Goldy's Kitchen Cookbook (9 page)

Y
es, it's true. It would seem as if vegetarians are taking over the world, or at least the publishing industry. Carolyn Marino, who was an editor for
Catering to Nobody
and has edited my last six novels, and, bless her, this cookbook, is a vegetarian who also requested more meatless dishes.

But there is another reason why this chapter of
Goldy's Kitchen Cookbook
is titled
Spuds, Salads, Etc.
While learning how to cater, I noticed something interesting: Green vegetables, everything from broccoli to haricots verts, were rarely served hot at a party for, say, forty people or more. The reason was that you could not keep the vegetables at a high enough temperature to feed all those folks
hot
vegetables without overcooking said vegetables. You could serve vegetables if you cooked them between layers of cheese, because the cheese would keep them hot. But cheesy green beans don't quite work with steak and the inevitable cheesy
potato dish, which is what catering clients clamor for. So green salads, in their many forms, are usually what caterers serve with the protein and starch.

Some of these spud and salad recipes were originally published with bacon, ham, chicken, etc. That said, you will probably have at least one vegetarian at your next party. But the carnivores will not be happy if you omit meat from their meals. My advice is to fix your dishes in a vegetarian manner (i.e., omitting the meat), and buy one of those spiral-cut hams to serve at the end of the buffet.

Since I receive many, many more questions about the writing and editorial processes than I do about cooking, I want to add that an editor does more than ask for recipes. She can help a writer figure out what needs to be taken out, put in, or—even more fun—be developed.

I adored the movie
Shakespeare in Love
. Hearing of this, my editor at the time, Kate Miciak, insisted that Goldy cater a Tudor feast. To do this, I had to go to England for research. (Please don't throw me in that there briar patch!) And as it happens, the Tudor kitchens at Hampton Court are almost perfectly preserved. Given that many castles were destroyed by fire, this alone is a miracle. For example: a Tudor pastry chef created a cake topped with actual miniature cannon. When the cake was served, the cannon blew real gunshot that ignited a blaze that destroyed an entire section of the castle. The dangerous activity of baking bread for any castle was often relegated to beehive-shaped ovens located
beside the river,
so that sudden conflagrations could be doused.

Doing the research was fun. That said, I came to the conclusion that folks of today would not particularly relish foods served during the Tudor era, even at the royal table. Why? At court, the spectacle was the thing. A peacock would be skinned in such a way that the head, raw skin, feathers, and feet could be set to the side in one piece. Then the bird itself would be roasted. The head, raw skin, feathers, etc. would then be
put back on
the roast, so that servants could hold the peacock aloft, feathers fanned, as they processed into the banquet hall, where the peacock would be served. Food poisoning, anyone?

Knowing all this, perhaps it's no wonder that so many people in publishing eschew meat.

My writing parallel here is that good editors can help you realize when you're going down a rabbit hole. Even though people ask where writers get ideas, the truth of the matter is that writers have many more ideas than they can possibly develop. Sometimes you have an idea, from an article you read, or something funny that happened in the gym. (Nothing funny has ever happened to me in a gym, but never mind.) You think, Wow! Great story here! And then you work on it for a couple of weeks or months—or years, if you're very unlucky—and send it to your editor, who says that in fact, it is not a great idea, because it has no zing. She will ask, where's the oomph, the vigor, the emotional power? And you reluctantly admit that there is none of the above. Best to start over.

As with characters, the key that will unlock a writer's motivation on a story is the energy—good or bad, light or dark—that one finds in that energy. Once the story takes on a life of its own, you're golden. Or at least, you have a chunk of ore.

It seems I have many issues that are fraught. (Who doesn't?) But issues that involve one's children are the most fraught of all. And since I always have Goldy's voice in my head, I experience those challenges with her reaction as well as mine. A chance conversation created a Goldy-in-my-head moment that led to
The Cereal Murders
.

