Man With a Pan (26 page)

So Andy became the moving force in our kitchen, and his beach-head there soon stretched into a continent. This was not deliberate, though it was perhaps inevitable, for the sharing of marital responsibilities often and quite naturally comes to mean dividing them. In the damp kingdom of the laundry room I admit no help, lest my mental schedule of upcoming loads get scrambled by an errant washerful of socks. One parent can more easily keep track of the science-fair project than two, and no kid wants to be quizzed twice on his Spanish. There is efficiency in this, but also territoriality; territoriality being a male trait not mitigated by gayness, two men together may make a Lear’s kingdom of their marriage more readily than, say, two women. Better to play Cordelia and renounce one’s claim altogether.

So I almost never cook anymore, except on special occasions: layer cakes for birthdays, the old spinach and rice torta when old friends visit. My other skills, whatever they were, have, with underuse, atrophied. Alas, with overuse, so have Andy’s. A family is not the same as a communal college kitchen, where anyone who doesn’t like what’s served can whip up an alternative or just eat out. As a parent, Andy is reduced to making those dishes that will actually be consumed, not stared at balefully and then cunningly rearranged on the plate. When the boys are at camp, out comes the adult food—the fish and even the liver—but the rest of the time we live in the kind of culinary rut that women’s magazines exist to jolt mothers out of. I don’t blame Andy; rather, I’m grateful. He keeps it coming, moderately healthy, moderately tasty, moderately well received. I have a paper bag waiting at the door each morning as I go to work—without which I would probably lunch on yogurt and large pieces of cake masquerading under the euphemism of “muffin.” But Andy himself is dissatisfied and I am flooded with wonder and guilt over the same image from our separate pasts: a mother who does everything he and I do, and much more, and well.

Perhaps our boys will someday paint an appetizing haze around Andy’s Costco-enhanced fettuccine Alfredo, much as food stylists paint a glaze of deliciousness on the covers of cookery rags. In the meantime, they are growing up, in relation to food, more like my father than like his son, which is to say: somewhat alienated, somewhat wary. But as wary as they may be about what Andy, in his ambitious moods, puts before them, it is nothing compared to the grave doubt they apparently feel on those very rare occasions when I make their meals. So when Andy announced that he would be out of commission for a few days following his hernia repair, their first thought was not of his abdomen but of their own.

I am ashamed to admit that, much as my mother prepared food in advance so that she would not worry about the rest of us eating when she had to work late, Andy felt he had no choice but to plan a few days’ worth of meals for us so that he could have his innards tailored. He knew I would be better able to take care of him if I weren’t also trying to take care of dinner. He knew the look that came over my face when I had to hunt for something in the freezer, which was so impenetrable that he might have been hiding not just a package of bacon in there but an entire hog. Mostly, he knew that feeding the family was the one job that made a parent indispensable. No one but me, in my misplaced pride, would suffer much from misfolded T-shirts or from someone getting a B minus in algebra. If you put dinner on the table, though, you are—as our older boy sometimes exclaims when he sees Andy’s bubbly mac and cheese emerge from the oven—the man.

“I know it’s in here somewhere.”

Recipe File

Spinach and Rice Torta

8 small portions

This recipe is adapted from from Marcella Hazan’s recipe.

4 tablespoons vegetable oil
5 tablespoons butter
1 large or 2 medium ripe tomatoes, skinned and diced, or 1 cup canned Italian peeled plum tomatoes, drained and diced
¼ cup or more chopped pancetta
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
1½ lbs fresh spinach, washed carefully, trimmed of stems, and torn into small pieces Salt
1 cup raw unwashed rice
1½ cups beef broth, or ¾ cup canned plus ¾ cup water
½ cup toasted plain bread crumbs
4 eggs
½ cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg

In a large pot or sauté pan, heat the oil and 2 tablespoons of the butter until hot; add the tomatoes and sauté for about 2 minutes.

Add the pancetta and garlic and sauté, stirring, for 2 to 3 minutes.

