Humorist Betty Teller, an accomplished cook, at a cooking party.
A guest essay by Betty Teller
It’s not my fault, not really. I will admit that I procrastinated to the last possible day. But I do that every week. I always put off writing, in the hope that I’ll have an adventure, or inspiration will otherwise strike, so I don’t have to write about raking the yard yet again.
But I woke up early this morning with every intention of jumping right in. I’d cleared my calendar in preparation. I had only one small item on the agenda before I could sit down at my computer.
I had to go buy a few ingredients for the moussaka I was making for the cookbook club dinner tonight. And then I needed to cook it. The recipe I selected was short and looked pretty simple. I figured on 30 minutes to go to the store and about an hour to put the dish together. I’d be at my desk and ready to write by 10:30 or 11 a.m. at the latest.
The cookbook group was meeting at my house, but (this time, at least) I was the world’s most organized hostess. I had set the table a day in advance, and all was ready.
I was home from the store by 9:30 a.m. as planned. I got to work immediately on the dish so I could get it out of the way.
But there was one small snag: The book selected for the evening was a chef/restaurant cookbook.
Here’s my issue with chef recipes. They can be absolutely delicious, but they are also deceptive.
They often include landmines for the unwary.
I had already scanned my recipe for one obvious IED (improvised explosive device) found in books of this type — the ingredient with a page number next to it, telling you that it isn’t an ingredient at all, but rather an entirely separate recipe. Fortunately, the author had avoided planting that particular ordnance.
But she wasn’t entirely innocent of sabotage.
The thing about restaurant chefs is that they usually command an army of willing laborers. For the lucky chef, cooking is mostly assembling. He or she merely reaches out a hand and some underling fills it with the perfectly prepared ingredient at the very moment it is needed. All the chef has to do is toss it in and stir.
I, on the other hand, have no minions. So before I could put on my chef’s hat and assemble my moussaka, I first had to tie on my food prep apron to create my mise en place (a French term that means “chop till you drop”).
And this is where those easy-sounding chef recipes get you. They sneak a world of hurt into the ingredients list.
This one didn’t say “onion,” it said “onion, finely chopped.” Ditto for the garlic, tomatoes, parsley and mint. It wasn’t “cheese,” but “grated cheese.” In place of “eggplant,” it said “eggplant, peeled and sliced lengthwise into 1/4-inch slices.”
An hour later, I was still measuring, grating and slicing, and I hadn’t gotten to step one of the actual recipe.
But I’m an experienced cook. I figured I’d make up time after I got through the chopping. Except the prep didn’t end there.
Once I got to the body of the recipe, I found that the ground lamb was to be cooked separately. I had to pre-bake the eggplant slices. I needed to make the Mornay sauce. And cook and mash a potato. And of course, every step took twice as long as the book said it would.
It took until 3 p.m. to complete my prep, but finally, I could don my toque and assemble the dish — then sit down to write my column at last.
What an easy recipe this must be for the chef! It only took 10 minutes to prepare the individual ramekins.
It’s 4 p.m. as I write this. The ramekins are on the counter, ready to pop into the oven. And they look gorgeous. But I’ve gotta sign off and put my apron back on. The club members will be arriving shortly, and my kitchen looks like a war zone. Every pan in the house is dirty.
It seems that my unreliable dishwashing staff are AWOL again.
* * *
Betty Teller chronicles her kitchen adventures in her biweekly newspaper column, amuse-bouche, in the Napa Valley Register. After 20 years as a museum exhibition developer with the Smithsonian Institution, she spent seven years creating and directing the exhibitions program at the now defunct Copia food and wine center in Napa. In 2005, she started her column and her current career as an editor and food writer. If you’d like to subscribe, email amuse-bouche AT sbcglobal DOT net.
This had me laughing. So true! Sure it tasted good but multitasking when you have a dinner ahead is always asking for trouble unless you are assembling a salad – not one of those where you chargrill five types of veg, roast and chop nuts, macerate fruits, pick leaves off sprigs of herbs, milk the cow and so on.
So true. Though this wasn’t as bad as the time I decided to bake the world’s most labor-intensive cake an hour and a half before my guests were due to arrive. I’m beginning to think my time management skills are more to blame than the cookbooks I use.
Love this post! I found it especially humorous because I had just read an Emeril article about the importance of reading recipes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/emeril-lagasse-recipes_us_56dccc80e4b0ffe6f8e9cc94
Thanks for a wonderful post!
I too laughed at this. As a lover of cookbooks, I have run in to this many times. Even though I know I should read the recipe before I start, I am sometimes in a rush to get cooking. We don’t always do what we know we should do. Those “IED” recipes get you every time! Lol It can make making the dish so much longer to prepare.
