Well I have to admit I was sort of thwarted here. After a spurt of planning (and posting) ahead, I just figured that I was going to cruise through, then realised that I didn’t really have anything for today ready. No problem, there were a few dribs and drabs what were supposed to come in the mail that were for review here.
Of course, God said “Ha!” and the one thing that did arrive arrived without the actual perfume- just a crushed box. Seller offers no returns and Amazon doesn’t cover it. (is it me or is it more Caveat Emptor on Amazon these days? You’d have a better time shopping in Santee Alley- you’ll be getting a fake but at least it will be something!)
So the other day Cinnamon talked bread. I love bread. I know eating carbs in Los Angeles is up there with jaywalking, keeping your natural hair color, or driving a Camaro without irony in the list of Things That Aren’t Done, but screw it. I like carbs. My idea of heaven in a piece of still-warm-from-the-oven bread with sweet butter and raspberry jam, and a strong coffee with real cream. Even though I will pay for it in the sugar and caffeine rush, and the other less attractive effects coffee has on me, which some people pay good money to effect through pills. Or hoses.
I have even heard of realtors who, when staging a difficult to sell house will toss a ready-to-bake loaf in the oven an hour before an open house to get that “warm, lived in” feeling.
But I don’t bake. Much.
I did for a long time cater with a friend who I have known for 40 years (how this is possible when we are both 29 is open to question- I blame time warps) before she moved back to NYC a few years ago. “Catering” I should call it since we jokingly called ourselves “Charity Caterers.” We would do it for friends and family, their theater openings and whatnot. My friend was the baker- in a way you have to have a scientist’s mind for baking. There are rules there and little leeway- sometimes a gram too much flower or the egg whites at the wrong temp or Mercury in Retrograde could send your souffle falling like a rock or make your bread gluey or your cookies crumble in the most appalling way. I try to be that person, but don’t always succeed.
We did have a lot of fun; cooking with a companionable companion is the best. Some of which were fraught, but ended up well. A few that spring to mind are:
Catering her husband’s Theater opening at the (now demolished) Tiffany Theater on Sunset. Attempting to finish off the devilishly complicated Martha Stewart appetizers in a weird little room under the show floor, with ceilings that pitched from 7′ to 4′ and one fluorescent fixture strobing to seizure-inducing blinks. Don’t ever do that. Love Martha but some of those recipes are only possible with a restaurant kitchen and a fleet of assistants. But it worked out and people ate.
Doing a backyard ‘do for friends of ours who are (literally) clowns and were looking for investors in their show. My friend baked up a storm of little delights and I made made-to-order mini quesadillas, with fresh tortillas cut to rounds, Mexican white cheese, fresh tomato salsa and guacamole. All of which was bought for practically nothing in downtown LA at Grand Central Market, and cooked on three $9 gas burners I bought in Little Tokyo and still have somewhere. I don’t know if they got investors, but they certainly got fed.
Or the funniest (and most fraught) one: my friend as her wedding gift to a friend of hers was going to make the wedding cake. In NYC. I was going back east to visit so of course was going to be in on this. I was staying with a friend in the Village; I think she was staying at another friends on the Upper East side and she had rented from and-yet a different friend a kitchen in Brooklyn. The idea was that we would bake the cake in Manhattan, her Husband and child would arrive and we would pick them up (with cake) in the car we were going to rent and then take cake and caboodle to the wedding venue in the Catskills. We were very lucky that Enterprise Mid-Town had run out of anything with four wheels except the Champagne colored Cadillac deVille we were given with no good grace. The idea (also I believe from Martha Stewart) was to decorate the frosted and fondant covered cake with gum-paste flowers that we would create and apply at the hotel before transporting and final assembly of the tiers at the venue.
If your friendship can survive attempting to cut gum paste into flowers for a wedding cake using kitchen utensils, credit cards and car keys, it can survive the Zombie Holocaust.
A Supper Buffet for Ball or Reception from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Digitally enhanced from our own 1923 edition.
