In the Kitchen with Grandma

I've been cooking a lot lately.

I make all my own meals. Lean protein, brown rice, veggies galore and fresh fruit, basically, in various combinations five times a day. Generally speaking, I cook the rice in big batches in advance, cook a day's worth of chicken or fish at a time, and then cut up a fresh veggie or two to go with each meal. It's steaming or stir-fry (with Pam, can you believe it) or the good ole microwave, which is fabulous with veggies. Tonight I had chicken breast that I had roasted in the oven, a cup of chewy brown rice, and a huge pile of spinach that cooked down to almost nothing. For flavoring, it's Mrs. Dash on the chicken (I'm pretty much salt-free), this garlic-ginger-basil paste I make for the rice, and a squeeze of lemon on the spinach. I also do this thing where I cook up a couple of red onions, thinly sliced, and slow-cooked in a pan with a healthy splash of balsamic vinegar on them. It's a great condiment to almost everything I eat.

So it sounds pretty boring, huh? It constantly amazes me that I find it all delicious, satisfying as hell, and a total snap to prepare.

But today I got to thinking about how my Grandma taught me to cook. Grandma Kathryn was a brilliant cook, half Italian and half German Jewish, so her background was steeped in two food-loving traditions. Her people-pleasing food skills really took off in the 30's, when volatile Grandpa Alex would fly off the handle at his current employer, quit abruptly, and move Kathryn and their daughter Cookie to a new town, usually some cockamamie place in the South. Kathryn would take over a listless boarding house in the new town and in a matter of days start producing meals that the tenants raved over. Her good cheer, dazzling cooking skills and inate ability to make everyone feel at home guaranteed that her little family landed on their feet wherever Alex lead them. In town after town, Kathryn made breakfast and dinner for twenty or thirty people a day, incorporating local specialties in her repertoire until she could turn out a wide variety of first-rate cuisines.

Grandma and Grandpa lived next door when I was a kid so I spent many a Saturday at her side, learning about brisket and marinara and gefilte fish and roast chicken. She had a million little tricks. She would put a teaspoon of good whisky in each bowl of chicken soup - she said it made the flavor complex. She added fresh herbs to wine and vinegar because in those days there weren't shelves of specialty items. Her simplest salads had twelve ingredients. She showed me how to make matzo balls that were flavorful as well as light as a feather. The day before Thanksgiving, she roasted a chicken until it was dark brown, then would pick all the meat off and use it to make an intense gravy that served as the base for what would become the next day's turkey gravy. She made sour cream coffee cakes and mandelbrodt, perfectly shaped tartlets and melt-in-your-mouth almond crescents. She would get upset sometimes when one of her admirers asked her for a recipe, and when she shared it, they said, "Would it be okay to leave out the mushrooms?" Her answer was, "Of course, but then it won't be the same, and it won't be what you loved so much."

Grandma would gently saute chicken livers in perfectly flavored schmaltz, with a few thin onions and a splash of sherry. Then I'd put them in the big wooden chopping bowl and take them out into the living room, where I would sit on the floor "Indian style" leaning against Grandpa's knees, and chop chop chop. Grandma would come to me with hard boiled eggs, one at a time, and I'd incorporate them into the liver pate. A little salt, a little pepper, another egg, and finally the consistency would be deemed perfect. We would sample the finished product on a fresh matzo, then store the rest away for the evening's relish plate.

Grandma taught me well, and over the years friends have oohed and aahed over my culinary exploits. I even cooked for a year in a tiny seafood place in Manhattan Beach, California, when I was still in college. I didn't think it was surprising that sometimes people would come back to the kitchen to tell me thay enjoyed their dinner, even tipping me a dollar or two. After all, I had learned from the best.

One time I made a special dinner for friends of mine, Trish and Pete, and Trish said, "Everything you cook is so rich!" I was taken aback. I thought, "Yeah, everything's rich - because I'm having company and I want everything to be special." But it made me realize for the first time something that had never been stated: one of Grandma's main tenets was that anything could be made "better" with a handful of walnuts or an extra dollop of butter or a grind of good parmesano reggiano. When company was coming, you upped the ante with adding extra stuff - cheese, cream, butter, toasted nuts, bread crumbs, smoked salmon, roquefort dressing, gravy, dark chocolate, Kahlua, brandied cherries, whipped cream. That way your guests knew how much you cared, how much you loved them. Extra was better, rich was better.

It was unthinkable to have "ordinary" food when company came. And it was unthinkable that people wouldn't exclaim over how delicious everything was, eat too much, and (frequently) have to lay down on the living room floor after stuffing themselves with the magnificent food. That was the sure sign it was a helluva good dinner - visible gastric distress. It was all part of being generous hosts, of showing people a good time, and Grandma derived a great deal of satisfaction from the groans of pleasure that rose like bubbles all around her dinner table.

Think "Chocolat" or "The Big Night" and you'll get the picture.

No doubt about it - food was a way to express affection, and really delicious, really rich food was like being served pure love.

I don't know if Grandma would approve of the way I cook these days - there's nary a walnut or dollop of butter in sight.