Man with a Pan Read online

  The immediate lesson of being in the kitchen with a fine or great chef is humility. You properly want to go hide behind the woodpile until the dinner bell. You are a minor club player from South Dakota in the presence of Roger Federer. What astounds you, other than the product, is the speed and dexterity with which great chefs work. You feel like a sluggard because you are a sluggard. I can truthfully say that I wrote my novella Legends of the Fall in nine days, but then I had twenty years plus of practice: the same with chefs. There are no accidents or miracles, just hard work accompanied by taste.

  It is a somber situation with the best home or amateur chefs. When I watch my oldest daughter, Jamie, forty years after our first forays into French cooking, I am aware that I have fallen behind her to the point that I’m around the corner out of sight, but then after the university, she worked in New York for Dean and Deluca catering. When I cook and learn from my friend Peter Lewis from Seattle, I remind myself that he owned the restaurant Campagne for more than twenty years. In France, my friend the writer and book dealer Gérard Oberlé, who hosted the thirty-seven-course lunch, can bone a lamb shoulder in minutes, while I take a half hour. And who else makes a lovely sixteenth-century stew out of fifty baby pig’s noses? The owner of the vineyard Domaine Tempier, Lulu Peyraud, now in her mideighties, has cooked me a dozen meals, and a few courses of each have caused goose bumps. You watch closely and hopefully manage the humility of the student again.

  A few weeks ago, my wife cooked an antelope meat loaf for friends that was the equal of any rough terrine I have had in France. There is simply no substituting wild game with the pen-raised variety. If you want to make Bocuse’s salmis de bécasse (an improbably elaborate recipe), you have to take up woodcock hunting. I love ruffed grouse and Mearns quail, but neither can be raised in captivity, so you better train a bird dog and head to the field and forest with a shotgun.

  Cooking becomes an inextricable part of life and the morale it takes to thrive in our sodden times. A good start, and I have given away dozens of copies, is Bob Sloan’s Dad’s Own Cookbook. There is no condescension in the primer. Glue yourself to any fine cook you meet. They’ll generally put up with you if you bring good wine. Don’t be a tightwad. Your meals in life are numbered and the number is diminishing. Get at it. Owning an expensive car or home and buying cheap groceries and wine is utterly stupid. As a matter of simple fact, you can live indefinitely on peanut butter and jelly or fruit, nuts, and yogurt, but then food is one of our few primary aesthetic expenses, and what you choose to eat directly reflects the quality of your life.

  “Never hunt when you’re hungry.”

  Recipe File

  Grouse Surprise

  Once at our cabin in a slow hunting year we had only three grouse for five people to go with the usual grilled woodcock first course. I cut the grouse into small chunks along with equal-size pieces of sweetbreads. You marinate both in buttermilk and lots of Tabasco for a couple of hours, flour, and sauté until delightfully brown. The sauce is made with a cup of marinade plus a stock made of grouse carcasses and woodcock leavings. We always kept a stock going throughout hunting season. You whisk the sauce vigorously so that the buttermilk doesn’t curdle. I always like a Le Sang des Cailloux Vacqueyras or a Domaine Tempier Bandol with this meal, though if you’re rich, head for a Burgundy or a Bordeaux.

  Elk Carbonade

  This works well also with venison or antelope or even the domesticated buffalo I buy shipped from Wild Idea in South Dakota. You have to learn stews and soups to take advantage of lesser cuts of your game. Shanks and their marrow are especially valuable. This version of the generic Belgian dish is adapted from Julia Child.

  Cut 5 pounds of elk in ¾-inch cubes. Brown in pork fat in Le Creuset. Set aside. Sauté 10 cups of sliced onion and 7 cloves of garlic, salt, and pepper. Assemble, adding 1½ cups of beef stock and 4 cups of pilsner beer, 3 tablespoons of brown sugar, and an herb bouquet of bay leaves, thyme, and parsley. Bake at low heat, about 275°F, for 3 hours. Add a little cornstarch and 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar and cook for 5 minutes on the stove until thickened. Serve with Rustichella pappardelle noodles.

