Memory
When I was around 13, I went to visit my friend Sue. She lived perhaps 45 minutes away, and was tall and loud and brash and British, with wild red hair and a wicked sense of humor. I adored her. We decided to cook dinner for her family - five people, all told, including myself. In the fridge, we found two Cornish game hens, some bacon, some scallions; in the pantry we found rice.
First, we cut the bacon into half-slices, and wrapped each half-slice around an inch of scallion. We arranged these on a tray and popped them in the oven. We washed the hens and butterflied them and put them in to roast; we made rice and giblet gravy. We nervously poked at the hens, hoping they were done, and burnt our fingers on the oven rack.
When we served dinner, we found that two Cornish hens are not nearly enough for five, so her parents got a half each to themselves, and the two remaining halves were divided among the three children. The scallions in bacon went well with the crisp skin of the hens; the giblet gravy was neither too peppery nor too salty, and if the rice was a bit bland and sticky, well, mixed with gravy you couldn’t really tell.
At the time, I was dreadfully embarrassed - not enough food! The horror!
But now, I think - we were 13, and we tried hard, and we turned out a tasty meal in under an hour. If Sue turned up at my doorstep tomorrow with two Cornish hens, we might be able to make a meal fit for a king, but I don’t know that we could truly replicate the accomplishment.
July 19th, 2004 at 4:18 pm
In 1995, when I was twenty, my grandmother died. That fall, when the High Holidays rolled around, I decided I needed to duplicate the Rosh Hashanah lunch she had made throughout my childhood, to honor her memory. Of course, I didn’t know how to cook worth a damn; I spent ages on the phone with my mother, my sister, my sister-in-law, hunting for recipes and tips. I roasted cornish hens; I made wild rice, and giblet gravy; I made tsimmes (an Eastern European casserole of sweet potatoes, potatoes, prunes, and brisket, heavily flavored with lemon and pepper and cinnamon).
I was living in a house with a ragtag bunch of college students and computer programmers, most of whom were not Jewish and all of whom were baffled at being hauled into the dining room for a late lunch on a white tablecloth with candles lit and wine poured. The hens were a little dry, the gravy a little burned, but everyone assured me that the food was gorgeous, and for the duration of the lunch I almost managed to convince myself that my grandmother was watching, and that she was proud.