I also recognized this. My favorite example is Suzanne Goin’s cookbook Sunday Suppers at Lucques. It happens to be my favorite cookbook simply because if you actually follow all of the directions, you will have an amazing dish, guaranteed. The hitch of course is all those directions. She is absolutely OCD about the prep, the specific angle things should be chopped at, even going so far as to instruct the cook to layer the parsley leaves one atop the other and slice them in ribbons. I love her the way you love an annoying but adorable child. I know now that I must allot four times as long as normal for one of her recipes. Yet, she is truly a genius.
Thanks! I wish I had followed Emeril’s advice. I’d like to say that I will next time, but I’ve done this too many times to believe I know how to learn from experience.
I love that cookbook too. I have been trying to cook my way through it (18 down and about 100 more to go). I found her instructions to be excellent and everything I have made so far has been amazing. I felt as though following each recipe was like a cooking lesson. What is your favorite recipe from Sunday Suppers?
Oops. I don’t know how I managed to post that reply to you. What I meant to say is that I firmly believe that most chef cookbooks are written primarily to convince you to eat at the restaurant rather than cooking at home. I’ve heard great things about the Lucques cookbook , but I think I’ll try eating there instead!
Betty Teller hits the nail on the head, once again!
Thanks for the laughs and the honesty. For me, chef books are excellent examples of LOOKbooks instead of COOKbooks…you get ideas through images of the finished food. Otherwise, beware the land mines!
Hi Toni — thanks for your note! I have to say, I find LOOKbooks almost as frustrating as COOKbooks — because I have never once managed to make a dish that looked like the one in the book. I think they cheat there, too. 🙂
I laughed out loud reading this, Betty. Recipe selection for entertaining has been on my mind this week as I’m putting together a blog post on planning a dinner party. I know that you didn’t have a choice of cookbook in this instance, but I wonder what makes us so often choose unfamiliar or difficult recipes when we’re cooking for guests? We must all be suckers for punishment!
Actually, I think it is a great sign of friendship and trust that we are willing to try out new recipes on our guests — if they are true friends (and there is enough wine) we know they’ll forgive us for running late or screwing up one of the dishes. And anyway, disasters make the funniest stories.
A good chuckle is always good to end the day with and that is what I got reading this, thanks! My motto when entertaining has always been, “cook what you know”. Okay, so that might be my motto but not always followed. To top it off, never once have I actually accomplished being ready for the guest to arrive when they are actually suppose to arrive.
Plus, don’t even get me started on mise en place; I am usually miss en placing until the meal is served. No matter how much I prep first and no matter how far in advance I plan, still busting a move during service. You nailed it though; it is to do with not having even one minion to help out.
I’ve been amused by Betty’s muses for years — always worth a moment to read. I marvel at your way of creating stories and ‘true’ scenarios as if we were right in your home laughing at ourselves along with you. I’m counting on you to keep it up!
Thanks, Rosemary! I wish you had been here with me in the kitchen for this one — maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long.
Betty! What a hoot! And you nailed it with this “It seems that my unreliable dishwashing staff are AWOL again.” Thanks for this funny morning read. And when you find that staff, don’t be shy, send them my way!
I’ll be staffing up right after I cash that winning lottery ticket in my wallet.
Watching Downton Abbey, I have to say that I don’t envy them their starchy butler, but I am totally jealous of their kitchen staff. I want a Daisy of my own.
“Read the recipe all the way through” before making is such a throw-away line that it’s almost a joke, but is so important. Not only is it important, but doing so ahead of time, allowing plenty of time to buy the ingredients needed and to plot a plan for prepping the recipe. This is what annoys me so much about “30 Minute Meals”, because I know that I can’t just reach into my refrigerator and find 1/4 cup of finely chopped parsley; I have to actually chop that parsley. Many recipes benefit from prepping the day before or early in the day, and it makes the assembly of the recipe go smoother, but it takes a bit of forethought and planning.
Forethought and planning — alas, two virtues that I keep forgetting to stock up on!
The truth is, except when I have something else (like a column deadline, in this case) competing for time, I like nothing better than messing around in the kitchen for hours. So I doubt I’ll be giving up my attraction to labor-intensive recipes any time soon.
Hi Toni — thanks for your comment. I think I have even more of a problem with LOOKbooks than I do with COOKbooks — I can usually get the recipes to taste good, but I can never, ever get them to look as pretty as the ones in the book.
Your recipe is likely to increase my appetite more & more… its been delicious & fantastic, no doubt… keep writing more yummy dishes… Thanks for sharing & your kind attention to detail!!!
Hi Betty, oh how many of us have went through this nightmare? I despise those sneaky recipes that seem so simple, but have those hidden traps. This really makes me want to be a professional Chef. Can’t imagine how awesome it would be to have all the prep work and cleanup handled. I want some minions! 🙂