Cakes, candies, cookies and an assortment of fine baked goods frequent the clinic where I work. They are brought by coworkers and patients to ease us through the work day. I had just lifted the lid on the small plastic container and had reached two fingers in to grasp a sugary split date filled with cream cheese topped with a pecan half when a coworker said, “Oh, I know who brought those. She always brings us those special dates.”
Come to think of it maybe we all have our own food signature. The essence of each of my family members, for instance, can to a large extent be defined by their favorite food items. Not the ones they eat, but the ones they prepare. For example my grandmother never cooked a meal that I can remember, but every Christmas and Thanksgiving she fixed fudge, divinity and Ambrosia. She was an austere and disciplined woman and we caught glimpses of her sweet, divine side only about as often as these holidays rolled around.
On the other hand my grandfather could womp up a satisfying country meal of short biscuits, standing rib roast with crisp brown crust and field peas with snaps faster than you could say Yahooty. As the son of a share-cropper who became a member of the Florida state congress and later a circuit judge, he could womp up friends just about as fast as he could cook. His best dish was certainly creamed corn. It would begin in the late spring when he would fill the tractor hopper with a mixture of corn seed and 10-10-10. In his hat and long sleeve white shirt he would sow several acres of corn. When the seedlings reached 6 inches tall he would thin them and then run the tractor along the rows to “lay them by.” In the warm summer nights he would swear that he could stand in the field and hear the corn grow. In early July he would pull fat ears of Silver Queen and Truckers Favorite with brown crackly tassels. On the breezeway he would shuck it, pull the silks, trim the kernel tips into his dish and then scrape the ears to make a creamy mixture filled with corn starch. He would warm up the black iron skillet and add butter, corn and milk to simmer for an hour. Just before serving he would pop the skillet under the broiler to give the corn a soft golden crust. That dish from seed to table was my grandfather.
My mother cannot be singled out in one dish, but in her devotion to fixing an elaborate meal which is snarfled down by the family entirely too fast to give her the recognition she deserves. The typical meal would be foil-wrapped Cornish hens with wild rice stuffing served with vegetables and homemade butterhorns. The butterhorns which took 5 hours of preparation would be timed perfectly to reach the table hot from the oven. Another pan of rolls would bake during dinner and come out of the oven just in time for us all to enjoy hot seconds. All this hard work was largely lost on a crowd that eats and runs. My mother finally realized this after the fondue fiasco. She spent all day slaving over homemade cake and homemade bread while chopping pounds of filet mignon into dice-size pieces. In the evening we gathered around the pots of oil and chocolate sauce. At the Amen we grabbed fondue forks in both hands and commenced to sizzling and dipping. We finished off her days’ work in about 20 minutes. Now she’s less generous with the homemade items and is quite sensitive about being fully appreciated.
My father is a pound cake. He can cook many things, but as a boy he learned to bake a good pound cake and he can still do it by memory. He takes the center out of the tube pan and uses the tip of the knife to cut wax paper to just the proper size to line the bottom of the pan. He mixes up the pound of butter, dozen eggs, cups of sugar and flour and pours the creamy batter in a swirl around the pan. The baked result is a simple cake on the outside, but it is heavy with basic rich ingredients that are fully appreciated with each mouthful.
My older sister professes not to know how to cook when in truth she doesn’t want to cook. She is extremely efficient, organized and planned and that is borne out in the one dish that she prepares every Saturday at her son’s request. It is the Saturday waffle and it can only be made on Saturday morning. It is not round or heart shaped, but a very perfectly square waffle with precise squares within squares. Any extra batter that might happen to ooze out the edge of the waffle iron is immediately trimmed and tossed. Not so with my younger sister who can and does cook a lot. She can cook from Gourmet, but her daily favorite is double chocolate fudge brownies from a box. She empties out that dry powder into the bowl, adds the egg and oil and pops the pan in the oven. She’s cutting squares of soft brownies while they’re still gooey hot and serves them up without pretention. She’s just hanging out there licking chocolate off of her fingers.
When we married, my husband did all the cooking. We ate a lot of tuna noodle casserole ala Frank and it was always good and always different. He is great at taking a known basic framework and adding his own unusual, distinctive spin to create something delicious. He is never afraid to try a new thing, but he always does it with a good foundation.
I have become a happy roll person. About twice a week I will bake quick yeast rolls that take 60 minutes to prepare. They are a pinwheel shape and, despite the short rise time, the 2 tablespoons of yeast make them light and fluffy. I like the round completeness of them and they make the kids smile every time.
Some folks say you are what you eat. I think you are what you bake.