By Butch Freedman
I don’t know if my father ever said those exact words, but I got the idea that was what he believed. I never once saw him at the stove, never made a piece of toast for himself or boiled water for a cup of tea. Mom did it all—without complaint. Those were the accepted roles back in the fifties and early sixties. Traditional, you know. Maybe they were following the examples of their immigrant parents. But this stratification of gender roles is still largely present in today’s society. I know it took me a while to start cooking for myself. Funny thing, when I did hesitantly approach the stove, I discovered I liked it, and eventually got pretty good at preparing food and sharing it with family and friends. Too many of my male acquaintances are still totally dependent on their wives to feed them. Many of them, like my dad, simply don’t know how. And never bothered to learn. They don’t know what they’re missing.
My first true learning experience of cookery came when I had a job washing dishes at a fine French restaurant in Cambridge, MA. I didn’t take the job to learn how to prepare good food, but that’s what happened. Once the chef saw that I was competent at running the giant dishwashing machine, and not a stoner, he gradually allowed me into the kitchen proper to help with the prep work, basic stuff only at first: peeling and chopping onions, clarifying butter, peeling potatoes, etc. Once I mastered those tasks, he let me prepare and plate salads. When things got really busy in the kitchen (it was a small one) I was told to work the stove—if only long enough for someone more competent to take back control. But by that time I was hooked. I hadn’t realized how interesting and creative food preparation could be. Of course I still had to scrub the pots at the end of the day. That’s part of cooking also—the cleaning up—another facet many men are unwilling or unable (?) to participate in. I still make variations of dishes I learned about at Ferdinand’s (the name of the restaurant and the chef.)
But, like all cooks (and chefs) I’ve had my share of failures in the kitchen. Sometimes, the fails came because I tried to do too much, added too many ingredients to a stew or soup that would have been tastier with just a few good ingredients. And sometimes I mess up by trying new recipes of my own invention. Spicing can be tricky also, and sometimes ruinous. But these are all learning experiences. And usually the food is still edible, if not fully enjoyable.
One of the times I screwed up in the kitchen. unfortunately, involved cooking for a large group of people—specifically, a group of Jesuit priests. This was a case of over-estimating my knowledge of preparing a meal for a large group, a very different skill than cooking for two or three. I had been invited by my friend, Erik, a Jesuit novice, to visit him at the group retreat home. I spent a week there and had a great time walking in the surrounding forests and talking with the Brothers. They were a very interesting group of men, who had come to their calling for a wide variety of reasons. Erik, was born and raised Jewish, but somehow found his way to the Catholic church. The rumor, which he refused to comment on, was that Jesus called to him during an acid trip.
Eric told me that the preparation of communal meals at the retreat home was done on a rotating basis by one of the Jesuits. I, foolhardily, immediately offered to prepare the next day’s dinner. I decided I would do something simple, something I had made numerous times before: spaghetti and meatballs with a hardy ragu sauce. “You really don’t have to,” Erik told me. “You’re a guest.”
“No, I want to,” I quickly replied. “I’d like to give back.” Erik seemed hesitant, but told me he’d inform the elders.
All went well at first. I gathered the ingredients, started the sauce, rolled the meatballs, sliced tomatoes for a salad, made a dressing, etc. I then got a pot of water boiling for the pasta. The problem I soon discovered was that the pot was not big enough for the amount of pasta I needed to cook. There were about a dozen hungry priests already at the table. So I shrugged and went ahead and dumped the three boxes of spaghetti into the undersized cook pot, then waited for the noodles to soften in the salted boiling water. But ten minutes later, when I went to stir the pot, I found it difficult to do. The noodles were all sticking together! I stirred harder, trying to break them apart, but it was already too late. In another ten minutes, despite my frantic stirring and poking, the pasta had turned into one giant gelatinous mass. I wanted to run away and hide, or flee the premises, never to speak to Erik again. But the priests were waiting. They only got this one chance at a dinner, so I drained the mess, did my best to cut the spaghetti into chunks, doused it with sauce, plopped the meatballs on top, and served it to the men. I didn’t even try to explain or apologize. And the Jesuits, to their credit, did not castigate me, or turn away in horror. They did their best to cut it up and force it down, though the looks on their faces were clear evidence of their thorough distaste for my meal and probably for me. No one even spoke during the meal. Not even me. I left the next morning.
Still, even after such a disaster, I continued to cook, though with greater humility and more attention to proper proportioning. I’m still at it. Beverly and I share cooking responsibilities in our home. I’m happy I didn’t buy into that traditional notion of men staying out of the kitchen. I would have missed out on a lot of interesting adventures.
