A Final Thought: Please pass the ketchup
By Mitch Allen
I have always enjoyed cooking. When I was a kid arriving home from school, my older brother would make us watch The Galloping Gourmet on TV while my sister and I wanted only to learn what trouble Eddie Haskell was causing for Wally and the Beav.
Secretly, though, I didn’t mind. The show was always exciting at the end when Graham Kerr would run into the audience, grab the hand of a stranger, and invite her on stage to enjoy the dish he had prepared, served inevitably with a glass of wine.
The Galloping Gourmet aired from 1969-1971, a half-century ago, long before the Food Network, back when there was Julia and Graham and no one else.
My mom was an excellent cook who went far beyond the 1960s casseroles du jour found in Betty Crocker cookbooks. There was a little ethnic diversity in my hometown of Columbus, Georgia—thanks to nearby Ft. Benning—but nothing compared to Cleveland. Yet in spite of being surrounded by fried chicken, fried pork chops and fried catfish, our family’s favorite dishes—thanks to Mom—included German rouladen, Korean bulgogi, and Hungarian chicken paprika (I didn’t know it was called “chicken paprikash” until I moved to Northeast Ohio. In fact, I thought only our family ate it.)
Mom collected cookbooks and even wrote her own titled Generations’ Creations: Treasured Recipes of the Morgan-White Families. You won’t find it on Amazon. The only remaining copies are in my basement.
Dad was also a good cook, although much more traditional. He pan-fried chicken better than any woman (except his sister) and he was celebrated for his hickory-smoked pork butt, which—thanks to the Food Network—we all know now is actually a shoulder. He also fried fatback, bologna, and Johnny cakes and every Christmas he’d make a homemade, bourbon-soaked fruitcake.
Mom forced us kids to cook. She’d say, “I hope you’re all so rich one day that you don’t have to cook and clean, but, dammit, just in case, you’re going to know how.”
The first time I cooked a meal alone for the entire family, I made pigs-in-a-blanket, the recipe for which came from the back of a Bisquick box. It was, for all intents and purposes, a hot dog wiener wrapped in a pancake covered in ketchup.
It was horrible. I was nine.
Ketchup, Mom instructed, is not a sauce.
Once when I brought a girl to our house for dinner, Dad char-broiled steaks while Mom whipped up a béarnaise. When my girlfriend asked for ketchup, the clinking silverware ceased, the dining room fell silent, and all eyes turned to me, saying, “What is this creature you have brought into our midst?”
I wanted to say, “Let he who fries fatback cast the first stone,” but I kept my mouth shut—and married ketchup girl.
I, too, am a decent cook. Becoming so was inevitable. I have marched my way through much of Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking—from onion soup to coq au vin to chocolate soufflé—and I have at last developed the discipline to measure ingredients in grams, and shellfish cooking times in seconds instead of minutes.
Still, there is one thing I have been afraid to tackle: bread.
Until now.
About six weeks ago, on December 30, I baked my first loaf of bread ever—a French baguette—and I have become hooked. I don’t know why I never tried it before. Perhaps it’s a gender thing. The entire endeavor feels highly feminine, as if through yeast one is giving life to the rising dough which rewards you in the kneading process with a delicate smoothness and softness I have never known except in reaching under the table to touch the girl who asked for ketchup.
Since December, I have made more baguettes, white sandwich bread, homemade hamburger buns, Parker House rolls, soft pretzels, sourdough, Italian bread, country loaves, and, as I write this, pizza dough.
I thought I was doing a good job until my wife and I visited the bakery stalls at Cleveland’s West Side Market this past weekend. Those loaves are utter works of art, edible poetry, simultaneously ancient and fresh. To borrow from a Judy Collins’ song: I really don’t know bread at all.
“I like your bread,” my wife said, guiding me through the crowds, kneading my hand.
Thank God for ketchup.