  On the Shelf

  To be honest, which is very difficult for me, though we have hundreds of cookbooks, I use only a few, while my wife uses many. Perhaps I am not all that imaginative outside my work. I use all the Italian cookbooks of Mario Batali. In Montana and along the Mexican border, we live far from acceptable Italian restaurants, so we cook Italian a couple of times a week. I’ve memories of my French bistro favorites. Haute cuisine is beyond my talent. We frequently use David Waltuck’s Staff Meals from Chanterelle, and I’ve lately become fascinated with Colman Andrews’s Catalan Cuisine. A worn family classic is James Beard’s American Cookery. Anything by James Villas is good.

  IN THE TRENCHES

  Brett Thacher is a fifty-eight-year-old father of three boys, the oldest of whom is closing in on his teenage years. He lives in Canton, New York, near the Canadian border. His wife, Pamela, is a professor of psychology at St. Lawrence University. He’s what’s called a trailing spouse in the academic world. When he files his income taxes, he usually lists his occupation as “Housekeeper/homemaker.”

  About a year ago, Pamela and I pretty much went vegetarian. We still eat fish, but we’re completely off red meat. My brother-in-law had had a kidney stone attack. And somebody suggested to him, “Well, maybe you should be looking at your diet. And why don’t you read this book called The China Study.” The book makes the argument that not eating meat, eating a completely vegan diet, is healthy and is actually good for some of the various ailments in life.

  I didn’t become a vegetarian entirely for health reasons, though. A lot of what drives me is the fact that meat consumes a lot of our resources. And if you’re going to be serious about global warming, and also about reducing our reliance on energy, getting close to the source is much better, I think. Pamela picked up the book first, and I was pretty much an easy sell. Years ago I had toyed with a vegetarian diet when I was at UMass, when I was going to college, but then I trended back to eating meat.

  Our oldest boy, Eben, interestingly enough and completely on his own, is a vegetarian. It wasn’t so much a cognizant decision. He tried meat once or twice in his youth, but he never liked it. And he really eats a diet of tofu and other vegetables and fruits and some things like noodles. Charles, my second, and Sam, the youngest, still like chicken nuggets, and I’ve got to admit that they still like to go out and get a burger once in a while, but Charles, he’s eating more and more a meatless diet. Sam, he’ll still go for everything. We haven’t pushed going meatless for them. We kind of like them to make their own decisions. But certainly we have plenty of meatless menus and diets available to them.

  Pamela and I lived in Providence, Rhode Island, when we were first married. A restaurant there called New Rivers had as part of their winter menu a veal Bolognese sauce. I used to love to make it. I wouldn’t always use veal; we’d use just regular beef quite often. When we switched to a vegetarian diet, I said, “Ha, I think I could adapt broken-up frozen tofu to substitute for the veal in this recipe.” I tried it, and it worked quite well. Now I substitute ground-up frozen tofu for meat in chilies and other dishes all the time. If you freeze tofu and then thaw it, and then crumple it up, it’s very much like ground meat. Almost indistinguishable. It’s really a clever little trick. And I think I read it in one of the Moosewood cookbooks.

  I also bake all the bread that we eat. Just to date myself, probably thirty or forty years ago there was a fellow who was the baker at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California—I think they’re up near Ojai, but I’m not sure. Anyway, he wrote a baking book, The Tassajara Bread Book. It has a very basic bread recipe that’s pretty easy to do. I just take three cups of water, dump it in a bowl, put in a tablespoon and a half of yeast. Then I usually put in about a third cup of honey for the sweetener. And mix up the sponge with enough flour to make it look like good, thick mud and
let that rise.

  I just dump the flour in. The recipe that they have in that book has exact measurements, or close enough to exact measurements for making bread. But I started out a long time ago, thirty years ago, making the bread from this recipe, so I just slap it together.