What I learned? Enjoy your time in the kitchen. It’s fun to cook with friends. Even if you screw it up, take it from Julia Child: you can make it into something else. Who’s to know? You can even just feed it to the dog. Or the husband. Don’t be afraid of what my other friend called “the room with the big hot thing”, just don’t pay attention to Martha Stewart when she writes that wrapping anything in thinly sliced cucumber or cutting out gum paste ornaments is easy and fun. That’s a world of hurt..
Do you have any cooking stories to share? Triumphs or tragedies? We would love to read them in the comments..
Images: Pexels, Wikimedia Commons (edit- I did have images but for some reason WordPress won’t let me. If I can I will upload later.) UPDATE: Photo issue fixed, OBVS
omg. MARTHA.
’nuff said – or I’ll be here all day.
MARRRRTHA
Love her.
Remember her show “Martha’s Cooking School”? the one that started off with the question “What would you do if Martha Stewart came to your home o teach you…”?
My answer was “MOVE!!!”
I love these “baking under less than optimal conditions” or spur-of-the-moment stories! You triggered a very fond food memory: eons ago, a bunch of us rented a huge beach house on the Outer Banks of NC. We threw money into a jar in the kitchen for group food. Lots of grilling. Lots of champagne and beer. One night a group of us decided to make peach cobbler (we’d found Bisquick in the cabinet.) We were all pretty loaded — slicing/peeling peaches. Nobody lost a finger and it was absolutely delicious! So apparently peach cobbler is pretty easy to make if we managed to do it.
What’s Bisquik?
it’s a ready-made flour/baking mixture (you add eggs and liquid) – great for biscuits if you suck at making them from scratch – and biscuit dough is the topping for most cobblers.
(and I tend to suck at making biscuits from scratch – usually they turn out tough as old boots
We never actually tried it for biscuits, but I was deprived of the biscuit experience until I met a Southerner.
And I never had a bagel until 1979
If you ever make “old fashion” comfort food, Bisquik is wonderful for making the carby part of chicken and dumplings. I go for the fast stuff to make it…rotisserie bird, frozen mixed vegetables, cream of mushroom soup and the Bisquik. Fresh chopped parsley, some fresh thyme leaves, a few torn fresh sage leaves and a fair amount of flaky salt and white pepper complete it. Some of my friends who are the most ridiculous food snobs always ask me to make this if we’re getting together.
I use “just add water” dumpling mix. It’s ridiculous having suet loitering on my shelves for a decade.
Three things I just cannot make. Scones, pastry & dumplings.
I can make cakes, buns, cookies, UK biscuits, sponge puddings etc but bakeries & supermarkets do it better & cheaper. Plus wheat & my gut are not friends so I rarely eat them
Suet- wow! I don’t think American kitchens use that all anymore, even to feed the birds. But then we are the fattest people afraid of fat on the planet.
Suet pastry over steak & kidney when the gravy soaks into it & the top is crunchy is the food of the Gods. Do Americans eat kidney?
Not really. Organ meat kind of went out in the 60’s. It’ too bad because it can be so delicious.
That’s a shame. I generally draw the line at tripe & lungs but if treated well liver, kidney, heart & calves foot can be yummy. Those in their 50s & below won’t know how to cook it
I love liver- and it’s funny- Americans SAY they won’t eat this but sautee it and put it in stuffing or make it into a hot dog and they’ll gobble it up.
Or on the snootier end, call it pate and they’ll pay through the nose for it..
I’d forgotten- yes chicken and dumplings are great wth Bisquik. I want to try your recipe- it reads easy and yummy!
It’s almost shameful how easy it is to make “convenience food” chix & dumplings. If you DO make this dish, throw some dried aromatics (dried sage, dried thyme) into the Bisquik/dumpling mixture. I always have to make extra dumplings because I wind up eating a few before the dish gets to the table. : )
You’re my sort of cook!
And YOU are my sort of writer!
