Archive for the ‘THE SOUL OF A KITCHEN’ Category

by Katherine Tomlinson

In the Beginning Was the Recipe…

I was looking for my mother’s recipe for Mincemeat Cake. It was not in the yellow binder where I keep the family recipes copied out by my sister in her meticulous art school handwriting and decorated with whimsical drawings.

The recipe wasn’t in the manila folder where I keep the loose recipe cards and the torn magazine pages and the newspaper clippings and the scribbled instructions on the backs of envelopes, school notebook paper and old invoice forms from my grandfather’s general store. (There’s even a recipe copied out on a soft paper napkin worn to the consistency of Kleenex.)

My mother had a recipe box like all good mid-century housewives and she kept many recipes in that box, but the ones she cherished the most and used the most often were in an old school binder with a coarse cloth cover that was rubbed through to the cardboard beneath. When I inherited the binder in the late 80s, it was falling apart and I transferred the contents over to the aforementioned yellow binder.

A lot of the loose recipes in the folder are starting to fade with age. Some of the oldest date back to the early 50s and the paper has browned and the ink lightened until you almost need to be a forensic documents examiner to piece together the instructions. My mother’s recipes are written out the way she talked and almost seem interactive with their asterisks and inserted comments. “I usually use twice the amount of ginger,” she notes on a recipe for ginger snaps, making me wonder why she didn’t just write out her version of the recipe.

Sometimes she addresses the recipient of the recipe directly as she did with all the family recipes she typed out and sent to me in Los Angeles when I first moved here. (“Will feed six unless they are Tomlinsons,” she wrote on her recipe for macaroni and cheese, which was the best I’ve ever had.)

Reading some of the recipes is like traveling in a culinary time machine—all those references to “oleo” and directions to melt chocolate in a double boiler, instructions rendered obsolete by the invention of the microwave. The recipes also show a high degree of brand loyalty. It was always “Pet” Evaporated Milk and the 10X brand of confectioner’s sugar. (In fact, that’s what it’s called in all my mother’s recipes—10X sugar.)

When I finally found the recipe—stuck between the pages of Jane and Michael Stern’s Square Meals, I realized two things right away. It was the recipe I remembered my mother making but it was not her recipe. The instructions were written out in a hand unfamiliar to me. It’s fussy writing, with little circles dotting the Is.

My mother had two kinds of handwriting—the elegant, grown-up penmanship she used to sign her canvases and our report cards and the messy scrawl she used to communicate with herself in grocery lists and refrigerator reminders and notes. She doodled on her notes, a habit my sister inherited.

I’ll never know the name of the woman who passed this recipe on to my mother, but she would have been a friend. Because sharing the food you love is one of the things friends do.

Somebody’s Mincemeat Cake Recipe

2 cups (1 jar) prepared mincemeat

2 cups chopped walnuts

1 tsp. vanilla extract

¼ cup rum or cognac

1 tbsp. grated orange rind

¼ cup orange juice

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup mayonnaise

3 cups flour

1 ½ cups flour

¾ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

In a large bowl, mix the mincemeat, walnuts, vanilla, rum (or cognac), orange rind, orange juice, buttermilk and mayonnaise.

Combine dry ingredients and sift into the wet mixture. Blend thoroughly.

Pour into a greased and floured tube pan (or use one that’s been sprayed with Pam) and bake at 325 degrees for two hours.

Remove from oven and cool on a rack.

Frost with buttercream icing using a cookie press.

Buttercream Icing

¼ cup butter, unsalted

1 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar

1 tbsp. milk

Beat ingredients together. The mixture will be very stiff.
Put into a cookie press and press frosting designs on top of cake.

Garnish with candied fruit.

by Katherine Tomlinson

I don’t have a lot of pots and pans. If I had to, I could put dinner on the table with just one pot and a paring knife. And I’d have no problem eating with mismatched utensils if necessary. But take away my spices and it’s a whole other story.

I grew up in a household with a spice rack, but my mother’s culinary palette was much too broad and diverse to be contained, even in the deluxe, three-shelf version. This was in the 60s, way before the foodie revolution when pretty much the only way to get an authentic herbes de Provence blend was to make it yourself. Do you now how hard it is to find summer savory and chervil and lavender even now?

