Reunion Beach Elin Hilderbrand (best selling autobiographies .TXT) 📖

In desperation, I improvised. Turning the oven up to Broil, I opened a commercial sack of the pale white bread common to the times—pre-sliced, white, soft, and squishy. Spreading the bread onto a metal cookie sheet, I ran the pan under the broiler, praying I would remember to remove it before the toast burned.

After skimming the excess grease the dishes’ contents looked a lot better. Pouring everything left in the dish into a huge dented pot with a long handle, I turned the heat underneath the pot on high and kept stirring until the whole mess inside it came to a boil and the ingredients combined to appear to be a sauce holding tuna fish. I poured in frozen English peas from the freezer, stirring until I smelled the toast browning.

I reached in, just in time to prevent burning, and pulled out the pan. I slid the toast onto oval serving dishes rescued from one of the cupboards and turned the toast over to reveal the white untoasted side. Now was not the time for such niceties as toasting on both sides. I took the pot of sauce, tuna, and peas and poured it over the slices of half-done toast. I stuck my finger into the near-empty pan and scraped around the sides before putting my finger in my mouth. Yum. I had succeeded!!!

Walking into the dining room, my bounty on the platter, I looked at the waiting faces. “Tuna fish à la king,” I said, renaming the meal I was presenting so proudly. My heart was beating with excitement, and my throat had eased up enough for me to speak.

They dug in, and that was that. No one complained, as they sometimes did for the regular cook, and I scuttled away to finish the brownies that would cap my meal. Suddenly I felt victorious and happy. They had liked it! Or, at least, hadn’t disliked it enough to tell me. That moment of holding my success aloft was my gold Oscar. I had won.

Within the first few days I understood the difficulty of multiplying a recipe by more than two, because it is not easy to get the ingredients measured accurately—particularly when using an uneven number—and because food changes as it “grows.” Three times as much fat is not needed to cook three times as many onions, for instance. I learned how important good smells were to appetite and cooking onions permeated the house with an aroma of well-being. I learned not to change a recipe drastically when I had hungry mouths to feed.

The expectant look on the faces of the diners—a captive audience, in a way—was important to me, just as it had been important to me as student director of Our Town to hear the applause when the play was over. I wanted that look to change into one of satisfaction and elation. And I learned I loved cooking. I was happier in the kitchen than I was anywhere else. Along with that happiness came what I call the triumph of taste—that moment when one knows one’s food is good, just before sending it out to be consumed.

My second night as cook the Israeli boy, Uri, an exacting scientist, helped me fix spaghetti and meatballs. The recipe called for twenty meatballs. I again multiplied the ingredients in the recipe, but this time by an even number, and used some judgment rather than following illegible jotted numbers. I pulled all the ingredients together with my hands and arms, as I had seen the cook do, combining them as I moved, kneading them into one. I took a taste and liked what I had done, albeit raw. I passed the cookbook to Uri, who had no frame of reference, to follow. When Uri read to make twenty meatballs, he did just that, as unquestioningly as he would add two ingredients together in a chemistry class. He shaped them carefully and methodically into twenty balls the size of softballs before slipping them into the oven. I wasn’t watching, and he didn’t question his assumptions.

It was nearly time to serve before I saw what he had done and realized I had another calamity. Not only were his softballs too big to be called meatballs, they were still red and raw in the middle. Inedible in their present state, I dropped them in a couple of large frying pans, poked and tore them apart, sautéing them as fast as I could before topping the sauce and spaghetti with them. Platter once again held high, I announced the name of the dish—spaghetti and meat sauce. From this I learned to read the body of the recipe and make changes in the body as well as in the ingredient list, adapting what I had to the number of people I had to serve. I learned that a recipe is only as good as the interpreter, that it was not as inviolate as a chemistry formula, requiring all the senses, including a sixth sense, a hunch about the way a recipe should go.

My mother always said I was mean when I was hungry. Not only was (and am) I, but all the inhabitants of our house seemed to be. A late meal or an inadequate meal caused ill-will and crossness. Whoever was in control of the food was in control of the mood of the co-op. Later I was to understand this had been true in my family as well as in the world. Food is the most powerful control issue in a home, nation, the world. Without it, little runs right.

I also learned never to tell anyone what you are cooking until you know what it will be, particularly if you have never cooked it before. There is a fine line between anticipation and disappointment, and the inexperienced cook is better served seducing with mystery and aroma.

Each day brought new lessons, going from fear to a growing feeling of satisfaction. I basked in the approval of the diners, feeling a fulfillment and contentment mixed