  You let it rise until it almost doubles, and then you mix in about a quarter cup of oil and roughly two teaspoons of salt. Then add in the rest of your dry ingredients—you know, the rest of the whole-wheat flour. When I make the sponge, I usually split it between whole wheat and unbleached flour just because I found that the 100 percent whole wheat flour recipe is a little too dense. I mix in the dry ingredients. And then you knead it for—if you use the counting method, you can do it for about a hundred turns, and maybe ten minutes of kneading. Then you oil the bowl and put the bread back in. And you let it do a second rise. And after it’s done that second rise, I turn it into loaves. The Tassajara book recommends punching it down and doing one more rise, but I found that you don’t need to do it.

  I bake two loaves a week, roughly, for the general consumption. Charles is a PB&J kind of guy on homemade bread. One time I bought a loaf of Freihofer’s 100 percent whole wheat. And he said, “Dad, I don’t really want it on that bread. I want it on the bread you make,” which was kind of nice. It was very gratifying.

  Once in a while, the boys will help me make the bread. It gets kind of exciting when you have to flip it over and knead it and work some flour into it. They make little piles of flour on the side. I’m really happy that the boys see that there’s more than one way for a family to operate. Their mother is the principal breadwinner and goes off to work every day. Interestingly enough, we live in a town where, as small a population as we are, it’s not that uncommon. I can tick off on my hand about at least five dads I know who do a similar thing.

  Recipe File

  Tofu Bolognese

  1 cake extra-firm tofu (size in plastic packages), frozen

  2 tablespoons soy sauce

  1 tablespoon olive oil

  1 medium-size onion or larger (depending on one’s taste) 1 clove garlic

  1 jar good basil tomato sauce or equivalent homemade

  ½ cup dry red wine (optional)

  Capers to taste

  Thaw the tofu and squeeze out any remaining water, then crumble the tofu and mix it in a bowl with the soy sauce.

  Sauté the garlic and onion until the onion starts to go opaque.

  Add the crumbled tofu and brown slightly as one would ground beef or veal.

  Add the tomato sauce, wine, and capers.

  Simmer for 10 minutes.

  Serve over the pasta of your choice.

  MATT GREENBERG

  The Ribbing

  A Screenplay

  Matt Greenberg is a film and television writer specializing in horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. His credits include the films 1408, Reign of Fire, and Halloween: H20. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three daughters, none of whom likes scary movies.

  Ominous music plays as we

  FADE IN:

  EXT. SIERRA MOUNTAINS - DAY

  A lone Prius drives along a ribbon of mountain road.

  INT. PRIUS

  40-year-old screenwriter MARC GREENBAUM is behind the wheel. Like all screenwriters, he is incredibly handsome, brilliant, and well adjusted.

  LORELEI, his young wife, sits next to him. Like all screenwriters’ spouses, she is perfect in every way.

  LORELEI

  (Without a hint of exposition)

  … Honey, I think it’s just great you decided to take this job as a winter caretaker for an isolated hotel resort with a questionable history.

  MARC

  (Cocky smile)

  Well, baby, I figured we could all use some time away from Hollywood.

  STANLEY (O.S.)

  I thought it was ’cause your career’s in the toilet.

  This from STANLEY, their 7-year-old son, who is sitting in the back. Despite certain Oedipal issues, he is also well adjusted.

  MARC

  Naw, tiger. Daddy’s business is just a little slow right now.

  STANLEY

  Your agent says you can’t get arrested.

  MARC

  LIES! I’M AT THE TOP OF MY GAME!!

  LORELEI

  Honey, please. I’m sure once you finish your spec screenplay, we’ll be fine.

  MARC

  Damn straight. The important thing is we’re together. And we’re all incredibly well adjusted …

  CUT TO:

  EXT. INCREDIBLY ISOLATED HOTEL RESORT - DAY

  A HOTEL MANAGER shows Marc and his family around.

  HOTEL MANAGER

  … as you can see, everything here is kid safe and family friendly. Except for the fact that you’ll be completely cut off from civilization without any hope of rescue, you shouldn’t have a problem …

  CUT TO:

  INT. KITCHEN - HOTEL RESORT

  The Hotel Manager leads them through the kitchen.

  STANLEY

  But what if something goes wrong?

  MARC

  Stan, we’re a close-knit Hollywood family. What could possibly go … ?

  Marc suddenly stops. He’s just seen what sits in the back of the room …

  THE MOST AMAZING BBQ/GRILL EVER

  A brand name emblazoned on the front: PSYCHO GRILL 1000.