Nowadays, there are all sorts of subtle and different “curry” spice mixtures readily available. You can buy Bengal and Madras versions in any grocery, pick up green Thai curry powder or red curry paste from World Market or order complex and subtle blends from companies like chef Ranjan Dey’s New World Spices (http://www.newworldspices.com/ ). Back then, though, outside of the Indian subcontinent, “curry” pretty much meant the tin of chrome-yellow powder composed mostly of cumin and turmeric. This might have daunted another cook but my mother was made of sterner stuff. She’d grown up in the south and cooked like Paula Dean. And if she’d stayed in Virginia, maybe that would have been enough. Biscuits are, after all, the staff of life.

But she’d married an Army officer, moved to Germany and then France, traveling to Italy and Switzerland and taking the odd cooking course as she went. Sauerbraten found its way onto the menu, with crisp little potato pancakes on the side. There was a flirtation with escargot when she bought the reusable shells and single-purpose copper pan to cook them in. (The only person in the house who truly enjoyed these rubbery, garlic-infused morsels was my little sister, who was four at the time. Everyone else was meh.)

She invented a dish called “shrimp curry” and God only knows what was in it because it hit the family dinner table with a distinct “thud” never to return. I remember the sauce was disconcertingly pink and creamy but know for a fact that no coconut milk was used as a thickener, the way it is in most recipes today. I suspect mayonnaise might have been in there somewhere. My mother was very fond of using mayonnaise as an ingredient.

Her next attempt to coax the family toward more adventurous eating was “keema,” a traditional Indian dish involving ground meat and peas. My mother used ground beef (she was tired of making hamburgers) and peas. The peas were canned. The dish was greeted with even less enthusiasm than the shrimp curry had been.

My sister, who refused to eat onions, spent half an hour extricating miniscule slivers of the toxic vegetable from the keema before she even tasted it. Keema is not a dish that’s best served cold. My brother thought it looked like barf and expressed this opinion several times. Loudly. At which point, my neutrality toward the meal (it was better than stuffed peppers) became a lot more negative because, sadly, he was correct. I think the unpleasant texture might have had something to do with the canned tomatoes she’d used. To this day. I rarely cook with canned tomatoes because I hate dealing with the chunks of tomato end that never quite integrate into whatever you’re making.)

Our father, who had served in India during WWII, refused to eat it. He liked beef. And he could tolerate peas (although green beans were better) but he didn’t want them mixed up. And he really didn’t want any curry powder slipped into the mix. We ate a lot of meat loaf after that.

Despite my mother’s best efforts, curry did not seem destined to become a part of my life. And then I went to college and in my sophomore year opted out of the “food plan” that allowed me to eat in the cafeteria. I lost ten pounds because I wasn’t eating sweet rolls for breakfast every day. (The cafeteria made awesome sweet rolls.) I ate a lot of yogurt. And I discovered that you can make rice and beans taste like completely different dishes depending on the spices you use. Which is good because rice and beans are cheap. I started using spices I’d never heard of. And I discovered the secret of life. Spicy is better than bland.

Once I learned that, my destiny was set. I’ve gone way beyond the spice rack to the spice cabinet. I regularly use five kinds of pepper—white, red cayenne, dried red chili flakes, black pepper and coarse cracked black pepper. There’s probably a bottle of green peppercorns somewhere in the cupboard as well, most likely tucked behind the canister of wasabi powder or the container of dried dill weed I bought when I was making a salmon mousse and never used again.

I have seven different kinds of curry powder, all with different topnotes—saffron and tamarind and fenugreek and fennel. I make curry so often one of my wooden spoons is permanently stained yellow. And I’ve even made keema a few times.

Somewhere, my mother is laughing.

by Katherine Tomlinson

My sister Mary loved Christmas. You think it’s rushing the season when the yuletide decorations appear the day after Halloween? She kept little white Christmas tree lights strewn around her apartment year round, surrounding the space with a dotted line of luminosity that defied the darkness that often threatened to engulf her.

She started her Christmas wish list in January, appending directions and diagrams for the hopping-impaired, and revising it weekly throughout the year.

Christmas was what she called “a candy holiday,” a time she gave herself permission to eat all the wrong things … all the time. Meals were made of eggnog and sugar cookies. Dessert would be dates stuffed with cream cheese frosting. There would be candy canes. She was picky about her peppermint, would only deign to eat one particular brand. She’d stock up during the half-price sales after the holiday and mourn when her supply ran out. (And by stock up, I’m not talking about purchasing a couple of boxes; I mean she stocked up. She’d buy enough to last till February.)

She’d had her Christmas stocking since she was a girl. It was made by our mother out of red velvet, with her name stitched in white around the top, framed by a constellation of embroidered stars. She liked that stocking filled with Hershey’s kisses, packets of dried figs, and one of those Lifesavers’ Sweet Story Book collections with the butter rum and pep-o-mint flavors.