Add the spinach and salt, stirring until the spinach wilts.

Add the rice, cook, uncovered, stirring frequently, moistening occasionally with broth until half-done (tender enough to be chewable but with a hard, chalky core), about 15 minutes.

Pour into a bowl and let cool completely; may be stored at this point in the refrigerator.

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Grease a 10-inch springform pan or an 8 × 8-inch brownie tin with 1 tablespoon of the butter; dust with about 2 tablespoons of the bread crumbs.

Add the eggs one at a time to the chilled mixture, beating thoroughly.

Add the remaining butter and the cheese and nutmeg; mix well. Correct for salt.

Pour into the prepared pan; sprinkle with the remaining bread crumbs. May be stored at this point, covered, in the refrigerator.

Bake on the uppermost rack of the oven for 50 to 60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. If using a springform, unhinge the side, let cool, then remove. Best served lukewarm or hot.

Note: I use arborio rice. I also amp up the pancetta and nutmeg, probably in violation of all that is sacred. You can also double the recipe, using a 9 × 9-inch pan, for thicker pieces.

Andy’s Mac and Cheese

All measurements are approximate and depend on what you’ve got in your refrigerator.

6 tablespoons butter
1 pound elbow macaroni or other noodles
2 cups bits of leftover cheeses; if leftovers are unavailable, buy Emmentaler and/or Gruyère and/or extra-sharp cheddar
1 cup milk, half-and-half, cream, or any combination thereof
½ cup plain bread crumbs
Salt
Pepper Cayenne
Nutmeg Allspice
Paprika
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Use 1 tablespoon of the butter to grease a medium-size metal, glass, or ceramic baking dish.

Cook the noodles.

Grate the leftover cheeses. If different colors, grate separately for layering.

Meanwhile, melt 4 tablespoons of the butter and sauté the flour over a low flame. Add the milk slowly, and stir constantly while the whole thing develops a uniform and slightly thickened consistency. Mix in salt, pepper, cayenne, nutmeg, and allspice, to taste.

Add the Parmesan and mix through.

Add the cooked noodles and mix through.

Pour half the noodle mixture into the baking dish and top with half the shredded cheese (of one color). Layer on the second half of the noodle mixture and the second half of the grated cheese (the other color). If half the cheese is cheddar, put that half on top.

Top with bread crumbs, dot with the remaining butter, and season with paprika. Bake for about 40 minutes until brown and bubbly.

On the Shelf

Mastering the Art of French Cooking,
Julia Child. This classic and its successors were major influences but, much like great religious texts, mostly reached me in an attenuated form passed on by ancestors. In this case, it was my mother who studied Julia Child’s methods, as detailed not only in the books but also in cooking classes and on television; she was able to teach me the basic techniques if not the
joie de cuisine
that went with them. When, after college, I did my own pre–Julie Powell tour through the first volume, it was a grim business and came to a grinding halt, appropriately enough, at rabbit.

Marcella’s Italian Kitchen,
Marcella Hazan. One of the Italian cookery doyenne’s best books, and the one I still use even though I don’t cook much anymore. It includes her fantastic spinach and rice torta as well as great risottos, pasta sauces, and stews. Nervous cooks (like me) love the precision of the instructions, and ambitious cooks (like me) appreciate the sound basics that encourage improvisation.

The Cook Book,
Terence and Caroline Conran. This primer came out in 1980. (The original is out of print now, but a new version was published in 1997.) It is assumed, quite rightly in my case, that the reader knows nothing practical. The British slant means that (1) the recipes are on occasion revolting—I’m talking about you, steak and kidney pudding—but (2) the careful explanation of every possible tool and ingredient, complete with pictures, history, and shopping and storage tips, made it invaluable for a neophyte. I deeply impressed my twenty-two-year-old friends with the simple asparagus soufflé. And deeply scarred them with that pudding.

IN THE TRENCHES

David Olivier, a thirty-nine-year-old software engineer, lives with his wife and two young daughters in New Orleans.

