The cook’s in the kitchen

ROBERT GARDNER

For most of my life, I’ve eaten well. My mother was an excellent

cook, who fixed a full dinner for us every night, including dessert,

which was usually pie. She could roll out a perfect crust with just a

few flicks of her rolling pin. In those days, crusts were made with

lard, which I don’t suppose anybody eats these days because of health

concerns, but four of our five family members lived into their 90s,

so it can’t have been too bad for us.

I lived with my sister Jesse for many years, and she was a good

cook, but it looked like my years of eating well might have come to

an end when I got married.

Katy had lived at home, then at the YWCA, and had no experience in

the kitchen. Our first meal was an adventure. Wanting to impress me

with her wifely skills, she pored through women’s magazines for the

perfect recipe. Why a respectable magazine would print the recipe she

chose I can’t say, anymore than I can say why of all the recipes Katy

chose this one. Perhaps it was the familiarity of the ingredients --

potatoes and frankfurters -- but anyway, this was to be her debut.

The recipe directed her to core the potatoes lengthwise, no mean

feat, and then to thread the franks through the hole, not an easy

task, either, but she managed both. She then put them in the oven to

bake, unaware, as the recipe’s creator apparently was, of the

different cooking times each ingredient required.

Never suspecting a problem, Katy took the dish out of the oven at

the required time, put a potato on each plate and proudly brought the

meal to the table. It was a very peculiar looking dish, but I didn’t

want to disappoint her, so I attacked it enthusiastically.

“Wonderful!” I exclaimed in what I consider a neat bit of acting.

Katy beamed, happy with her success, until she cut into her own

potato when she discovered what happens when you cook a potato and a

frankfurter the same amount of time -- the frank dries up and the

potato is still almost raw. One bite and she burst into tears, and it

looked like we might spend the rest of our lives eating in

restaurants, but she persevered, and eventually developed a good if

somewhat conservative repertoire of dishes.

After she died, I had no choice but to step back into the kitchen.

I’d always done a certain amount of cooking. I’d take the remains of

a ham, a packet of split peas, and over a long afternoon and a few

drinks, create a soup that would make Andersen pea green with envy.

Now, however, I was reminded of the difference between cooking on the

rare occasion and cooking every day. I started off with great

ambitions, but each day the menu got simpler, until dinner consisted

of nothing more than a steak and lunch was a carton of yogurt. My

years of eating well were at an end.

Then I broke my hip, and a cook was hired. This seemed like a

ridiculous extravagance to me. Rich people with lots of servants had

cooks, not us ordinary folk. Besides, I still had a refrigerator full

of yogurt. I was persuaded, however, to try it temporarily.

Well, it’s omelets and other extravaganzas in the morning, a

different entree every night and all sorts of surprises in between. I

don’t just get a fresh peach. I get a fresh peach that’s been peeled

and sliced. The orange juice has been squeezed a few minutes before I

drink it, and as for drinks, it’s like having a personal cocktail

waitress.

Now, if she can just figure out that potato and frankfurter

recipe, I may keep her on permanently.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.