Wheat Germ, Lots Of Wheat Germ

Cooking while in RISD wasn’t all fun all the time. Every culinary escapade was not the birthday party that the cranberry orange tea breads were. Remember Adelle Davis? I mean, I’ve still got the cookbooks, so maybe I should give the recipes another try someday. What I do remember about the recipes of hers that I cooked in the hazy 60’s and 70’s is that they resulted in some pretty damn heavy food. She espoused natural unprocessed foods way before many other Berkeley California restaurateurs (Alice, are you reading this?) and I love her for that. But, wowee zowee the Adelle Davis recipes that I cooked weighed in at about 35 pounds per serving. Granted, you might be able to attribute that to my skill level. I remember that many of the recipes called for a lot of wheat germ, which in my memory made for the mother of all sauces (I don’t know what else to call it. Glop?). This glop was an amalgam of the wheat germ and the cooking oil – sunflower oil. We were trying to eat healthy food and be in tune with the planet – the planet being Earth. I specifically state the planet Earth, because someone told me that one night I woke from a deep sleep, sat upright in the bed and said, “It’s my turn to be space cadet”. So, I just wanted to be clear as to which planet I want to be in tune with. My companion and I tried several of the Adelle Davis health food recipes; said companion got sick to her stomach – and it wasn’t because of my cooking. Of course it may have been my cooking – sometimes - maybe.

Adelle Davis circa 1925

I distinctly remember an Adelle Davis baked bean recipe that included, as the primary ingredients, beans and red wine vinegar. There may have been cheese in there as well, but that would just be so wrong! Yes, the recipe called for red wine vinegar. Well I thought that it called for red wine vinegar – 3 CUPS! Any chef that was as practiced and competent as I was at the time knows that many recipes call for multiple cups of red wine vinegar. I mean, it just tastes so good going down. Smooth and full like a classic vintage wine from Missouri or Nebraska. So, I made the recipe with 3 cups of red wine vinegar. Throughout the entire process of making this dish there was this teeny, tiny voice way in the back of my head saying, “three cups of vinegar?”
I ignored this voice as I have always ignored the voices that are in my head. To listen to these voices would be to invite peril, so the voice was ignored. As the dish baked in the oven its fragrance wafted through the apartment. Yes, I thought that I noticed the wallpaper peeling in the room closest to the kitchen, but it was an old apartment with old wallpaper so I just locked that observation away with the voice. And when it was done baking, I ATE THE DAMN THING. I mean sure, my poor terrified, and much wiser than I, companion took a nibble of it and refused the rest. Probably, because the aroma truly made your eyes water. Oh wait, the phrase is ‘mouth watering’, not ‘eye watering’. I continued to eat this insisting that it was absolutely great, and with a flavor like this probably very healthy. As I continued to wolf this down my companion was frantically searching through the phone book for the poison control center number. In hindsight it was not so much ‘great’ as ‘pretty damn interesting’ – for a short period of time. When I was at last able to crawl from the bathroom I reread the recipe discovering that some fiend had cleverly deleted the word ‘vinegar’ from the recipe. It now read, “3 cups red wine”. As I’ve grown older I have found peace with the fact that there is no dishonor in tossing away, by any means, a particularly inedible THING that I’ve created. In fact I’ve done this on several occasions with my cooking and would have liked to on several occasions with other people’s cooking.


David Versus the Hibachi; Guess Who Wins

My culinary triumphs, and failures, continued. I remember the day that I bought my first hibachi. Yeah, I know, you had one too. Everyone in the 70’s and 80’s had one! Cute little 75 pound cast iron hibachis that took two people to move were eventually replaced with Weber grills of all sizes that only took one person to move. The first thing to be cooked on that hibachi was – hamburgers. Of course, the iconic American grill item. Don’t argue with me about hot dogs, the burgers were first. For what ever very odd reason I had never made hamburgers before, never even grilled a burger. So, I got some good meat (not knowing much about meat at the time but I’m sure that it was good) made burger shapes with it and fired up the hibachi. Friends arrived, my girlfriend was there and drinks were poured. I can still picture all of us on the deck of the apartment that I was renting. I’m sorry that I don’t have a picture of us, but if you want to know what it looked like just take a look at a late 1970’s Budweiser commercial. Actually, a rock concert photo from Rolling Stone would be closer to the truth.

Soon the coals in the hibachi were ready. When I say that the coals were ready, I’m talking hotter than the center of the sun hot, ready for branding hot, ready for the Inquisition, let’s show God to these Saracens – WHITE HOT. There may have been some fool in attendance who suggested that I might want to let the coals “cool down a little” but, hey, what did they know. In retrospect these 1970’s first time burgers were different from what I make nowadays in that they were about an inch and a half in diameter before cooking – about the size of the top of an aluminum beer can (maybe I was poor when I bought the meat or over optimistic on how many it would serve). The mini-burgers reacted strangely when they hit the hibachi’s grill that rested a scant hairsbreadth above the white hot, incandescent, look at them for even a fraction of a second and you’ll go blind coals. The burgers simultaneously contracted into a patty about three quarters of an inch in diameter and – carbonized. I had become a ‘Magic Chef’! The burgers had morphed into lumps, small lumps, of charcoal (it seems that early on in my cooking journey I had a propensity for transmuting food into charcoal). Friends circled around as I placed these ‘things’ on a plate.

One cute young woman, whom I secretly lusted after, started to laugh and pointing at the ‘things’ saying, “God, they’re so small!” If I didn’t have such a thick hide, good ego structure and absolute ignorance of just how failed this effort was I might not have cooked ever again. But hey, we were young, had something to drink and still had potato chips, and empty burger rolls, so I survived to grill another day.

I have told you of the tragedies but let me remind you that there were triumphs too. In particular a honey almond mousse that was to die for. Well, not die for, better than that – you would kill or maim to get your share of it.

My culinary skills continued to progress. While living in Providence I shall also claim credit for creating and hosting the first ‘Under $4.00 Per Gallon Wine Tasting Party’. Think back to the mid 1970’s, wines were just beginning to be popular and there were a lot of odd bottlings out there. At that time you could in fact purchase a gallon of wine for less than $4.00. I’m not saying that it was a premier cru; I’m saying that it was a gallon of wine, or something close to wine, for less than $4.00. I know that there were some Gallo wines in the tasting, also Cribari, Yosemite Road Red and Yosemite Road White and some too odd or hideous to even remember. The likes of Mateus and Blue Nun were ruled out because they cost more than $4.00 per gallon. The rules of the tasting were not the gentile, actually taste a little of the wine, spit it out, cleanse you palette, and write down your observations that some of us follow today. This was more along the lines of, ‘Can You Survive This Event?’ Wines were consumed by the glassful and the winner was, not a wine, but that person that was still standing at the conclusion of the event. I still remember that a half consumed gallon of the Yosemite Road White sat under my kitchen sink for about six months before I finally gave up and threw it out.

Moussaka (Meatless)

My cooking, to say nothing of the rest of my life, has taken a couple of twists and turns. There was a time during and after college years that I was a practicing vegetarian. Oh my God! A Vegetarian! How cute is that!? But wait, this recipe has cheese so does that make me a ‘Lacto-Vegan’? I know, you’re saying to yourself, “how could he have possibly been a vegetarian – he’s much too loud, opinionated, obnoxious, crude, vain, and the list goes on. But, I was! Lots of grains, veggies, brown rice, regular trips to the health food store, herbal teas, dried lotus root, dulse (I still love it), picking and eating day lily bulbs and yoga. Brown rice continues to be one of my all time favorite foods.

The Meatless Moussaka is from those days in the 70’s. I don’t remember where this recipe came from, maybe a magazine, maybe a friend, maybe a crude takeoff on a real Moussaka recipe without the Béchamel – or lamb. As I recollect, pretty hazy days as they were in the 70’s, it’s a good recipe. Let’s be honest – It’s not Moussaka.

