Saturday, May 1, 2010

Survival of the Fittest: Cooking Light

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The sandwich, history tells us, was invented in the 18th century by a guy too busy running the British navy to leave his office for a leg of mutton or some home-cooked calves' brains. Also, he was an earl. So when he asked for two pieces of bread with "something chewy in the middle" to be delivered to his desk, people didn't look at him as if he'd just proposed leasing London to the French. They jumped to it, shouting, "You heard the man! Bread! Sliced meat! On the double!"

Circumstances were not so favorable for the 21st-century South Orange, New Jersey dad who may have devised the single most important modification of the sandwich to date. One day this complex and mysterious figure opened the refrigerator to find that some parts of it were far better stocked than others.

"Looks like it may be bread sandwiches for lunch!" he announced to the three kids peering into the depths of the empty meat tray along with him.

"Don't they always have bread?" one of the kids asked warily.

"Daddy means they only have bread," said his older sister in a tone suggesting she'd been down this sort of road before with Daddy.

"Who ever said that a sandwich has to have something in the middle? If a donut had something in the middle, that wouldn't make it a sandwich, would it?"

There was a pause in which the kids pondered this thought-provoking question. It didn't take long for a counter-proposal to emerge.

"Mommy said we could have turkey burgers."

"That sounds," he said gravely, "like something we'd need to cook."

"You just turn on the microwave. The way you do with those funny, star-shaped things you make us."

"You mean my recipe for Chicken D'etoile?"

History is silent about what exactly happened next. But all the evidence points to the kids continuing to lead healthy and productive lives. Meanwhile the dad was left to ponder why for him "cooking light" does not have to do with calories absorbed from food but those expended by the chef during its preparation.

Still, rumors that it was not always so continue to swirl about him. Hadn't Mario Batali stolen several garnishing secrets from him? Didn't the two of them once sneak into Jacques Pepin's villa in order to cook him a surprise dinner of Pork Shoulder Alla Porchetta? OK, a little more plausibly didn't the Dad in question make crepes for his entire family when he was a mere gangly teenager? Having in a moment of weakness confessed the truth of the last to his wife, she brought it up the next time she caught him opening a can of Spaghetti-O's.

"Let's not romanticize the crepes," he replied. "I left stuff out of the recipe."

"Like what? Aren't they pretty much just flour and water?"

"You had to sift the flour. On top of mixing it with the water. Even at 15 I realized that life is too short."

Such reactions are all too common, driving many a talented chef away from the stove. There really should be a cookbook for people who suddenly find themselves not as hungry as they thought when a recipe turns out to have "steps" or "ingredients." (One of each is enough, thank you!) These are also the people who look carefully at the verbs in each step. "Remove from carton" and "leave alone," or even "abandon," are fine. But it's not a good sign if any part of the process involves both "wringing" and "hammering" as in "wring the bird's neck and then hammer until meat is tender." "Whisk" is a direction to be avoided at all costs unless it refers to the dirty dishes and pans that are to be whisked away by someone else.

Remember that you can always simplify an existing recipe, even if it comes from Julia Child, Batali, or one of the other kitchen greats. For instance, a recipe may in theory call for a "delicate" blanching and then sautéing of bacon before mixing it with braised beef. But already the room is spinning, and you haven't even begun to contemplate all the substances that have to simmer and then be boiled down before sunrise. Fortunately, this recipe can itself be boiled down to the following: "gently pick up phone, allow second or two for it to warm to hand temperature, then order pizza." The cooking time for this Jersey classic is approximately half an hour.

Those who seek to run a more efficient kitchen are sometimes intimidated by fancy names. They worry that a person who has been promised Beef Burgundy will not be satisfied to come home to pizza. But the truth is that, if smart, this person will be satisfied to come home to just about anything that he or she does not have to cook.

Remember too that Burgundy is only a place in France. Behind the dish that bears its name is no doubt a story of a Duke of Burgundy who woke up in the middle of the night craving "a tasty stew flavored with an assortment of herbs and roots from the garden." Since this was a Duke, no one said, "You're kidding? It's three in the morning." They started chopping onions as if their lives depended on it. Which they probably did.

The names "sandwich" and "Beef Burgundy" originated because other people started to ask to have "what Sandwich and Burgundy are having." This soon became abbreviated to "I'll have a Burgundy sandwich; hold the lettuce!"—which was confusing. Eventually, however, the two foods sorted themselves out as it became clear that you should never wrap Beef Burgundy in saran, toss it into a full duffel bag, and expect to be able to wear the clothes in it the next day.

Will the bread sandwich catch on in the same way? The fact that, when its inventor refers to the "family home," he is not talking about a castle may hurt its chances. On the other hand, with all the new culinary ground being broken these days, you never know. Already this sandwich has begun to inspire the next generation of chefs. I recently encountered a 10-year-old boy of my acquaintance eating Nutella right out of the jar. When asked what he thought he was doing, he replied that he was having a Nutella sandwich.

"Where's the bread?" I asked, glancing back and forth between the kitchen counter on which he was standing and the unopened loaf on the toaster.

"Who's to say that a sandwich has to have bread? "

Who indeed? I had come across a reference to Chicken Florentine on the Internet and had been vaguely considering the possibility that it might turn out to be what we were having for dinner. But this thought soon passed.

Life really was too short. I'd have what he was having.

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