Food, Glorious Food 2

[2. When you were growing up, what ONE thing did your parents always remind you of, when it came to meal time (or cooking)?]

[There were the usual table manners taught: napkin in the lap, offer a dish to your neighbor before serving yourself, don't chew with your mouth open, ask to be excused. The dinner table was a place where all the issues of the day, macro and micro, got aired, for good and for ill.]

[I also remember Mom making an effort to teach Kate and me to cook. Absolutely invaluable, although I think I learned more from watching her and listening to her and my grandmothers talking about cooking than by actually doing it myself. The kitchen doesn't scare me, and even though I'm no more than adequate in it, I'm game to try any new recipe if given time and ingredients.]

[Lastly: Dad saved my life three times, I think, using the Heimlich maneuver. So, you know....thanks, Dad.]

3. Is there anyone you know whose food you won't eat (for one reason or another)?]

[No. Picky as I still am, I do try to drop hints to my hosts about what I would rather not eat, but once it appears on my plate, I'll make a game effort at least to try everything.]

[4. Is there anything you "specialize" in cooking, that people actually ask for?]

[That would be Meat Log. The nicer word for it is "Italian Meat Loaf," a real-oven adaptation of a recipe from one of those awful Microwave Cookery tomes that were so popular in the early '80s before we all realized the microwave isn't for cooking, but for warming up. The first time I made it for Sean back during our first stint as roommates in Goleta in '91, he called it Meat Log, and the name has stuck amongst the select few who have sampled it and, believe or not, asked for more.]

[I've imparted the recipe here before, but basically it's any combo of ground beef, veal, turkey, pork or pork sausage mixed with the usual meatloaf bindery plus tomato sauce (and jack up the herbs, garlic and onion), then roll up around a filling of grated mozzarella. (That part's tricky, since if you don't create a uniform meat layer, the cheese oozes out and you don't get that desirable meat Twinkie effect.) Bake in foil-covered dish 45 minutes, removing foil during the last 15 and drizzling more tomato sauce and cheese on the top.]

[I know it sounds trashy, but Trashy Is Its Own Cuisine�. We're coming into Meat Log Season, and my stomach is growling as I type this.]

[5. When you were growing up, what one meal do you remember as being your favorite?]

[Despite the sometimes argumentative table hinted at above, my memory of family meals is mostly good, which is why I dream of living again in a household where people (preferably more than two, but that would do if my table partner is right) sit down together, eat, and talk. To me, that's still the default, but various living situations have conspired to deprive me for too long except when I visit my parents, eat at my sister's, or have the occasional meal at Dolores House. Once I have that again at my own place, I'll feel like I've arrived, finally, at home.]

[But this question asks about specific meals, or foodstuffs I remember. Well, there's Christmas (see below), Thanksgiving (turkey, not ham, and we eat in the evening), the occasional Easter leg of lamb, breakfasts (my mom makes great breakfasts, mostly because she loves it herself), and the truly occasional Dungeness crab feed. It's in that last that I respond to those who impugn my avocado-avoidance-based California patriotism...]

[Any day between November and March, buy as many cooked, cracked Dungeness crabs as you want. Probably one per person is adequate, but get more only if you're sure that any leftover will be eaten in the next morning's omelettes...]

[Serve piled high in a giant bowl, with a slightly smaller bowl alongside for shells...]

[Accompany with cold Sauvignon Blanc, green salad, sourdough bread (preferably from Sonoma's Basque Boulangerie, nee Sonoma French Bakery, unchanged in thirty-plus years), lots of butter for the bread, sides of cocktail sauce from the bottle, cocktail sauce mixed with mayo (kind of a spicy, homemade Thousand Island without the pickle relish), and if you're feeling fancy, melted butter...]

[Go to town. If the crabs have been adequately cracked, your should have no need for the nutcrackers you've considerately distributed around the table. The bodies yield the most meat, but the long, buttery, orange-white slabs from the legs and claws are my favorite. The first gobbles don't really require dipping, but by about mid-meal, you do try the dips, but after a few dips, you dig for and eat the sweet flesh unadorned, again and again until you're about to burst.]

[That and dry, sun-bleached hills covered with live oaks are California to me.]

[6. Did your family have particular ethnic foods different from those eaten by your friends?]

[Well, the obvious answer is Christmas, because English is so an ethnic group. On their wedding china, we have the usual starter of Yorkshire pudding, then roast beef with "potatoes around" (i.e. roasted in the same pan as the beef, which these days requires an extra slick of vegetable oil because beeves are too lean to get the spuds crispy) drowned in gravy made from the pan juices, any water from the veggies, wine, and (and this is outre if correct Yorkshire) flour/milk thickening; peas with pearl onions AND creamed pearl onions, Brussels sprouts (boiled to death aussi a la mode de Sheffield ou peut-etre de Leeds); a dish of creamed horseradish; copious amounts of red wine; and apple pie with sharp cheddar (Grandma, R.I.P.), vanilla ice cream, and/or whipped cream for everybody but me - I'm American enough to love Mom's apple pie so much that I eat it plain.]

[So much for tradition. Mom was a true '70s NorCal wife-and-mom, however, and at least a competent cook (and usually better), and she often did make Chinese-esque stir fry; Indian-like curries; stuffed peppers that maybe had a great-uncle from Anatolia; and lots of Mexican-based dishes. She even essayed a successful cheese souffle, once. The fact that none of these was as "authentic" as later examples at various restaurants doesn't detract from the fact that, compared to many of the contemporaneous kids with whom I compared notes, meals at home were relatively adventurous. We had plenty of fish, occasionally liver (beef and chicken), and meats like lamb and veal and venison and rabbit and game hens, at least every once in a while. Thanks, Mom. (And thanks to both of them for, you know, feeding me at all...)]

[7. Today, what is your IDEAL meal?]

[This is the hardest question. I don't know....I'm greedy for different foods at different times, and for different styles of eating. My body does crave vegetables sometimes to an extent that can only be nutritional, not nostalgic. Really, it's about context: fancy restaurant, divey diner, a Double-Double while driving, a solitary plate of crackers and cheese. They all have their place. Right now? As I wrote above, I crave more meals in good, leisured company.]

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