Honest to goodness Moussaka is a wonderful layering of eggplant, lamb and Béchamel. I’ve grilled both the eggplant and the lamb (shredded the lamb for the dish) to get a nice smoky tang to it. I am certain that there are a million great Moussaka recipes out there. This recipe should be titled Eggplant and Cheese Casserole. Very good in its own right. I do recall that my friends and I always enjoyed this dish. Serve it with a green salad, a nice light fruity red and some ripe fruit drizzled with honey for dessert - it’s a wonderful evening.

The Kitchen Sink Casserole

Last night, whatever leftovers that were in the refrigerator and cupboards, that made sense in combination, went into a Kitchen Sink Casserole (i.e., everything except the kitchen sink). I firmly believe that no food should be wasted - if it ain't moldy - eat it.

- Leftover roasted pork shoulder, cubed
- Leftover roasted chicken breast
- Red onion
- Carrots
- Sweet potato
- Celery
- A bit of corn relish
- Red pepper
- A sauce Velouté; the liquid in the sauce was white wine, chicken stock and coarse mustard (the seasoning). Don’t let the name of this sauce scare you off. It’s a white sauce made from a roux (cooked flour and butter) in which a light stock (the chicken broth and wine) takes the place of milk or cream (a Béchamel sauce).

Sauces are wonderful. Made well and properly incorporated they can make many dishes appear more dazzling, and tastier, than they otherwise might be; a breaded and grilled paillard of chicken breast or the same with a nice Béchamel seasoned with herbs? As Julia writes there are just a few basic sauces: Béchamel and Velouté (cousins – the Béchamel with milk and the Velouté with white stock) and Brown Sauce (with brown stock; beef or demi- glacé). Some food authorities consider those three to be the Pantheon. Others, including Julia, go on to include tomato sauce, egg yolk and butter sauces (Hollandaise), oil and vinegar (vinaigrette) and flavored butters. All the other million sauces are simply variations on these themes. None of these are hard to make. Go try one tonight and dazzle the respective other!

The Kitchen Sink Casserole tasted and looked great. I’ve done it before and look forward to doing it again.

Next Week: Deerflies and Dave’s Vegetarian Dinner, When Snow Turns to Slush Thoughts Turn to Food and Sometimes Nothing Horrible Happens

Plastic Rats, The Bank And Cranberry Orange Tea Breads

Nearing the end of my fourth year at RISD I was fortunate enough to get a job with a New York architect who was responsible for a 30 story bank building in Providence. Lucky, lucky me. The job continued through my fifth year and after graduation. To be working with a New York Architect, while still in school, part time, 30 story building, making a couple of bucks, guaranteed a job after graduation – Very Cool. I don’t usually get that lucky. Maybe there is a balance in life.

Yes, there is balance. The architectural position was preceded by my working in a knitting mill, Atlantic Knitting Mills, where I ran knitting machines. Working at the mill was a huge step up from my previous job. The previous job found me sitting in front of a buffing wheel in a plastic paper weight factory – the opposite end of the balance of the architects’ position. In my hands were clear plastic paper weights the size of index cards, about one half inch thick. These paperweights were a give away to doctors from some pharmaceutical company. Inside the paperweight was a cross-section drawing of a rat in vivid color showing the course of some drug as it wound its way through a lab rat’s body. I sat in front of this buffing wheel polishing the front, back and four edges of these paper weights for eight hours a day, five days a week, for more than two months. I swore that my brain had turned to a thin mush from the ceaseless boredom of this work and was leaking out of my ears. I would catch myself with my mouth open; slack jawed, drooling onto these paper weights as I polished them. I quit two days earlier than I said that I would. I absolutely could not, would not continue with this torture. Almost in tears from the mind melting labor I called the factory owner and explained that I just could not and would not buff those rats anymore. He didn’t seem too upset. He was probably thinking, “Oh God, another one’s gone over the edge. I hope that he doesn’t come back and force me to call the police like the last one did.”

The work at the knitting mill was part time during the school year and full time during the summer. It was a really nice job and I remember it fondly. The owners treated us workers nicely; nobody cared that my ponytail might get caught in the knitting machines. I learned to run a knitting machine and to tie the proper knots between the bobbin of thread that was almost empty and the waiting full bobbin and during lunch I got to sit on the roof looking at huge rooftop ventilators that looked like the helmeted heads of Roman Legionnaires, the armies turning in unison with each gust of wind.

The mill gave its workers free turkeys at Thanksgiving and Christmas and I thought that was pretty damned cool. It was the early 70’s and by God I was actually cooking those turkeys. I had begun to invite friends over to cook dinner for them. The details are lost. I’m sure that there were good turkey dinners and less than good turkey dinners. I suspect that some of the dishes came from cans or the frozen food section of the market. I suspect that some of the dinners were ‘potluck’. But, I do know that meals were cooked and shared with lovers and friends and that cooking was on its way to becoming an increasingly important part of who I was.

I was a bit surprised that the bank agreed to the architect’s hiring me considering that, at the time, my hair hung down to the middle of my back when it wasn’t in a ponytail and I had a full, full beard. This was not the look one normally associated with anyone remotely connected with a bank in the 1970’s. A great photo from that time shows the back of five people looking at the horizon from the roof top heliport of the newly constructed bank building. All dressed in suits – only one with his hair down to the middle of his back in a ponytail. My suit came from the Salvation Army. The bank asked me to wear it for whatever ceremony we were having on that day.

The ‘Custom House Tap Crew’: George G., The Curmudgeon Chef, Frank T., Robert M. and Peter R.

The bank people could not have been nicer to me and I, believe it or not, I even made some good friends. It was a time in our great country when the lunches that we - architects, contractors and bankers - went out to daily included three or so drinks with our meals. We’re talking wine, yes, and beers and gin and tonics and lots of other concoctions. Then, with lunch over, we would actually go back to work. As out of place as it may be today, this lunch menu was considered absolutely normal – nothing out of the ordinary. Of course there was the fact that my architect boss kept a quart bottle of scotch and a quart bottle of antacid in his lower desk drawer and that was considered normal too. God, I miss those days.

The gourmet in me was growing. I was occasionally cooking meals for friends and the bankers were initiating me into the world of their private clubs. We are not talking about strip clubs here, though as I recall that was the case a couple of times. We’re talking about the type of club that is located in the understated mansion, the club that announces itself with only a beautifully aged mahogany front door and a small brass plaque upon which was engraved the club’s name or just the street number, the kind of a club where four or five courses were routinely served for lunch and the wine selection was modest, but impeccable. There were so many pieces of silverware at the place settings that I knew whichever piece I chose it would not be the correct one. Multiple courses, cloth table cloths and napkins, candles and impeccable service. I’d seen this level of service a few times with Dad as my guide, but now it was me being treated as an equal (more or less) by my employers – Wowee Zowee! I was about 23 years old, in Capitalist Pig Heartland – and I loved it! Revolution? What Revolution? My Chassagne-Montrachet is losing its slight chill. There were people in these places whose names I’d seen in the newspapers many had been on TELEVISION: mayors, the governor, senators, bankers and the television weatherman. The club members were men. Rarely one or two women guests might be seen. These were also the type of club where a dress code was in place and rigidly upheld requiring, at a minimum, a sport coat and tie – a suit and tie were preferred. My co-workers dressed to the code, but I was just some hippy dippy kid in school wearing jeans, a gaudily colored shirt and Vasque hiking boots. The suit in the photo was a rare change from my usual outfit, hanging forlornly in the closet, waiting for a suit emergency. So, most of the time, upon entering these clubs I was whisked away by the maitre’d before any of the Club members could catch sight of such a derelict and given a sport coat and clip on tie that I’m sure they bought for fifty cents at the Goodwill store. The sports coats that the maitre’d loaned me never fit. They came in only two sizes; too large or too small. If the jacket was too large, the bottom of the jacket came down to my knees and the cuffs had to be rolled up to the elbows. The too small version found the bottom of the jacket at my waist, the cuffs at my elbows and the back seam threatening to split open if I took a breath. I looked like an organ grinder’s monkey.