Bisquik is one of those shortcuts that is perfectly acceptable in my book. It’s got the levening in it already and at least I know I will use it up before it expires, unlike actual baking powder.
Like Aunt Bessie’s stuff then. Wish the UK had the equivalent scone (biscuit) mix. We can’t even agree how to pronounce scone & DH loves them
Kind of, although it looks as if Aunt Bessie’s makes a different mis for each item. Looking at their website I want to try it all, of course.
Bisquik is an old American staple- a boxed self-raising flour. We used it for pancakes, which always turned out pretty well.
Oh I love peach cobbler!
It’s a funny coincidence that you should post this today, Tom. I’ve been called in to make salad for 40 people up at my church for dinner tonight. The cooking team whose turn it is is out of town dealing with a sick relative. Salad is no biggie: just clean, chop and refrigerate. And I’ve got a nice big modern kitchen to work in. I remember those gum paste from Martha Stewart’s giant coffee table book, “Weddings” which I own. They’re gorgeous. Can’t imagine making them, or a wedding cake, in the scenario you outlined! You certainly have had some adventures! I love a croissant with raspberry jam, or a good bagel with cream cheese.
I have that book, too! Gorgeous – but she’s batshit crazy. And careless – her recipe for marshmallow neglects to tell you to use a BIG pot, as the mixture doubles in size.
sigh.
I keep her original books but now? I wouldn’t use one of her recipes on a bet. 30 years after and I’m still traumatized by that marshmallow all over my stovetop!
Oh my Gawd! How awful! Thanks for the warning. The photos in the book are aspirational, but I wouldn’t try to make that food or sew those clothes.
All of her books are gorgeous. All the food, the stuff, everything.
And she was super-pissed when her first cookbook got called out by NYT for unworkable recipes.
It is all aspirational, but kind of in a way that isn’t healthy. It is impossible to create a lot of these things without an army of over caffeinated youg assistants willing to commit seppuku if the lines on the dill garnish aren’t perfectly straight.
I saw a special on her home in Maine, Sunnylands, which used to belong to one of the Fords. (as in Ford Mustang) It had special pink gravel on the mile long drieway which had to be scooped up and put way for the winter and then respread for the spring and summer.
That’s Martha in a nutshell.
Didn’t she get locked up?
Yes, for insider trading
Which wasn’t completely fair. She did sell imclone on the advice of her broker. Strangely enough, the drug whose denial of sale by the FDA (erbitux) was the cause of her broker telling his clients to sell the stock (the news was about to be announced and the stock would tank) ended up being approvved after all.
Basically they sent Martha to jail for being Martha- a snooty-pants rich white lady with a superiority complex. Some of the jusrors must have tried to make one of her cakes.
Someone had to take one for the snooty white rich ladies of the world…….pfft. She got sent down for rubbish recipes really didn’t she?
I remember cetuximab trials back when I worked in cancer research days
Oh yes, rubbish recipes and impossible crafts.
Did you ever get Brini Maxwell over there? She was a semi-serious comic version of a combo of “That Girl” 60’s mid-mod and Martha Stewart crafts done in New York in the early 2000’s. Had a show on Bravo for a couple of Seasons here in the states.
Her catch phrase was whenever completing a project “Now why didn’t YOU think of that?”
https://youtu.be/Ntu6FygCZRg?si=9g8mwxC_vobddD8b
Never heard of her but that catch phrase would have made me gnash my teeth
It’s hilarious actually. And what’s weird is that in there with all the winking drag comedy are some really helpful advice.
She is kind of like the mean relative who will give you a recipe but leave off one key ingredient. Like the phone number to the Fire Department
She can be sketchy on ingredients and accurate ingredient quantities, too. I stopped using her recipes decades ago.
I’ll use her for ideas, but won’t depend upon her for actual directions.
It actually was fun- going all over the city and buying stuff. My friend and I met as New Yorkers and it was nice to be that again. We actually purchased the fondant and the gum paste at someplace near Hell’s Kitchen. And a Cadillac deVille is the perfect car for Manhattan: luxurious enough to soak up the bumps but still Amurrican enough to let the d-bag in the S-Class know “do not f*ck with me, Hans, I’m from MICHIGAN!!”
