Butchblog

My mother was not a good cook. Judging by the final products, I don’t think she liked preparing food or cared much about either taste or presentation. I remember sad-looking greyish liver and onions, and boiled chicken—also grey. I did like the hotdogs on buns dinner, served with baked beans from a can. My father didn’t cook at all. I would have been shocked to see him even crack an egg. It was the fifties, so none of this was surprising. My thought at the time, as much as I gave it any thought, was, this is what people eat. I don’t like it, but what are you gonna do? Maybe Mom was ahead of her time. She had other stuff on her mind—she had a job and was an artist, and didn’t feel obligated to be the super housewife. My mother was not the subservient type, not a shrinking violet. She was big and busty and commanded any room she walked into. We were all (including my father) a little bit scared of her. My cousin Barry called her Big Iz, but never to her face. And no one complained about the unappetizing dinners.

            It wasn’t till I went off to college that I had any inkling about doing my own cooking. And even then, only in the most limited sense. Think meat loaf and stuff from cans. Mostly I ate in the student dining hall or at the cheap diners you could find in the town. It’s not that I didn’t know anything about good food. My grandmother, an immigrant from Hungary, was a great cook. I loved going to my grandparents’ house for large family gatherings where Grandmom made us brisket with thick brown gravy, stuffed cabbage (prokas) and butterfly noodles with kasha, a brown grain. And Dad occasionally took the family out to eat—often to Chinatown, where we splurged on egg-rolls and won-ton soup and other exotic fare. I was in heaven then, discovering how exciting food could be and that it could be prepared in many different ways. Somewhere a seed was being planted in my still inchoate brain. I wanted to be able to cook food, but wasn’t yet sure that was a thing a man could or should do.

            It was in my graduate school years when I got a job at a fancy French restaurant in Cambridge that I began to really appreciate food and cooking. It was not a glamorous job; I was the dish-washer and spent most of my shifts working frantically to keep up with the endless barrage of dirty pots and pans and the scraping of food scraps from trays the waiters would dump in front of me. I was surprised how often plates would return with uneaten food—Coq au Vin, half-eaten steaks, full slices of Quiche Lorraine, once even a whole duck. I, of course, did not refrain from scoffing down these delicious left-overs and what I didn’t eat would bring home to have for my next day’s breakfast. Eventually, the chef allowed me to work on some of the meal prep. I did salads and stirred sauces, butchered chicken carcasses and cracked hundreds of eggs. I loved all of it, the chaos of the kitchen as well as the balletic coordination when things were going well. I also learned that the plating was almost as important as the taste of the food itself. Nothing left that kitchen with the slightest trace of spilled sauce or misplaced garnish. Food there was art as well as nourishment.

            During my first marriage I did most of the cooking. My ex-wife might dispute that, but that would likely be a lapse of memory on her part. And anyway, this is my story. She can write her own. I wasn’t forced into doing it; by then I liked cooking and had my own repertoire of dishes, and I think our kids liked my cooking. At least they didn’t complain. On a teacher’s salary, I also had to be somewhat frugal, and my cooking some days reflected that. I hate to admit it, but there was powdered milk being served. But, unlike my mom, I did care about flavor and presentation. And unlike my dad, I was proudly committed to being the main cook.

            Now my wife, Bev, and I alternate cooking days. She’s the more creative chef, constantly trying new recipes, whereas I have mostly settled into prepping those dishes that I’ve made a hundred times before. But both of us cook with care and love and a sense of appreciation for the food and the experience. That, I believe, is part of the good life.