Onion Soup

One of the best dishes I ever made, probably the best one, was French onion soup. When we first moved to Fredericton, we joined the university gourmet group and were members for several years. Once for our final meal of the year I made onion soup for sixteen people. A departing faculty member had given me a huge black iron pot that had belonged to the US Army. Every once in a while, even now, someone will mention the soup. Some people said it was the single best thing they ever tasted. I have never made it again. I used an Escoffier book and a Larousse cookbook. Escoffier recommended first roasting the bones for the stock, several kinds, beef of course, and I think lamb and veal. Some vegetables were roasted too. The resulting stock was so subtle that I can’t even bring it to my memory; I only remember its reputation.

I was thinking of that soup this morning because tonight we will have chicken soup with stock from the bones of the roast chicken we had several nights ago. My cooking has gradually lost its luster. I rarely cook any more for someone who loves food. I love food, but cooking just for myself is too much work. Fredericton has never had good restaurants. I don’t know why that is. We go to one and it is good, and six months later we go back and it is mediocre. Bill loves Italian food, but there has never been a good one here. An Indian restaurant opened here a year or so ago. I was delighted. It was ridiculously expensive and lousy. I didn’t think it was possible to make lousy Indian food. All the effort had gone into the ambience.

Bad Food

My gastronomic experiences in Nova Scotia ran the gamut from the one at Fat Frank’s in Halifax to one in Shelburne. I ordered salt cod because I hadn’t had it since I was young. This was the most inedible meal I have ever been served. The chef had no idea how to cook salt cod; he had merely heated it up. Salt cod that has not been soaked and re-soaked and cooked and fussed over is like cotton fiber, or the choke part of artichokes or milkweed pod fiber. If I had tried to eat it, I would have surely choked. When I pointed this out to the waitress, she saw immediately what the trouble was. She brought me another meal and didn’t charge us for either mine or Bill’s.

Once in Maine I had a bowl of fish chowder (ordinarily one of my favorite dishes) that didn’t have even one tiny speck of fish in it. I am not exaggerating. That however was edible. To be fair to Shelburne, the most delicious fish chowder I ever had was in that lovely town.

In rural Quebec I had spoiled chicken. Even though I had never tasted spoiled chicken before, I recognized it after only one bite. It has a disagreeable vinegary taste to it. The waitress didn’t speak English, so I used my French: pointing to the chicken, I said, “Poulet est mauvais.” Our kids thought this was hilarious, and the phrase has become part of the family lexicon. The waitress did understand me.

Fifty years ago, in Austel, Georgia, we stopped to eat at a Greyhound bus station. There was hardly anything on the handwritten menu, and when we ordered, the waitress whispered, “I wouldn’t order that if I was you.” What would you suggest? She told us. The meal was awful, but I can’t remember what it was because for fifty years we have wondered what the other meal would have been like.

The most disgusting meal I ever saw was one Bill was served. We decided to try the new Brazilian restaurant, but when we arrived, they apologized over-profusely, saying that they didn’t have anything that was on the menu. They suggested two things they could make. I had one, Bill the other. I don’t remember what I had because the appearance of what he had was so astoundingly repulsive. It was an egg dish, the eggs barely cooked, with a plain tomato sauce over it. The tomato sauce mixing with the runny bright yellow yolk and the transparent white of the uncooked albumin turned my stomach. Bill didn’t mind it, he said.

A Perfect Moment

The most superb meal I have ever had was at Fat Franks in Halifax sometime in the early 80’s. I had gone to give a writers’ workshop there; the organizers had given me a meal allowance, but I hadn’t used any of it. I decided to blow it all on one meal. Someone told me about Fat Franks. I began with the single best thing I have ever put in my mouth, saffron soup, a plain cream soup flavored with saffron. At the time I had never tasted saffron, just read about it. I had a delicate, perfectly cooked Coquilles St Jacques for the main course. It had an ideal blend of flavors. I had never had the dish made by anyone else but myself. The dessert was Bavarian cream so subtle that it required my taking one bite, waiting, taking another.

