Best Food Writing 2010 (38 page)

THE LAST GOURMET SUPPER

By Marisa Robertson-Textor From
fastertimes.com

Last fall, the sudden demise of
Gourmet
magazine sent a seismic shock throughout the food world. Of all the obituaries written for this iconic food magazine, perhaps the most poignant was this insider memory, written by one of the magazine’s newest staffers.

H
ere’s a dilemma: How do you have your Thanksgiving and eat it too? For me, the answer is to celebrate early, then head for warmer climes over the holiday itself. Imagine it: all your friends clamoring to join you at a family-style banquet without family-style irritations. There’s no getting stuck at the kids’ table. No Cool Whip. And most definitely no football. It’s Thanksgiving for the Thanksgiving-lover—in a word, bliss.

But that bliss, officially known as Gobble Gobble Night, never would have been achieved without
Gourmet
magazine. When I started fact-checking there five years ago, I was just another girl who loved to cook and thought she was pretty darn good at it—when she thought about it at all. During my first week, between making phone calls to price-check hotels in Rome and sending e-mails to establish the precise differences in aging techniques between tawny, ruby, and non-vintage Ports, I wandered the magazine’s mazelike hallways feeling like the youngest ensign assigned to the Starship Enterprise. “Yes, but do you really braise it?” I’d hear a senior food editor ask with the sort of concern I’d always associated with questions along the lines of, “Okay, but was it benign?” I had thought I loved food—thought I knew it—but clearly I didn’t. Not at all.

To say that working at the magazine fed my culinary knowledge is like saying that going to elementary school endows you with a love of literature. In an ideal world, yes; but first you need to learn to read. There are disadvantages to being surrounded by professors when you’re a fumbling fourth grader, but the advantages—like that particular brand of ferocious generosity one only encounters in chefs—more than compensate. And you never know where that generosity might lead you. Back in the fall of 2006, during a discussion of the best turkey roasting methods with my colleague Lillian, I told her about my vision for a best-of-all-possible-worlds Thanksgiving. “Come with me,” she said promptly. “I have something for you.” It turned out there was an extra Bell & Evans bird down in the test kitchen. Did I want it? I did. But that was only the beginning. “You need aromatics,” Lillian announced firmly, passing me several freezer bags packed with vegetable parings. “Wait, where are you going? Don’t forget the turkey stock.” One grocery bag was filled, then another. What ensign wouldn’t seize the helm?

That first Gobble night was too much of everything: food, labor, stress. Everything, that is, except space—my modest dining room couldn’t accommodate fifteen guests. “Could. Not. Eat,” says my brother, Alex, when he remembers that evening, gritting his teeth like a superhero whose powers are being taxed beyond measure. “No. Room. On. Table. For. Plate.” But the food, oh, the food! People still reminisce over the butternut squash and creamed-spinach gratin. It should have taken me 1¼ hours to prepare—and as the person who fact-checked that recipe, you might say I had a moral obligation to clock in at under 75 minutes—but just slicing the squash into ribbons took me almost twice that long. Then again, what was two hours? Planning the menu, scouring a dozen Brooklyn markets for ingredients, set up, clean up, not to mention the cooking itself—a good week of my life went into that first dinner. Like any Herculean endeavor, it didn’t seem worth it. But then, after the final guest departed and the final dish was put away, came the afterglow.

By the following year, I was proficient enough in the language of the recipes not simply to follow the instructions, but to anticipate them: which vegetable would enter the pot next, when a hot liquid needed to cool off slightly before being incorporated into the remaining ingredients. That increased facility, combined with a Greek chorus of admonishments from the food editors—“Trust me, you don’t need five vegetable sides.” “Don’t bother flavoring the whipped cream.” “Outsource!”—made the second dinner far less demanding than its predecessor. (Although I realized I might have taken the outsourcing thing too far when my friend Daniel and his pals from Stockholm heroically carted six chairs and two enormous pots of caramelized-garlic mashed potatoes all the way from the West Village.) But these tactical advances—including turning my bedroom, the largest room in the apartment, into a makeshift dining room—didn’t preclude new errors. Reasoning that I’d have more prep time if I held the dinner on a Sunday night, it never occurred to me that at 4 am Monday morning I’d still be in the kitchen, grimly rinsing pans.

