Good Recipes (And Cooks Who Share Them!)

"There is nothing like a good old recipe.

If it has lasted, then it is good."

-- Yotam Ottolenghi

My grandma's cookbook 11-18-14

"I hate the notion of a secret recipe.

Recipes are by nature derivative and meant to be shared --

that is how they improve, are changed, how new ideas are formed.

To stop a recipe in its tracks, to label it 'secret'

just seems mean."

-- Molly Wizenberg

I don't use recipes a lot. 

Recipes are rules, and, well.

Recipes 11-18-14

Anyway. When I cook, mostly I just wing it. I follow principles as a general guide, but after that I like to wander off the trail and explore the landscape on my own.

Unless I'm baking. 

Baking is an exact science. It involves chemical reactions and precise measurements and combinations of ingredients and heat and cold and time.

So when I bake, I definitely stick to the recipe.

I have a shelf loaded with cookbooks full of recipes and a shoe box stuffed with hundreds more. Some of them are hand-written from friends and family, others are printed from the Internet or taken from television chefs or ripped from magazines. 

You can tell easily which recipes are my favorites -- the trusty old reliable ones that I return to again and again -- because that's where the pages in the books stick together. They're the ones on the food-stained and spattered recipe cards. They're the ones copied onto sheets of notebook paper that's been handled and folded in half so many times that the paper is soft and delicate as tissue.

One of my favorites is a recipe for Madeleine cookies that a French chef jotted down on an order ticket and sent to me via our waiter.

Anyway, all of this is by way of saying I popped my pecan pie cherry yesterday.

I baked an absolutely perfect pecan pie using a recipe from a Food Network cook after watching her bake it on TV.

Pecan pie 11-18-14

Pie crust has always been a bugaboo for me. Because if the pastry isn't good, then the pie isn't good. I make fine, serviceable pie crust. But I've always wanted to be able to make a crust so tender and flaky and buttery that it makes your eyes roll back.

It finally happened. I made a perfect crust. 

That fucker was as tender, golden, flaky and buttery as shit.

And it wouldn't have happened if someone else wasn't generous enough to share her time-tested recipe.

A tender flaky crust! 

True confessions, though.

I didn't follow the recipe exactly. 

It called for a cup and a half of cold shortening, and I'd only chilled a cup. So I added a stick of cold butter instead, and it worked beautifully. And I'd venture to say my tweak made the recipe even better, because it made it buttery.

Thanksgiving is around the corner. And Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks, sure, but it's also a good time to do some plain old giving.

Good recipes will be trotted out and prepared on dinner tables across the country. If someone asks you for your recipe, don't be a Selfish McStingy Pants. Cough it up. Share it. Write it down for whoever it is. Let them know where you got it from. 

Good recipes have history. And that's part of the appeal -- knowing the path a recipe has traveled, whose hands and kitchens it has passed through. I love using a recipe that someone else gave me, especially if it's in their own handwriting. It's like looking at an old photograph. It's nostalgic and special. It makes me think of that person and evokes memories of a time and a place and the food we shared, and that feels good.

It tastes good too.

**(For the pecan pie recipe I used, click here.)**

A Bumper Crop With Plenty To Share

"Poke had never shared out so many raisins,

because she had never had so many to share."

-- Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

Bumper crop of garden-variety Barbies 9-13-14

"The little I have, I share with you;

the little you have, you also share with me.

Together we all have a full share of everything."

-- Israelmore Ayivor

"Give it away give it away give it away give it away now
Give it away give it away give it away give it away now
Give it away give it away give it away give it away now."

-- Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Give it Away"

I can still remember my grandpa filling my sister's little flowered bicycle basket with tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, then sending her teetering off down the street to sell his overage to the neighbors for a nickel apiece.

He had extra, so why not share?

I like the idea, but not so much the approach.

I'd rather just share, without the middle-man, or the hefty price tag.

Right now I have more tomatoes, peppers and broccoli than I can possibly use, popping up and ripening in my garden every day.

After yesterday's picking I walked over to my neighbor, Vera's, and held out the colander full of peppers and tomatoes like a big, plentiful basket of Halloween candy and let her choose the biggest, prettiest ones.

I've been sending Leo's girlfriend, Mackenna, home with bunches of broccoli. Broccoli is her favorite. She calls it her "go-to" vegetable. Tomatoes too -- her grandma makes tomato sandwiches, like me.

This weekend, I'm cooking a big pile of tomatoes into a third batch of sauce to share with Sam so he can still eat a home-cooked supper when he's away from home. Granted, he's a good cook himself. He keeps texting me pictures of things he makes -- steak au poivre sandwiches, grilled salmon with asparagus, and Greek salad stuffed pitas. It's impressive. But I know damned well that the little shit ain't making his own pasta sauce. I can still do some things that he can't.

