You know how you can tell the best recipes? They’re the
ones on yellowing paper with the tattered edges, stained and sticky from reuse.
And today I’m grateful for all the ones in my collection, for the ones shared
by and with friends.
Recipes are powerful things. They invoke much more than
lists of ingredients and preparation instructions. They tie you to memories—not
only of the actual food, but to who gave it to you and whom you’ve shared it
with. Maybe to meals or occasions shared with them.
They are so evocative that women in the Terezín ghetto
during World War II reconstructed
menus and recipes for meals in their past, meals that they would have no
hope of actually preparing in their present circumstances. But remembering and
recording those recipes sustained them in different ways than actual food would
have done.
A few years ago I went through my recipe box and got rid
of maybe a couple hundred cards; the ones I have left definitely fall into that
yellowed-and-stained category.
I have a recipe for fresh strawberry pie that came from
our family
friend, Mrs. Dyo. You can substitute ripe peaches for the strawberries, but
only if the peaches are really, really ripe and flavorful. Then it’s about the
best summer dessert ever.
My carrot cake recipe came from a colleague of mine at
Fort Lee, Virginia (you know—where I learned
to drink coffee next to the Chemical Capital of the South). The only reason
my copy of this is readable is that some years after I got it, I shared with
colleagues at Hughes Aircraft Company, and one of them typed up and distributed
new copies of it. That puppy’s been sent out across two continents; it’s that
good and that easy.
I got the recipe for red beans and rice from Mary Pyke in
grad school. The first time I tried making it I kept having to move it to
larger pots because it just wouldn’t stop expanding. When I yelped to Mary
about my predicament, she replied, “Oh, yeah. I should have specified that
‘Serves six’ means ‘Serves six Viking warriors.”
I’ve had my recipe for French apple pie since I first
discovered that pie didn’t have to taste like the God-awful frozen things my
mother passed off as dessert. It came from my friend Leilah, and has recently
been amended to include variations that she and her husband John use to make
regular two-crust pie. (Major up: use tapioca instead of flour to keep the
juices from making the bottom crust all soggy.)
Then I adjusted the crumb topping based on input from a
couple of friends who responded when I put out a Facebook cry for help. Now the
topping is loose and crunchy, not hard and resembling something Xena Warrior
Princess might wear.
Maybe one of my newest acquisitions is a lovely salad of
grilled steak and asparagus on cress with mango slices and a ginger-hoisin
dressing. That came from my friend Danger Girl, via Twitter. It’s wonderful.
You’ll know that even before you stick a fork in the salad because the
recipe—not six months old—is already stained from splashes of the dressing.
I don’t know where I got the recipe for English toffee. The
card is not only sticky and yellowed (even though by now I can make it from
memory), it’s got a scorch mark from me leaving it on a burner I didn’t realize
I’d turned on. I also don’t know how many times I’ve shared that recipe—people
love it, and it’s easy as pie to make.
(Although, actually, pie isn’t all that easy. At least
not pie crust. You need a “touch” with pastry to get it right. But I have a great
recipe and I’m happy to share.)
Cornish pasties (oh, lord—the pastry has both lard and
suet; I swear the filling is just my socially-acceptable rationale for making
and eating that tender, tasty crust) from my grandmother, bread dressing from
my great grandmother (marjoram instead of sage), cottage pie (lamb is
expensive, so no shepherd’s pie) from Hugh Featheringill-Whittlestonefordly
(whatever his name is), shortbread from my friend Bridget Navarro in Korea, fresh cranberry relish (mash-up from several sources)—I’ve
shared them all with friends, who now have them in their collective memory.
Going digital—putting recipes on computer—is good,
because I have a tendency to scribble things on paper, clip stuff out of
newspapers, etc., which I often lose. But the recipe you look at on your device
is never going to be an indicator of how good it is—you wipe the floury
fingerprints off the screen after making it, and move on. It looks the same
whether you’ve made it once or once a month. The ingredients and instructions
are always neutral; no scribbled annotations of variations you’ve tried or
outcomes. No memos about which occasions you served them on—they’re just there,
like any other domestic tool. So I’m always going to have printouts to carry
around with me when gathering the ingredients.
So, really grateful for recipes that nourish me and
connect me in so many tangible ways with my friends and family. As an aside—if you
know anything that smells better than apple pie baking, I want you to tell me
what it is and give me your recipe for it.
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