Here you go Marilyn, you will not believe what I had to do to get there...
I had the bookmark for the old Group Project Archive, I had to open in a new page, then keep going backwards. Sheesh!!! It took me five open new web pages to get to it. I love this one. It had me literally crying with laughter.
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Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 18:21:36 GMT
From: Marilyn in FL (@208.152.233.235 ())
"Repulsive Dinners: A Memoir" (excerpt from Laurie Colwin's "Home Cooking")
There is something triumphant about a really
disgusting meal. It lingers in the memory
with a lurid glow, just as something exalted
is remembered with a kind of mellow
brilliance. I am not thinking of kitchen
disasters--chewy pasta, burnt brownies,
curdled sauces: these can happen to anyone. I
am thinking about meals that are positively
loathsome from soup to nuts, although one is
not usually fortunate enough to get either
soup or nuts.
Bad food abounds in restaurants, but somehow
a bad meal in a restaurant and a bad home-
cooked meal are not the same: after all, the
restaurant did not invite you to dinner.
My mother believes that people who can't cook
should rely on filet mignon and boiled
potatoes with parsley, and that they should
be on excellent terms with an expensive
bakery. But if everyone did that, there would
be fewer horrible meals and the rich,
complicated tapestry that is the human
experience would be the poorer for it.
My life has been much enriched by ghastly
meals, two of the awfulest of which took
place in London. I am a great champion of
English food, but what I was given at these
dinners was neither English nor food so far
as I could tell.
Once upon a time my old friend Richard Davies
took me to a dinner party in Shepherd's Bush,
a seedy part of town, at the flat of one of
his oldest friends.
"What is he like?�, I asked.
"He's a genius," Richard said. "He has vast
powers of abstract thought."
I did not think this was a good sign.
"How nice," I said. "Can he cook?"
"I don't know," Richard said. "In all these
years, I've never had a meal at his house.
He's a Scot, and they're very mean.�
When the English say �mean�, they mean
�cheap�.
Our host met us at the door. He was a glum,
geniusy-looking person and he led us into a
large, bare room with a table set for six.
There were no smells or sounds of anything
being cooked. Two other guests sat in chairs,
looking as if they wished there were an hors
d'oeuvre. There was none.
"I don't think there will be enough to go
around," our host said, as if we were
responsible for being so many. Usually, this
is not the sort of thing a guest likes to
hear but in the end we were grateful that it
turned out to be true.
We drank some fairly crummy wine, and then
when we were practically gnawing on each
other's arms, we were led to the table. The
host placed a rather small casserole in the
center. We peered at it hopefully. The host
lifted the lid. "No peeking," he said.
Usually when you lift the lid of a casserole
that has come straight from the oven, some
fragrant steam escapes. This did not happen,
although it did not immediately occur to me
that this casserole had not come straight
from the oven, but had been sitting around
outside the oven getting lukewarm and
possibly breeding salmonella.
Here is what we had: the casserole contained
a layer of partially cooked rice, a layer of
pineapple rings and a layer of breakfast
sausages, all of which was cooked in a liquid
of some sort or other. Each person received
one pineapple ring, one sausage and a large
heap of crunchy rice. We ate in perfect
silence, first in shock, then in amazement,
and then in gratitude that not only was there
not enough to go around, but that nothing
else was forthcoming. That was the entire
meal.
Later as Richard and I sat in the Pizza
Express finishing off a second pie, I said:
"Is that some sort of Scottish dish we had
tonight?"
"No," said Richard. "It is a genius dish."
Several years later on another trip to
London, Richard and I were invited to a
dinner party in Hampstead. Our host and
hostess lived in a beautiflul old house but
they had taken out all the old fittings and
the place had been redesigned in post-
industrial futuristic.
At the door, our hostess spoke these dread
words: "I'm trying this recipe out on you.
I've never made it before. It's a medieval
recipe. It looked very interesting."
Somehow I have never felt that "interesting"
is an encouraging word when applied to food.
In the kitchen were two enormous and slightly
crooked pies.
"How pretty," I said. "What kind are they?"
