When I Turned Into A Cook

When I was a child, I never concerned myself with food or cooking except when I was at my Grandmother's in the summertime. She and my Grandfather had gardens at both their home in Scranton, as well as their cottage at a place called Lake Coxton, also in PA. Fresh vegetables and fruits were a staple throughout the summer and we often picked fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, even sweet onions and would have a bite of the warm veggie right their in the bed.

The food memory strongest from those years before my Grandfather died in 1971 when I was 15, was the fresh fish. He'd taught me to fish as a small child and I used a branch with a line of string, a bobbin and a worm. But I could catch perch, small mouth bass, pickerel, sunnies and the odd bullhead. Let me tell you, the simplicity of a freshly caught perch fried up with butter in the morning was in directly inverse proportion to the amazing flavor. Salt, pepper, butter, fish. Yum to the 10th power!

A few summers later, when I was a teen, I learned how to make pies from the berries we picked. Huckleberries, blackberries and the red rasberries that took hours to pick a sufficient quantity for a pie, or, on the days when the pickins were slim, then a kuchen. The satisfaction of eating something I had not only created, but made from fresh fruit I gathered was huge.

Unfortunately, college rolled around, after that adulthood, and my culinary experiences were few and far between. Not counting the time in the Hamptons where a bunch of us actors gathered to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Another gal and I were assigned the turkey and were mortified when, after checking, checking, and checking we STILL didn't see the little button pop up, we discovered we had, gulp, cooked the turkey upside down. Imagine our surprise - and relief - when it was the juiciest turkey we'd ever eaten because the juices all settled in the breast!

I lived alone in an apartment in Manhattan only at the end of my time there. That was where I made my first, solo, Thanksgiving dinner. For one. ME. I was beside myself with glee that the family tradition: turkey with stuffing (onion, herbs and celery only), mashed turnips (rutabegas, my Gram called them), mashed potatoes with butter and peas, with the ubiquitous pumpkin pie - all came out perfect. I sat in my apartment on West 57th Street that night and gorged on my meal. Accompanied by the Georges DeBouef Beajulais Nouveau for that year. It was marvelous. It was also a turning point.

I was still working full time and acting and singing at that point, but soon gave it up. When I realized that I was going to have to move back home to Long Island as a result of my elderly Gram's recent arrival at our house and my Mother's increasingly poor health, I packed up the few new kitchen items I had and headed home.

And that is when the most amazing transformation occured. I turned forty that year, but instead of a wild mid-life crisis involving partying and orgies, I morphed, instead, into a hausfrau.

14 years later I have become a happy cook. Still with much, much, much to learn, but I've experienced the excitement of a complicated meal - getting it all done to perfection and served together to compliments - and to discovering the perfect combination of flavors that make a dish soar rather than simply fly along at low altitude.

Then along came the new movie, Julie & Julia. I saw it the weekend it opened and immediately ran to the bookstore for the bible of French cooking. They were sold out. I grabbed "How To Cook" by Madame Julia instead but went on-line and purchased both volumes of "Mastering The Art of French Cooking", as well as "My Life In France" and the biography of her editor.

And I went and saw the movie again today with my Mother (who, unfortunately, tries hard but with a few exceptions, which oddly enough included a masterful b'oeuf Bourginon, is a fairly sad cook.

But I came home and had been inspired. A dish appeared in my mind as if by magic and I created it to both my Mother's acclaim and my own.

A ring of saffron rice circling the outer perimeter of the plate. In the middle, a bed of steamed fresh spinach with lemon. On top of the spinach perched thin-sliced chicken breasts sauteed with lemon and (yes, Julie and Julia, BUTTER!). On top, a finely diced melange of broccoli and carrots that had been blanched, and then sauteed in garlic and butter and a dollop of the mixture on top of each breast.

Delicious!

While I have no intention of earning the badge of "lobster killer", or attempting aspics which do not appeal to me, there are oodles of fabulous recipes that I am already planning to try. And I'm going to study the books of other cooks and compare the recipes. What do they do differently about a basic dish like, for example, coq au vin? What do they do the same when preparing a quiche?

My brother went to the French Culinary Institute, but I've never heard about what he learned, what he cooked, or why he simply abandoned that particular dream.

But I now understand the joy of learning new things, acquiring the implements to make them with, and discovering the satisfaction of a well-devised, creative and tasty meal.

Dare I say it? Why not! As Julia would be bold, so can I be.

Bon Appetit!