All of these coats were of an indeterminate color and fabric. I always wondered what the person whose coat I was wearing had died of, how long they had left the coat on the body after he died and if he had died of anything that was contagious. The ties were usually black or maroon and always stained. The net effect of my own clothes, the borrowed jacket and the clip on tie was to make me look like a derelict clown. No, with my hair and beard I looked like a young Santa on skid row. I gotta love those bankers because no one ever laughed or made me feel out of place.

The construction of the bank reached completion and the night before the grand opening found all of us who had been responsible for this building caught up in the proverbial whirlwind of attending to last minute details. The bankers, being above all sensible-buttoned-down-trust-your-money-to-folks, came up with a plan for our remaining sensible while attending to the completion of the final details. The plan being that the group of us would attend to ‘a detail’ after which we would retire to The Custom House Tavern (AKA the Tap to regulars like us) to restore our energies so that we could proceed to accomplish the next detail whereupon we would retire to the Tap to re-energize ourselves and so on and so forth – you get the besotted picture. There were many, many details we had to attend to that evening. The Custom House Tavern is a venerable institution. I remember it as wood paneled without being over the top, quiet, no live music the way they have today and it was here that on a cold, bleak and rainy day I was introduced to the wonderful combination of Amontillado Sherry and walnuts – perfect.

At the time I was living with a young beauty who, when we graduated, had become an art teacher in a public school, a career path that many RISD graduates before and since have followed. She was having a bake sale at school the day of the bank’s grand opening and I had agreed to bake some cranberry orange tea breads for the sale (the recipe is very good, better than yours, try it – but use butter, not margarine – I knew less than I do today – I hope).

The timing of baking the tea breads and ensuring a sufficient retirement fund for the Tap owner required that I use all my skills to successfully balance both these Herculean tasks. To this day, I have no idea what time I jumped, or stumbled, out of the Custom House Tavern – Finish The Details – Custom House Tavern – Finish The Details loop. The sun had not yet risen so I had plenty of time to make the breads. I managed to get home and assured a very dubious companion that I would in fact make these breads and that she should go back to bed (I guess that I did wake her up when I stumbled in. Yeah, I was stumbling a bit) and sleep pleasant dreams. It was HARD making the damn tea breads! To begin with I really strained my eye in this task. Yes, eye, singular. I found that if both eyes were open, I had twice the images that I actually needed. I repeatedly damaged any remaining brain cells to make certain that the quantities were correct, that I hadn’t already added that particular ingredient, that the pans had been buttered and floured, that only a minimal amount of skinned fingertips and blood had gotten into the orange zest, and that the temperature was correctly set on the oven, that the oven was in fact really ‘on’. I got the batter made, into the pans and the pans into the oven AND set the timer. Now it was time to close my eyes for just a few moments for a little nap.

WHAT THE BLOODY FREAKIN’ EARTH IS ENDING HELL?! What’s this roaring in my head like a jet engine?! A plane’s landing on my head! The world’s ending! And in a sense it was in fact – for me. I shot out of bed, actually fell out, opened my eyes and found my companion holding a hairdryer that was going full blast in one of my ears (I know that if she had a second hairdryer I would have gotten it in both ears). She turned the weapon off and sweetly said, “David, David, your breads are done”. I had slept (not passed out, I’m certain of that) through the timer alarm. The breads looked like large charcoal briquettes. No, she didn’t leave me that day. Not that day anyway. Boy, you try to do something nice for someone and it just gets you nowhere. It took a very long while for the psychic toxins of the slightly over baked breads to depart our abode. You know that saying, “It’s the thought that counts”. It’s a bullshit saying.

Next Week: Wheat Germ, Lots of Wheat Germ; David Versus the Hibachi and Moussaka (Meatless)

A Diversion: The Cape 2009
Bonnie and I were on the Cape last week enjoying beautiful weather, gorgeous bay and ocean, old friends, great seafood and several good and one not so good restaurant. Hatch’s was as ever and that pleases me very much.

In previous postings I wrote about EATING the lobster and Hatch’s free lobster bodies. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. So, I’ve titled the following photo ‘The Remains of the Day’. My apologies to Kazuo Ishiguro and to those of you with weaker stomachs than I imagined.

THE REMAINS OF THE DAY

The good restaurants are the ‘Blackfish’, Moby Dick’s’ and the ‘Karoo Kafe’.
The ‘Blackfish’ (no website) has a wonderful menu, perfectly cooked food, great service and a close darkish comforting ambience. The appetizer menu items include such dishes as a confit of pork belly with hoisin sauce over white corn polenta (virtually the same as I dish that I serve at home. Who was first and does it matter?), rabbit ragu over fresh Pappardelle ( excellent and one of Bonnie’s favorites), seared foie gras on toasted brioche with strawberry rhubarb compote and a wonderful homey dish; Provincetown mussels with fennel, sweet Italian sausage (I would use Linguica) and a savory cream broth. Entrees included a tuna ragu over fresh Pappardelle finished with mascarpone cheese and lemon confit (I thought that the shredded tuna would be dry, but it was creamy and wonderful), Panko crusted sole with lemon and caper beurre blanc, Braised organic veal with wild mushroom jus and a variety of Niman ranch burgers. Yes, wonderful desserts.

Moby Dick’s is a classic clam shack; screened on all sides of the dining area with views of the salt marsh and picnic tables and benches for seating. Bonnie and I invariably order the same thing all of the years that we’ve been dining there; a fried clam platter (with the bellies) and a fried oyster platter. If it’s cool we’ll get some clam chowder. The platters are simple, the shellfish expertly cooked and the quantities huge. Each platter contains the fried shellfish; crispy hot and not a bit greasy, French fries and a good coleslaw. We leave stuffed to the proverbial gills and extremely satisfied.

The ‘Karoo Kafe’ in Provincetown is new to us this year. We were introduced to the chef/ owner, Sanette Groenewald (Yes, the same name, Grunwald in the South African Boer language), by a friend of hers. Elyssa told us about the ‘Karoo’ when I asked her about a spice that she had mentioned, Peri-Peri. Elyssa suggested that we go to the Kafe and talk with Sanette. It was an intro from a Graham Greene novel. We walked in, walked up to this woman and said, “Elyssa told us to talk to Sanette about buying the Peri-Peri”. The women looked us up and down, broke into a smile, laughed and said, “I’m Sanette. I’ve been expecting you.” Sanette is a native South African woman who has been living in the states long enough so that she’s become an American citizen. Her laugh is easy and contagious. Though we did not eat in the Kafe (scheduling with full bellies didn’t allow it) the menu is intriguing and the food that we saw coming out of the kitchen made us tear-up at that the knowledge that we had just eaten and couldn’t shovel in another fork-full. Sanette also sells the spices and sauces, the ingredients and flavors of which are based on her South African upbringing. Very, very nice flavors. We did serious damage to the budget so that we might bring these flavors home with us.

The restaurant that disappointed us is ‘Mac’s Shack’. We’d been here before and really enjoyed the food. The menu is catholic including seafood, shellfish, burgers, sushi and sushi rolls. This year the menu, and the cooking, seemed to have been ‘dumbed down’. The oysters on the half shell that I had contained a lot of shell fragments, little oyster liquor and had not been completely shucked from the shell. The clam fritters were absolutely raw inside, the sushi rolls were, for the most part, based on California rolls with a ‘squiggle’ of something on top. Bonnie’s Caesar Salad had anchovies, but no dressing. Her burger was cooked as ordered, but that’s about the best that we can say about our meal. Ah well.

