Cooking Is Not Simple

Last night Jerry and I went to Berkeley Bowl supermarket (named after the  former bowling alley where the first store opened.  I've lived in Berkeley so long that I actually remember that bowling alley and in fact lived so close to it the summer after I graduated that I could lie in bed and hear the balls strike the pins.)  Our cupboard was bare, and we'd run through all the take-out options we could think of: soup, tostadas, pizza.   We had no choice but to go buy some raw ingredients.

Berkeley Bowl has a marvelous array of vegetables, many of them unrecognizable to me.  It has a complete fish and meat market.  Everything is fresh. Jerry maintains that the temperature of the store is only a few degrees higher than at Everest Base Camp. He wears a down vest and wipes his eyes.  The aisles are crowded. 

We'd made a  detailed shopping list, starting with ingredients for something we call "Mexican Muck," which is actually Mexican lasagna--I know, I know--from the South Beach Diet Cookbook.  It can be stretched to four nights, which is ideal.  We bought a ton of stuff, almost $200 worth, packed our recycled grocery bags, lugged them to the car, and bleated all the way home about how the ultimate indignity lay ahead:  after we put away all the stuff, we'd have to cook.

After a thrown-together dinner,  I collapsed with a book, "My Life in France" by Julia Child.  I came across this paragraph on page 74:

"One of the best things I absorbed [from the Cordon Bleu] was how to do things simply.  Take roast veal, for example.  Under the tutelage of Chef Bugnard, I simply salt-and-peppered the veal, wrapped it in a thin salt-pork blanket, added julienned carrots and onions to the pan with a tablespoon of butter on top, and basted it as it roasted in the oven.  It couldn't have been simpler.  When the veal was done, I'd degrease the juices, add a bit of stock, a dollop of butter, and a tiny bit of water, and reduce for a few minutes; then I'd strain the sauce and pour it over the meat.  The result: an absolutely sublime meal."

Simple?  A thin salt-pork blanket?  Julienned carrots?  Degreasing and straining?

I've noticed this about many people who write cookbooks:  They moan about the lost American home-cooked meal and the nightly gathering of family around the dining table.  It's not that much work, they maintain.  It's homey, it's the soul of family life, blah, blah, blah.  They have not visited chez nous, where dinner is cooked in a resigned silence, dutifully eaten--admittedly with sometimes lively conversation-- and cleaned up with more resignation.  We are not Paul and Julia absorbing the essence of France.  We don't even absorb the essence of  California produce, which is available at Berkeley Bowl.  We cook it,  and we eat.