I don’t think of myself as a foodie. I love eating, and I’ve always enjoyed cooking. I’ve cooked ever since I was a kid. For a long time we had an arrangement in my household. My wife, Sarah, who now works full-time, was home for a number of years after the girls were born. She’s the full-blown foodie.

When she was home, she was the primary cook. I have the somewhat more flexible schedule at present, and although we both cook, I’ve now taken the lead role. When I started, I had a couple of cookbooks that were geared toward quick recipes. I found a short list of recipes that I felt pretty comfortable with and stuck to that a fair bit. I got a lot of advice from Sarah earlier on. Now I find myself digging around in cookbooks just for the enjoyment of it. It’s a new dimension in the process.

When Sarah was home with the children, we were fortunate that we were able to swing that arrangement. And we’re glad we did it for those few years, but honestly, my wife is a smart, capable, progressive woman and there are some real challenges to falling back into very typical, traditional delineations of gender roles. Inevitably, even if you’ve agreed to it and are trying to do your best to be equitable about it, there’s a tension that goes along with it. She was happy to have time with the kids when they were very young, but I think she was very glad to go back to work finally when she did. I enjoy a lot of the things that stereotypically and traditionally have been the woman’s role. I enjoy spending time with my kids. I enjoy being in the kitchen. I enjoy taking care of my house. The fact that we’re both working now and both have roughly symmetrical kinds of tasks around the house has really eliminated that tension. I find it much preferable this way.

I do most of the shopping. For a while we were chronically having a problem of forgetting key staples, like orange juice. I worked in restaurants for many years, so I finally made up a restaurant-style inventory list of all the staples that we need to keep around the house. My Sunday morning routine is to go through cookbooks, find several recipes I plan to make during the week, and note the ingredients. Then I run through my master inventory list. I’ve got it broken down by refrigerator and pantry. I keep the list on a clipboard, hanging at the end of the shelves in my kitchen. When I used to bartend, we had a list of all the liquors—and it was similarly set up. Every night we reviewed: “What’s in the refrigerator?” “What’s in that section?” Why did Sarah and I keep forgetting to buy orange juice? I don’t know. But for me, this master list works. Some people can manage all of it in their heads, but I’ll just forget.

My dad is from New Orleans; my mom is from Virginia. We moved around when I was young. I was born in Australia and lived in England and Kenya and Chicago. My mother did most of the cooking, but when we’d come down to New Orleans to visit my grandparents, I was exposed to a very intense food culture. It was real old-school Creole home cooking, which isn’t around much anymore. My grandmother taught me how to make a roux. Actually, everyone in the family would start hopping on the making of a roux. It was the kind of thing that people would just talk about. How to best make one is an earnestly discussed topic. I find it’s very easy as long as one obeys the key principal (emphatically and repeatedly proclaimed to me when I was a small child): Don’t do anything else while you’re making it. Just stand there, stirring the oil and flour over medium to medium-high heat for as long as it takes (typically 20 to 30 minutes) until it reaches the desired color. The preferred color is a matter of further discussion. I like a darker roux, milk chocolate tending toward dark chocolate, myself.

As a preteen and a teen, I got very interested in cooking, and I dived into various cookbooks and went through weird, obsessive cooking stages. For a while I was obsessed with all things Japanese. In Virginia, back before sushi restaurants had swept the nation, I made my parents buy me sake, and I clearly remember going to the first sushi restaurant that was around. That was a big deal. We had a lot of different international ethnic cookbooks, probably as a product of having traveled to a lot of different places. We had an Armenian cookbook, and every Thanksgiving, I made a Mount Ararat pilaf, which was an elaborate dish with dual mounts of rice, one larger and one smaller, roughly in the shape of Mount Ararat in Armenia. On top of it was this sauce made of various dried fruits that was reduced for a lengthy time. I think the main attraction for me, being eleven or twelve, or however old I was, was that you cored two apples and lined them with aluminum foil and filled them with warm brandy and put them on fire. I thought that was very cool.