Anyway, part of the joy of having my garden is sharing what comes out of it. And not just sharing because I have too much. But sharing because I have any at all.

I even like to share the harvesting duties. Sometimes I wait on purpose to pick stuff until Mackenna is here to help me, because she enjoys it too. And I enjoy her company. (She was also a very helpful assistant in setting up the bumper crop of garden-variety Barbies for today's photo).

My garden will be winding down soon. But while it keeps on producing an abundance of goodness, I'll keep on giving it away.

Because the only thing sweeter than finding good things, is sharing all the good things that I find.

Two People Sharing One iPod

"Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste."

-- Charlotte Bronte

Styrofoam wig forms 8-4-14

"It ain't no fun if the homies can't have none."

-- Snoop Dogg

Maybe I'm a slow learner, but yesterday I discovered that I can listen to the actual radio through my iPod.

That means I can listen to baseball games -- through my iPod.

So that's what I did.

We were at the firing range shooting pistols, and I wore my ear buds underneath my protective sound-canceling headphones. It was the best of both worlds. I was shooting and listening to the Indians beat the Rangers in a 12-inning showdown -- through my iPod.

When we were done shooting and waiting for the others to finish up, my husband sat down beside me on a bench where I was listening to the final innings. I'd been giving him game updates all afternoon. 

I held one of my blue ear buds out to him.

Me: "Want one?"

Him: "Sure."

And so we listened to the last couple of innings like two kids, heads bent toward each other, shoulders pressed together sharing their favorite songs -- two people listening on a device meant for one. 

It felt a little like a date -- kind of sweet and romantic, intimate in a way -- a modern tech-age version of holding hands. 

I guess the kids have known it all along. If you want to get closer to someone, there's a really good way to get there -- through an iPod.

Sharing My Kitchen

"Upon walking into Eva's kitchen, something profound happened to Delphine.

She experienced a fabulous expansion of being."

-- Louise Erdrich, The Master Butchers Singing Club

Me, Mackenna and Jill 7-2-14

"I feel fortunate to be part of the cooking community.

We learn from each other."

-- Marcus Samuelsson

"Lucy settled into August's kitchen as if they were a family."

-- Susan Richards Shreve, You Are The Love Of My Life

Mostly I cook alone.

My husband grills the meat, but I do everything else. Sometimes I also grill the meat.

Occasionally Sam takes over the kitchen on one of his baking binges. And Leo scrambles himself eggs from time to time.

But that's pretty much it. Otherwise it's just me in there.

My kitchen is my domain.

And I like it like that.

But yesterday I had the opportunity to share my kitchen with two very special people.

My very dear and incredible friend Jill was here for a visit en route from West Virginia to her new home in Chicago. And Leo had abandoned a lovely young woman -- his girlfriend Mackenna -- at our dinner table to go to football practice.

It was time to start supper, so the three of us apron-ed up, got out the big knives, and got cooking.

When Jill comes to visit, it's a foregone conclusion that we'll be having Taco Night. She always counts on it, and she always gets it. Yesterday, as often happens, she also helped make it. We recruited Mackenna from the sidelines and put her to work as well.

While Jill diced tomatoes and broke down a head of iceberg lettuce, I taught Mackenna how to make hummus and my famous, velvety smooth avocado-lime dip.

I cooked the meat and shredded the cheese, while Jill, who is vegan, prepped the rice and got the black beans started.

Meanwhile, Mackenna set the table. She also cubed the tofu -- Yes. Tofu in a burrito. It's delicious. -- which Jill coated in spices while I heated a pan of oil to fry it in.

Leo wouldn't be home until later, Sam had plans to meet a friend for sushi, so when my husband got home from work, it was like he'd walked onto the set of Sister Wives. 

The four of us -- this fresh new assemblage of faces around my dinner table -- had a lovely time devouring what we'd made. Jill loaded up one of her famous "diapers full of delicious," a burrito so full and bulging and dripping that it looked like, well, I think the name says it.

Mackenna's eyes were clearly bigger than her tiny dancer stomach, and she artfully built a burrito that rolled up to be the size of a swaddled newborn. She gave it a pretty good go, but tapped out with more than half of it still clutched in both fists and a glazed look in her eyes.

I've always been a little jealous of those multi-generational families of women who gather in the kitchen, standing hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, re-creating age-old recipes and cooking secrets, chatting and laughing and sharing the simple joy of making good food together.

I got a happy little taste of it yesterday.

It tasted good.