very much but I could not bear to throw them out, so I put them in a tin and left them for a couple of days. One afternoon when my blood sugar dropped and it was time for tea, I remembered the chocolate wafers. "Better than nothing," I said to myself, biting into one. To my amazement, they were delicious. They tasted strongly and wonderfully of chocolate and were hard and crunchy, too. it had taken a couple of days for the taste to bloom and it was worth the wait. And so I add to Mrs. Simon Kander's admirable recipe a seventh step:

  7. Let cool, put in a tin and do not eat for at least two days.

  And of course, for those of you about to give a dinner party for chocolate nuts, you know what bakeries are for: so that, at the end of dinner, you can put your feet up and have the chocolate dessert you didn't bake.

  THE SAME OLD THING

  any of my closest friends are sick of my baked chicken, and even when I point out that I know a million variations on this theme, they rightly point out that they have had them all, and more than once.

  But when the chips are down, the spirit is exhausted and the body hungry, the same old thing is a great consolation. When people who must provide meals are too tired to think of what to cook, those old standbys come to the rescue. These are things a person can cook half asleep.

  For instance, frittata. Even on a Sunday night, a little butter and some olive oil can be found in most households, and usually some eggs. A frittata is a flat Italian omelet that can be eaten hot or cold and the ingredients are limitless. A mushroom and zucchini frittata is nice, and so is a red pepper and onion frittata, but suppose you have no peppers or mushrooms? The answer is potato frittata, which tastes good and is handy since people tend to store potatoes.

  For two people you need one large potato cut into dice, four eggs and some minced garlic. The potatoes are sauteed with

  garlic in olive oil or butter, and when they are cooked, the scrambled eggs are slipped in and left to cook gently. Frittata should be cooked in a metal-handled skillet since you may want to stick it under the broiler for a minute or two (perhaps with a dusting of grated cheese) to brown the top. Even a child will eat it, and with a green salad and something nice for dessert, it makes a meal.

  For more years than I like to think about, a variation on baked chicken was my party standby, and with it I always served the same old thing: creamed spinach with jalapefio peppers. I could not get enough, as the song says, of this wonderful stuff. My friends liked it too, and I was happy to pass the recipe along. My friends fed it to their friends, and so on. By now, probably half the people in the Western Hemisphere have eaten this savory dish.

  One November, at a literary festival in Dallas, Texas, I and the other participants were fed a delicious meal in a beautiful house. The side dish was creamed spinach with jalapefio peppers and it was so good it made me want to sit up and beg like a dog. Without a trace of shame I marched up to the hostess and pleaded for the recipe. This nice woman presented me, shortly thereafter, with a green card which read from the kitchen of BETTY JOSEY and there was the recipe, which I have altered just a little (since it is hard to find jalapeho cheese up north):

  CREAMED SPINACH WITH JALAPENO PEPPERS

  2 packages frozen spinach

  4 tablespoons butter

  2 tablespoons flour

  2 tablespoons onion, cfiopped

  I clove garlic, minced

  V2 cup evaporated milk

  serves 4-6

  V2 teaspoon black pepper

  % teaspoon celery salt 6 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, cubed 1 or more jalapeno peppers, chopped

  buttered bread crumbs

  1. Cook spinach. Drain, reserving one cup of liquid, and chop fine.

  2. Melt butter in a saucepan and add flour. Blend and cook a little. Do not brown.

  3. Add onion and garlic.

  4. Add one cup of spinach liquid slowly, then add evaporated milk, some fresh black pepper, celery salt and cheese. Add one or more chopped jalapefio pepper (how many is a question of taste as well as what kind. I myself use the pickled kind, from a jar) and then the spinach. Cook until all is blended.

  5. Turn into a buttered casserole topped with buttered bread crumbs and bake for about forty-five minutes at 300°.

  After about five hundred or so casseroles of creamed spinach with jalapeno peppers, I felt it was time to move on to a new side dish. For a while I was stuck on baked polenta with cheese, but eventually I settled down with orzo.

  Orzo is a rice-shaped pasta which can sometimes be found in the spaghetti section of a supermarket, and can always be found in Greek or Italian specialty stores. I am not much of a rice cook, although 1 have tried and tried. 1 have sauteed the rice first, put tea towels under the lid, steamed it in the
oven, but I never get it right. Orzo, on the other hand, never fails.

  Orzo with butter and grated cheese is very nice. Orzo with a little ricotta, some chopped parsley and scallion, butter and cheese, is even better. Orzo with chopped broccoli and broccoli di rape is heaven, and it is also a snap. While you cook the orzo, steam the two broccolis—the amounts depend entirely on

  how many people you are feeding—until tender. Chop and set aside.

  Drain the orzo and throw in a lump of butter. Stir it in, add the broccoli, some fresh black pepper and some grated cheese, and you have a side dish fit for a visiting dignitary from a country whose politics you admire.

  This certainly was good for a few hundred parties, but people, unlike other mammals, tend to get bored. Eventually 1 began to hear faint protests (especially since the orzo was so frequently served with chicken), and 1 knew I had to expand my repertoire.

  For a while 1 turned to meat loaf. I myself love meat loaf and find even ones that have been lying around on a steam table palatable. I especially adore a meat loaf sandwich, but as we know, you can't have a meat loaf sandwich without making a meat loaf.

  Meat loaf ranges from the sublime (the one in Marcella Kazan's first volume that contains funghi porcini and is cooked in white wine) to the pedestrian: meat, egg, seasoning and bread crumbs. Meat loaf is not usually a party dish but one day I decided that I would make a meat loaf with a design in it, to resemble the gorgeous torta rustica I had seen in a fancy Italian restaurant.

  I packed half the seasoned meat into a loaf pan. Then I added a layer of spinach chopped up fine with scallions. On top of this I placed three hard-boiled eggs, shelled and wrapped in pi-miento. Then 1 covered them with the rest of the meat and put it in the oven. When it was done, I left it to cool and then put it in the refrigerator for an hour or so to set.

  When sliced, the result looked like sunset over the Mediterranean and was much admired, except that it was plain old meat loaf and everyone knew it.

  One of my most popular fallback recipes is for something called vegetable fritters. These are not fritters, properly so-called, but they are made of vegetables. They are really little potato croquettes made with chopped-up vegetables.