When Good Cooks Go Bad

This is what it looks like when you drop a knife on your foot. Every cook is taught to wear smart footgear at work. I wore steel-toed clogs and boots. And I never dropped a knife. Not once. I did slice off the top of my middle finger on my left hand cleaning the meat slicer the lazy way. (Grab a rag and turn it on and you will join the ranks of every prep cook who has the same injury along with the multiple burn marks up and down your fore arm from reaching into a hot oven to grab a sheet pan.) Welcome to the professional kitchen!

But I finally did drop a knife, and I did it at home where I was wearing flip flops.

It landed between my second and third toes and hit an artery. That was fascinating. I got to watch the blood pump as I tried to elevate my foot and staunch the bleeding. Utter failure. So I called 911 and went to the ER for stitches and a tetanus shot and now I am lying in bed with a hot swollen trotter that wants to bathe in the salty healing waters of the Pacific and rest atop a cushioned ledge beside me as I recline to recuperate on a chaise longue in a garden filled with citrus flowers and jasmine.

FML.

It's sort of a miracle that I haven't done this before now. My first gig in a kitchen was cooking once a week for Mr & Mrs WASP. I adored them. Mr WASP had been the chef de maison until he lost his eyesight too late in life to relearn his way around the kitchen. Mrs WASP hated cooking and put an ad in the Boston Globe back before Craigslist. I answered that ad and the rest was history. I cooked the oddest things for them. At least to my mind. Prune souffles and chicken diablo (this dish I cooked for Julia Child, a friend of Mrs WASP, who loved it and I am so grateful I had no idea I was cooking for her at the time or I might have had a stroke.) One of the strangest moments was when I was asked to prepare an eggplant Parmesan without garlic because Mr WASP found the taste too strong. I made it with shallots.

My life with the WASPs was hilarious. Besides cooking for La Julia, I had multiple moments that I will never forget. Once Mrs WASP realized that she could throw almost anything at me and I would reproduce it with the energy and enthusiasm of an apprentice in a 5 star restaurant, she began to have me come in for dinner parties. We collaborated on dainty hors d'œuvres and hearty entres. I learned to cook for a child's table in the kitchen while rolling out course after course for the adults in the dining room. I learned that beef Stroganoff was not to be made from hamburger meat but was a delicate and complicated specialty worthy of my keenest attention. I very quickly gained a working knowledge of some of the most important dishes from the best kitchens circa 1958. A very good year for food. I learned how to please a palate and fill a belly.

But my favorite moments in the cuisine des WASPs were rather more incidental. The time their eldest boy brought a girl home. She was, we discovered after all the ingredients for dinner had been purchased and each course had been prepared, a vegetarian. Mrs WASP was not pleased. She came flying back into the kitchen and unleashed a series of invectives the likes of which I had never heard.

"Can I help you, Mrs WASP?" I asked, alarmed by her rare presence in what I had come to view as MY kitchen.

"No, Opti. That fucking girl that Mark brought home is a fucking vegetarian. I will not have you do one ounce more work on this dinner, She can eat a fucking carrot."

So she threw open the door of the fridge, pulled out the crisper, grabbed an unwashed, unpeeled, filthy carrot, and slapped it on a plate. There was dinner for the fucking vegetarian. I believe young Master Mark never brought her home again.

Another rare moment when Mrs WASP invaded my kitchen was on one particularly fine Saturday morning. She had opened pretty much every cupboard in the joint and was swearing as each door swung open.

"Mrs WASP, what on earth are you looking for?"

"Oh GODDAMIT, Opti! Muffy is running late for our matinee and we don't have time for our martinis before the show, so I'm going to have to pack a fucking thermos of them to take with me and I can't find the Goddamn thermos!"

I found the thermos and watched, enthralled as Mrs WASP poured straight gin from the freezer into the coveted vessel and departed to go see her show. There may have been a whisper of vermouth but if there was it was so slight that it disappeared in my memory.

Me, Mam, and Three Aunties.

My mother has been known to flit about the country (and other countries) ISO good art. I have had the extraordinary privilege of learning how to look at paintings by watching her look at paintings. She was herself a very accomplished visual artist but her eyesight is wanting and she never drew or painted after I was about ten as best I remember. She also loves drawings and some sculpture, but my devotion to photography and architecture is a sort of grandchild to her love of the broad and beautiful brush. My brother took our visual education and incorporated his own love of the Shakeresque reverence for function to become one of the best landscape architects I have ever seen. We are truly her children. There is a quickening pulse that anyone who knows how to "read" art gets in front of some pieces, or on a particular patch of land, or in a perfectly-proportioned room that we owe her. It is a very pure joy.

She taught me many other things. I know how to cook because she made me sort and clean dried pinto beans and stood behind me as we refried them. I know a well-made piece of clothing because she made me a black watch plaid shirt with mother of pearl snaps and a yoke with the prettiest collar a girl ever had. She taught us how to iron. From the smallest piece to the largest. She grew Shirley poppies in our garden because I loved their papery frivolity.

She taught me to recognize quality. And beauty.

So she decided to come to DC and drag one of my aunties, a distinguished artist in her own right, to come see the Gauguin exhibit at the National Gallery. It drove my poor auntie Papier to distraction. "Utterly unorgnized." But the show was deemed worthy and we met up after to catch up and enjoy each other.

Painting by Mario Andres Robinson

I herded them to Locolat for baguettes which the Belgian owner, Neil, has flown in from France, and an almond truffle and then we hit up the Morton Fine Art Gallery next door as well as their PopUp Project gallery just down the street. Phenomenal.

After that we headed off to dinner at Radius, one of my favorite DC restaurants, which features a tightly-edited wine list to accompany a spectacular menu focused on local seasonal ingredients and a shockingly creative but always honest technique. We were there for three hours and I got to see two of my other favorite aunties: La Tia and La Lizzie who joined us to feast on springy splendor and a whole lot of green. (I highly recommend the pickled veg. Carrots, potatoes, and ramps (I think) in a sweet-tangy brine that turns everything a gaudy, Gauguin pink and tastes like a summer sunset.)