Friends sometimes ask me what my favorite restaurant is. The answer is simple. There isn’t any one restaurant that’s my favorite. As I eat just about anything (no tofu or veggie-burgers thanks – eecchh!), hamburgers and hot dogs to foie gras and sweetbreads, I have several favorite restaurants. If the ingredients are good and the chef and staff love what they’re doing, it usually works, that is, you’ll get good food and enjoy yourself. Yes, many favorite restaurants.

And what did David cook while we were on vacation? Very simple dishes; French Toast made with the Portuguese Bakery sweet bread, steamers (piss clams) with hot broth and melted butter on the side (this was not served with the French Toast), fettuccini with tomatoes, shallots, garlic, olive oil, little neck clams and mussels in a red wine sauce, smoked shellfish in pasta with just a little garlic and olive oil, lobster risotto, the requisite lobsters and of course Bonnie and I canned 14 jars of rose hip jelly. A great vacation.

A Vacation Dinner - Lobster Risotto with a Salad of Boston Lettuce and Honeydew Melon Dressed with a Balsamic Reduction

Childhood’s End

Elementary school, junior high school and high school came and went. While there were a lot of incidents, I don’t recall many of them as being related to food. The ‘Coffee And’ continued as did my absolute fear of the holiday hard boiled egg and faux communion wafer. I guess that experimenting with alcohol consumption and mixology might be considered a mere hint of the cooking that was to come. In these experiments I learned that you could not drink huge amounts of screwdrivers (vodka and orange juice) without getting very sick for what seemed to be a very long time, nor could you substitute, simply because they were the same color, root beer for coke, mix it with whiskey and create something that would stay in your stomach for any length of time. One of my girlfriends, Diana, gave me a chocolate bar that was flavored with a hint of oranges for a birthday present. She asked me to guess the combination and of course I did. It was a wonderful present.


All of us went to McDonald’s and got hamburgers that cost us, if I remember correctly, about fifteen cents in the sixties. Everybody sat in their cars to eat; the first McDonald’s in our area offered window service only. We would go to any number of Dairy Queen type places for milkshakes and when we were old enough to drive down to the Rhode Island beaches for the weekend we would eat potato chips all weekend because we only had enough money for gas, potato chips and beer. We were honest to goodness surfers and surfing was the only thing that really mattered. And I continued to eat without giving a thought to cooking.
Through it all Mom and Dad loved their three sons very much, worked hard to do their best for us, kept us clean, tried to teach us right from wrong, showed us some of the world outside our hometown, taught us the importance and beauty of books and writing, continued to ‘make bread’, taught us to eat in a restaurant and, yes – taught us to EAT lobster. And, now, I wanted to get out there and walk that wire without a net.


Who says that you can't mix them? Granny Smiths and Navels.

He Did Get Into RISD!

In 1968 I was free of home, away and in a college and a city which I came to love. I would eventually graduate, work as an architect and carpenter in construction sites throughout New England, meet a woman and marry her for better or worse – turned out to be the latter. But most importantly, finally, I began cooking.

I was absolutely thrilled, just couldn’t wait, to get out of my home town and go away to college. I just wanted to be away, not to have Mom and Dad over me – the same plea that a gazillion other 1960’s teens wanted. Hometown wasn’t bad but, parents were parents and I was a teenager so that’s all you need to explain the testiness between us and my desire to go. I had no thoughts of going to a school to learn how to cook, no thoughts about cooking anything. I didn’t even know that there was such an institution or career path as the Culinary Way (why weren’t guidance counselors telling me about arbitrage and other Wall Street careers in the 60’s?).

I was absolutely certain that I wanted to be an architect and, despite my high school teachers actually trying to discourage me from it, I applied to colleges with architecture programs. One of my high school teachers thought so little of my aspirations that when I asked this art teacher for some advice about some drawings that I had to do as part of the entrance exam she told me, “You should just stop wasting your time with this. You won’t be accepted”. Maybe I misheard her. Maybe she said, “You’ll shoot your eye out kid”.
Well, I was accepted, attended and actually graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) with a degree in architecture (a huge FU to the high school teachers that told me to forget architecture school). So if I’ve got a degree in architecture, why aren’t I doing that instead of writing this? Real simple answer – because sometimes people change. They change because as you travel your merry path, if you’re lucky, you come to know yourself and this world better. Maybe you find something that you didn’t even know existed. Maybe you come to want more. Maybe you come to want different. Maybe ya just gotta do something else.

I will always be grateful for the education I received at RISD (I could have gotten so much more out of it if I had really APPLIED myself) because the most important thing they taught me was to be able to tap into my creativity and use that creativity in every aspect of life. How can you do anything without creativity – especially cooking?

In the RISD of the late 60’s you could only live in the dorms during your freshman year. After that you had to get an apartment where you could, in addition to sex, drugs and rock & roll, COOK. It was great! The sun rose, skies were blue, birds sang, gentle breezes blew and I began to cook. I don’t remember what I was cooking to start, probably packaged and frozen things, steaks, hot dogs, I would not be surprised if I had used canned things – the usual college student fare. But, somewhere along the way the cooking began to evolve and take over my soul. Somewhere is that early summer walk home with Ellen, when I cooked us dinner.





Joe’s, Haven Brothers And How The Other Half Live

It’s been said by some, even my wife on occasion, that I’m impossible to live with (I won’t even begin to go into that) so pretty quickly I got my own apartment and lived alone or with a girlfriend who cared about me enough to tolerate me. No dorm life, all the better to be cooking. I thought that Providence, Rhode Island was great even in the 60’s and 70’s. Hell, I didn’t leave the city until about 1979. It had a rawness to it, a ‘real’ place that was ready to explode into something spectacular. Even then, you could feel the vibration of this huge engine that is the city growing stronger as it accelerated towards its current renaissance. And even then it had FOOD. God bless the Italians, good pizzas, Casserta’s spinach pies, scungili salad, the restaurants on Smith Hill and, not Italian at all, Haven Brothers food wagons and Joe’s Sandwich Shop on Benefit Street.
There was nothing the likes of Joe’s in my boyhood hometown. Sandwiches that had names, crowded with college kids, foods that I had never heard of before and it wasn’t run by Joe – it was run by Dewey. People eat tongue sandwiches? Not in central Connecticut. I recall Joe’s sandwiches as being phenomenal. They didn’t close until late on the weekends and it was located in the middle of the RISD environs so after a night of 1960’s debauchery, or in the middle of it, you could go to Joe’s with minimal money in you pocket and get Swiss cheese on a good hard roll with tomato and lettuce and dress it with Nance’s Mustard – chase it down with Mountain Dew. God that was a great sandwich. In my memory I remember the ingredients of those sandwiches being absolutely perfect – the Kaiser roll had taste and texture to it, it was chewy maybe with a hint of the tang of yeast, the lettuce was Iceberg (no 90’s Frisée) with crunch, moisture and a taste of greenness, the Swiss cheese nutty-sweet, not toooo soft, the tomato was ripe and tasted like a tomato – YEAR ROUND – (probably not but, that’s what I remember), and the Nance’s Mustard - I never knew about Nance’s Mustard until then; a sweet mustardy gift from the Gods. And - it was wrapped in a wax paper with a pickle, something that this lad had never seen. The Mountain Dew chaser – bubbly light, citrusy, chartreuse in color and a different flavor. The first faint beat of my gourmet heart: I found the Mountain Dew much more of a compliment to this sandwich than the too sweet Boone’s Farm Apple Wine. Ah, Boone’s Farm Apple Wine. A youth wine crafted to be swilled down in copious amounts while listening to Led Zeppelin and Santana at full volume and dancing with your girlfriend, and everyone else in the room, as if you were a demented Dervish. As with all food and meals, it wasn’t the sandwich alone that made it great – it was the context. The times, the people, you. A friend pointed out that I had forgotten to add drugs to that small list. I don’t dare try that sandwich today. Why chance to lose such a great memory?

