Part 13 (1/2)
A woman told us of a meal she cooked for her girlfriend when they were first getting together. It included oysters and a big steak-they're both Texans-but also contained a little surprise, because the one cooking had done some undercover work beforehand. Talking to the mother of her intended girlfriend, she found out what her favorite foods were, then made one of them as well-shrimp remoulade. It made a lasting-an effective-impression that she had taken that extra step to surprise her lover with her secret knowledge of a favorite dish.
Food is used not only to woo someone into bed but into one's life as a new friend, with the possibility of becoming a lover, or not. The food we offer might well lead to marriage, which shows how powerful cooking for another can be.
”The dish that made me marry my husband,” reports one woman, ”was his mole poblano, and the fact that he spent days making it. When I got to his house, there was something in the air I had never smelled before. It was utterly amazing!
”But,” she adds, ”it was also a high-pressure meal. What if I hadn't liked it? I don't know what would have happened. But I did like it. And now he makes his moles in far less time.”
This story was told over a dinner with five Minnesotan women I had met while on a book tour. In answer to my question, what would you cook if you wanted to seduce someone, the youngest woman, a pretty blond publicist about twenty-five years old, shrugged and said that she'd have to make her spaghetti with red sauce because that was all she knew how to cook.
”But,” her companions chimed in, ”cooking anything for someone says that you care!” And the sign of a caring person is no small matter.
A friend of ours was in a professional relations.h.i.+p with a woman for a period of time. When it was clear that part of their relations.h.i.+p should be over so that it might blossom in other ways, he invited her to dinner. But this wasn't merely dinner. It was a meal that invited her into his life.
”I made my usual pasta puttanesca,” he explained, ”but I served it on a large platter. And I cooked a whole pound of spaghetti, which is way too much for two people, but I wanted there to be this feeling of plenty.”
Another special touch came with the tomatoes. ”There were red and yellow tomatoes, but instead of dicing them up as I usually do, I cut them into fans and lay them around the pasta.”
The beautiful presentation, the generous platter that would necessitate the lifting and serving of the pasta, made me think of the Bowerbird arraying his colored stones to attract his mate with the promise of a beautifully furnished home. This meal was a gift, an offering. (And it did work.) Cooking together also has a seductive power. Maybe it's the nerves, the excitement combined with the chances of colliding into each other while stirring the risotto or opening the oysters. And there's the challenge of doing something together that's slightly tricky, like rolling out long sheets of pasta or shaping ravioli.
”We'd make fajitas!” sparked one of the Minnesotans.
Fajitas? I was thinking of foods a little less prosaic than fajitas, but then she added, ”All that chopping and mixing would be fun to do with someone,” and I saw her point. You could make fried egg sandwiches and it would be fun.
”Fondue,” suggested another woman at the table, her choice for a seductive dish. Curious, because fondue is one of those few dishes that involves cooking and eating at the same time.
”The dipping of the bread, the small amounts,” she elaborated, ”we'd feed each other bites of the cheese and wine-soaked bread.”
”Our first date was a cooking date,” Eric says. He's telling me about getting together with the woman he eventually married. ”We made a Spanish dish, a lasagna of sorts. It was so complicated. She was nervous-she cut herself twice. We probably should have made something simpler. It took so long to make that we were exhausted by the time we sat down to eat.”
The first meal I made for Patrick when I knew we'd be spending the night together was a picnic. We met in Phoenix, where neither of us lived, because we were going to hear Ram Da.s.s speak. To be outside in the warm desert air by a pool in winter seemed so luxurious that it never occurred to me to look for a restaurant. Instead, I made a number of small dishes to enjoy poolside-a lentil salad, a very green tabbouleh with tons of parsley and scallions, and roasted peppers with saffron and olive oil. Patrick politely declined all three. Legumes, onions-even in the form of scallions-and peppers, were the three foods that completely undid him, which, of course, I didn't know, so my menu was a flop.
The first food he offered me wasn't exactly seductive either, but it showed me a caring man. At that time I was thinking about marriage, and my mind was already made up about Patrick. He met me at the Little Rock airport with a take-out pizza. My first. The smell of the warm yeasty bread and the melted cheese filled his Astro van as we drove off into the night. The pizza was there in case I got hungry during the long drive to his studio-home in the woods. I was touched that he had even considered that I might be hungry and provided for that possibility.
The second offering came a few days later, on the morning of my departure. I awakened in the pre-dawn darkness to the sight and smell of a plate of slithery fried okra. This was not a food to get or keep me in bed, but I thought that it was a bold and curious move on Patrick's part. The way I saw it, he wanted me to become acquainted with ”his” food. So having fried okra for breakfast was also a way of becoming more deeply acquainted with him. Have we ever fried okra in almost twenty years of marriage? Maybe once. But we've been known to order it at truck stops, mostly out of sentiment.
When we met, as is no doubt true with many couples, we didn't know each other's foodscape at all. He was a vegetarian. I wanted to stop being one. He was an artist and a Southerner; I was a cook and a Yankee. But over the years we've blended many of our tastes. We've also flipped food priorities. He is no longer a vegetarian while I regard my forays into carnivorous foods as nearly complete. When I asked him what he'd cook for me now, he gave me a menu that was oddly but truly ours.
”I'd have a bottle of Veuve Cliquot,” he began. ”And I'd wear an ap.r.o.n with bold stripes, something kind of French looking, not some dorky woman's ap.r.o.n or a farmers market ap.r.o.n. I would have prepared homemade pimento cheese, and I'd make panini out of that, cut it up into little wedges for the appetizer to have with the champagne. I would explain the Southern tradition of pimento cheese, and I'd read a poem where a man is behind a woman in traffic. He sees her b.u.mper sticker and it's offensive to him. So he gets out of his car and goes to her window, but then he finds her very attractive. They wonder if they can ever be friends. I'd write my version of that poem and read it.
