Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman's Guide to Men (18 page)

I’m certain some girls are frightened by their mothers, and the fear lasts into maturity if not forced out by a hungry brood of their own. Either Mother cooked like Henri Charpentier and wouldn’t let anybody else near the stove, or Mother’s taste buds were in her feet and she had no skills to pass
on.
I come from a long line of Southern cooks which never helped anybody off to a good start. The cornbread on my maternal side was so gummy that once when I left a glob of it between the pages of the
Delineator
(that was once a popular magazine, kids) as a place mark, the pages stuck together.

Mother’s steaks resembled the hide of an armadillo. (I think they
fried
steaks in Little Rock in those days.) Never mind, Mother. I love you anyway and you have other talents!

Recipe books are hardly the ally they should be to a neophyte cook. Instead of taking a girl gently by the hand and making things
simple
, they have a cavalier way of calling for stock … or leftover chicken. Stock is
supposed
to be a broth, generally kept simmering, and replenished from time to time with scraps of meat and vegetables. I did very little simmering or replenishing in the
kitchen.
As for leftover chicken, tell me, pray, what single girl has any leftover meat of
any
kind? Leftover
gimlets
maybe …

The Escoffier cookbook, which a sadist gave me when I was learning to cook, set back my progress about two years, I’d say. The book is full of fascinating but mystifying instructions such as, “Over the garnish pour a quart of chicken consommé thickened by means of three tablespoons of tapioca, poached and strained through a cloth or fine sieve.” I’m not much for tapioca hot
or
cold, but
poached
!
…

The recipe for turtle soup is plain mayhem. It begins with the slaughter of the turtle. “Take a turtle weighing from 120 to 180 pounds[!], and let it be very fleshy and full of life. To slaughter it, lay it on its back on a table, with its head hanging over the side. By means of a double butcher’s hook, one spike of which is thrust into the turtle’s lower jaw, while the other suspends an adequately heavy weight, make the animal hold its head back, then, quickly as possible, sever the head from the body.” It goes on for two more pages for the turtle-soup fancier with a strong stomach.

Escoffier to the contrary notwithstanding, I managed to become a pretty good cook after a very slow start—failing with the never-fail hollandaise a few times and all that. Gather around and I’ll tell you how—using these three techniques.

Pussyfooting, Copycatting and Diversification

Pussyfooting means that on little cat feet you sneak up on one dish at a time. First you boil water, then you make Jell-O. Next you make a mousse; and one day, sing choirs of angels, you have advanced on and overtaken . . . Beef Stroganoff!

To copycat is to borrow a friend’s entire dinner menu and do what she did. Write down the names of what you ate on three-by-five index cards and send them to the hostess: Linda’s Sweet and Sour Beef, Linda’s Heavenly Little New Peas, Linda’s Immoral Rum Cake. After you’ve praised everything to the limit, ask Linda please to give you the recipes in detail. Enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope. You could telephone, but it would take hours. From this kind of flattery a hostess can get writer’s cramp.

Now you do what Linda did down to the last simmer, baste and boil. It’s a good system because you have a rough idea of what something is supposed to taste like. (A beginner cook sometimes doesn’t have any idea how far she’s missed the boat until a well-meaning guest compliments her on her fish soup, when what she thought she made was coquilles Saint Jacques.)

This is a bachelor’s dinner for two I once copycatted that is the
simplest.
Joe’s menu: Barbecued chickens from the market cut in halves and reheated in an electric skillet (this bachelor didn’t have a stove and didn’t usually need one), a mixed salad of the crispest, crunchiest, sassiest greens tossed with bottled French dressing into which he had mashed a lot of fresh Roquefort, a Beaujolais wine served in chilled glasses, fresh cherries, grapes, plums, apricots, pears and peaches for dessert with a wedge of Camembert, instant espresso. It was exquisite. So was he—but a real bounder. I never felt guilty about stealing his menu.

Diversification means you don’t cook the same thing twice until you’ve cooked everything at least
once
! I know that goes against the specialization theory where you become famous for your Boston Baked Beans. It’s all right to have one dish you can’t fail with, but I wouldn’t play it safe very often. After all, you aren’t going to cook fancy just for
you.
Practice on
company
!

I recall a memorable cheese-fondue evening at my house—a maiden voyage, to be sure. Fondue calls for grated Gruyère cheese heated in a crockery dish, with one glass of Neuchâtel wine added for each person, then everything bound together with a little flour and kirsch. What could be simpler? I didn’t have kirsch and substituted vodka (they were both the same color), and since the recipe didn’t say what
size
glass of Neuchâtel—peanut butter, Kraft cheese or beer stein—I just sloshed in most of a bottle of wine. What the hell! Get the guests drunk on food as
well
as liquor, and you’re bound to have a good party.