And there were the Haven Brothers food wagons. In the center square of the city right in front of city hall, about mid evening or so, the food wagons would begin to arrive. They would not relinquish their domain until the very wee hours of the morning. We’re not talking a push cart with an umbrella over it. We’re talking wagons the size of small diners – they are small diners. I vaguely remember that they had a few seats inside, but I took the normal route and placed my order at the outside window. Sometimes I thought that I was ordering by yelling at one of the windows that was not in fact the order window – we’re not always where we think we are. You had to be a hardcore regular to rate an inside seat. It was grimly rumored that to be knighted a hardcore regular there was an initiation that involved used frying oil and the gorilla at the Roger Williams Park Zoo. The food wagons were the carnival come to town. The wagons loomed above you as they rested on what seemed like R. Crumb cartoon tires: oversized, midnight black, over shiny, with Mr. Natural truckin’ along beside you. The silvery stainless steel bodies of the wagons gleamed and blinded and pulsed in the mid-summer sun bright arc lights set up to light the area in front of the wagons, I remember the sounds of amusement ride gasoline generators, or maybe it was just the truck engines, and the crowds of people of every description, some scary as hell. The aroma of frying Italian sausage, hamburgers, hotdogs, pizza, French fries, coffee – It Was A Carnival! Some nights, a real honest to goodness freak show. In the world of Haven Brothers, it never rained, was never too cold, was never too hot and it was always arc light bright. We ate standing around these wagons, sitting on the street curbs or City Hall steps and sometimes we brought the food back to our nearby studios. The Haven Brothers should receive an honorary degree from RISD for sustaining many a student as they pulled an all-nighter to get their projects completed for the next days ‘crit’. These food wagons were so absolutely cool to this eighteen year old kid. I had never imagined that you could go to the carnival every night of the week without Mom and Dad yelling at you to behave.

I only realized how small my boyhood world was when I stepped out of it to go to RISD. I guess that there are no surprises in that. My cloistered central Connecticut schoolmates’ included no one of the Jewish persuasion. It did include one African American girl (her mother was the cleaning lady at the small private school in town), WASP’s, Irish, Italians, Scandinavians, Polish, Lithuanians, Germans, Dutch, Mongrels and I’m certain that a couple of the families were from Mars. We kids didn’t notice any of these ‘distinctions’. You were nice or a bully, you could hit a baseball or not, you would or wouldn’t tell if I snuck a kiss from you while riding in the Kindergarten school bus – it didn’t matter what your ‘ethnicity’ was (ethnicity is a horrible word, responsible for way too much hatred).

In talking with the African American woman at one of the two high school reunions that I’ve ever attended (God I hate those things) I discovered that she was now an insurance potentate working in the DC area. I was compelled to ask her how she felt growing up as the only black girl in town. Her response surprised me. She said that, ”I never felt different”. Her memories were that we had always treated her as just another friend, just another kid. No more than that and no less than that. I suspect that there were too few of us in any one ethnic category for that category to claim the scepter of ruler and lay waste to the minority, consequently we just didn’t care. Sure, there were bullies, but they came from every ethnic category.

Can you believe that this was my central Connecticut in the 50’s and 60’s? You could get more isolated, but you’d have to work at it. The fact that the world was much larger place than my home town was brought home to me with a jolt when, upon waking up one morning not long after college had started, I found one of my roommates, a guy, in bed with, another guy. I’d never seen this before. Even at Boy Scout camp. I had much to learn about the world outside my hometown. Wow! So this is how the other half lives (that’s what Dad was always saying). Hometown and boyhood were receding at warp speed.
So Haven Brothers food wagons, Casserta’s and Joe’s Sandwich Shop figured mightily in my culinary awakening. Amidst such plenty neither the body nor the mind would starve.

A note: Several of you have asked when the Dinner Diaries make their appearance. The answer; at the proper time. Hang in there.

Next Week: Plastic Rats, The Bank and Cranberry-Orange Tea Breads

The stories told in ‘The Cooking and Memoirs of a Curmudgeon Chef’ are, in fact, chronological. If you haven’t read this before you’ll enjoy it more and understand it better by beginning at the first posting. As the King said to the White Rabbit in ‘Alice in Wonderland’, “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop."


‘EATING’ The Lobster

Among the many things that my parents did for their three sons was a ritual that my father observed on his sons’ birthdays. He would take each of us, individually, on our birthday to a good restaurant. How cool was that! King of the World was how absolutely cool it was. Dad and I alone, being treated as a grownup, a real restaurant: candles on the table – lit! Cloth tablecloths and napkins, menus, a waiter, Shirley Temple drinks, Dad had something stronger and a relish tray. Oh my God the relish tray above all! As I recollect, in the 50’s and 60’s Connecticut restaurants always had these relish trays. They were a little tray, usually stainless steel, with several small sections that had canned olives, corn relish, cottage cheese, celery, maybe a dip or spread, mini breadsticks or Melba Toast in plastic wrappers. I know, today it’s odd, but to a kid such as I relish trays were just about the crème de la crème, Christmas!. It had stuff that we didn’t eat at home, you were supposed to eat it before your dinner came and you could still get dessert too!


For our birthday dinners
WE COULD ORDER ANYTHING THAT WE WANTED!
EVEN
THE LOBSTER!

That statement had to be made in big, tall bold letters. Many times I did order the lobster. Actually, I can’t remember ordering anything except the lobster. The lobster dinner came with a price, perhaps a small price or perhaps not, but most certainly with a price. A price that, though we didn’t realize it at the time, would serve my brothers and me, and our families, faithfully and commendably throughout our days on earth. The price was – ritual and form. You couldn’t just eat the lobster – you had to EAT the lobster. You could not leave the smallest bit of meat uneaten.

This of course from the man who admonished his entire family, at any dinner that we ever ate at any restaurant, “Don’t fill up on the cheap stuff”. He was absolutely convinced that if we ate too much from the Relish Tray we wouldn’t be able to absolutely finish – decimate – leave no crumb of what we ordered for our meal. If we didn’t eat everything that we had ordered then the restaurant would have won. They, the restaurant, would have sated us with the free relish tray and yet – we wouldn’t have finished the food that we actually ordered and had to pay for. The restaurant would get this food back, uneaten, and God knows how, but they would make money on it. Didn’t this guy ever hear of a doggy bag? In Dad’s later years the battle cry changed from, “Don’t fill up on the cheap stuff” to, “I could make a meal out of bread”.

The Grunwalds dressed up to go somewhere in the late 1950’s

The Grunwalds EATING of the lobster was, as Bonnie has likened it, similar to the scene in the movie ‘Splash’ where Tom Hanks has taken Daryl Hannah to a beautiful restaurant; she orders lobster and absolutely annihilates it – eats the whole damn thing: meat and shell! The Grunwald way of eating lobster isn’t quite that extreme – but it’s close. Of course the main pieces of meat in the claws and tail are easy – for amateurs. BUT, how about getting those pieces of meat that are located in the fins of the tail – HOW ABOUT THOSE PILGRIM!
How about the meat in all the legs! Put those legs in your mouth, crack ‘em and suck that meat out! Forget the claw knuckles and you will be damned by Poseidon. Don’t Miss Them! – Miss What? – The HUGE pieces of meat in the base of the legs and claws where they go into the body! Crack that body shell in half and get the meat on the sides of the body.
And by God you just better attend to the coral (red stuff) and the tamali – I don’t care if the tamali is greenish, somewhat gelatinous, and has supposedly soaked up every bit of toxin that the lobster has ever ingested – it tastes great!

