With Love and Quiches (3 page)

When our lease on the tiny apartment was up, we bought our first small home, a bit further east on Long Island in a nice suburban neighborhood, but we moved back home to my parents’ house for six months during the transition. That meant six more months of Evelina’s divine cooking, with a side benefit of occasional babysitting from Mom, Dad, or Evelina. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t the same house I had grown up in. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, in that house, my childhood home, we had an ancient refrigerator in the basement. When I was away at college, an electrical fire started in it, and our home and almost everything in it were destroyed. It was a true tragedy, but my parents rebuilt it exactly as it had been. (Years later, I would come to see this as the first in what would become a long line of freezer-related disasters.)

But once Irwin and I had finally settled into our new home, I found myself fairly grounded. This was during the early to mid-sixties; we were part of the Woodstock generation and were semi-hippies—or at least we pretended we were. But in reality, our life together looked pretty conventional. I’d accepted by then that I would probably never get to teach high school, and I was okay with that. I was happy staying home to raise my children, having no real desire at the time to do something outside the home.

But as months turned into years and the children grew out of infancy, I found myself feeling increasingly stuck at home and bored. I was cooking, but not in a particularly creative way. In keeping with the era, I made plenty of casseroles with string beans bathed in Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and topped with O&C onions. Another plebian creation was Swedish meatballs stewed in a mix of half grape jelly, half ketchup. I soon realized that this wasn’t working for me. It was against my innate style, and something needed changing. Fortunately, I had plenty of time on my hands, so I started reading cookbooks and cooking magazines from cover to cover. Slowly but surely, I felt my
passion for all things culinary rekindling. Then I started cooking—
a lot
. And so it began.

During that time, I eagerly collected
Gourmet
magazine, which had been around since 1941. I used to mark up each issue as if I were studying for an exam, and I kept a notebook where I noted where to find what in the various issues. (Since I never parted with even one issue, I ended up with a forty-five-year collection that I kept until we sold our house and moved into an apartment. I couldn’t bear to throw them away, but neither eBay nor the local library would take them, so we finally had to put them out at our tag sale.)

I also discovered Julia Child’s
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
, first published in 1961. I became obsessed with both. Starting in the sixties, Time-Life Books published a fabulous series of cookbooks called Foods of the World, with each book written by an expert in the cuisine of a different region of the world. There were at least twenty books in this series with titles such as
American Cooking, The Cooking of China, The Cooking of the Caribbean Islands, The Cooking of Vienna’s Empire
, and
Classic French Cooking
. I collected them all and used them until most of the pages were dog-eared and stained with all manner of food.

As was popular during that era, we started a gourmet dinner club once a month with our other young married friends, where we each brought a different course for the meal. It wasn’t as boring as it may sound because my friends were
really
good cooks. Exposed to the talents of others, my passion for food kept building.

In this time (and, honestly, ever since) I was more of a chef than a baker. Racks of veal, potatoes Anna, beef tenderloin with bordelaise sauce, ratatouille, mushrooms in a myriad of ways—these were the dishes that had my attention. To this day, I have never baked an apple pie—or any covered pie, for that matter! I have never personally baked a layer cake, never made a traditional frosting, never made any of the all-American kinds of desserts. Instead I did mousses, dessert soufflés, tarts, homemade rich ice creams, and sauces.

Just like Julie in the film
Julie & Julia
, I learned most of my techniques from Julia Child. I read
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
as if it were the Bible. Every recipe in that book, in my opinion, is perfect. All the advice in it is invaluable, and I still know and unconsciously use those principles to this very day.
Splendid Fare: The Albert Stockli Cookbook
is another source that I relied upon. In it is an exquisite
tarte à l’oignon
and a perfect Cumberland sauce, made with currants and port—a great sauce to serve with almost anything, and it lasts forever in the fridge. Albert is a famous chef I knew, if only because Irwin and I made a pilgrimage once a year to his restaurant, Stonehenge, in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Albert once told me during one of our dinners there that ketchup, in his opinion, was one of the most perfect sauces ever created.