The necessary background to this story is that Jim and I pulled one of our children from an overcrowded public school, then took out loans to get him an expensive college preparatory education. We discovered too late that without the money to support a country-club lifestyle—including fancy cars for tenth graders and yearly trips to Europe—our nonathletic son would not be considered cool. Unfortunately, those rich kids chewed up our offspring and spit him out in little pieces.

But we knew none of this when we took on massive debt to send this son through middle and high school at a place where the joke was,
How many parents does the headmaster trip over on his way to a member of the Coors family?

Our child was subject to numerous physical and emotional humiliations. (This was before there was the awareness of bullying that there is now.) Still, when we brought the horrible kids' behavior to the attention of the head of the middle school, he scoffed. “I can't legislate morality,” he announced. Goldy (and I) thought,
Then why are you here?

Of course, if school administrators anywhere are doing their jobs, then they should
kick out,
or at least suspend with required remediation, kids who are bullies. Children should have to take responsibility for their actions, and endure consequences. Then, perhaps, things would not escalate as they all too tragically do and did. But back then, as we repeatedly saw, administrators (and parents) tended to look the other way, or wash their hands, of bullying. We hope that Columbine, which is part of our school district, has changed that.

So, negative things that happened to us and our kids appear in disguised form when Goldy's son Arch is at Elk Park Prep. With Goldy's voice in my head, I could tap into all kinds of dark energy.

Let's take the time Jim and I were at a parent get-together that was billed as “an informal meeting over wine and appetizers to discuss college counseling.” The country-club parents came with their talons extended. We never dressed up enough for these events, but we went anyway. After all, we were spending a lot of (borrowed) money to send our child to the school, and one of the supposed perks was the vaunted college counseling program.

One mother looked down from where she towered over me in her very high heels. She took in my clothes and sniffed. She said, “Our other son is at Columbia.”

I said, “Oh?”

She said, “That's in New York.”

And of course the Goldy voice in my head said, “I thought it was in South America.” (This line was later stolen and appeared in a movie, the title for which I have conveniently forgotten.)

One tidbit I picked up along the way was that the country-club parents were deeply offended that Stanford never sent a representative to the school to drum up enthusiasm for applications. I think Stanford is doing the right thing. As has been well documented, many selective schools will lead high school seniors to believe they can get into their university. These recruiters will whip kids into a frenzy to apply. In fact, those universities are using these kids, the great majority of whom they will reject, as a way to inflate their acceptance rate statistics.

But what was really distressing was seeing how a class—and I witnessed this
repeatedly—that had been made up of
friends,
disintegrated under the competitive pressure of Who Is Going Where, or even, Who Is Applying Where. This is how I came up with the first line for
The Cereal Murders
: “I'd kill to get into Stanford.”

I wrote the book. But before sending it to my editor, I had to test out my Killer Competition hypothesis. So I scooted down to a Denver meeting of college admissions deans. I put the manuscript in the hands of the director of admission at Stanford, and said if he had any problems, please to let me know. (I never heard from him.)

At that same Denver meeting, though, I heard an anecdote that actually proved my hypothesis, although not in the life-or-death terms of my story. During one of the breaks, I talked with the dean of admissions at Bowdoin. (Yes, some are called directors, some are called deans. It probably won't help your child's case if she addresses her letters to the
Chief Gatekeeper.
) When I told the very kind man from Bowdoin what I was writing about, he responded with a story: When he'd previously been dean of undergraduate admissions at Duke, his office had received a letter from a highly valued applicant from a high school in Texas. In her letter, she said that she had changed her mind, and asked that her application to Duke be withdrawn.

His office wrote back a pro forma letter thanking the young woman for her communication withdrawing her application. Duke was sorry to lose her as an applicant, but wished her all success in her academic career.

A week later, the dean received a frantic call from the college counselor at the applicant's high school. She said, “That young woman never withdrew her application to Duke. Please send us the letter your office received, so we can analyze the handwriting and find out who did.”

As you've no doubt guessed, the letter had been written by a classmate who was also applying to Duke.

My editor loved the anecdote and the story. As they say at Stanford, “Q.E.D., baby.”

