~a column by Colleen O’Brien
When I read that poet Phyllis McGinley liked to read cookbooks in bed at night, I thought her odd. I’m not a cook who loves her work, so I figured it wasn’t a habit I’d get in to. Cookbooks were a necessary reference for me now and then (what does it mean when it says “clean the turkey”?); they were not best friends but casual acquaintances. But when a neighbor gave me a cookbook she published, I did indeed take it to bed one night. And it was a good read! I was captured from the appetizers right through the after dinner drinks. So, periodically over the years, I read cookbooks, even though I never feel compelled to practice what they suggest.
I had received the big loose leaf Betty Crocker cookbook from my mother when I married, when cooking — my own cooking –actually entered my life. Betty, now dog eared and spattered with spaghetti sauce, has lived in my cupboard and moved from state to state with me ever since. What I discovered in moments of cooking panic is that it is not the recipes in Betty that are important but the helpful hints she adds at the back of her book. When I look up a word in the dictionary, I often get carried away and read the next word and the next. It’s the same with the end papers of a cookbook.
In the middle of making a cake I discovered I had no baker’s chocolate (What is baker’s chocolate, I wondered?). I turned to my friend Betty and she told me what to do (cocoa and butter). And I discovered the next hint was just as interesting: “If you have no sour milk, add 1 TBS lemon juice or vinegar to milk to make one cup.”
The dictionary, one of my favorite reads to get lost in because I look up the word “lilied” (which means covered with lilies), and find, remarkably, that there are 10 entries for one of the simplest words in the language — “like”! Who would have thought to look up a word everyone knows and likes, like “like”? Cookbooks are the same: that there is born a person to think up and put to use a recipe. The helpful hints in a cookbook impress me as do the definitions in a dictionary. Who did think them all up, the words and the entrees? Was it a matter of trial and error or a lucky guess? Whoever these bright souls were, both the word makers and the cake bakers, I am thankful for their ingenuity and common sense.
In a Lithuanian cookbook full of mouth-watering but complicated recipes for unpronounceable dishes like Velyku Boba, Brandeles Su Lasiniais and Mocuites Smiltiniai, the secrets in the back mark the book as invaluable.
- “Add baking powder to mashed potatoes to make them lighter.” I tried this, and amazingly it also eliminates lumps.
- “To remove the burned taste from scorched food, quickly place pan in cold water.” Had I known this from the beginning, would it have forestalled my having earned the Mother’s Day plaque that said “Where there’s smoke, there’s dinner”?
- “To keep pies from running over into the oven while baking, use macaroni as ‘smoke stacks’ in the top crust to allow for escape of steam.” (Do not use elbow macs, as I did, because of course they direct the steam right back into the pie.)
- “Rinsing the pan with water before heating milk in it will prevent the milk from sticking to the pan.”
- “If eggshells are moistened before placing eggs in water to boil, it will help avoid cracking, and the shells will also come off easily.” This is SO worth it.
- “To prevent cheese from drying out, spread butter on cut side and before wrapping in foil, place a lump of sugar in the package to prevent mold.”
When you send your kids into the world, give them a dictionary and a cookbook. With job problems, car problems, social problems, house problems, they’ll be on their own; for communicating and cooking, they’ll thank you.
