Pregnant with my third child, a close relative of my husband’s decided to stay with us for a week – and both criticize and control. She insisted I make her personal recipe for Romanian stuffed cabbage. I figured it’d be tedious with par boiling cabbage, separating leaves, fixing meat/rice filling before placing globs inside each leaf then sealing into a sturdy cabbage roll, making sauce and slow cooking -- just what I needed with a pregnant belly, and two other children under the age of four.
Holding back a sigh, I asked her what I must buy from the supermarket. She gave me the list of ingredients. Upon my return, she told me she’d forgotten to mention "I must have raisins." Her tone was sharp. Out again, I got raisins. When I returned she said she meant golden ones. Oh, and she needed bay leaves. She waited until I’d exchanged the brown raisins to dictate another of her “must haves.” While I clearly allowed her to manipulate me, I also made a silent decision to alter, to suit myself, any recipes chosen for personal cooking. After all, the bay leaves added nothing special, and the regular raisins would have been just as good. Cooking should be creative, not a confining burden!
The experience reminded me of a cookbook that I received as a gift. Filled with elite chef recipes, it called for foods seldom found in real people’s homes: saffron rice, for example and exotic seasonings were a must. Just seeing “must” was enough to turn me off. What snobbery! Some of us are more comfortable using whatever spices are on hand. We’re the ones who almost never measure, and toss leftovers in with the main entree. We understand risks and mistakes are part of life, and cooking errors can be laughed at later. No person or printed word, I quietly vowed, would again change my cooking freedom into a science experiment, or control my kitchen.
Why are so many people threatened to venture outside the culinary box? If an expensive cheese is listed, but the pocketbook considers it extravagant, why not substitute it with another cheese?
For me, I’ve always liked to color outside the lines back when I was literally handed a coloring book and crayons. But I know that doesn’t work for everyone. Perhaps a scientific and mathematical mind gives one reason to follow exactly what appears on a printed page. And those who make certain a teaspoon is different from a pinch amount are comfortable with the sense of order on a printed page.
A structure-oriented woman would not like to do a recipe incorrectly. She’d probably be anxious, without printed instructions, that it would taste quite awful, look unattractive, she’d hear negative remarks, and her sense-of-self would be diminished. There could be a fear of failure or even a sarcastic comment passed about her inability to prepare a simple meal.
Blame can be passed to the recipe itself if it had been totally followed and still came out wrong. We who prefer fewer boundaries at the stove, would laugh off the “what did you do that this smells so bad?” or “is a souffle supposed to look like mush?” The process is freer, sometimes with great results, sometimes disasters, but cooking isn’t threatening and mistakes are shrugged off.
I observed from my mother that “romance” with food is often about presentation and not the dish itself. A fast-food meal on dinnerware, cloth napkin, parsley decorating the plate, changes both the appearance and the emotional; biologic eating becomes dining. I tested this theory when my married older son was in medical residency. I mentioned this hypothesis to my daughter-in-law and we decided to see if it were valid. Packing bone china, some sterling flatware, small linen cloth with matching napkins, candle and two crystal goblets in a basket, we headed to McDonald’s. She ordered our burgers and fries; I set the table. There’s a quiet elegance when we handle sterling, or a goblet’s stem. So, our McDonald’s food was transported from fries stuffed into a cardboard container, and a skinny burger demanding condiments in order to cover up the grease, into chopped beef and golden potatoes. Our minds saw beautiful dinnerware and altered our perception of the meal. We ate at a slower pace, slicing bits of burger with gleaming sterling.
It was so out of context to have an exquisite table setting with fast-food, that we were moved towards the glamour rather than the franchise. Other diners avoided us. No one asked if we were having a celebration but rather assumed we had mental problems they didn’t want to catch.
Notice, in movies, there’s often a woman with her hair pulled back, secured by an invisible pin, and her body language presents an attitude of polished behavior. Ever notice as that one pin gets released, her hair tumbles down, and she comes across as relaxed? As the pin is removed, she shakes her head in a gentle motion so the tresses cascade around her shoulders. The dining table itself can be the structure with an orderly and beautiful arrangement of dishes, colors, flowers, candles, napkin rings. Cooking well requires the pin be removed, the creative process to cascade, mistakes chuckled about long after the meal is even history, and feeling like a free spirit.