Food, Cooking, and Tales of Culinary Disaster

Before I start, I don't want you get the impression that Ed is nothing more than an amazing collection of quirky eating habits. He is an interesting, thoughtful, and well-rounded person with many hobbies, interests, pursuits, and opinions. Food is not one of them.

One of Ed's favorite things to eat is a grilled cheese sandwich. I'd guess that in the five years we've lived together, I've made several hundred of them. I can and have made them in my sleep. Most of the time, they've turned out just fine. There was one occasion that I neglected to remove a square of waxed paper from one of the cheese slices, but that was one time out of several hundred. Perhaps the perpetual production of grilled chesse sandwiches is my karma. My mother tells me--and anyone else who'll listen--that when I was fourteen months old, I would eat nothing but grilled cheese sandwiches and spaghetti during a cross-country car trip. Personally, I don't think anyone should be karmically liable for anything that's done before the age of eighteen months. On the other hand, my mother did spend night after night warming up cans of spaghetti in hotel sinks full of hot water. I have no memory of this, mind you, but in this case I suppose Mom is a reliable source. Dad never comments, but it's entirely possible that the trauma of driving through seventeen states with a toddler has affected his memory.

Ed's perfect grilled cheese sandwich is made with two different kinds of cheese. This never would have occurred to me. Ideally, the cheeses are cheddar and monterey jack. American, colby, provolone, mozerella, and munster are acceptable in various combinations, but not Swiss. Never, ever Swiss, under any circumstances. Forget it and order pizza instead. The preferred bread is either Wonder Bread (which isn't really food, so I never buy it) or whole grain bread, or as Ed described it--"the kind with chunks of stuff in it, only not too large".

I used to think that there wasn't a whole heck of a lot you could do with a grilled cheese sandwich to make it interesting. In recent years, however, I have discovered that I'm wrong. Ed's idea of an interesting grilled cheese sandwich includes bacon. Personally, I can't face that much fat and salt at one sitting in any form. I have visions of his arteries screaming "help me, help" like Jeff Goldblum in that horrible remake of The Fly.

The best grilled cheese sandwich I ever had was made by the person who eventually catered my wedding. I was working for the local NBC affiliate, and Wendell was the local TV chef. A couple of times a month, he'd wheel in portable range top, pots, pans, knives, utensils, and loads of food. In seven minutes or less, he'd put together one of those things that looks easy on TV, but is actually a pain in the ass because you never see the 20 minutes of off-camera prep work. For those of you who don't know, the minute the cooking segment or show is done, the entire crew descends upon the resulting food like vultures at an all-you-can-eat carrion bar. This is the natural order of things in the world of TV production, and six decades of wide-scale TV production have produced a truly vicious and voracious breed of production assistants.

Anyway, on this pparticular day, Wendell had a grill theme going. He concocted a variety of sandwiches, and I came away from the fray with a delicious grilled gorgonzola, walnut, and pear sandwich on sourdough. This may be stretching the definition of "grilled cheese" a bit, but frankly, as I huddled in the corner of the studio defending my prize, I didn't care. I've never quite been able to recreate that sandwich, because I have no idea what kind of pears he used. However, if you're going to try it, brush the bread lightly with olive oil instead of buttering it.

These days, vanilla means boring or basic. I blame it on the invention of artifical vanilla flavoring. Compared to the real thing, artifical vanilla starts at medicore and gets worse from there. Sometimes artifical vanilla leaves a nasty chemical aftertaste, and at other times, it doesn't seem to do anything. Vanilla is a very complex flavor, and it's not easy to synthesize well. Even, liquid vanilla extract has alcohol in it. Granted, that does burn off in the cooking process, but it can leave an off taste behind.

Personally, I haven't bought one of those nasty little brown bottles in about ten years. Most cooking snobs will tell you to use a real vanilla bean and absolutely, positively nothing else. However, that usually involves extra work, like steeping the pod in milk before you can get on with whatever it is you're making.

Instead, I like to use vanilla powder. It's made from real vanilla, and because it's concentrated, you actually use about half as much as you would if you were using liquid extract. I buy mine from Spices, Etc., but you can probably find it elsewhere if you look around.

So, what do you use it for? I use it in almost anything I bake, other than bread. I also like to put it in hot chocolate--or almost anything else chocolate, for that matter. Chocolate and vanilla, both originally from Latin America, combne wonderfully. I put it in fruit smoothies, waffles, and french toast. If you're into making your own soaps, candles, or skin care product, it would probably work well in those.

My husband is an extremely picky eater, and even he likes this. The recipe is originally from my great-grandmother. My mom insists that you have to use extra sharp colby cheese, or it simply won't taste right. However, if you don't, she's highly unlikely to find out about it, so substitute as you like. I've used cheddar and Monterey jack. It does taste better with a really sharp cheese.

The ingredients are very simple--macaroni or similar pasta, plain tomato sauce, and extra sharp colby cheese. I've been known to thin out tomato paste with water in an emergency, which works fairly well if you whisk it thoroughly. Amounts vary with the size of the casserole dish you're using. I usually use about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of cooked pasta, 6 ounces of tomato sauce, and 3/4 to 1 cup of shredded cheese per layer.

Put the pasta in first, then the cheese, and cover with tomato sauce. You can pour it over and spread it around a bit, but don't worry if it's not even. Repeat for every layer except the top one. (I've found that most casserole dishes hold three layers.) For the top layer, put the tomato sauce in before the cheese, so that the cheese will form a crust on top of the casserole. If you're feeling extravagant and have no fear of fat, you can dot the top of the casserole with butter or margarine. I usually don't bother.

Bake at 350°F for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on how brown and crisp you want the crust to be. It's supposed to be gooey inside, so don't leave it in so long that it dries out.

I don't usually have cooking accidents, but when I do, they're spectacular and often involve fire.

The first time I destroyed a microwave oven was when I was eleven years old, in the early 80s. My family had recently moved to a house that had a microwave. Our old house didn't have one, and the were new enough at the time that I wasn't really familiar with them.

For reasons that I've forgotten, I was home alone after school. I decided that a snack was in order and I had recently heard that you could bake potatoes in the microwave in less than half the time it took to bake them in the oven. Fine, I thought. Mom usually bakes potatoes for an hour. One third is less than one half, so I put the potato in for twenty minutes and wandered off. Therefore, I don't know what caught fire first--the potato, the plastic plate, or the inside of the microwave itself. I do know that our smoke alarm had fresh batteries.

It was twenty years before I destroyed another microwave, this time from the outside. Once again, it was in a house that I'd recently moved into. This time, the microwave was over the range. I was making potato pancakes, a traditional Chanukah food, for some friends of mine. I poured the cooking oil into the pan and set it on the burner. I hadn't intended to turn the burner on, but I did, out of habit. I walked into the other room to chat with my friends.

After ten minutes or so, one of my friends inquired as to the nature of the black smoke pouring out of the kitchen. I rushed in to see flames shooting up a good three feet from the pan, where the oil was burning. The plastic on the front panel of the microwave was blackened, twisted, and melting. I put it out by dumping about two pounds of cornmeal into the pan. Much to a cetain person's amusement, the digital clock continued to work.

Does anyone know how to get smoke stains off a textured ceiling?