As soon as each course was served, a fat man in a chef’s hat stood in the doorway watching me, staring at me, Fat Frank himself, I figured. When I had finished each course, he would disappear until the waiter brought the next one. I wondered why he was watching me. Did he think that because I was alone, I was a restaurant critic? Could he tell by what I ordered that I would enjoy the food? Was my delight evident? As I was eating the Bavarian cream, he came to the table and commanded, “Eat it all.” Yes, I said, I am just slowing down to enjoy it fully. The meal cost $21, quite a price for that time. As I was leaving, the man I presumed to be Fat Frank helped me on with my coat. I said something complimentary. He beamed.

Alas, Fat Franks had closed by the next time I got to Halifax.

New Brunswick Food

When we came to Fredericton, we discovered some wonderful bargains in food. One was butter. The dairy industry had persuaded the government to enact a bill that protected butter so that it was just as cheap as margarine. What is more, it was delicious butter. Butter now is more expensive than margarine, but after years of real butter, I can never go back to margarine. A brand of Sussex NB butter has consistently been named the best butter in the world in international competitions.

Another bargain was smoked salmon, in the US an unaffordable luxury. I concocted a dish which I fed to every American visitor. It was really just a cream sauce with smoked salmon, modeled on creamed finnan haddie, a dish my father loved. I found out that there were two kinds of smoked salmon. Cold smoked salmon is like lox, smooth, sliced thin, put on bagels, or crackers with cream cheese. Hot smoked salmon is more like cooked salmon, thick. I used the hot smoked salmon, served with boiled potatoes. It is one of my favorite dishes.

I discovered fiddleheads, available in May and June, picked along streams and rivers. They are the unopened fern buds of the fiddlehead fern, shaped like the head of a fiddle. Boil them; serve them with butter, or butter and lemon juice, or hollandaise sauce. When we would go to visit my parents after university got out, we would take my father a big bag of fiddleheads.

We discovered the Saturday farmer’s market. Mr. Merrithew had delicious liver. The liver was so good that people lined up at his stall as soon as the market opened. Eventually, getting Mr. Merrithew’s liver involved the strategy the three pigs used, getting up earlier and earlier to beat the wolf, until finally people would drive out to Keswick to his butcher shop Friday evening. He was a tall man with the largest hands I have ever seen.

Twenty years after we arrived, the Patels began to sell samosas at the market. Since I first tasted Mrs. Patel’s samosas, I have had those of many other cooks, but none ever compare. The Patels are now threatening to shut down their operation because others at the market complain that their long lines interfere with other businesses. Unbelievable.

For a number of years Bill had a garden plot in a community field presided over by Dr. Dorothy Farmer. From that plot we had tiny new potatoes: the essence of potato.

Eating and Cooking

As long as I can remember I have loved to eat. I do remember, however, that my mother would try to get me to eat by feeding me, saying, with each spoonful, “This is going down to Aunt Tempie, this is going down to Grammie.” I take it from this memory that I wasn’t a good eater when I was small.

My brother and I didn’t have many rules, but one was inviolable: no fighting or arguing at the table. Supper was to be a pleasant occasion. We weren’t forced to eat anything we didn’t like, although we were urged just to try it. I remember once when I refused mushrooms, that my dad said, “Someday you will love mushrooms.” And he was right. We always ate well, even when money was tight.

My father did the grocery shopping. He had worked for a while in a grocery store, learning to be a butcher, and so he knew how to pick out meat. He liked trying new things. He would go all over Lowell and vicinity for special items: one place had pure peanut butter, another liverwurst, another pickled kielbasa, another good corned beef. Way before such things became popular, we had sour cream, pita bread, Lebanese cheese. Often my brother and I would go with him. Sometimes he would get some exotic treat for us to bring to school. I remember bringing kumquats to school for my first grade (we had two grades in a room, so it was for the second grade as well.) Needless to say, the kumquats weren’t well-liked, although my classmates remembered them for many years.

My mother didn’t teach me to cook, so when I got married, I had to fend for myself. My father helped out by buying me cookbooks. I came to love cooking, especially new dishes. Early on, I made a dish of tuna fish and grapes. “Hot grapes?” my husband said, incredulous. Once I bought a pork shoulder and began to cook it when we got home from work. I kept looking at it; it kept being pink. About 11 PM, we went out to a restaurant. It cooked all night, and in the morning it was still pink. I am not sure when I finally realized I had bought a ham, not a pork roast.