All my brothers and I continue to have a lifelong love affair with eating lobster the way Dad taught us. We are so absolutely certain that this is the way to EAT lobster that our revolutionary zeal has made it easy to enlist our wives and families in this fraternity. This is not to say that the path to lobster eating enlightenment has been easy. The Grunwald method of eating the lobster was a lot for a young kid to absorb. There were moments at the lobster table when we faltered in our commitment and resented not be able to take the easy path of just the tail and claw meat. However, we eventually understood that the truism of ‘anything worth doing is worth doing well’ could be applied to every aspect of our lives. For this, if nothing else, I owe Dad eternal thanks and love.

Our commitment goes deep and we take no prisoners. On one of my brothers’ wedding anniversaries he cooked lobster for himself and his wife. While they were eating the lobster my sister in law sliced her hand open while cracking a claw open (an accepted hazard in the course of EATING a lobster). The cut was deep enough that they had to go to the hospital to get her stitched up and ‘pain-killered’. When they returned home the wife went to bed, basically passing out from the drugs, whereupon my brother went back to the table and finished his lobster – and hers. Well what was he supposed to do?

You really do have to cook the lobster yourself. It’s so easy to steam or boil it that you should never entrust this task to some eyebrow pierced and tattooed 16 year old in your local food store who will boil your expensive lobster to the point where it has acquired the chewy-ness of a car tire. And for those PETA folks out there that are reading this and ignoring the realities of evolution and the food chain I want you to know this. Know that before I put the lobster into the pot of boiling water or plunge that knife into its back I give thanks and I give that crustacean a chance to live. The lobster and I actually have a conversation, though to date it is one-sided. I say, “hey little lobster. If you can say one or two words of English I will let you live in splendor for the rest of your natural days.” So far, the lobster always says – nothing. I give him a minute or so to respond and then – the end. I will alert everyone when the first lobster speaks to me.

There’s an absolutely wonderful seafood market on the Cape – Hatch’s. Just one of the things that make this emporium so wonderful is that they give away free lobster bodies! The first time that I saw the small sign that they had posted saying, “Free Lobster Bodies” I nearly fainted from the huge number of happy thoughts that were running through my head. The cooked bodies are the unappreciated leftovers from the lobsters that the store cooks up for undeserving amateurs who just dine on the claws and tails. Not only is there a good amount of meat in these bodies, they also form the base for wonderful broths and stocks.

I went in one day and there were several people in the store. When my turn came to be waited I noticed that THE sign was posted and when it came my turn to order I asked the counter guy to fill a bag for me. I have little hesitation in being a pig about this, few people avail themselves of this delight. Maybe, if I could get cheap lobster on a regular basis I’d approach this differently. Maybe. As my bag was being filled with the bounty of other folk’s laziness a women standing by my side waiting to order some fish looked at the lobster bodies being piled in the bag, turned to me, smiling, and asked, “What will you use them for? An art project, or decoration?” I smiled back and said, “Why no ma’am, I’ll be eating them”. You never have a camera with you for that Pulitzer winning photo. Her look said that her stomach had been turned inside out and the fact that you could see the blood draining from her face summed it up - Amateur. Dad would not have approved of her inability to EAT the lobster – and I certainly agree with his assessment.


The Frontiersman And Patricia Murphy’s

Let’s Let loose the Hounds of Hell right here. Virtually all young children should be banished from the better restaurants until they reach the age of eighteen. Rather than defining what a better restaurant is, let’s just say that children younger than eighteen years of age should be confined to the likes of fast food restaurants, national chain restaurants or the dining room of any third rate, or lesser, national hotel/motel chain. While there are children capable of acquitting themselves appropriately in an upscale setting the majority cannot. I was one of those golden children, as was my cousin, Claudia, who joined me at our parents’ wedding anniversary dinners at Avon Old Farms was one and later in my story I’ll introduce you to the third golden child. I wrote that my parents took my brothers and me out to good restaurants so you may think that I’m contradicting myself. Understand that my brothers and I were golden children because we knew that if we were not we’d be dealing with Dad’s belt. I’ve always felt that a little fear is a good thing.

I know, you’re reading this page and screaming, “My child’s perfect you asshole!” The truth is that your child is not perfect. Truth be told you love your child and maybe, just maybe, the grandparents love your child. No one else cares the slightest about them. Your child is loud, runs around the restaurant like a Chihuahua on uppers, screams loudly and sharply enough to split eardrums, throws food and silverware to the floor, and is a mind-boggling irritating pain in the ass to someone who’s gone to a good restaurant to be cosseted in the lap of culinary luxury.
You have absolutely no idea as to how irritating your child is when they’re misbehaving and in need of a ‘time out’. I was out to dinner with a friend of mine who has children. There was a child in the banquette next to ours screaming, putting their head over the top of the partition to look at us and throwing food. I said to my friend, “We have to get our seat moved because in another minute I’m going to injure the child and the parents”. He looked at me and said, “What’s the problem?” Wild eyed I replied, “Can’t you hear that screaming kid. I’m not going to eat dinner with that crap going on!” His response was classic, “Gee, you know I didn’t even notice it. When you have kids you pretty much learn to ignore it.” With those words I entirely understood the parents’ situation – you’re deaf and blind.



Central Connecticut Hoodlums – I knew these kids and in 1957
none of them should have been granted entrance to a good restaurant


If you’ve calmed down enough to appreciate what I’ve told you should be asking yourself, “How will they ever learn to behave in a good restaurant if I never take them to one?” Try eating dinner at the table as a family, with something that you actually cooked rather than poured from a box or gotten from takeout. Have the kids’ help you make dinner, at least have them set the table if not cook (maybe they’ll remember which fork to use when – a skill that I’m still working on), have the family sit together and talk politely for the entire meal and cleanup together. Teach them the wonder and magic of food and cooking. It doesn’t have to be expensive and it doesn’t have to take long. Buy ground beef (not the pre-made patties), good hamburger buns, make some of Dave’s Roast Potatoes – or even potato chips and make a green salad. And when I say make the salad, I mean make the salad. Do you know how long those ‘pre-made salad mixes’ have been sitting around and what chemicals they’ve been dosed with to keep the lettuce green? Make meatballs instead of hamburgers, the recipe is only a little bit more work. Make a marinara sauce; one half hour tops. Cook up some pasta. There, in less than 30 minutes you’ve made pasta with meatballs in marinara sauce.

I’m convinced that soccer is a communist plot intended to destroy the American family. You don’t need to go to practice and games 24/7. What do you think is better for your kids’ upbringing? Being together as a family or being shuttled to an endless round of soccer games? Was our family together most of the time? Yes we were. What did being together do for us? I’m not sure; I just know that it was right. Was it perfect all the time? Of course not, silly. But the few perfect times do stick with you.

I wrote that I was one of the golden children who consistently behaved perfectly in all restaurant settings – I lied. I recall an incident where Dad had taken us to see a Yankee’s game in New York sometime in the late 1950’s. After the game we went to ‘Patricia Murphy’s’ for dinner. In my preadolescent memories, I think that I was somewhere around eight or nine years old, maybe 10, I recall ‘Patricia Murphy’s’ as a pretty damn opulent restaurant with incredible popovers. A restaurant that may have been out of my league except for the fact that it was here on this day, after seeing Mickey Mantle play baseball in Yankee Stadium, that I ordered for the first time – duck a` l’orange. Mickey Mantle and duck a` l’orange as equals? Absolutely. Mickey Mantle, a boyhood hero of mine to this day and I loved the duck, crispy sweet and tangy, rich tasting and served in a beautiful setting.

