Alchemy

Cooking is magic. It is. If you cook, you already know this. If you don't cook, I'll ask you to trust me on this point. Someone, I'm not sure who--and it may, in fact, be the omnipotent They we all talk about but never actually meet--got this idea to convince people that cooking is difficult, not meant for normal people unless it includes Miracle Whip, Cool Whip, and powdered cheese. Any other food preparation must, by rights, include so many ingredients and so many preparation steps as to place the scientific art beyond the reach of mere mortals. The people, though unwilling to give up their rights to semi-automatic weapons, were happy to abdicate the rituals of food preparation and to embrace their collective culinary incompetence.

After this initial perversion occured, other someones decided that this particular fact provided the basis for turning a neat profit. "Who are we to argue?" they intoned like a Greek Chorus with cardboard and wax paper accompaniment. Cookbooks, once a place to save bursts of genius or comfort, became sophisticated How To manuals. Julia Child and Graham Kerr slugged wine while demonstrating the techniques in controlled settings that implied that only those with a staff to provide pre-measured ingredients in clear glass ramekins of varying sizes could possibly manage the feat of preparing a meal with more than one dish. Experimentation was forbidden beyond the occasional and impossibly sexy act of adding one unmeasured ingredient: a flowing splash of wine, perhaps, or sprinkling of chopped parsley on a plate. Our impulses toward wholesale kitchen creativity were stemmed by tips on how to count while the wine flowed to insure that one didn't over-pour and, thus, decimate the painstakingly constructed food item in question. Mr. Kerr added the money shot to each program by sampling that episode's foods, chewing with an exaggerated and blatantly orgasmic assortment of facial contortions and moans.

Weary mothers of small children introduced small television sets into their kitchens so that they could cook along with their pixillated mentors. They galloped toward the smug self-esteem of Haricot Verts avec Buerre Blanc. Green beans and butter didn't stand a chance.

Next came packaged foods and mixes. The purveyors of these 'foods' sang the praises of their convenience. At last! Real solutions for real homes! Who has time to boil and mash potatoes? Just boil some water, stir in this white powder and have at it! The promise was that hours of inefficiency would be relieved. People wanted to believe this. People trained themselves to believe that mashed potatoes from flakes tasted as good as mashed potatoes from ... potatoes. They didn't, of course, but so what? The astronauts drank Tang. It had to be good!

My mom stayed with Julia and Graham. Nary a Twinkie darkened our door. She even made her own bread from cracked wheat. I felt like the unluckiest girl in the world. I wanted peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches made on the kind of bread that let the jelly shadow show through. I wanted Wonder Bread that could be squished and compressed into a dense white cube. I wanted instant Oatmeal and McDonald's cheeseburgers. Instead, I got steel cut Irish Oats and steaks from my cousin's pasture fed, nearly organic, cows. We picked apples and berries. She made jams and relishes, sauces, cobblers, soups, and a seemingly endless procession of meals balanced for color, flavor, texture, and nutrition. The unfairness of it all was brutal. How could I ever gain the approval of my peers if I'd never had Cheez Whiz?

Twenty years of mixes and just-add-water marketing began to flag. The affluence of the middle class increased the frequency and quality of dining outside the home. Folks started to smell the smoke that obscured the mirrors of gastronomy. The pressure was on the Sellers to improve their products in the key areas of taste, presentation, nutrition, and chic, all while maintaining a reasonable price. Freezing technology improved, the strategic use of adjectives continued to weave crack-dream illusions, not the least impressive of which was the wholesale prostitution of the word, "fresh". Suddenly things could be both frozen and fresh, canned and fresh, preserved and fresh. As long as they were hydrated and/or maintained their original shape, they could be called fresh.

People arose to exploit the chink in the food industry armor. Playing on the heartstrings of boomer nostalgia (boomers could remember food from before the days of Hamburger Helper), Martha Stewart made millions. More recently, Emeril has seduced millions with his erotic throw-it-together-and-"BAM!" concoctions. The demystification of cooking has spawned an entire television network, not to mention programs shown on other channels. And suddenly the secret is out: cooking just isn't that hard. Even cooking foods from Other Countries is not that hard. Recipes and menus can be tailored to meet demands of preference, time, skill, and budget with an ease that approaches alarming.

Now we can get to the real magic, the information that was once so well known as to be beneath discussion, things like: how a few simple ingredients can be combined and prepared in dozens of ways, with very different outcomes; or how easy it really is to set up a rotating larder, plan meals, and simplify the whole "what's for dinner" process; how accessible it all is.

Today, I had my own epiphany. It was about custard. My whole life, one of my very favorite things to eat has been custard. I've probably had it fewer than a dozen times ... in nearly 41 years. Why? Because I assumed from it's delicate texture that it must be impossibly difficult and time-consuming to make, that it must require a finesse that I not only didn't possess but was far too old to learn. It's been raining for two solid days and I've not had enough sleep. My body is cold and not up to the task of eating. I decided to just look at a custard recipe and see what was involved. In less than four minutes my treat was in the oven. It only took that long because I had to wait for water to boil for the bath around the custard bowl. It was easier than making scrambled eggs! 50 minutes later, I returned to the kitchen and pulled my first baked custard out of the oven. It's gorgeous! Light, delicate, yummy. My only criticism is that I'll use less sugar next time.

Making this custard involved the use of one bowl (it was also baked in it), four eggs, two cups of milk, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla extract, 1/4 tsp of salt, nutmeg, and a whisk. That's IT. No special beating instructions. No greasing pans. No walking lightly lest it falls. Just boil some water, put it in a bigger pan, set the custard bowl in it, put it in a 325 degree oven and wait.

40 years old and just now unveiling the mystery of custard.

It's good to be me.

~M

Copyright 2004 Seasmoke All rights reserved