This became another family favorite. I will sometimes use half grated Gruyère and half grated Parmesan.

1.
Preheat the oven to 400˚F. Scrub and prick each potato 3 or 4 times (in the center of one side) with a fork. Bake the potatoes for 1 hour, or until flaky. Remove from the oven and cool slightly. (Leave the oven on. Butter a rimmed baking sheet.)

2.
In a large bowl, with an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, measure in the butter, cream, salt, pepper, and Parmesan. Using a sharp knife, cut the flat top side of each potato (where you pricked it) at a 45-degree angle to remove an oval of skin. (Visualize cutting out the top of a pumpkin.) Using a spoon, scoop most of the potato out of the interior into the bowl with the other ingredients. Leave a thin layer of potato inside the skin. Scrape the potato from the back of the removed ovals of potato skin into the bowl.

3.
Whip the potato mixture until smooth. Taste and correct the seasoning.

4.
Dividing the whipped potato mixture evenly, spoon it back into the skins. Place the stuffed potatoes on the baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes, or until the filling is thoroughly heated.

Makes 4 servings

Yes, back in the day I actually used to make these for our kids' slumber parties. (I also asked the kids to do taste tests. They would carefully bite into cookies and vote on 3 x 5 cards for “Cookie A,” “Cookie B,” or “Cookie C” to see what recipe would go in whatever book I was writing.) To make these potatoes vegetarian, leave out the bacon and use vegetable bouillon.

1.
Preheat the oven to 400˚F.

2.
Scrub and prick the potatoes in 3 or 4 places with a fork. Bake them for about 1 hour, or until flaky.

3.
Meanwhile, in a large skillet, melt the butter over low heat. Stir in the flour and cook and stir just until the mixture bubbles, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the bouillon granules, stir, and then gently whisk in the milk. Cook and stir constantly over medium heat until the sauce thickens, about 10 minutes. Add the Cheddar and stir until it melts, 2 to 3 minutes.

4.
Split each of the hot potatoes in half lengthwise and place them on a platter. Place the steamed broccoli florets and chopped bacon into bowls. Pour the cheese sauce into a large gravy boat. Diners serve themselves assembly-line style, ending with the cheese sauce.

Makes 4 to 8 servings

Even though it sounds like an ancient segment from
The Tonight Show
—“Sounds Dirty but Isn't”—Penny Prick was a game actually played in Ye Olde Englande. Gamers placed halfpence on sticks, then cast pieces of iron at them. If you knocked off a coin, you got to keep it. A different skill set from winning at Grand Theft Auto, for sure.

1.
Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Butter a 9 x 13-inch baking pan.

2.
In a large saucepan, bring a large quantity of salted spring water to a boil. Place the potatoes in the boiling water and cook over medium-high heat until fork-tender, about 40 minutes.

3.
While the potatoes are cooking, cut a piece of foil into an 8-inch square. Quickly rinse the garlic bulb under cold running water and pat it dry. Place the bulb in the middle of the foil square and carefully pour the olive oil over it. Bring up the corners of the foil and twist to make a closed packet. Place the packet on a pie plate or rimmed baking sheet. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the garlic cloves are soft but not browned. Using oven mitts, carefully open the packet, remove the garlic bulb with tongs so it can cool, and reserve the olive oil.

4.
When the garlic cloves are cool, squeeze them from their skins into a mini food processor. Process the garlic until it is a paste.

5.
Drain the potatoes and place them in a large bowl. Add the garlic paste, reserved olive oil, butter, milk, cream, cheeses, salt, and pepper. Using an electric mixer, beat until creamy and well combined. If the mixture seems dry, add a little more milk. Scrape the potato mixture into the baking pan. (If you are not going to bake the casserole immediately, allow it to cool, then cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 8 hours.)

6.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes (10 or 15 minutes longer if the casserole has been refrigerated), until hot through and slightly browned on top. Test for doneness by scooping out a small spoonful from the middle of the casserole and tasting it.

Makes 4 servings