And then the demons cast their spell on me and I became just any other pain in the ass child in a restaurant. It being the 1950’s I recall that I was dressed in some sort of cowboy outfit. If you’re puzzled by that, than you don’t know the 50’s. In those days every boy was dressed in a cowboy outfit or a Superman cape. Not only was I wearing a cowboy hat, or a Davy Crockett coonskin hat (actually, I believe that the coonskin hat was made of vinyl and squirrel fur), but I was also wearing a holster with two cap pistols in it. Being the 1950’s you could get away with parading around with a holster with guns in it. Even with the guns and holster this outfit is fashionable today in certain neighborhoods of New York City, Dallas, Houston or Provincetown.
We were seated at the tables and well into our dining when the incident occurred. As a child I never relinquished my guns to the maitre’d, one never knows when one will need to protect kith and kin. Consequently I had stuffed my Husky Boy Bubble Butt, holster and cap pistols into a very elegant chair not large enough to accommodate such large example of youthful 1950’s virility. And then – one of the cap pistols fell from the holster to the hard marble floor causing it to fire (hair trigger you know) and letting loose a humongous bang that echoed through the restaurant for 20 minutes. The fragrance of cordite from the exploded caps did not ‘work well’ with the duck. I was surprised as anyone else in that room and my first thought was that I hoped I hadn’t damaged my pistol, my parents were so surprised that, at least initially, they hadn’t even thought to swat me, the other diners were surprised, but not to the point where any of them dove to the floor. That is to say that the other diners did not seem unduly disturbed with one exception. The exception being an older woman (to my eight or nine year old eyes she looked ancient, probably somewhere around thirty years old). This old lady was sitting at the table next to ours, her seat just to the side of mine. I recall the scene visually and as a series of loud noises. When the cap pistol fired (the first loud noise) I heard her shriek (the second loud noise) and saw her grab her chest as if she was having a heart attack, she jumped up knocking her chair over (the third loud noise), knocked her meal to the floor (the fourth loud noise) and angrily confronted my father about the hoodlum that he was raising (the fifth and possibly loudest noise). Boy did she confront him. I remember that I was absolutely astonished that a woman would scream at my Dad like that. I honestly don’t recall a punishment for this, but the worst thing is that I was too young to truly appreciate the humor of the situation.

NO CHILDREN IN GOOD RESTAURANTS

Christmas 1952 – The cowboy outfit preceded the Davy Crockett
Outfit by several years. However, the inclination towards firearms is obviously present.


Next Week: Childhood’s End, He Did Get Into RISD and Joe’s, Haven Bros. and How The Other Half Live

The Parents Make Bread

My parents made bread from scratch. It was one of the holiday rituals, for both Christmas and Easter. Though not done consciously, they have passed the tradition to me. I love making bread. I’ve been making it since college days where I would give fresh, hot loaves away to friends. I remember one of the financially impoverished moments during college found me selling hot, buttered slices of freshly made bread to the students for one dollar a slice. Any recipe secrets? Well, not secrets since I’ll tell you, let’s just say that it’s what I do: Make a sponge as directed in ‘The Tassajara Bread Book’, before the loaves go into the oven and if I want a glaze I’ll brush the tops with a mixture of beaten egg and a little water and make a shallow slit in the top, use a baking stone rather than a bread pan if you’re not fussy about the shape of the loaf, when the breads go in the oven throw some ice cubes on the oven floor to create steam. For me this all works.

Every aspect of bread making and fresh bread screams sensuality. If the sex police ever made a loaf of bread they would ban anyone from making bread by hand ever again. The wonderful way that the gooey sponge transmutes to a wonderful shining silk as more flour is incorporated, this silken feeling of dough beneath your massaging hands, the elasticity of the dough, the push and pull of your hands and arms and upper body as you knead this dough, the warmth of the oven, the resting between risings, the fact that this can’t be rushed if you want it done well; wait for it, wait for it. The aromas of the yeasty bread and finally the finished bread. This finished bread; aromatic like nothing else, hot, the crust hiding the chewy interior. You and your lover should slather butter on a slice from a loaf just taken from the oven, share bites, gently, slowly, kiss that drop of butter that’s at the corner of your partner’s mouth and see where this all goes. Primal babe, very primal. On this earth it’s as good as it gets.

As I grow older some of the childhood memories that I have of Mom, Dad and Food are beginning to take on a strange and frightening aspect. My childhood eyes would widen in horror if I knew then what I think that I know now about certain ‘rituals’ that Mom and Dad kept. It starts, as all good horror stories do, so innocently.
The ritual began on Holiday eve. Oddly, I remember this being coupled with my Mom scrubbing the kitchen floor clean. All of this done the night before family was coming to visit. In making the bread Mom’s responsibility was to gather all the ingredients and make sure that they were added in the correct order. Dad’s responsibility was to knead the dough. OK, this doesn’t sound strange or frightening up to this point, but I have acquired a credible knowledge of bread making and looking back I perceive that the weirdness of their ritual begins with their approach to kneading the dough. It was Dad’s job to knead the bread because, according to my parents, this took several hours, if not all night, and required the body strength of Hercules! I’m not Hercules and I make damn good bread. Bonnie’s not Hercules and she makes damn good bread too. My Dad damn well wasn’t Hercules. What’s wrong with this picture? You do not knead it for several hours at a time – yet my folks said that you did. Several kneadings sure, but hours and hours? No way.

Mom and Dad approached the bread making evening with something of a grim attitude and for some reason they started later in the evening and continued into the wee hours of the morning. I remember that as child, an innocent, I would eventually drift to sleep to the grunts and groans of my Dads’ endeavors with the bread, kneading the dough. HEY, WAIT A MINUTE HERE! Maybe that “hours of kneading” line was bullshit, a red herring, a ruse. Maybe my Mom and Dad were actually………… Oh!, Oh! Please God tell me that my imaginings are not true. Say that the ‘ritual’ of cleaning the floors and making bread was exactly that, nothing more, nothing less. The late hour, the children asleep in their beds, the freshly cleaned kitchen floor, my Mom so breathily silent, my Dad grunting and groaning for what seemed to be hours as he kneaded the dough. I beseech you to assure me that as a young child I did not drift off to sounds of my Dad and my Mom – “making bread”.

A Classic Summer Salad – Jersey Tomatoes, Basil and Shavings of Parmesan Reggiano. Dressed with Olive Oil, Red Wine Vinegar, Salt and Black Pepper

Polio, Strawberry Shortcake And Uneaten Green Peas

In truth, the Grunwald family dinners were usually pretty uneventful. Watery tomato sauce on the walls was not an everyday occurrence. But, there is that one dinner in particular that I will never forget. One of my brothers contracted Polio in the early 1950’s. Very, very scary stuff back then. We wondered if he was going to die or be left paralyzed. Scary enough that the kids in the neighborhood kept their distance from me that summer. Nobody was sure how you caught the disease. The local newspaper printed a report of my brother’s illness without giving our family name. I wasn’t allowed to see him in the hospital; he was in an isolation ward. Thankfully, it did not leave my brother with any permanent damage, but I will always remember those frightening days, talk of the possibility of my brother being in an iron lung, crying parents, time in the hospital and a lot of painful rehab for him later. All very tough on a kid that was 4 or 5 years old.
School had finished and summer vacation had begun. He didn’t feel well during that particular early summer day, pretty lethargic and feverish, but in the late afternoon it took only an hour or two to go from not feeling well to the panicked frightening call to the doctor, the doctor coming to the house and the trip to the hospital. I remember that, suddenly, we all realized that he was very ill just as we were about to eat desert after dinner, all of us sitting around the small kitchen table, humid and still light outside. What I consider very weird is that I will always remember what we were having, what we were supposed to have, for dessert – strawberry shortcake. Didn’t Proust have something to say along these lines? Do I have any neuroses about cooking, serving or eating strawberry shortcake these days? – No. But, I will always remember. I find it perfectly understandable, but strange none the less, how certain aspects of a moment will stick in your head and forever bring you back to that incident. Again; the context of the moment. Actions and components forever preserved in a singular memory simply because they were all present when that moment occurred in time – Polio and Strawberry Shortcake.

