Hamlet the Old Dog Learns a New Trick 2017. Acrylic on paper, 17 x 25"
In 2013 I published Cookbook for the Poor, a book of autobiographical essays loosely related to food and restaurant work. Between each chapter is an affordable recipe of some simple comfort food to help you get by when the going is tough.
I’ll post the Introduction and one of the recipes here. Thanks for reading!
Introduction
I am a cook. I have been for a long time. My first job was dishwasher in an Italian-American restaurant. I got hired by the same chef who packed school lunches for my mother when she was a little girl. My grandparents owned a fine dining steak and potatoes restaurant on Route 5, before the thruway had its say about bypassing humanity throughout New York State. The chef’s name was Eddie Masters. He changed his surname from its original geographical certainty of “Masterangelo” in order to be accepted into a white Anglo-Saxon country club. I guess Eddie loved golf more than pride.
He would often come up behind me as I was washing dishes, thrust his forearm between my legs, hoist me in the air, and land punches up and down my arms and legs. Probably getting back at the memory of a little girl having her lunches prepared by the chef. I would wake up the next day black and blue, begging my mother not to call and complain.
What a life the chef had to the eyes of a sixteen-year old boy! Red convertible car, a stocked bar, interesting people, dressed up and laughing, clinking of silverware, linen smells, surprisingly pleasant garbage odors. Eddie kept a loaded .38 in his knife drawer. The cook’s line was directly behind the dish station. He would throw pans at the wall in front of me. Bang! More than once I imagined my last pot scrubbed.
It was tough work. Eddie called up my mother once to tell her how capable of a worker I was. True enough I was terrified not to be.
After the dinner rush he would have me and another dish boy peel garlic into fish tubs. It made the flesh beneath our fingernails burn for days. Such was the trial of a dishwasher, my first foray into the working class kitchen.
Then I went to college and studied history, I guess subconsciously intent on never leaving the working class kitchen. By then I was a capable prep cook and student of “the line”. Recently I read in a science magazine that high-naveled humanity is biologically more suited for sports than those with lower belly-buttons. It means better balance, which explains my rapid rise in the line-cooking ranks at an early age. I performed well. Very well.
At the same time I was raising my first daughter on $6.00/hr. I had a vegetable garden every year out of college, and came across my first cookbook bought on purpose. James Beard’s Theory and Practice of Good Cooking. What fascinated me most about learning to cook outside of the professional kitchen, was the art itself. How to make something wonderfully satisfying out of practically nothing. To wake up with the sun dreaming a soup du jour. My daughter was fed the experiments from my hovel kitchen. Why pour milk on processed cereal when she can have buckwheat pancakes? And how affordable it was to roast a chicken that I could purchase after just 45 minutes of paid labor.
We were poor. Living check to check, always in debt, barely making the rent, and a week late at that. Still, I insisted on teaching myself to cook. Gas and water were included in the rent. So I could afford to be hygienic and also create my heart’s every culinary desire (limited by ability of course).
I remember a prep cook at the time who admired my scratch cooking methods admitting that he tried it once, but found it to be too expensive. This confused me. What was he buying processed that was cheaper than a head of garlic or bag of flour?
And the joy of cooking! Seasonal ecstasy. The smell of the pork laid in fat sizzling on a windy Saturday morning in November. The rush of good feelings flowing throughout your body. I sing the mind electric! That sort of euphoria which only good ingredients and time to use them can inspire.
It is not expensive to eat. First, one must dream well and then love well. No life should cook for itself only. Not for long periods of time anyway. There should be a muse for art and creation, even if imagined. But appreciative ghosts only last so long. That is why this book works best for the young who are ready for new love, or the old who have given up the ghost and no longer strive. It will be replete with anecdote and story made from my writer’s desk of young woe and wonder, but consist of few recipes. The latter which I provide will be tried, maybe true, but sure enough, everlasting. This book is not for anyone with an affordable car payment, nor for the couple who can afford a $2500 couch more than once in their lifetimes. Read the practicing cook’s inspirations while bubbling stocks on a Sunday afternoon. He might have some infusion to offer that will improve digestion.
White Bean and Garlic Soup
Serves enough
1 lb. dried great northern beans
½ gallon vegetable, chicken or beef stock (homemade)
4 head of garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions
2 carrots
2-3 ribs celery
5 head of garlic
10 whole cloves
Bunch of fresh thyme
Bunch of fresh parsley
2-3 fresh sage leaves
2 bay leaves
10-15 black peppercorns
½ cup cream
Salt
Pepper
In large pot, soak the beans for at least 2 hours.
Add a bouquet garni of cloves, thyme, sage, bay leaves, and
peppercorns.
(This can be made by tying up ingredients in a clean, white cotton cloth, if cheesecloth is not handy).
Add ½ of stock and enough cold water to keep beans in liquid.
Simmer beans with herbs and spice until almost done (about an hour).
Halfway through cooking beans add peeled garlic cloves whole (about 20).
Add hot water to pot when necessary to keep beans at liquid
simmer.
Meanwhile, sauté neatly chopped onions, carrots and celery in
olive oil. Add stock and simmer for a few minutes. Turn off heat and set aside.
Add vegetables with liquid to beans.
Remove bouquet garni. Discard.
Borrow a hand blender or food processor, or suffer with own
ineffective implement to mash ½ of the bean mixture.
Add cream.
Add chopped fresh parsley.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
You are now greater than your neighbor.