Totally Cooked
November 22, 2024 at 03:45AMJust in time for Thanksgiving, Slate pulled together the 25 “most important” recipes of the past century. That’s not the thing you need to read. (I mean, go ahead. It might be good!) No, what you need to read is Dan Kois going full Slate and cooking his way through all 25 at home over the course of a month. It’s exhausting. And relatable. And very funny.
I carefully measured all my ingredients—no, I didn’t have lard, I used butter—and cut them all together with the pastry blender. “Stir vigorously with a stout wooden spoon,” Lewis instructed, so I found my stoutest spoon and set to work. How long did I have to stir this for? “The dough will be very soft in the beginning but will stiffen in 2 to 3 minutes,” said Edna. OK, well, this Aston Villa vs. Bayern Munich match was at the 40-minute mark, so the game clock could be my timer. I stirred, stirred, stirred. I switched arms and stirred some more. Wow, this dough really was stiff. Onscreen, the players chased one another from one end of the field to the other. I finally understood their ceaseless toil. The game clock ticked to 41, then 42. The dough, previously fairly stiff, suddenly turned very, very stiff. To drag my stout spoon through it was like shoveling heavy, wet sand. Edna Lewis smiled beatifically.
The clock hit 43. “Continue to stir a few minutes longer,” Edna said, a hint of cruelty appearing in her eyes. You know those nightmares where you’re running from a serial killer or your AP English teacher or whatever and your legs simply won’t work—won’t push through whatever is stopping them from doing the job of running? It was like that. My arms can type thousands of words of nonsense, but ask them to stir biscuit dough for five whole minutes and they ache and burn. I do not have the gumption, or the biceps, of the 20th-century home cook. My soft, sad life had not prepared me for real labor. Harry Kane took a foul and lay down a little longer than he needed to, just to catch his breath. If only I could do the same. If only my brutal taskmistress would let me rest, even for a second.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/11/21/totally-cooked/
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