On Fearless Cooking
Beauty has nothing to do with it
My grandmother was a genuine Irish cook. The story goes that after her boat landed in New York she traveled to Philadelphia, where cousins worked as rich people’s maids. She was hired on as a cook based on the skills she developed by her mother’s side and soon proved adept at the European recipes then in favor with high society. She could accomplish the most lavish feasts and fanciest cakes, but her dishes at home were humble, plainly served. She stayed until she married and, of her seven children, she leaned on my mom the most when she suddenly found herself a widow. Her daughter learned to cook by her side, and that’s how Mom taught her daughters.
I was recently talking to Kate McDermott. She’s one of the most skilled cookbook writers in the country. Besides her popular workshops, she runs a legendary Pie Camp, a three-day, total emersion into crusts and fillings.
We got around to lamenting the perils of not growing up with someone who cooked at home every day. People seem more anxious about even the most basic kitchen skills, striving instead for masterful presentations rather than simple delicious pleasures.
She put it this way, “You’re lucky today if you learn at the elbow of an elder.”
We agreed that much can be blamed on the veneer of perfection presented on food blogs, Facebook, and Instagram. I added the decades of photoshopping in newspapers’ food sections and glossy magazines.
I could hear Mom having a conniption over all this. To her, a pretty appearance placed a long second to taste. She had no use for a person (i.e., a woman) who couldn’t quickly read a recipe and know not just how to do it but be fearless enough to change it. Everything she made looked good enough to eat, but if she deemed her flavor experiments flawed, it went right into the trash.
The hunk of boar I suggested my son grill over the weekend is a case in point. Sam’s skills are only partly due to standing beside me. An earlier influence were the nights he snuck out of the house to meet up with the rest of his 15-year-old friends at divey restaurants with excellent cooks in the kitchen.
We lived in one of Brooklyn’s “you name it, we got it,” scruffy neighborhoods, and his education in Puerto Rican, Chinese, Polish, Mexican, Italian, and Irish food eventually proved more enticing than whatever his fellow delinquents were up to. I knew which ones he went to by the takeout containers piled around his room. I always took a couple of forkfuls before kicking him awake.
At some point in his college years he wandered into the kitchen and took his rightful place by my side. He became as fearless as his grandmother.
The boar suggestion didn’t faze him even though neither of us had experience with one. Plus, he has a smoker.
“I’ll go get wood chips!” Sam said.
“I’ll go get the meat!” I said.
A butcher in a faraway cool neighborhood claimed he sold genuine free-range boar. I ended up buying three shoulder roasts and then dropped them off at Sam’s house.
“What do you think about wrapping one in bacon?”
“Beats me,” I said and left him to it.
A couple of days later, I received this:
Four hours went by and another photo showed his progress:
And somewhere near nightfall, came this decidedly unphotogenic sight:
The boar didn’t appear on Facebook or Instagram, but a heap of it made its way over to his mom’s house. Not pretty but soooo good.
Photographs by Sandra Benventuo