The Cook is in the Kitchen!

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23109, 6 August 1938, Page 5 (Supplement)

The Cook is in the Kitchen!

By JESS DUFF

TRIALS'OF ONE WHOSE ENEMY IS THE OVEN

TlfllO was it said that the woman U w ], o makes good sauces sits on the'a l WN ~ ol t-'ivilisation- 1 — Never mind—-|-in saying it now-! Hut J am not so sure that British women sliino at sauces. W e di<l> thou why should Voltaire Ijhto. lmrled this gibe at our beads, •'How could you believe in a nation ffliich lias ;U) religions and only one auce?" Lucky, indeed, is the woman who is-- happy fussing around with cookery books and casseroles. But never forget this either—a gift for cooking, combined with a well-filled purse, has spelt ruin to many a man's digestion. There is not a doubt of it, but cookery is the gentlest art., in which invention and imagination have their iilace. Moreover, it is a whole-time job. If . YOll have only one ear for the i'rring-pan and the other for the still ■mall yoice issuing from the pootrybcok. then there is going to be trouble ; Q the scullery. Remember what the estimable Mrs. Berry says, "Love don't last; cookery do!" Surely a sad rejection, to one born romantic, but with i heavy mixing hand.

Pikelets That Travelled Alone! To narrow down to personalities, I realise more fully now , with what a iimchiiig generosity my good mother, liersolf of the most superlative looks, lot me plav fast and loose with currants, butter, tlour —those odd nnits mit of which marvels are occasionally made. Yet the cakes always ended up as leail, ami so were- surreptitiously bestowed 011 a east-iron little boy next door, who was glad to hobble away with manv a sodden relic under the elastic nf las blouse. Believe mc or not as you —and it was so long ago that I can hardly believe it myself!—but out of a particular batch of pikelets, 1 once liored a hole in one of the stoutest, attached a label to it and sent it with triumph through the post! Even 111 the' kitchen, however. I havo had niv "moments musicales." One day I made an everyday soup, and a German friend, who chanced to come in, tasted it. made rich noises, and said, ippreciativoly. "This is good soup!''

* """"" s j Charity begins at home, but if it ] j slays there it doesn't get much j ■ notice. ] It's only plain Soots broth," I said is modestly ;is 1 could. "Scots?" she '■riecl, witlieringly, "It is not Scots. It ri international!' ; But all in all, L am a dud. Incapacity, so they tell us, may teach us many a. valuable lesson —to be in lilted to failure, or not to bo unduly elated at access. And time, that leveller and kraolisher, may sometimes prove an illy. Yo'u see. you cannot play hit and •iiiss all your life without an occasional rewarding hit—a. matter of mathenatics, so I am told. Excuse me for •nentioning it, but I have known scones if mine to bounce up and hit the top of ■.lie oven ' • • ' 9 •'Tell me not in mournful numbers, l.ife is easy. Scones are hard." The Right Musical Touch Many a time have I noted how, at ihe pastry-board, a woman will pat the dough as lovingly as if it were an infant's round, rosv cheek; or she will linger with a soft and tender pressure as if she were clasping her lover's hand. ■Never a sculptor handled his clay with more sensitive care. Surely the best. baking-board touch >bould be the (Jhopin or Debussy touch. A long apprenticeship with Beethoven will avail you nothiiig. A too careful and reverent study of the sculpture of Michael. Angelo or Me tin per, or too much reading of Whitman, or playing of Liszt may result in an all-too-virile handling at the kitchen table. . Your pastry will be executed rough like Rodin. It will emerge in powerful blobs —an effigy in .piecrust; a thing of - permanency, yes; enduring granite, most assuredly; but noi edible! \ T ou may rejoice at such a free, broad, and idiomatic rendering of a plain theme, but it will have few supporters at the. dining table, nor will it "launch a thousand ships." Now. this is odd—wrists that do not tire after four pages of double octaves I have seen give out lamentably after two and a-lnilf minutes' egg-beating.

What is the Secret? Some cooks build for success with scientific precision, and get it. Others, regardless and abstracted, whistling a tunc or thinking of something else, throw together a few handfuls of flour, sugar, butter, an bgg or two; and the miracle is done! Wonderful creatures. I take, off my hat lo vou. With jne, it is a girding of the loins and the fixed look of urifaltering resolve.

i here is a long and painful scrutiny of the cookery book,- with slow attention to the minutest detail. Let 110 one cough or open the door. Let no dog bark. The cook is in the kitchen, and things are about to happen! And yet, with all this meticulous care, this intense consumption of the brain cells, art so rarely "happens." 1 have known of a man who, for want of something to read, seized on the dictionary to swallow it piecemeal. In a similar mood and situation, I have conned the pages of cookery books. But all the reading of cookery books—need I stress the platitude?—does not make a cook.

The oven, it seems, is my sworn enemy, working no miracles, playing against me, deriding my puny endeavours. The cake 1 expect to find risen to a mountain reappears as .1 lowly valley. "What goes into the oven as buns comes strangely out as biscuits. What enters boldly as biscuits emerges nothing but crumbs! The Lord must chasten bis people. "We must learn, if for the hundredth time, how minute is our part in the universe, and how ambitious beginnings can end so easily in smoke; how all flesh is grass and all cake (with me) is dough!