These were treats from our childhood, items that showed up year after year, along with a dozen pencils with our names on them (mail-ordered from a catalogue in the days before the Internet) and the hard, black rubber comb that seemed inevitably to lodge in the toe of our stockings. The Lifesavers’ assortment was the candy equivalent of the Crayola box with the built-in crayon sharpener—we usually got one of those as well. In recent years, the crayons and comb were optional, but the kisses were not.

Mary was a traditionalist about Christmas dinner as well, and when we feasted the season, it was with the same dishes our mother and grandmother had made. Except for pie. Neither one of us could ever manage a pie crust as flaky and light as the ones our mother made, so we gave up and opted for cookies as a consolation prize. There were gingersnaps made from a recipe out of Joy of Cooking; peanut blossom cookies with Hershey’s kisses, a prize-winner from a Pillsbury Bake-off sometime in the 60s. There were seven-layer bars. There were oatmeal cookies made from a recipe hand-written on a page of lined notebook paper so splattered with butter it is transparent in parts.

There was always pumpkin bread and banana chocolate-chip bread and orange-cranberry bread made from the instructions on the back of the bag of cranberries. One year I’d been too busy to bake and tried to substitute a loaf of cranberry bread from a high-end bakery. It did not go over well.

In fact, the only new addition to the traditional Christmas day menu—where meals melt into each other in one unbroken decadent dream—has been “Bubble Loaf,” a sweet bread drizzled with an orange/butter/sugar glaze that makes cinnamon rolls seem as bland as unbuttered white toast.

We were brought up in the south, so Christmas dinner always offered what our grandfather called “a gracious plenty.” More food, in other words, than any one family could eat in a week. We carried that tradition with us, even when it was only the two of us to celebrate. After all, why not make enough food to last until the New Year—leaving more time to play with your Christmas presents instead of cooking. And when everything was gone but the carcass of the turkey, there would be Brunswick stew to make from the bones. And of course, biscuits had to be baked to eat with the stew. (And pot pies could be made from the leftovers of both. Done right, a Christmas dinner could last until March.)

The cooking was left to me, but Mary made her own Christmas cards. They were whimsical—designs that usually featured the members of her menagerie, which at various times included an iguana, a tortoise, several frogs, a chameleon and two snakes in addition to a fluctuating number of cats. On her last card, she’d sketched her six cats, sleeping and dreaming of candy canes and fish. I discovered the prototype in her desk when I cleaned out her apartment. I found homes for all but one of the cats, and the last one came home to live with me. It puts me one cat over the line, but he’s a lovable animal, a sweet-faced marmalade tabby with golden eyes and abandonment issues.

I know how he feels.

My sister died last year, but the pain of her loss is a wound only freshly healed over. Beneath the new pink skin is tender flesh filled with nerve endings firing at random. The ache isn’t constant, but summoned unexpectedly, triggered by the most innocuous things. The scent of peppermint. The taste of salty caramel. A glimpse of Miracle on 34^th Street while clicking through to the news.

My sister loved Christmas. I loved my sister. The two feelings are now inextricably twined.

I’ll be making Bubble Loaf for breakfast Christmas morning. And I’ll be thinking of her.

by Katherine Tomlinson

I celebrated my 21^st birthday with two cakes. One was devil’s food with German Chocolate icing that my mother made and sent to me by way of my younger brother. The other was a pound cake with pink, lemon-flavored fondant icing, an old-fashioned confection baked by my great-aunt Helen who lived in the small North Carolina town where I was going to college.

One birthday, two cakes—that’s just about the right ratio. When I moved to Los Angeles the next year, I ate my birthday meal in a now-defunct coffee shop called The Copper Penny. I ordered a slice of carrot cake. It was good. I ordered another slice to take home to the tiny studio apartment I rented in the middle of L.A.’s Korea Town. I’d been in the city for six weeks. There was no one in Los Angeles who loved me enough to make me a cake.

I felt pretty sorry for myself until I discovered that most of my new friends had never actually tasted home-made cake. Never. They were familiar with bakery cakes that come with thick, lard-laden frosting that coats your tongue with a sweet slime. Some had made cakes themselves from mixes and been happy with the results. (And really, the chocolate cake mixes on the market are great. If you weren’t raised on home-made cake.) The idea of someone actually … baking … a cake for them was an exotic concept.