”Then I'd open a Ridge Zinfandel, and I'd cook roasted potatoes with salt and grill lamb chops and cook some collards. In summer I'd cook yellow squash on the grill while grilling the chops. That would be dinner.
”Afterward I'd have a salad of limestone lettuce, and then I'd have fancy chocolates and coffee. And I'd read another poem that I'd write for the occasion.”
He even suggested having lots of candles, though he doesn't care about candlelight for himself. But he knows that women like candles.
”And music,” he adds. ”Some impressionistic cla.s.sical music. Debussy. Poulenc, but not the choral music. Ravel, but not the Bolero, of course. Maybe some chamber music. I'd have to give it some thought.”
This would be a quirky and utterly enjoyable meal, and we would share it with pleasure. I would be amused at the pimento cheese and champagne combination, but know that however unusual, it would be good. We would enjoy every swallow of the Ridge until it was gone. I would smile at his poems, and he'd skip the chocolate. The coffee wouldn't be decaf. It would be a long and delicious evening.
And this means a lot because sometimes food can go sideways when couples do, and it's one way you can tell that things maybe aren't so good at home. When my first husband and I were drifting apart, our cooking for one another was one of the signposts that said the nurture had gone out of our relations.h.i.+p.
”Your food is so subtle,” he would say, clearly meaning bland. Then, after asking if I'd mind, he'd dice up a few jalapenos to throw over my goat cheese souffle or roast chicken.
”And your food is inedible,” I thought to myself. I was unable to get down even a mouthful without choking on all those chiles. Every pain-laden bite produced tears.
At a certain point it was clear that we could no longer feed each other. And then, we were no longer a couple, but two single people out in the world once more. In our new lives we were each cooking solo meals, eventually planning a menu or two that might seduce another to join our worlds, and eventually, that happened. Best, we became good friends again. Today we cook and eat together every so often, but when we do, we thoroughly enjoy what have quite clearly become over time, our true culinary differences. Although living in New Mexico has toughened my tolerance for the burn of chiles, my food is still subtle and he still throws chiles on everything. I sputter and cough, and we laugh through it all.
Pimento Cheese Enough for four big panini ”Mother would take blocks of American cheese, jars of Miracle Whip, and cans of pimentos, sit under the post oaks and grind them together with a clamp-on-the-table meat grinder.” That's how pimento cheese was made in Patrick's family.
This version started out pretty much the way Patrick's mother's did, with pimentos and mayonnaise but Cheddar and Jack rather than American cheese. Then, feeling the pimentos were not as tasty as they once might have been, we switched to thick, jarred Spanish peppers and bolstered the mix with smoked paprika, along with plenty of pepper and a little mustard. The resulting cheese, in our a.s.sessment, can be addicting, whether on a cracker or in a sandwich.
8 OUNCES AGED CHEDDAR CHEESE, YELLOW, OR WHITE AND YELLOW MIXED.
13 CUP DICED SPANISH PEPPERS OR 1 (4-OUNCE) JAR OF PIMENTOS 2 TABLESPOONS MAYONNAISE, MORE OR LESS.
2 TEASPOONS MUSTARD.
1 TEASPOON SWEET OR HOT SMOKED PAPRIKA.
FRESHLY GROUND PEPPER-LOTS 1 SLICED SCALLION.
Grate the cheese on the coa.r.s.e holes of a grater or run it through a meat grinder if you still have one. Stir in the peppers, mayonnaise, mustard, and paprika, tasting and adjusting as you go. Finally season with plenty of freshly ground pepper and add the scallion.
Pimento Cheese Panino ”Really it's just a grilled cheese sandwich. Warm grilled sandwiches taste so much better than cold cheese on bread.” That's Patrick's a.s.sessment of this delicious panino.
PIMENTO CHEESE.
TWO LONG SLICES OF BREAD, SUCH AS SOURDOUGH OR COUNTRY FRENCH BREAD.
OLIVE OIL OR b.u.t.tER.
Sandwich the cheese between two slices of bread. Brush with olive oil, then grill in a panini maker until the cheese is melted and soft. Slice diagonally into long fingers, put on a plate, and serve as an appetizer for two or lunch for one.
How to Make Pimento Cheese Pimento cheese did not exist in my Yankee family, so at a recent Mardi Gras party full of Southerners, I asked each of them, ”How do you make pimento cheese?”
Not surprisingly there were as many answers as people asked. Variations abounded on the cheese/pimento/mayonnaise theme: Yellow Cheddar, white Cheddar, both, or American cheese. Pimentos out of a jar or raw bell peppers. Onions, scallions, or no alliums at all. Mustard in addition to mayonnaise-or not. In place of mayonnaise, one woman used cream cheese thinned with milk. Another added diced jalapenos, perhaps a nod to her new home in the Southwest.
Scallops with Slivered Asparagus and Lemony Wine Sauce Once the asparagus are peeled and sliced, this seductive little entree comes together in just a few minutes. You'll be cooking the asparagus in one pot and the scallops in a pan, then making a pan sauce and bringing them together, but it's not so complicated to do this. It's even less so if one person does the asparagus, the other the scallops. Just talk to each other to get the timing right.
Three golden-crusted sea scallops per person should be enough-they're rich and filling.
12 OUNCES ASPARAGUS.
6 LARGE SEA SCALLOPS.
SALT AND PEPPER.
2 TABLESPOONS b.u.t.tER, IN ALL.
1 FAT SCALLION, THE WHITE PART WITH A LITTLE GREEN, FINELY CHOPPED.