by Pascale Boucicaut, editress-in chief & chef de cuisine
“It is very simple. I am here because I choose to be.” – M.F.K Fisher
“Here” for me is a kitchen in New York City. Right now polentas cool on wooden boards and cover my counters. A ragú boasts its hearty aroma while, wafting from the oven, vanilla whispers secrets of a poundcake, nearly finished baking. Screaming to me are pots to stir and temperatures to check while a patient pen and paper sit and wait their turn. Turning in me tonight are leftover thoughts from a radio program I was on recently. On the show, when asked if I identified with old ideas about women in the kitchen, I stammered over my words. Worse was when asked if, and why, I was stuck in a domestic kitchen. While the question caught me off guard, the answer, which simmers and even burns inside me, sings out louder than the other kitchen sounds: I am not. I am here because I choose to be.
There are a great many reasons why one decides to cook: boredom, curiosity, and hunger are perhaps the most prevalent. For some, cooking is mixed with the art of entertaining. Then there are those who wish to master the science and technique of the world’s best chefs de cuisine. Somewhere inside me are all those reasons, and every plate I’ve ever served, for better or worse, will remind me so. But deeper inside lay those subtle urges that one may quickly call feminine, and thus belittle or judge, and I embrace them as sincerely as you would the meal you’d be enjoying if you were here right now.
It all began with a love of food that was bequeathed to me by my parents (all four). Every slice, bowl and piece was placed before me with thoughtful care, from each in their own way. My father has always been dogmatic about his cooking methods and, for whatever reason, never shared them with anybody but me. From him I sought and still seek those magical kitchen secrets, the ones that can’t be found in recipes. My mother, a lover of home and comfort, allowed me to appreciate a degree of pleasure all too often battled by women. She passed on those “oohs” and “aahs” that keep meals from becoming wooden and keep tastebuds from drying out. The step-parents, joining my family later, introduced new epicurean experiences. Suddenly we were eating chili omelets on Sunday and picnicking together in the summer. I am a culmination of all these people, and then I am peppered with my own desire to make family, and feed them, wherever I go.
It is hard for me to identify cooking with feelings of ‘burden’ or ‘work’ because it is what I love to do more than most other things. I cannot explain why restaurants are filled with men while women dominate the food blogosphere, but I revel in the fact that I am just one in a magical line of women who have done so much exciting domestic culinary work. In fact every time I set before a stove I silently salute the women who have done the same for centuries before me, thus informing the dishes that I make and learn to make from them. I will venture to guess that very few of us suffer to discover the secrets of a restauranteur’s bouillabasse, because it is likely that he learned it from his mother and we are better off doing the same. It matters not that my hands no longer move professional pots so long as I know how to handle them like a pro.
As a woman, I’ve expanded and reduced, all with the confidences and insecurities of a girl, coming of age. Though somewhat later than most, I too noticed my gastronomical habits shift, to suit the lifestyle of a young lady, and so too noticed foods replacing other foods. For a time, animal products ceased to exist on my plate. Later, I would swear against all wheat products. This was all until I started cooking, really cooking, really exercising my kitchen skills and toning my culinary technique. It is with this experience that I now invite women into my kitchen, keep doors open to hungers fed and unfed, and closed to the devil that tempts us to fear a healthy dose of butter or a chocolate after dinner. Because I pity the unfortunate souls who subscribe to the adage that ‘you are what you eat,’ for as a woman, as a living and breathing creature, ‘you’ are so much more. Without the variety of all good things god is said to have made on earth, we become little more than a poundcake — the barest minimum of equal ingredients, measured by weight and nothing else, simply a pound of this and a pound of that.
And so I have carefully cooked up RecipesForLife, a project that saved me when living was losing its flavor and the food in my fridge was giving up hope. Most days, with eyes wide open, I take a bite of something every three hours and write down how it makes me feel. I do this because the Spaniards taught me that one’s mind only rises after second breakfast and because vanilla bean induces memory and memory is the seed of imagination.
Vanilla Bean Pound Cake
adapted from a recipe by Martha Pearl Villas and all sorts of women from the 18th century to the present
history.
Pound-cake. A rich cake so called as originally containing a pound (or equal weight) of each of the principal ingredients, flour, butter, sugar, fruit, etc.
—Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Volume XII (p. 247)
The French call Pound Cake “Quatre Quarts”, which means “four fourths”, referring to the equal portions of eggs, flour, sugar and butter. The French version is the same as the English… but in the French mind, there’s less emphasis on the pound of each but rather equal portions. You start out by weighing how many eggs you are going to use, and then weigh out the same amounts of flour, sugar and butter.
–The Book of Household Management, Isabelle Beeten (1861)
Old-school pound cakes come with their own easily-remembered formula (a pound of butter to a pound of sugar, eggs and flour) with leavening only coming from the air one whips into the batter. But just because it’s the classic way to do it, doesn’t mean mean I don’t think most pound cakes need a little extra creativity to keep them from becoming foamy, forgettable bricks.
– Smittenkitchen.com, Deb Perelman (2009)
ingredients.
1 pound (2 cups) sugar
1 pound (4 cups) all-purpose flour, sifted three times
1 pound (4 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1 pound (9 large) eggs, separated
3/4 vanilla bean
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
*1 teaspoon orange blossom water
steps.
1. In a food processor you will first grind the vanilla bean with the sugar so that the two infuse. Sift into a bowl leaving the larger pieces of bean out.
2. In a large mixing bowl you will cream the butter (so make sure it is room temperature), then slowly add the infused sugar. Make sure it is smooth and creamy and well integrated. You want to turn the butter so that the sugar granules are no longer visible.
3. Separate the egg yolks and the whites, and beat the whites with an electric mixer (if you’ve got one) or a whisk, until little light peaks form on top. You will do this to prevent your finished cake from being to heavy, rather than eliminating any of the egg (which would affect the flavor). Fold both the yolks and the whites into the butter mixture.
4. Next add the flour (after sifting three times) and salt, and mix well. I know this seems like a lot of work but its the only way to prevent your cake from turning into a brick. Add the vanilla extract and continue mixing until blended evenly.
5. Heat oven to 325ºF. Grease and flour a bundt pan, or (as I did) two loaf pans. Pour in the batter and make sure its evenly distributed. Bake for an hour and a quarter, or until a knife comes out clean.
Serve with a scoop of your favorite ice cream and one of your old favorites.
facsimile of an early poundcake recipe (from top): Carter, Susannah. The Frugal Housewife. NYC: G. & R. Waite, 1803.
