Man With a Pan (32 page)

And then we sit and we eat slowly. We can’t eat slowly enough. And we talk, really talk, about ourselves, not the kids. We make plans for the future. We discuss our work and what we hope to do. The conversations have proved to be so fruitful that I’ve taken to keeping a pen and pad at the table, to ensure I don’t forget any good ideas that arise in this very relaxed and fruitful environment.

If the food has been delicious and satisfying and the conversation easy and engaging, one of us will make an obvious glance at the clock. Time is not unlimited—a child needs to be picked up from school at some point, there’s more work ahead. Nor is the next move guaranteed—hoped for, more than half-expected, but not certain. Perhaps one of us is stressed about a work deadline, or an unavoidable conflict has arisen, a much-sought phone interview that could only take place in the middle of things. But it’s that look at the clock that announces intent. And Donna will say something like, “Meet me upstairs?” And then I know that this lardon salad with poached egg and baguette will have its much-desired and perfect conclusion.

Within the hour, life will be as it was, with kids and errands, busyness and work. The midday interlude will fade with the smell of the bacon. But its effects leave the mind and body nourished. I feel good, really good, on these days and think to myself, We have
got
to do this once a week, at
least
.

But we don’t, because work, travel, and schedules conflict. This midday union is a time commitment, but it’s also really important. Just because it’s deeply pleasurable doesn’t mean it’s an indulgence. Think of it as a business lunch, important business for the two of you. Schedule it.

Much is made about families eating meals together: everyone in the house at the table to share the evening meal as often as schedules allow. I believe in this. I believe that the meal is best if it’s prepared with fresh food you’ve cooked yourself. But less commonly noted is the value of a couple—parents—cooking and sharing a meal alone. This is every bit as important in the cooking life of a household.

The chorus of voices espousing the importance of food and cooking is growing for a reason. We’ve realized that cooking is important in ways we never dreamed. I believe that cooking is fundamental to our humanity, that even those who do not cook should spend time around people who are cooking. The work of gathering, preparing, and sharing food makes life better in profound and far-reaching ways for all the people engaged in it, cooks and noncooks alike. Indeed, to argue otherwise would be akin to saying that our sexual lives are likewise unimportant, optional, unnecessary. Yes, we can get by without sex, and far too many likely do; for really the first time in history, we can get by without cooking as well, by eating out or buying all our food precooked, but this, too, is an unhappy and self-diminishing choice.

Which is why I recommend that all couples roast chickens together.

“Can we role-play a couple who are too tired to have sex?”

Recipe File

Roast Chicken for Two (Continued), with Arugula Salad

This serves 2, with enough left over for a chicken salad sandwich the next day (while you’re catching up at work at your desk, and, at least for a moment, thoroughly enjoying your sandwich, you will think about what a wonderful gift a roast chicken can be).

1 3 to 4 pound chicken, cooked as indicated on page 240
6 ounces arugula or mesclun greens
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
½ very good baguette

Remove the chicken from the oven after it’s cooked for 1 hour and allow it to rest for 15 minutes in the pan.

Separate the legs from the carcass so that the juices fall into the pan.

Remove the legs and carcass to a cutting board.

If one of you likes the breast, remove it in one piece from the carcass.

Put the roasting skillet over high heat till the juices come to a boil.

Spoon enough juices and fat over the greens to coat them.

Sprinkle them with enough vinegar to give them flavor.

Divide the greens between two plates and nestle a leg or a breast up against the greens.

Spoon more fat and juices over the chicken.

Serve with a warm baguette and butter.

Herbed New Potatoes

½ to ⅔ pounds small new potatoes or fingerlings
1 ounce butter
1 tablespoon minced shallot
1 tablespoon chopped tarragon
1 tablespoon chopped chives
Kosher or sea salt to taste

Steam or poach the potatoes until tender all the way through (if you’re submerging them in water, keep the water at a bare simmer, not a rolling boil).

Drain in a basket strainer and allow to cool slightly.

Put the butter in the pan you cooked the potatoes in.

Slice the potatoes in half, or in quarters, depending on how big they are.

Return them to the pot and add the shallot, tarragon, and chives.

Stir gently to distribute all ingredients.

Season the potatoes with salt.

Cover and keep them in a warm place (a back burner of the oven is fine) until you’re ready to eat (this can be done before you put the chicken in the oven, if you wish).

To finish, put the pan over a medium burner just to reheat. Add a little more butter or some chicken fat, if you wish.

On the Shelf

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen,
Harold McGee. Revised and updated in 2004, this is the most important book about the hows and whys of cooking at the molecular level, perhaps the most important book about food and cooking written, in my opinion.

Jacques Pépin’s Complete Techniques,
Jacques Pépin. The combined edition of Pépin’s 1970s classics on the French classics. He’s an American treasure.

The All New, All Purpose Joy of Cooking,
Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker. This is the updated and much more informative version of America’s most important recipe book. Contains everything, it seems, and therefore a valuable resource.

The New Best Recipe, Cook’s Illustrated.
For true cooking geeks, the folks at
CI
are maniacs for experimentation.