Last year the guest list reached 25 people, but by that point the ritual was so familiar that it didn’t occur to me to panic. And, in fact, there was only one tiny snag. Picking up my pre-ordered foie gras from a local shop the morning of the dinner, I realized I’d procured exactly that: a naked lobe of foie gras requiring hours of deveining, prepping, and seasoning. (If any of my friends noticed that their toasts with Sauternes gelée were in fact topped with chicken-liver mousse, they were kind enough not to mention it. Of course, some of them might have been relieved.) In the eternal dinner party battle between the immovable object of logistics and the irresistible force of pleasure, pleasure had triumphed. As I looked at my friends, their faces limned in gold by the flickering candlelight, something settled inside me. I had this night. I had them. And the unspoken corollary—the thing I didn’t bother thinking about, because by now it was as natural as breathing—was that I had
Gourmet
.

This September, when it came time to fact-check the Thanksgiving menus for the November issue, it took me just minutes to pick my favorites: roast turkey with cream gravy, bacon smashed potatoes, pumpkin gingerbread trifle. Perfect. What I didn’t realize—what I still haven’t quite realized—is that I was working on the last issue of Gourmet ever. Next Thanksgiving, as cooks across the country don their aprons, for the first time since before America entered World War II, the magazine won’t be around to help.

How does one mourn the loss of a cultural institution? It is a death, to be sure, but the grief is more amorphous, less straightforward, than what you feel for a person. It’s like passing by your childhood home, now in a strange family’s hands; like finding out that the library where you whiled away your adolescence has been torn down. Something you loved dearly is gone forever, and it is beyond your power to get it back. Yesterday, you were part of 69 years of collective wisdom; today, you are meeting with HR; tomorrow, you are once again just another unemployed thirtysomething with a passion for food. Ensign, where’s your ship?

The only possible answer to that question lies in action. You’ve lost
Gourmet
.What do you do? You cook, of course.You start small, with the dishes you’ve made so often you know them almost as well as their creators: Gina’s seven-layer salmon bites, Paul’s egg salad with fennel and lemon, Maggie’s chocolate babka. Then, when you’re ready, you slowly leaf through all your old issues, recalling not just the dishes you made but—more important—all the ones you had once planned to make. All the phantom culinary visions that, unlike Gobble Gobble Night, were never realized. Remember that snowy Sunday in February when you were too sleepy to bother with the coffee-glazed doughnuts? Or how you gave up on preparing the Danish menu from the March 2007 issue because you couldn’t find five dinner guests who, like you, were part Danish? You didn’t do it then, but dammit, you’re doing it now. You’re tackling all the things that frustrate you, the things you’re still terrible at, like pastry dough and anything involving a mandoline. Because while it’s true that, having lived with
Gourmet
, you’re now in a better position to live without it, there’s a more enduring truth. You just don’t want to.

RECIPE INDEX

Roasted Garlic Guacamole with Help-Yourself Garnishes (from “Avocado Heaven”), pp..

Sardines in Escabeche (from “Sardines!”), pp..

Fancy Meatloaf (from “Potlucky”), pp..

Turkey Meatloaf (from “Potlucky”), pp..

Perfect French Fries (from “How to Make Perfect Thin and Crispy French Fries”), pp..

Rôties à la Crème ou au Lait (from “Rather Special and Strangely Popular: A Milk Toast Exemplary”), pp..

Milk Toast (from “Rather Special and Strangely Popular: A Milk Toast Exemplary”), pp..

Betty Gilbert Roberts’s Sour Cream Pound Cake (from “People of the Cake), pp..

Pan-Seared Trout with Mint-Cilantro Chutney (from “Does a Recipe Need to Be Complicated to Be Good?”), pp..

Gumbo z’Herbes (from “God Loves You and You Can’t Do a Thing About It”), pp.

PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made to all those who gave permission for written material to appear in this book. Every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders. If an error or omission is brought to our notice, we will be pleased to remedy the situation in subsequent editions of this book. For further information, please contact the publisher.

“The FedEx Meal Plan” by Brett Martin. Copyright © 2009 by Brett Martin. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
GQ
, November, 2009.