On a lighter note, in regards to the shortcake, I alternate between the ‘biscuit’ and the ‘sponge cake’ styles for the recipe and I always add a little Cointreau or Triple Sec (depending on what I can afford) and a bit of sugar to the strawberries as they are macerating. Never, never, never, use anything but real whipped cream. You will never get into heaven if you use any ‘non-dairy products’. Those fake whipped cream people belong right up there with the Spam people. It just ain’t that hard to make whip cream! Simply, whip the cream! Whip It, Whip It Good! Of course I add a little sugar and a dash of vanilla. There is an exception to the non-dairy rule – ‘Reddi Whip’ sprayed directly from the can to your mouth. Manners dictate that you cannot let the spout come in contact with your mouth. There are several other things that one can use ‘Reddi Whip’ for – I’ll just leave it at that.

In addition to watery tomato sauce and polio at our dinner table we had fun too. At one dinner the middle brother decided that he would refuse to eat his peas. From what friends with children have told me I am given to understand that the whole ‘children/refusal to eat thing’ is not uncommon. However, when you’re a kid, the scene unfolding before you seems scary, fraught with peril and certainly not everyday.

It began so easily. My brother toying with the peas, but not actually eating any and the rest of us have finished dinner. Dad: “you’re not leaving this table until you eat all of your peas!” Brother: “I’m not eating them!” And so battle was joined. The four of us, the youngest brother not having made his appearance yet, sat at that table, not eating, not moving, waiting for the next salvo to be unleashed. Waiting to see what strategies were employed and who would emerge triumphant – My brother or Dad. What seemed like hours passed. At this point I wouldn’t have touched, let alone eaten, these peas if they were the last food on earth. They were canned peas and in the passing hours they had taken on a gray color and begun to shrivel, looking like a virus molecule viewed through an electron microscope at a magnification of 5000x. After several go rounds of eat or else/I’m not eating my Dad played what he thought to be the winning hand – “If you don’t eat those peas RIGHT NOW you’re going to the orphanage for the rest of your life”. Holy Shit! He had never used this threat before! The usual threat was along the lines of, “I’m going to get my belt and spank you until you can’t sit down”. And my brother STILL refused to eat the peas. At this point, I suspect that it was a matter of pride for both parties. My butt is numb from sitting so long and I’m probably missing ‘The Wonderful World of Disney’, but I wouldn’t dare leave.

This being the same brother who, a year or two later, when what was left of my youngest brother’s umbilical cord dried up, fell to the floor, and for some absolutely unfathomable reason was put on the kitchen counter by our mother - ATE IT – mistaking it for what he said was a raisin.

This umbilical raisin eating brother was unmoved by the threat of merely a possible call to the orphanage. Then, Dad doubled or nothing. He went to the phone, dialed and said into the handset, “I have a boy here that I want you to come and pick up and put into your orphanage for the rest of his life”. My brother sat in his chair stone faced. I on the other hand was freaking out. Jesus, they’re going to take my brother away; I don’t like him, but I sure as shit don’t want him in an orphanage for the rest of his life! I screamed, “PLEASE, PLEASE, EAT THE PEAS – I’LL GIVE YOU MY BICYCLE!!!!” What the hell had I just said - my bicycle!!!!??? He still wouldn’t eat the peas!!!! “I’LL GIVE YOU MY NEW BASEBALL GLOVE TOO!!!!” I said that!!!???? Why the hell were these pleas coming from my mouth? Why did I care? If they took him away I’d get our bedroom to myself.
It was over more quickly than it started when my mother said, “Oh Chester!!! If he doesn’t want to eat his peas, then he doesn’t have to”.

You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ’em, and my brother knew.

One of Mom’s Recipes This is my Mom’s recipe for Jewish Coffee Cake. I believe that the name derives from the fact that the recipe incorporates sour cream. I mean, if it has sour cream in it, it has to be Jewish – right? There’s a weird ethnic thing that, growing up in a family where my grandparents weren’t born in this country, I came to realize pretty early on. It’s the fact that, out of ignorance, people will generalize and fabricate truths about other ethnic groups. No surprise there right? Since time began it’s been the case. It even manifests itself in food. Hence, if the recipe’s got sour cream it must be Jewish. Hell, everybody generalizes, regardless of ethnicity, usually not for the best. So you get older and come to know the world beyond yours and you simply deal with this and you understand that sometimes the generalization is not intended to harm. So, let’s not get too PC – sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, nothing more, nothing less.
This dessert, Jewish Coffee Cake, is one the iconic ‘Ands’ of ‘Coffee And’. What, you’ve never heard that phrase? I’ve never heard that phrase used anywhere in the United States except in the central Connecticut of my boyhood. I have always asked people that I meet, from across the country, if they ever heard the phrase, ‘Coffee And’.
To date, no one has so I have to presume that it’s a central Connecticut, 1950’s, Polish, thing. How’s that for a generalization? It is defined as joining with friends to have coffee and a dessert. Mom would say to us, “After church we’re going to Uncle Dick and Aunt Terri’s to have Coffee And”. The ‘Coffee’ was immutable. No, tea, no juices, no alcohol. Simply coffee with cream and sugar if you liked. The ‘And’ was never defined, elaborated on, specified or divulged to the guests prior to its being served. It could be anything from doughnuts to cookies to Jewish Coffee Cake. On some occasions, if the time of the gathering was close to meal time or if the ‘Coffee And’ host wanted to show off, the ‘And’ became a full blown meal with ham, kielbasa, beets, bread, everything. However, the etiquette of ‘Coffee And’ was usually maintained. Outrageous ‘Ands’, while not to be avoided, were not considered true ‘Coffee And’.
My mother has a singular trait that is marveled at by all family members at the ‘Coffee And’s’. She can make a single cup of coffee last forever. Lots of cream and sugar it will take her three to four hours to finish that cup of coffee – if she finishes it at all. Does she want some warm coffee added, maybe just a little. Does she want a fresh cup, no. Also, she never takes notice of whether or not the cup is level, whether or not the coffee was in danger of spilling over the rim. The entire family will, out of the corner of their eyes, watch the angle of the cup. The understated inhalation of the room full of people signaled the closing proximity of the remaining coffee in the cup to the rim. My mother’s hand will move the slightest bit, drawing the coffee edge a miniscule dimension back from a disastrous spill and the entire room of people will exhale. This is repeated many times. The anticipation of disaster finally wearing her audience out. She is a master entertainer. For Mom the ‘And’s’ were a matter altogether different from the coffee – keep ’em coming. My mother survives, basically, on a diet of sweets and that single cup of coffee.
Mom was wonderful enough to give me the old aluminum tube pan that she baked her Jewish Coffee Cake in. The pan, and the recipe are treasured and I continue to use them – it’s a very good recipe – the perfect ‘And’.

The recipe reproduction is tough to read. So, if you care to try it here it is.

CAKE

1/4 pound butter (no oleo!) 2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup sour cream 1 cup white sugar

2 eggs 1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon almond extract

TOPPING

1/4 cup sugar 1 teaspoon cinamon 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

- Cream butter and sugar. Add the eggs to the mixture.

- Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

- Add the flour mixture alternately with the sour cream to the butter/sugar/egg mix.

- Add almond extract.

- In a separate bowl mix the topping ingredients (I've alway increased the quantity of ingredients).

- Pour 1/2 of the cake batter into a greased tube pan (this is what you buy Crisco for).

- Sprinkle half of the topping over it.

- Add the remaining batter to the tube pan.

- Sprinkle the remaining topping over the batter and swirl batter with a knife to barely distribute the topping through the cake.

- Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to one hour - until a cake tester comes out clean.

- Make the coffee and invite the family and freinds for Coffee And.


Next Week: ‘EATING’ The Lobster and The Frontiersman and Patricia Murphy’s