The Food Lover’s Companion,
Sharon Tyler Herbst. The best all-purpose food glossary I know.

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking,
Marcella Hazan. She’s the authority in America on all food Italian.

The Zuni Café Cookbook,
Judy Rodgers. One of the best chef-writers, Rodgers penned her own book, and it’s masterly.

Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking,
Eileen Yin-Fei Lo. A great and recent resource for the basics of Chinese cuisine.

Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing,
Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. This is a love song to the sausage, and to all things relying on animal fat and salt!

JESSE SHEIDLOWER

Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad

Jesse Sheidlower is editor at large of the
Oxford English Dictionary.
He has reviewed wine and spirits for
Time Out New York
and written about food for
Gourmet.
A regular contributor to
Slate,
he has written about language for a wide range of publications, including the
New York Times,
the
Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s,
and
Esquire.
He lives in Manhattan with improbably large collections of cookbooks, French copper pots, and acoustic guitars.

When I make formal dinner parties, I try to make every dish a special event, something that will impress everyone at the table. The food should be served properly, should look beautiful, should smell glorious. And the first bite should be a surprise.

“Uh, I think I just swallowed a hunk of metal” is not, however, the surprise I’m usually looking for. But when I realized that one of my guests had just bitten into a piece of birdshot in the roasted breast of a wild Scottish wood pigeon, I felt a surge of pleasure. The entire menu was elaborate, beginning with a butternut squash soup with herbed goat-cheese dumplings, and ending with a rum raisin soufflé with burnt caramel sauce. But it was the echt-ness of the pigeon, the proof that it really was wild, killed at a distance by a man with a gun, that made me happy.

I never hunted or foraged myself, and I never served eyeballs or bladders or penises. But there was nothing I was unwilling to try, and when I could serve something that was authentic, whether wild ramps from the Hudson Valley or Scottish game birds, I’d jump at the chance. I fantasized about eating at St. John, the London restaurant where Fergus Henderson formed his “Nose to Tail Eating” philosophy.

It was thus something of a shock to everyone around me when I became a vegetarian.

For many years, I have been a passionate home cook. I prepared elaborate dinner parties, featuring numerous complex courses with matching wines; struggled over planning the menus; worried when food writers were coming over for dinner, afraid that they’d discern how ignorant I truly was. And these dinners always went very well: I grew more skilled over time, and much better organized; I impressed my guests, even the food-savvy ones; I was profiled in a major cooking magazine. When my wife encouraged me to move beyond formal dinners, I also began to cook for parties we called sTews (the spelling started in the mid-1990s as a joke about webzines), in which I would make three or four large pots of stew from different regions and invite several dozen friends over to eat in a more casual atmosphere.

Of course, meat was a main element in all of these parties. I sympathized with aspects of vegetarianism and made a casual effort to get my meat from humane sources, but in the end I liked meat and appreciated its variety too much to even consider removing it from my repertoire. Sure, you can do interesting things with vegetables, and you can make a meal without quail, or foie gras, or pancetta, or chicken stock, or lamb, but why would you?

But dinner parties were never actually enjoyable to me while they happened; the fact of having thrown one was what mattered. The pleasure I got from serving delicious food was quite real, but while the cooking was taking place, I was on the verge of fainting from stress. And they took enormous amounts of planning and energy to pull off. Still, I didn’t know how to stop it.

The intoxication of approval from others was glorious. Once, needing a can’t-fail impressive entrée for a
New York Times
food writer, I stuffed duck breasts with sautéed apples and chestnuts, wrapped them in prosciutto, and browned them ahead of time. The prep took forever, but the execution was fast—I popped them in the oven, put some truffled celery-root puree on the plates, carved the meat, and plated it with a veal-stock-based Calvados sauce. It was undeniably impressive, and when the writer said it was the best dish she had ever had outside of a restaurant, I was high for weeks.

The thing I liked best about hosting dinner parties, though, no one ever understood. I liked the form of social interaction it enabled me to engage in: specifically, none, while still reaping the benefits of good company. I was never very outgoing, socially, and having to make small talk remains almost paralyzingly difficult. By throwing a dinner party, not only could I get a roomful of people to be impressed with me, but I was able to get up and walk out whenever I wanted! There was always a pot of something to stir, a temperature to check. I even tried to explain this to a few people, but no one thought I was serious. As an experiment I once went an entire evening without saying anything other than announcing the courses and excusing myself when I went into the kitchen, and apart from my wife saying, “You were quiet tonight,” everyone thought I was a great host. It was too big a gift for a shy person to give up.

Then, about two years ago, a number of things in my life changed, effectively overnight, and I cannot say exactly why. I curtailed the driving need to e-mail that kept me online until the early morning hours. I reevaluated my obsession with social approval. I realized that going unshaven on the weekends made me look dirty, not cool. I stopped my constant overeating, my tendency to finish large dishes long after my hunger had been sated (which was merely a habit, not some kind of emotional reaction; I never ate as a salve). And I realized that I had been unhappy in my marriage for years, and knew that I could not remain in it.