"They're medieval fish pies," she said. "A
variation on �starry-gazey pie�. Starry-
gazey pie is one in which the crust is slit
so that the whole baked eels within can poke
their nasty little heads out and look at the
pie crust stars with which the top is
supposed to be festooned.
"Oh," I said, swallowing hard. "In what way
do they vary?"
"Well, I couldn't get eel," said my hostess.
"So I got squid. It has squid, flounder,
apples, onions, lots of cinnamon and
something called gallingale. It's kind of
like frankincense.
�I see," I said.
�It�s from the twelfth or thirteenth
century," she continue. �The crust is made
of flour, water, salt and honey."
I do not like to think very often about that
particular meal, but the third was worse.
It took place in suburban Connecticut on a
beautiful summer evening. The season had been
hot and lush, and the markets were full of
beautiful produce of all kinds. Some
friends and I had been invited out to dinner.
�What will we have, do you think?" I asked.
�Our hostess said we weren't having anything
special," my friends said. "She said
something about an 'old-fashioned fish bake."
It is hard to imagine why those four innocent
words sounded so ominous in combination.
For hors d'oeuvres we had something which I
believe is called cheese food. It is not so
much a food as a product. A few tired
crackers were lying around with it. Then it
was time for dinner.
The old-fashioned fish bake was a terrifying
production. Someone in the family had gone
fishing and had pulled up number of smallish
fish--no one was sure what kind. They were
partially cleaned and not thoroughly scaled
and flung into a roasting pan. Perhaps to
muffle their last screams, they were
smothered in a thick blanket of sour cream
and then pelted with raw chopped onion. As
the coup de grace, they were stuck in a hot
oven for a brief period of time until their
few juices ran out and the sour cream had a
chance to become grainy. With this we were
served boiled frozen peas and a salad with
iceberg lettuce.
Iceberg lettuce is the cause of much
controversy. Many people feel it is an
abomination. Others have less intense
feelings, but it did seem an odd thing to
have when the market five minutes away
contained at least five kinds of lettuce,
including Oak leaf, Bibb and limestone.
For dessert we had a packaged cheesecake with
iridescent cherries embedded in a topping of
cerise gum and light tan coffee.
As appears to be traditional with me, a large
pizza was the real end of this grisly
experience.
But every once in a while, an execrable meal
drags on way past the closing times of most
pizzerias. You straggle home starving,
exhausted, abused in body and spirit. You
wonder why you have been given such a
miserable dinner, a meal you would not serve
to your worst enemy or a junkyard dog. You
deserve something delicious to eat, but there
is nothing much in the fridge.
You might have egg and toast, or a glass of
hot milk, or toasted cheese, but you feel
your spirit crying out for something more.
Here is the answer: rosti. Rosti is a Swiss
grated potato dish. In reality it is an
excuse for eating a quarter of a pound of
butter. While your loved one is taking a hot
shower or mixing a drink, you can get to
work.
Take off your coat and plunge one large Idaho
potato into boiling water. By the time you
have gotten into your pajamas and hung up
your clothes, it is time to take it out--
seven minutes, tops. This seems to stabilize
the starch.
Gently heat a large quantity (half a stick)
of unsalted butter in a skillet. It should
foam but not turn brown. Grate the potato on
the shredder side of the grater, press into a
cake and slip into the butter. Fry till
golden brown on both sides.
The result is somewhat indigestible, but
after all, you have already been subjected to
the truly indigestible. You will feel better
for it. You and your companion-or you
yourself (this recipe makes two big cakes: if
you are alone, you can have both all to
yourself)--will begin to see the evening's
desecrations as an amusement.
Because you are the better for your horrible
meal: fortified, uplifted and ready to face
the myriad surprises and challenges in this
most interesting and amazing of all possible
worlds.
"Home Cooking"
Laurie Colwin
Publisher:HarperPerennial (paperback)
Alfred A Knopf, Inc (hardcover)
ISBN:0-06-097522-9
(Marilyn's note: This book has brought me so
much joy that I wanted to share one of her
short essays on-line. Laurie Colwin's writing
makes me laugh out loud--and her recipes make
me run to the kitchen to whip up something
delicious for my family.)
http://web.archive.org/web/20030331134323/food4.epicurious.com/HyperNews/get/archive_swap14201-14300/14255.html