“Forgotten Fruits” by Gary Paul Nabhan. Copyright © 2009 by Gary Paul Nabhan. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Saveur
, October, 2009.

“And You Will Know Us By the Trail of German Butterballs” by Jonathan Kauffman. Copyright © 2009 by Village Voice Media. Used by permission of Village Voice Media. Originally appeared in
Seattle Weekly
on July 1, 2009.

“Soul Food” by Amanda M. Faison. Copyright © 2010 by
5280: Denver’s Magazine
. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
5280: Denver’s Magazine
, April, 2010.

“The Need for Custom Slaughter” by Barry Estabrook. Copyright © 2010 by Barry Estabrook. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared on
politicsoftheplate.com
, January 20, 2010.

Excerpt from the book
Eating Animals
by Jonathan Safran-Foer. First published in
The New York Times Magazine
, copyright © 2009 by Jonathan Safran-Foer. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company. All rights reserved.

“Attack of the Anti-Meat Crusaders!” by Lessley Anderson. Copyright © 2010 by Lessley Anderson. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared on
chow.com
on January 15, 2010.

“Dear Zagat: A Hearty Thanks for Your 30 Years of Service. Now Go Away.” by Tim Carman. Copyright © 2009 by
Washington City Paper
. Used by permission of
Washington City Paper
. Originally appeared in
Washington City Paper
, September 18, 2009.

“El Bulli Gets Bested” by Carla Capalbo. Copyright © 2010 by Carla Capalbo. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared on
zesterdaily.com
, June 1, 2010.

“Anonymous Online Reviews Affecting Twin Cities Eateries” by Rachel Hutton. Copyright © 2009 by Village Voice Media. Used by permission of Village Voice Media. Originally appeared in
City Pages
on November 26, 2009.

“Fried in East L.A.” by Jonathan Gold. Copyright © 2009 by Village Voice Media. Used by permission of Village Voice Media. Originally appeared in
LA Weekly
on November 26, 2009.

“New Zion Barbecue” by Patricia Sharpe. Copyright © 2009 by Patricia Sharpe. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Saveur
, July, 2009.

“Kyoto’s Tofu Obsession” by Adam Sachs. Copyright © 2010 by Adam Sachs. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Bon Appétit
, February, 2010.

“Time to Respect the Ramen” by Kevin Pang from the
Chicago Tribune
, April 15, 2010. Copyright © 2010 by the Chicago Tribune. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of the material without express written permission is prohibited.

“World’s Best Sommelier vs. World’s Worst Customer” by Frank Bruni. Copyright © 2010 by Frank Bruni. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Food & Wine
, January, 2010.

“Nights on the Town” by Patric Kuh. Copyright © 2010 by Patric Kuh. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Saveur
, March, 2010.

Au Revoir to All That
by Michael Steinberger. Copyright © 2009 by Michael Steinberger. Reprinted by permission Bloomsbury USA.

“A Remembrance of Things Present” by Alexander Lobrano. Copyright © 2009 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Originally appeared in
Gourmet
, July 2009.

“The Perfect Chef ” by Todd Kliman. Copyright © 2010 by Todd Kliman. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
The Oxford American
, April, 2010.

“Killer Food” by Dana Goodyear. Copyright © 2010 by Dana Goodyear. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
The New Yorker
, April 26, 2010.

“Sweet Life” by Francis Lam. Copyright © 2000 by Francis Lam. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Gourmet
, October, 2009.

“Gino Cammarata, Gelato King” by Sarah DiGregorio. Copyright © 2009 by Village Voice Media. Used by permission of Village Voice Media. Originally appeared in The Village Voice on August 4, 2009.

Excerpt from “Will Work Nights” from
Cooking Dirty: A Story of Life, Sex, Love, and Death in the Kitchen
by Jason Sheehan. Copyright © 2009 by Jason Sheehan. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

“Russ & Daughters” by Rachel Wharton. Copyright © 2010 by Edible Manhattan. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Edible Manhattan
, March/April 2010.

“Pig, Smoke, Pit” by John T. Edge from the
New York Times
, June 10, 2009, Copyright © 2009 by the New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of the Material without express written permission is prohibited.

