Delectations

IT CERTAINLY beats me why people buy so many new cookbooks ~ when they could cook just as well from the ones they have. I guess it is for the same reasons that make people go in for Zen, when they could perfectly well become spiritual by taking their Christian backgrounds seriously. What it comes down to is that we want a kick in the behind, a painless one, one that does the work of becoming a better cook or a nobler mind for us so that we don’t have to. make the effort for _ ourselves. I am all for kicks that make life in the kitchen more interesting, including a little nip here and there, the way French and Irish cooks cheer themselves. But what is the matter with us that we can’t get out of the kitchen doldrums, that the chasm between our higher culinary aspirations and our daily cooking remains so wide? Here we sink into one level of cooking, and stay there, come hell or new cook- ‘ books. Whether it is a filet mignon or frozen fish stick level, it is as deadly in _ the long run as a voice with no inflections and one tone only. Yet cooks _ptide themselves on this steadiness, _ just as if they were trains that have to _ keep to a track, rather than free-wheeling jeeps. Its obvious that we suffer from sloth, from minds that contain no more : than five dishes and from a mental block about food. Our sloth gets hid- . den behind such excuses that the loved ones don’t want to eat something different from what they’ve always eaten, _ Patent tommyrot considering that the _ loved ones, depending on their age and Money, either frequent restaurants _ Whenever the expense account allows or throw table tantrums, refusing to ‘at. Our poor little minds simply can’t fetain the fact that there is something besides hamburger, steaks and frozen Peas, and no harder to rustle up than : these. Store cupboards and refrigerators bulge with possibilities, but bloom unseen. The mental block about food is probably the worst, since it is very hard to rid oneself of all the old wives’ tales about what is right or wrong eating. Take the sacred three meals a day, when doctors have said over and over again that a larger number of small meals is much more healthful and makes one much less fat. Then there is the breakfast myth. Why bacon and eggs and cereal when somebody may like curried shrimps or lentil soup so much better? Why can’t it be recognized that many children (as my own) loathe eating in the morning as much as many adults? Why not let them have a glass of milk, or a piece of salami, canned ravioli or cookies? They can eat all the things they should have later in the day. What about the size of a meal? It’s mental too. A man may not feel like a roast beef dinner, preferring to gorge on frankfurters and beans. He’ll say the first is too much, when in fact, it is no more than the second. The standard of meals, too, is a pain in the neck. Why must meals always be good, or superb, or well-balanced? Many times we are simply not up to them, just as we are not up to dressing charmingly, elegantly or even neatly. And what is all that nonsense about family meals promoting family feelings of love and togetherness? Most of them do quite the contrary when they are constantly enforced. First of all, most of the time children and parents just want to eat and get it over with. Second, family meals with small children and their beastly table manners are hell, whereas older children, as I said, want to get out as fast_as they can. I admit that, for a family, it is more practical to cook all the food at one time, but why, when the atmosphere is thick as it frequently is in family life, why not let the members eat separately or read during the meal? From experience I know that it is so much better not to irritate the loved ones with unimportant rules. Then you have a_ bargaining point when it comes to important things, e.g., dating, cars and drinking. Part of all the trouble that makes for the boredom of our daily cooking is that we think far too much about food—but in a wooly, guilty and last- — minute way. It is a poor approach, like crossing a river on whatever ice floes we can find. Some rivers may be full – of them, just as some minds are full of good recipes at the time they need and want them, but most rivers and minds are sparsely furnished. And since we _ do aspire to improve our kitchen hab- — its, witness the stream of cookbooks and all the cut-out recipes, I think that the only way to do this is to apply the principle that lies behind diving into water. You plan beforehand how you are going to do it, because once you’ve jumped you’ve got to follow your course or you’ll come to grief. I, COOKING, this comes to an all-over — planning session, once a week, or a fortnight, or a month, depending on temperament and kitchen facilities. The thing to do is to sit down in peace and — quiet, a cup of coffee or a drink at hand, with all the cookbooks, and all the clipped recipes, and all the expressed desires of the loved ones, around oneself. Peruse, study, weigh, and then write down what you would like to cook and they would like to eat. But give yourself leeway, making meals reasonably interchangeable so that people don’t have to eat just that one dish © when they don’t feel like it; this is especially important in summer. Then, prepare and cook as many things at one time as you possibly can; __ an enormous number of dishes can be _ kept in a simple refrigerator when a : freezer is not there, and they can be combined or tarted up in many different ways at mealtime. Furthermore, the __ cook, in order to avoid feeling, looking _ and acting like a tired saint, should allow herself plenty of time for her own pet projects. In all of us who cook all the time there is a yearning for the finer, higher things, for stuffed chickens, truffled patés and Saint Honorés. | Let us give in to these lovely desires, and set aside the long, unhurried hours © it takes to make these dishes. A cooking morning or evening, a Saturday or Sunday, when nothing is allowed to interfere with one’s project, when one can flute mushrooms in dedicated quiet and peace, are as much as a balm to. the cook as lotion is to a sunburned — skin. In these hours we can even recapture the times when it was fun to cook for a beau or a new husband or party, and when we thought how much fun it would be to cook all the time.