Taste: My Life through Food(21)
Kate had been experimenting with this dish for many years and succeeding brilliantly but would always ask my mother for her opinion or for tips as to how she might improve upon it. My mother is very patient and encouraging when teaching people to cook, but because of her knowledge, experience, and prowess she can be a bit intimidating. But Kate as usual was undaunted.
Because of the time-consuming and labor-intensive process of the recipe, it was usually only served on special occasions. One day, just my parents, Kate, my stepdaughter Christine, the little kids, and I were celebrating something; what it might have been I can’t remember, but it was clearly significant enough for Kate to make this coveted culinary treat. As we all tucked in, it was immediately evident that she had outdone herself. While my dad and I were moaning with delight, I noticed my mother chewing slowly, her eyes fixed in a stare as though she were trying to make the flavors of what she had just put into her mouth permeate every last taste bud. A moment passed, and Kate looked at her and bravely asked, “What do you think, Joanie?”
My mother continued to chew silently with her eyes still focused on her plate. After a slight, and not un-tense, pause, she looked at Kate and said, “I have nothing left to teach you.” And then she started to cry.
Kate was beaming as she hugged my mother. The rest of us laughed.
And then we devoured the lasagna.
* * *
Eating with my in-laws, Kate’s mother, Dorothy, and her second husband, Brad, was a very different experience than what I have described when eating with my parents. Although I always enjoyed visiting them, they were not necessarily a couple who liked to cook. Like many people, they enjoyed food but the process of preparing something beyond baked chicken or a steak, or experimenting with new recipes, was of no interest to them. Some people have a penchant for kitchen activities and others don’t, but our visits were always enjoyable.
Dorothy and Brad lived in a lovely home on the Maine coast not far from Freeport, an old town now composed mostly of outlet stores such as L.L.Bean and Sebago. Most summers, Kate and I and my stepchildren, and then later, our children, would drive the five hours north from Westchester for a visit. We would go out on their small boat to different islands, take hikes in the woods, or spend hours in the gargantuan L.L.Bean store in Freeport buying things we almost needed, like polar fleeces, thermoses, and carabiners. During our stays, inevitably Kate and I would do the cooking, because we knew what our kids would and wouldn’t eat, cooking made us happy, and being cooked for made my in-laws happy. But there was one meal that Brad made that neither Kate nor I would ever dare attempt.
Brad had been born and bred in Maine and still spoke in the flat tones that “Mainiacs” are well-known for. For those who have never visited, Maine is a beautifully rugged state with short summers and long, hard winters. Those born in Maine consider anyone not born in Maine an “outsider,” no matter how long that person may have lived there. They are for the most part a taciturn folk with a caustic, bone-dry sense of humor. An example of a Maine comic bon mot: Once, trying to make polite conversation at an uptight gathering at a small “yacht club,” I asked a member whether he had lived in Maine his whole life. His reply was a very deadpan, “Not yet.” The conversation petered out pretty quickly after that.
However, eating lobster plucked from Maine’s ever-frigid coastal waters with friends and family is one tradition that seems to scrape the patrician barnacles off even the most stoic of the state’s residents. The effort required by everyone at the table to break down and properly dissect a steamed lobster is an act that causes the participants to help one another complete the task. This act removes all barriers and can’t help but spark conversation. I have eaten lobster in England, the Maldives, Ireland, and many other places, and yet my favorite is still a one-and-a-half-pound lobster from Maine. I am not one who cares for his lobster grilled, thermidored, or Newburged, however tasty they may be. I am not saying I don’t like lobster bisque and don’t often crave a lobster roll on a lightly toasted, buttered bun. But when it comes to fresh lobster, I think, they are best gently boiled in salted water, and only butter, ideally clarified, is needed to enhance their flavor. This is how Brad cooked them every summer on the beach of a small island off the Maine coast.
On the day of our arrival, Brad would look at the upcoming weather forecast and decide when might be best for our annual island/lobster outing. After breakfast on the chosen day, we would fill coolers with beer, water, and soda, hunks of cheese, and homemade smoked fish paté; stuff plastic bags with ears of corn and loaves of bread; gather the life jackets; and head down to the rocky shore that the house overlooked. In two old burlap sacks, Brad carried a battered and blackened aluminum pot, a small wire shelf from a defunct fridge, and a stash of firewood. We would all then climb into a little dinghy and row to the motorboat moored about fifty yards out. Settled into the boat, we’d head to a nearby marina where there was a lobsterman Brad knew who sold the perfect-size lobsters for a very fair price. Their quick, vicious claws rendered useless by taut rubber bands, the crustaceans were tossed into an empty cooler and whisked onto our boat.
Making our way through the cold blue water toward a small island that had a less rocky beach than most of the other nearby islands, we would pass harems of seals swimming and sunning themselves on the jagged charcoal-colored rocks. The whole scene was a New England idyll worthy of any Wyeth family member’s bristles. We would moor the boat off the island, hop into the dinghy, and row to shore.