“Avocado Heaven” by Rowan Jacobsen. Copyright © 2010 by Rowan Jacobsen. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Eating Well
, March/April, 2010.

“The Kimchi Fix” by Jane Black. Copyright © 2010 by The Washington Post Writers Group. Used by permission of CCC. Originally appeared in the
Washington Post
, January 20, 2010.

“Sardines!” by Jeff Koehler. Copyright © 2009 by Jeff Koehler. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Tin House
, Spring 2009

“Rare Breed” by Molly O’Neill. Copyr ight © 2009 by Molly O’Neill. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Saveur
, November, 2009.

“The Charcuterie Underground” by Mike Sula. Copyright © 2009 by the
Chicago Reader
. Used by permission of CCC. Originally appeared in the
Chicago Reader
, November 26, 2009.

“Wines for Drinking, Not Overthinking” by Salma Abdelnour. Copyright © 2009 by Salma Abdelnour. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Food & Wine
, October, 2009.

“Moxie: A Flavor for the Few” by Robert Dickinson. Copyright © 2009 by Robert Dickinson. Used by permission of CCC. Originally appeared in
Gastronomica
, Winter 2009.

“Potlucky” by Sam Sifton from the
New York Times Magazine
, July 26, 2009, Copyright © 2009 by the New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of the Material without express written permission is prohibited.

“All That Glitters” by Janet A. Zimmerman. Copyright © 2010 by Janet A. Zimmerman. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
The Daily Gullet
, the literary magazine of the eGullet Society of Culinary Arts & Letters at eGullet.org., May 17, 2010.

“The Juicy Secret to Seasoning Meat” by Oliver Strand. Copyright © 2009 by Oliver Strand. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Food & Wine
, July, 2009.

“Feed It or It Dies” from
52 Loaves
by William Alexander. © 2010 by William Alexander. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.

“How to Make Perfect Thin and Crisp French Fries” by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Copyright © 2010 by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared on
seriouseats.com
, May 28, 2010.

“Rather Special and Strangely Popular: A Milk Toast Exemplary” by John Thorne. Copyright © 2009 by John Thorne. Used by permission of the author.

“What’s the Recipe” by Adam Gopnik. Copyright © 2009 by Adam Gopnik. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
The New Yorker
, November 23, 2009.

“My Inner Child” by Charlotte Freeman. Copyright © 2009 by Culinate, Inc.. Reprinted by permission of the Culinate, Inc. Originally appeared on
culinate.com
, December 29, 2009.

“People of the Cake” by Diane Roberts. Copyright © 2010 by Diane Roberts. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
The Oxford American
, April, 2010.

“Yancey’s Red Hots” by Wright Thompson. Copyright © 2010 by Wright Thompson. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
The Oxford American
, April, 2010.

“Computers or Cookbooks in the Kitchen?” by David Leite and Renee Schettler. Copyright © 2010 by David Leite and Renee Schettler. Reprinted by permission of the authors. Originally appeared on leitesculinaria. com, March 15, 2010.

“Does a Recipe Need to Be Complicated to Be Good?” by Monica Bhide. Copyright © 2010 by Monica Bhide. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared on
monicabhide.com
, March 28, 2010.

“Chapter 18” from
Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer
by Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal, copyright © 2009 by Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal. Used by permission of The Penguin Press, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

“A Glutton for Gluten” by Jess Thomson. Copyright © 2010 by Jess Thomsen. Reprinted by permission of the author. Originally appeared on
leitesculinaria.com
, April 5, 2010.

“The Doughnut Gatherer” by Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl. Copyright © 2009 by Dara Moskowitz Grumdhal. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared in
Minnesota Monthly
, June, 2010.

“Home Run” by Roy Ahn. Copyright © 2009 by Roy Ahn. Used by permission of CCC. Originally appeared in
Gastronomica
, Fall 2009.

“God Loves You and You Can’t Do a Thing About It” from
Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life
by Kim Severson. Copyright © 2010 by Kim Severson. Used by permission of Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

“This Thanksgiving, Moving Beyond Gourmet (Magazine)” by Marisa Robertson-Textor. Copyright © 2009 by Marisa Robertson-Textor. Used by permission of the author. Originally appeared on
thefastertimes.com
, November 24, 2009.