Menus and meaning
July 1998
Books are often the best dinner companions, but there's nothing like reading menus to add drama to the meal. True, for plot and character development, menus are naturally and inevitably inferior to books, but menus, even the worst of them, still have their theatrics.
Sometimes it's farce. Think of a meal where the curtain opens on cocktail weiners and chipped beef wrapped lasciviously around processed cheese: the height of low humor, indeed.
Then there's tragicomedy: food with pretensions but no elegance. A risotto made with instant rice. Canned French peas nestling on canned artichoke bottoms. Want to wallow in tragicomic cuisine? For an almost indescribable casserole of mixed feelings, fling open a spiral-bound community cookbook from 25 years ago. The horror. EEEEEEeeee! Har har!
Sadly, the tragedies are often the menus of your own making. Hubris overtakes you, and you take on too much, try too hard, then watch your audience wallow in pity, fear and loathing.
Darn it, there are so many rules, so many places to fail. Menu making is a desperate balancing act, where light must complement heavy, sour find its match in sweet, color find contrast, and never, no, never repeat yourself. And if the food you manage to produce chances to be edible, will the cook eat it? I've always worked myself out of an appetite when I cook — too much nibbling, perhaps -- and so I sit there at the dinner table with motionless fork. Funny how the guests start to notice, and start to look at their forks, and then peer suspiciously at the food I lavished my love on. What does she know that we don't?
But my favorite solution for menu angst is a change of scene — I hie myself to a restaurant. Now there's a menu for you. You sit back and read thrilling prose about food you haven't sweated over — or onto. In this heat, every kitchen task feels "Like Water for Chocolate."
The problem with restaurant menus is the lack of connected plot. They leave you to wander off. wondering what "Artichoke Alamo" is really like. And once you've made your choice, diner's remorse sets in.
Anything I buy I'll wish were something else, and the seasoning won't taste right and the color will be off. And it turns out not to have artichokes. So I'll stare at other plates around the room, plates plopped in front of complete strangers, out of longing or curiosity. Sometimes I can't resist asking, "How is the 'Curried Tofu with Yams'? Doesn't that need some hot sauce?"
After a few outings like that, the spouse prefers to head for the border, to bring home dinner from Taco Bell. And, over a bean tostada or two, I dip into Dante's "Inferno" — the perfect companion to the Texas heat.
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For all my complaints about the difficulty of composing a menu, I can't stand cookbooks that tell me what to serve.
It's not that I mind suggestions. But some cookbook authors think they're doing the reader a favor by dividing the work up into a series of menus, instead of putting forth recipes by category or ingredient. I CAN'T WORK UNDER THESE CONDITIONS. I wish I could give myself up to the fantasy of each meal, but perversity and rebellion seize me. Nobody, just nobody is going to tell ME what to do. And so I suffer, alone and helpless, each time I try to put together my own set of complementary dishes.
Books are often the best dinner companions, but there's nothing like reading menus to add drama to the meal. True, for plot and character development, menus are naturally and inevitably inferior to books, but menus, even the worst of them, still have their theatrics.
Sometimes it's farce. Think of a meal where the curtain opens on cocktail weiners and chipped beef wrapped lasciviously around processed cheese: the height of low humor, indeed.
Then there's tragicomedy: food with pretensions but no elegance. A risotto made with instant rice. Canned French peas nestling on canned artichoke bottoms. Want to wallow in tragicomic cuisine? For an almost indescribable casserole of mixed feelings, fling open a spiral-bound community cookbook from 25 years ago. The horror. EEEEEEeeee! Har har!
Sadly, the tragedies are often the menus of your own making. Hubris overtakes you, and you take on too much, try too hard, then watch your audience wallow in pity, fear and loathing.
Darn it, there are so many rules, so many places to fail. Menu making is a desperate balancing act, where light must complement heavy, sour find its match in sweet, color find contrast, and never, no, never repeat yourself. And if the food you manage to produce chances to be edible, will the cook eat it? I've always worked myself out of an appetite when I cook — too much nibbling, perhaps -- and so I sit there at the dinner table with motionless fork. Funny how the guests start to notice, and start to look at their forks, and then peer suspiciously at the food I lavished my love on. What does she know that we don't?
But my favorite solution for menu angst is a change of scene — I hie myself to a restaurant. Now there's a menu for you. You sit back and read thrilling prose about food you haven't sweated over — or onto. In this heat, every kitchen task feels "Like Water for Chocolate."
The problem with restaurant menus is the lack of connected plot. They leave you to wander off. wondering what "Artichoke Alamo" is really like. And once you've made your choice, diner's remorse sets in.
Anything I buy I'll wish were something else, and the seasoning won't taste right and the color will be off. And it turns out not to have artichokes. So I'll stare at other plates around the room, plates plopped in front of complete strangers, out of longing or curiosity. Sometimes I can't resist asking, "How is the 'Curried Tofu with Yams'? Doesn't that need some hot sauce?"
After a few outings like that, the spouse prefers to head for the border, to bring home dinner from Taco Bell. And, over a bean tostada or two, I dip into Dante's "Inferno" — the perfect companion to the Texas heat.
********************************
For all my complaints about the difficulty of composing a menu, I can't stand cookbooks that tell me what to serve.
It's not that I mind suggestions. But some cookbook authors think they're doing the reader a favor by dividing the work up into a series of menus, instead of putting forth recipes by category or ingredient. I CAN'T WORK UNDER THESE CONDITIONS. I wish I could give myself up to the fantasy of each meal, but perversity and rebellion seize me. Nobody, just nobody is going to tell ME what to do. And so I suffer, alone and helpless, each time I try to put together my own set of complementary dishes.
posted by aparker54 at 7:35 AM
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