The No Recipe Recipe for Disaster

Or, Self-Pity Plus a Little Wine Does not a Good Muse Make

I really enjoyed Kitchen Confidential: the way those Bad Boys smoked, drank, swore, stayed up too late, trashed the place, and maintained their mean knife skills—and all while working in top notch kitchens. Didn’t really want to be Anthony Bourdain, but maybe I wanted to be Bourdain more than I wanted to be M. F. K. Fisher. The closest thing I had to an Outlaw aspiration—okay, yeah, maybe I did want to be a kitchen Rock God.

I enjoy going with the flow, throwing food around with flare. Have had occasions—weeks at a time, really—during which I routinely let blood whilst in the midst of wild chopping frenzies. Anyone who has read my blogs knows that I am into the reinvention of food—ingredients that don’t quite come together in one format re-imagined and reconstituted; awe-inspiring success rising from the ashes of failure like a phoenix.

There are times, however, when the slightly out of date, or just plan odd, ingredients that crowd the back of the refrigerator are no longer viable as anything other than compost. Just as there are times when an improvisational cook should follow a recipe. Or better still, turn out the light and quietly leave the kitchen, assuming that anyone—say, an understanding husband?—who really wants to eat something when he comes home, can make himself a bowl of cereal or a plate of slowly scrambled eggs.

Lately I have been feeling a little too sorry for myself, and a little too sorry for the scary looking cheeses that go on sale at my local purveyor. I’ve been out of work too long, and it’s this weird season right now, winter still, but with spring just aching to burst. The sultry sun tempts the crocuses, who send up eager and innocent green shoots, and then the icy winter air freeze burns them, retribution for their curiosity. This combination of too much idleness and peculiar weather depresses me. And so, I trudge up to Garden Gourmet in the Bronx (although we call it Gordon’s, as in Gordon Garmet—a little cockney, guv?), because I have the time to cook, while the cherished Pig does not, and at least it is a reason for me to go outside.

Once I get there I am leery of the wine cheese from Bulgaria with the black rind, and the oozing thing that looks like a Danish Port Salut, only it’s not. But as I stand there, staring at these unlovely comestibles and their bargain prices, I begin to feel protective of them, not to mention thrifty, and so, I buy them.

I should say something about what constitutes bad cheese, at least in our household, because we are of slightly different minds, or mouths, about this. Mark has no problem with things that taste blue. Cheeses that are dimpled with blue, or some other color, contain cultivated penicillin mold. They have a tangy taste that goes up your nose and inhabits the front of your tongue and mouth. I appreciate these flavors more in theory than in actuality, but dear Pig claims to enjoy them when they are very strong—almost to the point where they are “about to walk off the plate,” as my mother would have said. The other kind of bad cheese, the one I have more tolerance for, is the one that is like a tilsit. This has a pungent, fungal taste, and registers strongest on the back of the tongue and down the throat. Such cheeses start to get bitter as they ripen. When they exceed their maturity they taste very much like a car-clearing vagrant on the subway smells.

Some of the bargain cheeses I buy encompass the worst of both tastes, although most fall in the fungal to bitter category. The taste buds may also detect in these foul and hoary fromages a hint of gasoline—a giveaway that they are processed cheese, just to add insult to injury!

So, the other day I was at home. The sun was very bright and I do like a bright sun, especially after a winter of SAD. However, on this particular afternoon I was discontent and at loose ends. In spite of my oft repeated claim that I am self-sufficient and could amuse myself endlessly without ever going to work, I was having difficulty mustering enthusiasm for any of my passions. And the sun, shining so relentlessly, was a constant reprimand to my inactivity. I began to wish that it was mid-January again, when the rays of the sun are so weak that they cannot illuminate ones flaws so brightly—and not at all after 4:15 in the afternoon. Here it was, nearly five, and it still wasn’t offering a reprieve.

I re-read the front page of the newspaper (the virtual newspaper, that is) and the goings on in the Middle East and northern Africa made my head swim, again. I played one of my vocal practice CDs and attempted to sing along with it, and actually dozed off mid-scale. Since I was already feeling utterly dull, I rationalized that it wouldn’t be a crime to transform dull into mellow. So I poured myself a glass of white wine. I held the glass in my hand and squinted out the window, willing the sunlight to lessen, ashamed of myself for thinking that way.

When I went back to the fridge for a refill, I spotted a large piece of oozy cheese with a brown rind, one I’d mistakenly believed I’d disposed of earlier. “I should really toss that,” I thought, but I was feeling too inert to do it. I poured another glass and left the cheese alone. “The cheese stands alone,” I said aloud, nearly moving myself to tears. The feeling turned into a thought and actually pierced my lackluster gray matter. Poor cheese, left alone to molder on the shelf. All it wanted was to be needed, to be used and useful, and nobody wanted it. Nobody was calling it on the phone, and asking it to act in a play or write an article, or even asking it how it was feeling. The cheese was reminding me of myself.

