Humble Pie

August 6, 2003

Now, with all these awards and degrees and OBEs (Order of the Biscuit Empire) coming in, I wouldn't want you to think I've completely forgotten who I am. Where I came from. And what it was like before I knew the difference between kosher and iodized. I could never forget my roots. There are too many out there who would be only too happy to remind me and, well, I can't give them all botulism.

I always liked to cook as a kid. I thought it was a lot of fun to mix all manner of things together -- I even wrote up my own recipes. The one I still have written in the back of one of my Dragonlance books calls for a soup made entirely of melted butter with some scallions added in for seasoning. I couldn't wait until I got old enough to make it in my own kitchen, so one day when my mom wasn't around, I decided to test the recipe.

I got out a pound of butter and started melting it, stick by stick, in a really big saucepan. Then I cut up a few scallions and started tossing them in as the butter liquidated. That was it. That was my genius recipe. I felt it had a sort of Tuscan elegance in its pureness and simplicity. I ladled out a bowl of this Butter Soup and sat down to sample my creation. You have to understand, I REALLY loved butter as a kid. I still do, I just don't think I would, you know, drink it again. To be completely honest, I did recognize that there was a small flaw in my soup du jour. Massive heart attacks aside, it was a bit weird to swallow all that butter. As it went down, it sort of coated and stuck oddly to my throat. That was the last time I made that particular recipe.

Then there were the tins upon tins of muffins I let burn in their paper sleeves because I totally spaced that the cooking time had a limit. And the many boxes of rice that became one with the pan because I let the water boil completely away while I was off playing with my Star Wars action figures. I burned a lot of things. Hell, once, I even burned a microwave.

Not a big deal, you say? Okay, well, it was my parents' first microwave and it was in the late eighties when microwaves were like iBooks. Note that I didn't say, "I burned in the microwave." No, I burned the microwave. It was, no joke, the first night my parents had the microwave. They were out and Detour was sleeping over. We were hanging out in the den, watching MST3K -- which, in those pre-cable hype days, only Minnesotans knew of its KXLI 41 existence -- and I decided I wanted some toast. You already have a bad feeling, don't you? My mother kept a steady supply of San Francisco Sourdough stocked in the breadbox (I'm taking a poll: Do people even own breadboxes anymore? Write me at keckler22@yahoo.com and let me know your opinion) and that's what I was after. And what a perfect opportunity of using the new appliance! Without a plate! Directly on the surface of the microwave! Look, aside from the fact that I was in AP/IB Bio and Chem, I never said I was a scientific genius -- I mean, Alton Brown wasn't going to come along for at least another fifteen years. What did I know from food science?

So, I put the two slices of bread in the microwave, set it for five minutes on high, took the butter out of the fridge, and went to take a shower. Smoke didn't exactly pour out as I popped open the door, but the pieces of bread had shrunk considerably and undergone some time in the carbon chamber. I pulled out the charred remains and promptly burned my hands. The fragments fell on the floor to be sniffed at by our black cat Nutsy, who was thinking he was really more in the mood for buttery succotash. I brushed the rest of the charcoaled crumbs out and surveyed the damage. There were two scorch marks where the toasts sat before their unfortunate conflagration. Not in a panic yet, I got some 409 and paper towels and went to work. I was fairly convinced I had the situation under control. It soon became evident that I really didn't. I banged out the Ajax and scrubbed some more. Yeah, it wasn't coming out. Having cleaned away most of the black gunk, I could clearly see that tattooing two scorch marks the size of raw chicken breasts on my parents' new microwave wasn't the only thing I had accomplished -- the plastic surface had also bubbled and then been chipped away with the power of Ajax.

I left my parents a very cute please-don't-kick-the-puppy-for-scarring-the-brand-new-appliance apology note before Detour and I went to bed. They were so taken by the note that when they got home, they dragged me out of bed to yell about just how cute they thought it was.

