Over the decades of physicianhood and the seven years of post-clinical (but definitely not retired from) life, I’ve found immersing myself in one of my favorite hobbies to be the best antidote to all the weighty seriousness.
I picked up my love of cooking from my paternal grandmother whom I knew as MeeMaw, Elvina O’Connor Manion.
When both my parents were working during some financially strained times in the ‘50s (yes, the Nineteen 50s), my dad would drop me off before heading off to his independent insurance agent office at her small rambling bungalow on Sycamore Street in uptown New Orleans. (Of course, my city of birth could also have a touch of influence on one’s love of food and cooking! Ya think? Louis Armstrong [“What a Wonderful World”] used to sign his letters, “Red Beans and Ricely Yours.”)
MeeMaw would make me crispy broiled chicken and rice with buttery chicken gravy for an early supper - and follow it with a cup of cafe au lait!, albeit mostly hot milk with just a touch of New Orleans coffee & chicory blend. Five years old and here I am sipping cafe au lait after late afternoon supper on her screened porch while we waited for Francis to pick me up. And invariably, though my dad was probably eager to get home, MeeMaw would make him sit down and visit, often telling him I hadn’t finished my coffee yet :) Imagine!
She’d often take me to L&M Grocery a block away, and the grocer Mr. Letuccia, standing behind the meat counter wearing a white apron would always greet her with a gracious warm smile like seeing a long-lost friend, and he’d marvel at what a handsome boy I was, me standing there, looking down mostly, shyly holding MeeMaw’s hand at my ear level. And then again, Mrs. Lettucia at the cash register, doting on me, my grandmother beaming, the celery and tomatoes dancing down the shiny stainless steel counter toward the waiting canvas tote. How can you not come away with a gumbo of love all simmered together, butcher beaming, celery screaming, cash register clinging and MeeMaw melodically echoing their praise and smiling her joy.
Of course, what she did with those ingredients was pure magic. I can’t right now draw up one clear memory of a particular dish she was making on her four-burner gas stove; more, the memory of humid, even steamy, air, the pale yellow walls and enamel beige painted pantry doors and glass-windowed cupboard all steamed up, the scent of foods just sauteed or baked … ahhh, yes, she’d already sauteed some vegetables earlier for a meatloaf, it was macaroni she was cooking in the boiling water. She made the most sublime macaroni and cheese I’ve ever tasted and can still not replicate. But I assure you of this - every time I make an attempt at it, no matter how I get the bechamel or cheddar proportions wrong or how I try to gussie it up with sauteed mushrooms and truffle oil, or apple-smoked bacon, she’s always with me in the kitchen.
The crisp fall and bone-chilling winter that descends upon Cape Ann beginning around All Souls Day (thankfully giving Halloween a tad of quasi-spiritual validity) is such an ideal time for hearth-style comfort foods, the kinds that call for lots of chopping and sauteeing and then assembling and simmering.
And yesterday was certainly such an occasion.
I had that craving to make a rich lamb stew. And I like to make mine along the lines of an elegant Osso Bucco. But as it’s a stew and not just a long-simmered meat dish, it’s got to accommodate the ever-requisite addition of potatoes (at its heart, it is after all an Irish stew!).
Some people who cook by recipes follow them rigorously; for them, it’s almost a technical /mechanical endeavor. X cups of finely diced white onion; Y cups of finely diced celery, one tablespoon of salt …. And when I was starting out cooking, I’d do the same. And following this approach often - but not always - would get you the desired result.
But when you become more food-obsessed, and I don’t mean gluttonous but rather artist / craftsman-like, you see such recipes as formulas that will give you a more or less predictable result. You may have something else in mind, perhaps another recipe you’ve worked with, or a dish you’ve had that you faintly taste-remember, or you just read an article mentioning this or that spice like ras el hanout used in Morroccan cuisine … so you assemble your general ingredients like an artist pulls out her oils and brushes, and use the recipe as a shopping list reminder.
Now, being holiday season, pandemic notwithstanding, there was a lovely array of pointettias and Norfolk pines on display. So, mask-attired of course, as was everybody else (oh, how we’ve come to normalize this!), I gathered up the celery, carrots, onions, lamb shoulder and, with a beautiful Christmas display in the corner, added an array of the small poinsettias and a robust young Norfolk pine to the basket.