I learned to cook before the world was aware of cholesterol. The over-the-top richness of some of my dinner guests’ favorites (and mine) takes my breath away. One recipe was homemade crêpes stuffed with brie, dipped in beer batter, and deep fried in a cauldron of clarified butter! Another dish was my Crêpes Soubise, which were plate-sized homemade crêpes laid flat and alternately layered with a béchamel sauce to which caramelized sweet onions and grated Gruyère had been folded in; I would keep going until the tower of crêpes and sauce was at least ten layers high and then bake it until it was bubbly. I would serve this in wedges as a first course. My friends would nearly swoon as they ate it. My liver pâté, made before I had ever heard of foie gras, had more butter and heavy cream in it than liver.

My most sought-after dessert was homemade almond tuiles: crisp, crackly, plate-sized cookies that I would alternately layer with my homemade deep-dark bittersweet chocolate ice cream. Like my Crêpes Soubise, I would also serve this dessert tower in wedges with Crème Anglaise and berries. I believed then, as I do now, that overindulging once in a while is one of the great pleasures in life.

In 1970, we moved from our first house into a lovely Tudor home in Hewlett Harbor, on the south shore of Long Island. Our dark oak-paneled dining room was very dramatic and much like a movie
set. During our very first dinner party there, twelve of us were seated around the table in this baronial setting when my dear friend Jack looked up and said, “Maybe we better eat quick and get the hell out of here before the real owners come home!”

It was in our home in Hewlett Harbor that dinner parties became more than just a hobby. I now had the perfect setting for a real affair. I loved to plan, shop for, and prep for these dinners. I loved the orchestration and the whole week leading up to them. By then we had a housekeeper, a woman from Belize named Bridget. Tall and elegant, with a regal bearing, Bridget served as sous chef while I cooked. It was serious business: I
never
bought anything prepared and even made my own crackers for cheese; I kept voluminous records of what I served and to whom; and I never repeated a menu or dish unless my friends begged me, which began to happen with more and more frequency. Eventually, my dinner parties became so highly anticipated that my friends started trading invitations to them.

The attention to detail I honed at this time, along with many other skills, served me well once the story of my business began.

I was having the time of my life throwing dinner parties, yet there was something else tugging at me even then. As I played the part of young society matron, volunteering at charity events, playing tennis, and so on, a hollow feeling crept in. I felt as if I were merely playing a part. Something whispered to me: I didn’t feel genuine; I needed something more. Yet for the moment, I just kept cooking and entertaining my friends.

As I honed my skills, I was inadvertently building my reputation as a very good cook among a wider audience than just my friends. Consequently, I was invited to give demos at Macy’s, other local department stores, and the local library, where I once found myself side by side with Jacques Pépin (when he was not yet “the” Jacques Pépin, celebrity chef and sidekick to Julia Child).

This all led to an invitation to teach a series of cooking classes on the north shore of Long Island to raise money for charity from ORT America, an organization that promoted Jewish values through educational programs all over the world. They offered to pay me! I wanted this so badly that I could taste it. I hoped it would be a remedy for the hollowness, that my time had come. I couldn’t type and had no résumé since I had never had a job, so I
hand wrote
a laundry list of everything I loved about food and wanted to demonstrate in my classes. This is what I submitted as my application.

When we sold our house a few years ago, I came across that “application,” and the list was quite hilarious. Tears of laughter ran down my face as I read it. The language was so flowery and overly dramatic! And the scope of what I said I would cover in the nine sessions was breathtakingly overambitious. I even called the participants “girls.” (This document did land me the job, however, at what I thought was a very impressive $150 per cooking class!) Here are some excerpts:

I create an analogy between painting and cooking. I love to cook and find it creative, challenging and really satisfying. A fine dinner or dish must balance color, texture, form and taste. Its final presentation in its very own way combines all of these parts, as a painting does. What we choose to serve and how we present it helps create the atmosphere for any gathering.
    I have learned during my years at serious cooking that there are some very basic principles and techniques that, once mastered, can give us the necessary tools for improvising and inventing things on our own that are unusual or express our own personalities. I will try to be representative in the foods I choose to demonstrate using as broad a spectrum and basics as I have the time for and I feel the girls taking the courses are ready for. I’ll also keep in mind
that we, as hostesses, want to be able to enjoy our own parties as well as our guests.
    French cooking techniques form, for me, the basis for expert cooking in any type of cuisine (Spanish, Italian, etc.) though, of course, any national cuisine has parts to it uniquely its own. Some French foods are very delicate, elaborate, classic and some more robust, peasant.
    There are five basic sauces from which practically all other sauces are drawn (Espagnole, Béchamel, Velouté, etc.). These incorporate use of stocks and wines.
    For hors d’oeuvres I will choose perhaps a classic cheese soufflé with lobster sauce. Soufflé techniques, once mastered, can be adapted for sweet or savory dishes, and can be done in advance by several hours if done properly. Quiches and crêpes can be used for gaining knowledge of custards, Béchamel and Hollandaise sauces.
    I do a lot of Italian cooking, especially for my closer friends. Italian cooking is probably more fun but can be quite delicate and subtle, too. A very good dish, very fine, is veal in Marsala wine with prosciutto, eggplant and fon-tina cheese.
    For hors d’oeuvres, my favorite is Pizza Rustica, an extraordinary Italian quiche; sausage in pastry; caponata, a cold eggplant dish that is fantastic when homemade.
    Pasta is easy to make, even easier with a pasta machine: fettuccine Alfredo with white truffles, spaghetti carbon-ara (love it, the best pasta creation, I feel), ziti Siciliana, homemade marinara sauce, light northern Italian meat sauce, clam and lobster sauces. We can work with risotto and make gnocchi or polenta.
    One of the most important techniques, included in so many varieties of desserts, is a successful pastry crust. They
can be made in many ways, some crisper, or sweeter, or more short, or with overtones of wine or including pulverized nuts, or other spices. We can make a poached fruit tart with a frangipane cream, or a pecan tart, or tarts and pies with creams and mousses and other fillings.
    Custards and creams, Bavarians and pastry fillings are a course in themselves. We can make a bread and butter pudding with a fresh raspberry Melba sauce, or a crème brûlée or a chestnut Bavarian with a chocolate sponge, sauce Anglaise, or some elaborate bombe.
    Dessert soufflés and crêpes served with special fillings and sauces are always spectacular. Chocolate is good for the soul. I make a very special French torte called a trianon, which can be served with a praline crème, or sauce Anglaise or sandwiched with a rich pastry filling.
    We will also make some candies. For example, a macadamia or mixed nut brittle and chocolate truffles, which are both easy and elegant.
    If it is preferred, I can substitute the last course for a potpourri of dishes, such as Chinese Peking duck, cassoulet, a very special Spanish paella or Spanish sliced pork or veal with almond sauce and saffron rice, South American or Greek specialties.

While packing up our home of thirty-seven years, I also found all my recipes and notes for those classes in addition to the application. My handwritten recipes and the handouts I distributed to students are also quite hilarious, a combination of useful and
woefully
inadequate. One sheet, for instance, was called “A Well Equipped Kitchen,” and in it I listed wire whisks, wooden spoons, cheesecloth, pastry brushes and feathers, a mouli grater, a food mill (ricer), a fourteen-quart stockpot, a huge mixing bowl, a mortar and pestle, a candy thermometer, and carbon steel knives as essential kitchen elements. Yet I never mentioned saucepans, frying pans, rolling pins,
measuring cups and spoons, slotted spoons, spatulas, pitchers, strainers, cookie sheets, or dozens of other things that even the most basic kitchen would need!

Also on that sheet was a list of “necessary” ingredients; I did only a slightly better job in that one. I deemed meat extract paste, sweet almond oil, and truffles as necessary, but neglected to list salt, butter, canned plum tomatoes, and a dozen other staples.

Perhaps my favorite is my “Hints” sheet, a veritable potpourri of advice, some of which I seemed to have taken out of thin air! (The bracketed comments are my present-day responses as I reread the Hints.) Try not to laugh too hard when you read this sampling.