The Food Wars

 

Smoky salmon spread

Me: have you ever had chowder?

Christian: Clam chowder? I think so, but a long time ago. I don’t much like clams.

Me: I was thinking of fish chowder.

Howls from both of them. No fish chowder. Later I learned that they joked about it after they left my cottage.

So tonight Jordan and I had a menu planning session. One night is a potluck for some of their friends. I said I’d bring two appetizers and settled on Reuben dip, which Christian loves, and the salmon dip she’s eaten all her life and loves.

Jordan: “Christian won’t eat that.”

Me: “Why not? He eats salmon these days.” (Something he learned to like after I began cooking for them.)

Jordan: “A filet, grilled or roasted. He doesn’t want it mixed with a lot of other things.”

Then she said the problem is that they are perfectly happy with grilled meat and a salad, whereas I want to add thirty-five other ingredients. I like grilled meat and salad, but every night? Boring! Yes, I want casseroles and sauces and lots of different tastes. To complicate things, the other night Jacob said, “Meat, meat, meat. Why do we have to have it so often?” When Christian said chicken is meat, Jacob said it’s not the same. What he doesn’t want is lots of beef and the lamb that I sometimes crave. So tonight, my suggestion of Mongolian beef, which Christian does to perfection, was shot down because Jacob doesn’t like beef. A good old-fashioned vegetable soup was shot down because Christian wants meat and doesn’t really think soup is a meal. We are clearly all mismatched.

Christian looked at the appetizer recipes I’d chosen for the potluck and said he would eat lots of the Reuben dip and maybe a bit of the salmon. So I guess that’s what I’m making. The sherry/cheese paté which I love was a no go, as was the marinated goat cheese with rosemary and the sardine spread, which I didn’t even mean to include. When I ran across the recipe, I set it aside to make for myself.

My options here are limited. If I don’t want to cater to their tastes, I can cook for myself—but cooking for one quickly gets boring. I’d eat a lot of tuna and baked eggs. And in my semi-reclusive state, after a day alone at my computer, I really look forward to their company in the evening. Life, I have decided, is a series of compromises.

My friend Jean was eating with me on average once a week and welcomed my experimental cooking, but she has moved this week to Trinity Terrace and has lots on her mind and her daily calendar, like moving and getting settled. I fear she will get so wrapped up in the social life there—and the really excellent food that is part of her contract—that she will not be easily lured to my coffee table. But I am ever hopeful and have recipes waiting: cream of chicken soup from scratch (soup is a no-go around here) and the one I really like—a salmon bowl with vinegar rice and cole slaw veggies with sesame. I’m already modifying the recipe in my mind. Or I bet she’d each fish chowder.

So tonight we had wine-braised chicken thighs with artichokes and onion. Christian has not wanted thighs because there’s not enough meat, whereas I find one good-sized thigh more than satisfying. But we planned it carefully: Jacob had a golf tournament today and would be hungry at five, asleep by six, so Christian could have two of the thighs in the package. Life never goes as you plan: there were only three thighs in the package (I never can master the amount of chicken I’m ordering from Central Market, and it’s a great source of frustration), and Jacob was wide awake and ready to eat. Jordan and I split a thigh and admittedly that’s not much meat. I thought it was a great meal—I browned the chicken slowly so the skin was good and crisp; then in the same pan I sautéed the onions and canned artichokes, added a whole bunch of dry white wine, and simmered until liquid was reduced. This is one of those recipes which I wish I could cook in an iron skillet and whisk into the oven. But I scraped the vegetables into a flat oven dish, topped them with the chicken, and baked them in my toaster oven. The vegetables were soft and delicious and the chicken skin (which I love) the crispest, best I’ve had in a long while. I loved it. I asked Christian, who has only lately come to artichokes, and he said, “Well, I didn’t know how to eat them. I’ve only had grilled artichokes where you only eat the tip of the leaf.” You see what culinary educational work I have ahead of me?

How about you? How experimental are you in cooking? And eating?