Already rainy, the afternoon was turning cold and sleety with expected strong sustained winds - even gusts up to 60 mph - for the next 12 hours, the kind of storm which howls and rattles the windows in their casings.
Truth be told, I enjoy the shopping and prep work as much as the “cooking" part, i.e. the actual assembly of the prepped parts over heat. In making stews and soups, there’s often a lot of prep work, chopping onions, peeling garlic, washing celery, slicing potatoes …. And even that often calls for some cooking. I like to saute’ my vegetables in EVOO or butter and put them aside, in part because it gives them a pan-roasted flavor. And you also get to more selectively aportion the now mounded components.
So while some people who do crockpot cooking sing the praises of just tossing in piles of chopped this and that and coming home hours later to a prepared “stew,” that’s not been my style. I see it as “component” cooking, thinking about your vegetable combination proportions, the seasoning array, the stock you’ll use, how you’ll sear or braise the meats …. For godsakes, I even sit down and do an ingredient comparison table when I can’t decide between two recipes. I want to see what are its predominant flavor layers.
I guess that explains why when a recipe says “30 minutes prep” I know I’ve got to block out half a day, and add on 2 hours for clean up. And I don’t begrudge it. I suspect I drag it out as I really love it. It’s a form of mindfulness, bodyfullness! meditation. I mean, the joy of knowing how to approach a Spanish onion with a razor-sharp chef’s knife and how’s the best way to cut it so as to easily peel it and then, after halving it lengthwise so that each peeled half has a good bit of root end on it holding on to the tear-inducing crunchy flesh so that when you slide your long scalpel into it horizontally in several layers and then again vertically in multiple longitudinal cuts, you can then do a slice-and-dice all in a series of swift guillotine swipes and swoop the pieces up into a holding bowl.
And then, knowing that you’ll have all these wonderful cut end peelings and shavings, like from the carrots, you can be simmering your own vegetable stock. Of course, you have to know what you can and can’t add to such a stock, e.g. bell pepper or the fennel cuttings, as the former will embitter the stock and the latter make it too licorice-like. And with a bunch of baby portabello and shitake mushrooms to be cleaned, I can add all those stems which become more pronounced roasted. I often take all the peeling and put them in a dry roasting pan and let them get toasty and a little caramelized at 350F and then I scrape the pan into the boiling water and let that simmer and simmer as I add more cuttings, roasted or not. It’s amazing how many cuttings you end up with, a big bowl full, and you just put those on a sheet pan and roast and then transfer the melange to the stockpot.
Well, aware of a reader’s impatience with all this wordy elaboration - not that dissimilar to the prep work itself I guess, a kind of verbal prep work here on the writer’s cutting board - with Norfolk pine and poinsettias in view, Baroque and Renaissance Christmas music audible above the exhaust fan, I must humbly report that I assembled an utterly stunning Irish Stew, the fragrance so heady with stock and port and herbs de provence, the kitchen so steamy, that I thought it vital to have another pour of liquid spirits.
Given that I’m still cleaning up this morning from yesterday’s culinary excursion, I’ll have to postpone sharing the recipe until I have time to make my notes and actually recall what I did. :)
First thing this morning, as I let the whole batch cool down in the crockpot overnight, I had a piecemeal taste of the stew, spooning a lamb morsel, a piece of sweet potato and a little gravy into a small bowl, mainly just to confirm all went well and do a finishing balance of the seasonings while it was still warm. The sampling needed just a touch of sea salt. As of course did the full helping which followed while the coffee was brewing, me imagining how even more delicious this fulsome roux-blessed gravy and bits of lamb stew would taste over a generous serving of New Orleans buttery cheese grits, sort of a riff on polenta.
Yes, for a Sunday brunch sometime in the future, when we can gather again, unmasked, maybe one or two of us still apron-adorned, warmly welcoming each other like old friends.
I’m checking the pantry now.
Ten-to-one, Kernan’s lamb and grits is going to be on the menu in the next few days!