I returned to the refrigerator, for an additional splash, and I just could not bear to see it sitting there so forlornly, so I took it out. Surely something could be done with this cheese so that it would feel better about itself, regain its self respect.

I tasted a corner. Even with my taste buds slightly anesthetized, its tang made the hairs on my arm stand on end. Maybe if I took some from the middle—really, that was a bit better. It wasn’t exactly what I would call an eating cheese though. . .perhaps a cooking cheese?

And this is when I had the blinding brainwave that should have probably inspired me to leave the kitchen at once, but unfortunately, it did not. Gougères! I could bake the cheese into those little French cheese puffs that everyone likes so much! Surely the flavor of the cheese would soften when combined with butter, eggs, and flour, and baked at 400 degrees!

At last the sun was setting, and I had to turn on the kitchen light as I set about turning old cheese into savory pastry. Gougères are made from cream puff dough, or choux, combined with cheese. You combine lots butter, some water, and some flour, and cook it, stirring constantly, until it becomes a thick, dry paste. You then remove this from the heat, beat in four large eggs until the mixture is satiny smooth, and wala, you put a cookie sheet covered with dollops of the stuff into the oven and out come cream puffs. Or, if you’ve added cheese, you have Gougères.

The problem was, I did not have much butter and I only had one egg. No problem. I felt weirdly energized. I was possessed by that fearless, Rocker God of Inspiration in the Kitchen. “We can do this thing,” I said to the cheese. “We don’t need cookbooks, and we sure don’t need supermarkets. We’re fuckin’ off the grid, baby!” The Rocker God of Inspiration in the Kitchen swears gratuitously like that.

So, instead of butter, I used half and half. And, I added a bunch of baking soda to the flour since I did not have enough eggs. It did not really turn into a dry paste when I cooked it on the burner, but I was not worried. I cut the rind away from the cheese, as well as the outer layer, with a very sharp knife. Then I chopped it into rough, soft hunks. I was performing a ritual sacrifice!

I added the cheese to the thickened, liquid. It tasted good! You could barely notice the cheese’s pungent bitterness. I beat in the one egg. The whole thing wasn’t exactly coalescing but I felt confident.

Just to be on the safe side, though, I oiled the baking sheets. Then I spooned the faux choux onto the sheets. Choux usually stands in cute little humps; this did not. It spread itself out on the tray. But I knew that because I’d added leavening, it was going to be fine. It might not be like any Gougères  you’d ever had before, but it was going to be great! I might even have to enlist the Pig to come up with a new name for it.

I baked them at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes, and then looked in. They were pale, and pretty flat. I lowered the temperature to 350 and baked for another ten. They were brownish, but still, remarkably flat, considering all the baking soda. And, don’t forget, the egg.

Right around the time I’d started sacrificing the cheese, I’d also knocked off drinking the wine, so by the time I took them out of the oven, the Rocker God of Inspiration in the Kitchen had a more tenuous possession of me. I removed them from the oven, and allowed them to cool for ten minutes.

When I went to do a taste test, I could not lift the Gougères off of the baking sheet. Did I mention this was a nonstick pan, which I had greased? So I got a spatula.

Turns out, none of the Gougères would come off of either of the sheets. They adhered. Like I’d glued them there and then covered the whole thing with varnish. Which would have been the outcome I’d have wanted if this were one of those decoupage projects I was so enamored of back around Christmas. But those weren’t edible. Apparently this wasn’t going to be either, but that had not been my intent.

After twenty minutes or so, I calmly admitted defeat. I was going to throw out the baking sheets, too, but instead I soaked them in boiling water and then attacked them with the spatula. Gradually the baked Gougères returned to their previous form, a sticky paste, albeit one with browned and hardened bits mixed in. I cleaned out the sink. I took out the garbage. I turned out the kitchen light. I retreated to the soothing now-darkness of the living room.

Later, when I heard Mark’s key in the door, I stood up. “I’m sorry,” I blurted as he came in the door. “I tried to cook something for you, but it was an unmitigated disaster!”

He stood there for a moment, all dressed up and handsome in his well made black suit, with the perfectly coordinated tie, shirt, and pocket square, his spit-shined shoes. He smiled. “Oh, that’s alright,” he said, “don’t worry about it. I didn’t get to eat lunch until nearly six pm, and that sandwich you packed was so big, I’m not even hungry.”

“Oh, that’s okay then,” I said, as he came over and gave me a squeeze. But it wasn’t, not quite, because the spontaneous, go with your impulses cooking project had failed. But as improvisers, we really have to learn to accept that. In the real world failing to plan may be planning to fail, but in improv if you plan too much, the spur of the moment decision that results in the “Oh My God where did that come from?” spark of brilliance will never be set free. If you want to have access to that muse, that genius, some of the time, you have to accept that you’re going to fall on your face, some of the time.

I was glad the Pig wasn’t hungry, though.