A Sentimental Idiot's Guide
I have always loved kitchens. Especially around the Holidays.
They remind me of my Mother, and Family and Home (capitalized for added emphasis) and sadly, there are times for all of us when those things seem to get lost so easily in the everyday shuffle and dance with life. But the Holidays bring those things right back for me.
I think that’s why all Holidays were created, though there’s evidence to the contrary. They’re usually just a good excuse to get your favorite people together (and a few to which you’re politically obligated) to eat and do nothing other than spend some time with each other, offering us a chance to both remember and look ahead, to share old stories and the pertinent current events.
The Kitchen in my house was always the meeting place, the eating place...the place where everything of any importance ever happened. I think most families are like that, or should be.
Though I can offer no footnotes or annotations citing references...I’m going to go ahead and claim that numerous university and think-tank studies show that families that cook together and sit down to eat together are 69% happier than those that eat at the drive-thru, although I will also cite similar studies which suggest that 89.2% of all statistics are entirely fabrications.
There’s a reason that food is always first on that list of basic human needs; food, shelter and clothing- and food should never be be packaged in Styrofoam or come with a spork or a straw, unless you’re on a roadtrip.
During the Holidaze, our whole house smelled like turkeys roasting, apple pies and kugel baking, potato latkes frying and even the occasional glazed spiral sliced ham in my memory of my very reform Jewish childhood. The food was always so good, that the Leftovers were like gold.
My Mother was a great cook, as well as my inspiration in many respects...and truly the reason that I was to become a chef. If she hadn’t passed away a few years ago, I may not have given it much thought...but she was the one that nurtured my love of the Kitchen, entirely unintentionally.
My love of Fire and Knives is all her fault.
Where else can a young boy learn that Fire and Knives are more than just toys?
One of many Kitchen memories one that might just be a universal one for all, involves the treat of getting to lick the spoon when she was baking, raw eggs be damned. I would inevitably exclaim, 'Me first!', followed immediately by my little brother's cries of 'Me, too!'. She taught us the importance of sharing and if there was only one slice of absolutely anything left...one of us would have to cut it in half, and the other would get to choose which they wanted.
It was the ‘I cut/You pick Rule.
All of Life should be that fair.
I learned so much in the kitchen about cooking, food and life, from my Mom...that it only seemed natural for me to find myself occupying my current place in the Food Chain.
These days, my preparation for the Holidaze takes months of planning...but the meal for family and friends is, oddly enough, the smallest part. Part of my newfound place in the Food Chain is to help create a Happy Holiday for nearly 1300 families and cook a sit-down Thanksgiving for 400, and help create a great Thanksgiving meal for a few thousand more, people that might not otherwise have a holiday at all. I’ll bring something good to prove my skill to my brother’s house for dinner, but to use a slightly inappropriate idiom for this specific holiday-I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when my own Holiday Dinner at Home took weeks of thought perusing through my 20 linear feet of cookbooks searching for something special, and I’d inevitably lose sleep thinking and planning. But after years of running restaurant Kitchens, catering dozens of weddings and the months I spent in Post-Katrina New Orleans helping run Disaster Relief Kitchens...I don’t lose sleep anymore. I love what I do, and somewhere along the way, I’ve managed to become pretty damn good at it...my inherent modesty and humility obviously being my strongest suits.
My somewhat new job as the director and chef at the Foodbank in a non-profit social service agency in the L.A. area gives me the opportunity to help feed nearly 25,000 people every month with well over a quarter of a million pounds of donated food. We’ll be packaging Holiday Baskets for nearly 1300 people in the Foodbank at MEND, with the help of hundreds of volunteers without whom we couldn’t possibly do what we do, and we try to make the Holidays great. MEND stands for Meet Each Need with Dignity, and we do our very best.. Every family will get Turkeys, Hams or Chickens, the prerequisite yams, cranberry and applesauce, potato flakes and canned vegetables...but in addition, we’ve been soliciting donations for months and months, and holding food drives for specialty items like stuffing, coffee, teas, fruit juices, holiday candies and pies. We get lots of support from fresh produce purveyors and distributors as well, and each family will get 20-25 lbs. of fresh fruits and vegetables. We feel that fresh food is the best food, and when the least expensive and most readily available items for those in need are also often the least nutritious...we try to offer the good stuff, and we’ll offer recipes as well. The things that take a little effort and creative alchemy are what make the Holidays especially delicious and memorable.
Or so my Mom might’ve said.
Every day at work, I’m reminded of a story that I’d once heard about Stone Soup and being a lover of soup – and recipes in general, I was enthralled. It goes a little something like this-
It seems that times were tough in a certain unnamed small village, as times can sometimes be. The residents were having trouble feeding themselves; the harvest had been meager that year. A visitor passing through carrying nothing but a stock pot stopped at the home of one of the residents, asking if they had any food to spare. The lady of the house politely told the visitor that her cupboards were bare and she had nothing at all to spare. From home to home the visitor went, and it seemed that the villagers had nothing to share with the hungry traveler. The dejected visitor filled his stockpot with water, and placing a big rock at the bottom put it on a fire in the village square. One of the villagers became curious and asked what he was doing. The visitor said that he was making Stone Soup, which was a delicacy where he came from, though it still needed a little something...to improve the flavor. If the villager happened to have a little bit of carrot...the soup would be much improved, and the villager gladly obliges with a few carrots.
Another villager passing by inquires about the pot, and the visitor again explains about the stone soup and that it isn’t quite finished yet. The villager offers them a little bit of parsnip to add to the pot and as more and more villagers walked by, each added another ingredient.
In the end they created a fantastic feast with enough to feed the whole village.
At home, I do love getting to let it all hang out ome of my favorite recipes when I cook...always including some variations of the traditional favorites, but always with a twist.....Spinach and Feta Cheese Casserole...Roasted Turkey , Glazed With a Rosemary , Honey and Roasted Garlic and Stuffed Under the skin instead of inside the cavity...Fresh Cranberry Sauce with Pineapple, Clove and Mandarin Orange...Pomegranate-laced Green Apple Cobbler With Vanilla Bean Ice Cream...Buttery Brown Sugared Roasted Root Veggies, just to name a few.
Cooking is fun.
The moral of the stone soup story is much like how I run the Foodbank at MEND. Just as the whole village got together and created a Stone Soup that fed them all, we engage the community and with everybody pitching in...and nobody has to go to bed hungry.
Our soup kitchen at MEND is of the Stone Soup variety, and as a foodbank director and chef...it’s my job to get the pot started and hope that with a little of that creative alchemy, we can make something great with a little love and enough for all..
It’s a lot like what you do at home, but probably for a few more guests.