Expectations

Exploring flavor and life

My husband asked me to make something very specific this last week. He’s very easy-going when it comes to food, in general, although he does have strong dislikes and preferences. I’m wildly experimental and adventurous when it comes to food, he is not so much. He was more so before his illness, but something I’m told is common to that is reverting to the tastes of your childhood, and I’ve explored his cultural cuisine (rural Appalachian, for the curious, and very specifically Hillbilly Kentuckian raised in the 1960s) enough to be comfortable cooking what he likes. In return, because he loves me, he puts up with my explorations of flavor and food ethnography.

So, when he asks me to make something I’ve never made before, and tells me that in his head it sounds delicious, but he’s never eaten it before, you can bet I jumped right on that idea. A little research later, some unsalted butter as all I had on hand that day was salted, and I was ready.

He’d asked me to make brown butter and sage sauce, to be served with pasta. I have browned butter before, but never made this sauce. Nor, to the best of my recollection, have I eaten it. I was going to be cooking blind. I have fresh sage in the herb garden just outside the door, and a garlic scape snipped up with it provided another layer of flavor. I carefully heated the butter, added in the herbs, and then as the particles of butter solids turned browned, pulled it from the heat and tossed it with the ravioli. The recipe I was following, from Marcella Hazen’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, didn’t suggest adding salt. I do, just a pinch, when at the table. This brought out much more flavor than our initial bites.

It has a much more delicate flavor than we were expecting. We had expectations of something, although neither of us could really say what, perhaps the butter flavor to be stronger. The sage, crisply fried, and garlic were the predominate - but not overpowering - notes in this. We agreed it would be nice to try it on a homemade pasta, as she suggests, but I didn’t have the get-up-and-get to do that today. I think, and my husband readily agreed, it would be a nice side dish but for a main meal we like something with more flavor to it. Stronger flavor? I’ll try this again. It didn’t meet our expectations, but we don’t know if that was me or the sauce itself. Perhaps if I find a restaurant which serves it, we can try it from an expert’s hand!

I love things like this, which stretch my palate and explore new regions of food. In the course of planning the meal I taught my husband that homemade pasta is not difficult to make, and will make some for him very soon as it’s not a thing I’ve done in our time together - it isn’t hard, it is time-consuming. And it is delicious. Funny how we default to our childhood settings. Mine is bread. I will make bread almost every day, almost without thinking about it, as it is an easy comfortable skill for me. Pasta? I have to think about and measure, but I know there are women in other kitchens who are the opposite in this matter. His? He makes cornbread. In a skillet which likely predates his grandparents, an heirloom with the sand-casting marks on the exterior of the cast iron, and a smooth interior you could fry eggs on. He never uses it for anything besides cornbread, and neither do I. His cornbread recipe goes something like this: a teacupful of self-rising cornmeal, a teacupful of milk, an egg, enough salt. Heat the oven to 400F with the skillet in it, and in the skillet, a big dollop of bacon grease. You mix the batter while the pan and oven are heating. When the oven is hot, you pour most of the grease into the batter, stir it in quickly, then pour it into the hot pan and bake for about twenty minutes, or until a wooden pick comes clean from the center. The teacup, cleaned and dried, lives in the container of cornmeal, always.

We both enjoy cooking, although I’ve never done it professionally, and he has. He will stand and watch me baking by feel and long experience, no measuring, and walk away muttering about this is why he doesn’t bake. On the other hand, I’ll stand there watching him cook by longer experience, and make notes to create a recipe out of his cooked-by-taste dishes he learned at his mother or grandmother’s knee. I can judge by eye the amount of whatever-it-is he’s adding, because I’ve measured since I was a child. Until I didn’t for some things, and bought better tools for accuracy on others. We make a good team in the kitchen. I miss that, lost in the onslaught on his energy the last few years have stripped away from us.

You adjust, in most things. You discover that life has changed from your expectations to something new and different. Not bad. Just… not what you thought it was going to be. And that’s all right, because you’ve never been here before, so you didn’t know. And now? you do. You find joy where it is, and are surprised. Let the regrets fall away and enjoy the food. It’s sweeter without the bitter touch of tears.