LOL! true dat!!!
I worked in the food service industry for many years including restaurant cooking plus I loved to cook and bake at home. When I managed school cafeterias, that was the best for baking, that huge stainless steel mixer with the deadly dough hook and the big convection ovens turned out beautiful loaves of bread. I baked bread for our family every week. Now? I have lost my cooking mojo. We keep to a very low carb diet and I have totally lost interest in cooking, to the chagrin of my husband. Things that I used to make without thinking about, like chili and eggs, feel like an overwhelming chore. Hopefully I’ll snap out of this before we starve!
I think that comes in waves. I stopped cooking for years until my friend moved to LA from NY and we started doing it together. These days I am in sort of a “microwave it” phase and am seriously considering going for a food service so I can enforce a diet that isn’t Hot Pockets and microwave burritos.
I signed up with Blue Apron about 5 years ago when I was falling into too many popcorn for dinner nights. I subscribed to it for 2 months which got me back into the “real food” habit again.
I think that that’s a great idea- severl of my neighbors have done the same. They get one of those and it “resets” how they look at portions and kind of reintroduces them to cooking. I might need to bite the bullet and give it a try. Can’t be much pricier per month than the two bags of groceries for $50 I just bought at Gelsons around the corner.
I bake and then I stop baking and then I start again. I’m not consistent. As to cooking stories, really, no. There are dinner parties done, emergency lunches put together when friends dropped by unannounced. As I’ve aged I’ve really come to appreciate what good restaurants can do that I can’t. My mother did bake and cook but she was not really domestic and did it because it was expected, not because she loved it. I think if she’d been alive in a different time she would have married someone who did the domestic stuff and she would have been in the world more (as it was she worked too). I do love reading cooking and baking books and getting ideas.
Oh I definitely appreciate what a good restaurant can do and know that I am not in that league.
We kind of grew up in the Julia Child era, with the Galloping Gourmet and the whole Alice Waters food thing in the 70’s. My mom was a good cook but decided when my sister and I got into it just to sit back and enjoy, much like when we got drivers licenses we became the designated drivers. Clever woman.
I love cooking more than perfume! I rarely follow a full recipe though. I cook meals by instinct.
I do bake sourdough every week but that’s more “food as medicine”.
Biggest disaster? My wedding cake. Yup made my own. Future MiL decorated it beautifully. When DH & I cut into to the centre was still slightly raw. No one died so all ok.
Baking sourdough has had its own disasters but there is only me eating it so….
I do a lot of cooking by instinct but then forgot what I did so have a hard time recreating the successes.
Anyone who even attempts their own wedding cake deserves a Nobel prize even just for the effort. They’re really a different animal altogether than a regular cake.
Your stories are a lot of fun and very enjoyable. I used to cook and bake a lot but ultimately, and after many years, finally took the advice of an older Texas woman I worked with. She said she didn’t cook and the pretty pots her mother in law gave her were displayed on her stove gathering dust. We all thought she was crazy but years later I came around. lol. So, I rarely cook. I make great sandwiches and salads, there’s takeout, and like Portia, I love eating out. That’s all folks! 🙂
My mother was an excellent cook, but an even better strategist. She insisted us kids learn, but my brother didn’t care about it. My sister and I did and got really competitive about it. Mom never had to lift a spatula again except to test for seasonings..
Smart lady, your mother!
She never got us to compete over vacuuming tho..
Tom,
you are hilarious.
No real kitchen tragedy stories. Sorry. I like to cook and Jin is amazing at it but what we REALLY love is eating out.
Portia xx
Well my friend and I have been eating out for 40 years, but those stories aren’t as funny. Filling, though..
Oh gawd, Tom, I do love your stories! I cook more than bake, and some of the things your friend, with you as accomplice, baked I would never attempt.
She is an excellent cook. Chef really. Puts me in the shade.