Poor deprived children. As Benjamin Franklin once said about beer, “cake is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

I baked a cake for my best friend’s 25^th birthday. It was chocolate with a chocolate mousse and raspberry filling and chocolate fudge frosting. Her response was the kind of rapturous appreciation master chefs dream of.

I make her birthday cake every year now. Because I love her and because making a cake is a way of saying, “I love you.” When my brother and sister and I were little, our mother used to make these incredibly elaborate cakes for us. There was a rocking horse for my brother one summer; a butterfly for my sister; a train for me. At Easter there would be coconut cake with the coconut dyed green with food coloring and little jelly bean “eggs” hidden in the “grass.” She invented a cake filled with walnuts and sour cherries to celebrate George Washington’s birthday. (It was served warm with cherry syrup poured over it. But it was also good cold, sans syrup.)

As we grew up, I started baking more and more. Bread and sweet rolls, brownies and cookies. And cake.

I once made my sister a Buche de Noell for her birthday because that’s what she wanted. No one in France makes their own; and there’s a reason why. By the time you make the cake and the filling and the syrup to brush the cake layers and the frosting—you’ve used up every pan in your kitchen and had to borrow some from your neighbors. I have to say, though, it was pretty tasty. And she was pleased that someone had gone to all that effort to please her. Which made me happy.

There’s an old expression, “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked a cake.” I grew up in a house where that could have been embroidered on a sampler. Food isn’t love, but making food for the people you love is an act of love. And there’s no sweeter way to say you care about someone than making them a cake.

by Katherine Tomlinson

I am never alone in my kitchen.

If I reach into my silverware drawer, my hand passes over the three iced tea spoons that are all that is left of my great-grandmother Julia’s silver service. The pattern is beautiful, elegant, 19^th century. I never use the spoons, but their shape never fails to please me when I notice them.

Hanging on a magnetic hook from my stove is a pot holder my Aunt Helen crocheted in the shape and color of a slice of watermelon, complete with the shiny black seeds. I’ve had it since I was a kid and it’s now a little grubby from hanging on a hook near the stove. My aunt used to crochet wonderful little whimsies—my favorite being Christmas tree ornaments—little red and green wreaths, tiny ice skates of white yarn with paperclip blades. I do not know how to crochet and wonder if that skill, like hand-milking a cow, will be lost to future generations.

There’s a set of elegant wine glasses in a cupboard above my sink. They were a gift from a beau and despite their delicacy, proved more durable than the relationship. When I use them, I think of him and my thoughts are fond but not regretful.

The Revere ware pot I use for making soup was a wedding present to my parents, as was the tiny cast iron frying pan I use to make single-serving scrambled eggs. These two items are the backbone of my batterie de cuisine, enduring through the decades as cheap pots come and go. They’ll probably bury that cast iron skillet with me.

My brother gave me the pretty cut-crystal vase that sits on my kitchen table. He brought it back from a trip to Ireland. I love the way it catches the light and like to keep it there even when it’s not filled with flowers. Fresh-cut flowers make me really happy. My mother grew roses in our yard when I was a child, heavy, fragrant blossoms in sunset colors (never white). The scent of garden-grown roses is like an olfactory time machine for me.

I have a stack of platters on a back shelf. My sister made two of them on a visit to Color Me Mine. The designs are pop-art jolly, a stalk of bananas on an orange background, a bunch of grapes on a green background. I use the platters for summer barbecues and smile as I load them up with turkey burgers and chicken pieces.

My cookie jar is a mid-century McCoy in the shape of a pineapple. It is in perfect condition—bought on eBay to replace the one I took from my mother’s kitchen that had gotten chipped and cracked and fractured over the years as it was filled and refilled with peanut butter cookie and raisin cookies and chocolate chip cookies. (The only store-bought cookies I can remember eating as a child were Oreos and Fig Newtons. And Girl Scout cookies.)

I have many wooden spoons and even more bowls, some of them vintage designs from my grandmother’s mid-century kitchen. I don’t like a lot of machinery between me and my food and bowls and spoons, I find, are sufficient for most tasks. I won’t have a bread maker in the house. It’s not so much that I am clinging to the old-fashioned technique of hand-kneading bread as it is my fear that the machine would make bread-making so tempting I’d make a new loaf every day. And eat it. With butter. And unless you’re a farmer or a construction worker, those calories are going to catch up with you. But I love fresh-baked bread and butter. My paternal great-grandmother, Granny Franklin, made her own butter. It was ambrosial. You will never catch me cooking with margarine.

My kitchen is the soul of my house because it contains memories of all those who are dear to me.

I am never alone in my kitchen.

by George

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