Then there was the Thanksgiving of 2000. It was our first "Married Holiday" and I was deep in my food fever. A recent edition of Cook's Illustrated told me, in its usual exhaustive but highly informative way, which was the best-tasting frozen turkey for my hard-earned editor's money. Mathra duly went to Star Market and bought a seven-pound turkey based on my carefully researched brand specifications. Because our families live in Minneapolis, the D.C.-area, and Mathra used all his school holidays as bonus thesis-time, our Thanksgivings were always pretty small. However, we liked to provide a haven for any grad students in the math department who were knocking about with no other place to go. At the most, though, we never had more than two or three extra mouths, so we got used to buying the smaller birds. Seven pounds, maybe eight, was our limit.

Mathra brought the bird home and, after sufficient thaw-time in the fridge, I put the beast in the sink and slit the plastic shroud. I don't know how long it took me to notice that there was something wrong. I think it was when I wanted to start washing out the cavity and couldn't find it. I also couldn't find the legs and wings. I called my mother in a panic:

Me: "Where are the legs and wings? I can't find the legs and wings!"

Mom: "Who is this?"

Me: "It's me! I can't find the legs and wings on my turkey!"

Mom: "I don't understand what you're talking about."

Me: "Mom, pay attention -- I've got my turkey but it doesn't have any legs or wings!"

Mom: "Did you thaw it properly? Maybe they're folded against the sides. Look inside the thing -- does it have the giblets?"

Me: "Okay, hang on...IT DOESN'T HAVE AN INSIDE!"

Mom: "That's just odd -- are you looking at it right end up?"

Me: "I don't know -- the thing doesn't have a head any more, how do I know which end is up?"

Mom: "Do you see the neck flap?"

Me: "NO!"

Mom: "Well, the other end would be the cavity."

Me: "See, you're not listening to me -- there is NO CAVITY!"

Mom: "What kind of turkey is this?"

Me: "I don't know, a seven-pound something Cook's Illustrated recommended -- what is going on with it?!"

Mom: "I've never heard of a turkey where you couldn't see the legs and wings attached to it."

Then, as I double-checked the weight, I noticed all the writing on the wrapper: "Seven pound BRAND NAME turkey breast."

Me: "Oh."

Mom: "What, 'oh'?"

Me: "It's a breast."

Mom: "I don't understand -- what's a breast?"

Me: "My turkey -- it's a breast."

Mom: "You mean, it's not a turkey at all?"

Me: "No, it's a turkey, it just doesn't have legs, wings or an inside."

Mom: "So, it's a breast."

Me: "Yes."

Mom: "So, no dark meat?"

Me: "No."

Mom: "Okay, well, enjoy that!"

Me: "But I don't know HOW to cook a BREAST! I know HOW to cook an entire turkey, I have all the INSTRUCTIONS for an entire turkey, but I don't know how to cook JUST A BREAST!"

Mom: "It can't be that much of a difference."

Me: "Mom, it's a HUGE difference of, like, many pounds of weight!"

Mom: "I have to get back to our actual turkey. Are you going to be okay?"

Me: "Yeah, I guess so."

Mom: "Okay, happy Thanksgiving -- we'll call you later."

Me: "Yeah."

To be fair to Mathra, who brought the legless, wingless, cavityless thing of turkey meat home to us, it was a MASSIVE breast. I mean, we were looking for an entire bird to weigh seven pounds and he brought home just one part of that bird that weighed seven pounds.

I got on the web, opened my Jacques and Julia and found a nice recipe for turkey breast provençale. However, not having any herbes de Provence on hand at that time in my life, I compensated and sent Mathra back to the store for olives and to Cambridge Naturals for lavender. To those, I added garlic and thyme and ground everything together with a bit of olive oil until it reached paste stage. Then I loosened the skin around the breast and smeared the Provençal Paste all around. Considering everything, the seven pound breast came out really great and, being white meat, it was a very healthy and extremely aromatic alternative. Even so, I do love a good drumstick at Thanksgiving. The other mistake I made that year was thinking I could make mashed potatoes from red-skinned potatoes. Never again. What I got was a gluey, glutinous mass of grossosity. I even spooned the potatoes into our Apilco pan and tried to bake them dry, but it didn't really get me anywhere.

Lessons learned:

1. Use only Idaho, Russet or any other dry, less glutinous potato if you want your mashed potatoes to be fluffy, creamy, and cumulous cloud-like and not to resemble mucilage.

2. Carefully read all wrappers or else you could end up with a big pair of dinners.

3. You can't make toast in a microwave.