  Marc stares as if he’s just seen a vision of God.

  HOTEL MANAGER

  She’s a beaut, all right. This baby can grill, barbecue, rotisserie …

  Stanley suddenly starts to CONVULSE.

  HOTEL MANAGER (CONT’D)

  Is he all right?

  LORELEI

  Oh, he’s just having a psychic moment.

  Stanley’s index finger points at the grill and starts to speak in an ominous voice.

  STANLEY’S FINGER

  Evil! Evil!

  Stanley’s eyes roll up in his head. He passes out. Embarrassed pause.

  MARC

  Maybe we should up his Ritalin.

  HOTEL MANAGER

  Well, to be honest … we have had a few issues with this grill.

  The Hotel Manager pulls out a photo of a very trim MAN.

  HOTEL MANAGER (CONT’D)

  Our last winter caretaker used it. I’m afraid he got a little … carried away.

  The Hotel Manager shows them a SECOND PHOTO of the same man. He is now 400 pounds. He lies dead, killed by congestive heart failure, his face in a bowl of BBQ sauce.

  LORELEI

  Oh, that wouldn’t happen to us. We’re strictly low-fat semivegetarians. Isn’t that right, schnookums?

  Marc stares at the grill. His mouth twitches.

  CUT TO:

  EXT. INCREDIBLY ISOLATED HOTEL RESORT - DAYS LATER

  One week later. Winter has begun to set in.

  INT. KITCHEN - HOTEL RESORT

  Marc cooks low-fat veggie burgers on the Psycho Grill 1000. It’s his first time grilling.

  INT. DINING ROOM - HOTEL RESORT

  The low-fat veggie burgers sit on the table. They’re burned to a crisp and are as hard as bricks.

  The family sits staring at Marc’s handiwork. Embarrassed silence.

  STANLEY

  Maybe you should stick to microwaving.

  CUT TO:

  INT. GREAT ROOM - HOTEL RESORT

  Marc sits at his computer, staring morosely at the screen. Lorelei enters.

  LORELEI

  How’s the spec screenplay coming, hon?

  She looks at the computer screen. All Marc has written is the title page:

  UNTITLED “AVATAR” MEETS “THE HANGOVER” PROJECT.

  MARC

  (Defensive) It’s a start!

  LORELEI

  No pressure, sweetie. I’m sure the tax lien on the house can wait.

  She kisses him sweetly -- thinking about the neurosurgeon she could have married -- then leaves.

  Marc puts his head in his hands.

 
MARC

  Can’t I do anything right?

  He looks up … and is shocked to see

  THE PSYCHO GRILL 1000

  Sitting across from his desk. Someone -- or perhaps some thing -- has wheeled it there.

  A PIECE OF PAPER is taped to its front. Words in bold are written: YOU CAN MAKE THE PERFECT BURGER.

  Below these words is a RECIPE. Marc reads the recipe. He raises an eyebrow.

  CUT TO:

  INT. KITCHEN - SERIES OF SHOTS

  Marc uses the recipe to make the perfect burger.

  He mixes 1 POUND OF GROUND CHUCK with 1 POUND OF GROUND SIRLOIN.

  He seasons it with SALT, PEPPER, GARLIC, and ONION POWDER.

  He seasons A STICK OF BUTTER by mixing it with HERBS OF CHOICE, then rolls it into a cylinder and freezes it.

  He slices pats of the frozen butter.

  He takes the seasoned beef and builds 3/4-INCH PATTIES. He makes an indentation in the center of each patty and places a slice of frozen butter there. He covers the butter slice with more meat so it is now in the center of the burger.

  He lights the charcoal in the grill. He PATIENTLY waits for the flames to die down until there are only coals covered with a light gray layer of ash.

  He rakes most of the coals to the right side of the grill, creating a HOTTER AREA.

  He places the burgers on the hotter area and quickly sears them on both sides.

  Finally, he moves the seared burgers to the left -- and cooler -- side of the grill so they can cook more slowly.

  ANGLE ON - MARC’S FACE