I can only suppose something was chemically out of balance. The cheese coagulated nicely but just sort of
lay
there like Moby Dick in the middle of the wine. I added more flour and vodka to try to bind everything together, but the cheese only got more recalcitrant. I transferred the whole mess to a chafing dish, and ravenous guests jabbed their cubes of French bread onto a fork and dipped into the fondue mix in traditional fondue fashion. (If a girl loses her bread in the mix, everybody kisses. If a man loses his bread, you go chug-a-lug with the wine in your glass.) Of course getting the bread extricated from
this
mess was like trying to get a dinosaur out of the La Brea Tar Pits—hopeless! After we all kissed and chug-a-lugged until it was getting
silly
, we finally ate the fondue with our fingers … it was just like an Our Gang taffy pull.

This kind of fiasco doesn’t happen nearly as often as you’d think. And one day after you’ve pussyfooted, copycatted and diversified sufficiently, you’ll be a good cook. Then you can go right out and swap Chicken Kiev and Artichoke Provençale with the best of them.

Refining the Art

You must adore food, of course, and be able to taste the subtle nuances of flavor, to be a standout performer. You’ll sharpen your taste buds as you go along. And you must pay loving attention to detail. I have never known a first-rate cook who didn’t. Old hands often say, “Oh, I never measure anything,” and they
don’t.
But they go to
three
markets to get a really plump chicken, and they marinate lamb for shish kebab for three days.

Confidence you need to get your
magna cum cookery.
Once you exude this quality, you can serve cornflakes, and people will swear
your
cornflakes have that
je ne sait quoi
! Most people so love to be cooked for—by a
good
cook—when
you
cook they’ll gladly eat Swiss chard and salmon aspic and things they’d never touch at home.

One popular hostess I know serves a course of bones at every formal dinner party. The guests just sit around and gnaw on these enormous bones, happy as clams. Can you imagine a beginner getting away with it!

Reading cookbooks like literature can help make you a good cook, once you get over your initial fright.

My favorite general recipe book is
The Joy of Cooking
, by Irma S. Rombauer. All the recipes seem to have a lightness and delicacy. Mrs. Rombauer gives very detailed instruction—none of that Reindeer Stew business—“Take one reindeer. Cook it. Transfer to a serving dish,” etc.

Another cookbook I like is
Twelve Company Dinners,
by Margot Rieman. Starting with the marketing and finishing with lighting the candles, this clever woman guides you through twelve gourmet feasts Lucius Beebe couldn’t snub. Of course we’ll all be cooking the same company dinners!

I think Ruth West’s
Stop Dieting! Start Losing!
(
The Famous Cottage Cheese Low-Calorie Cook Book
) is a must, dieting or not. It is a fifty-cent Bantam Book, easy reading and a fascinating account of how you can substitute low-calorie ingredients for high ones and still have great tastes.

Supply and Demand

You wouldn’t … you couldn’t … you
don’t
… or do you … let a man drink up all your booze evening after evening without replenishing your stock (sounds like rather a drab life socially regardless of
who’s
buying!). I just think there are better, cheaper and more reliable ways to get and hold a man than being his friendly neighborhood bar with all the drinks on the house.

Naturally
you fix him a cocktail before you go out if he wants one (unless you’re in a real pinch for money).

Naturally
you serve liquor and in quantity at your dinner parties and other parties.

Naturally
you don’t grab the bottle away like a mother lion protecting her cub as he’s pouring his third drink.

But you
can
gently discipline the sponger. Just be “out” of anything when he comes over … or down to the last ounce even if you have to siphon the gin off in a milk bottle and hide it in a cupboard. Some chaps are just careless and a mere hint will shame them into generosity. In severe freeloader cases, however, I don’t think the frank approach is out of order. You could say something like, “Charlie, darling, for six months you have been drinking up my booze and I think it would be a nice idea, since you adore Old Forester, if you brought a bottle over here
with
you next time.”

If you don’t speak up and your liquor supply seems inexhaustible, old Charlie may assume one of your other, beaux is a liquor distributor and
never
do his share.

Entertaining Him

When a lucky man does get an invitation to your apartment for dinner, a preplanned, not just a spur-of-the-moment one, I think his head should swim for days with happy memories. It should be one of the most exquisite little meals he has ever eaten, served in the most serene and beautiful atmosphere.

Here’s your check list.

Spic-and-span the apartment. He
does
notice, if only subconsciously.

Have fresh flowers about or at least masses of green leaves in vases.

Look beautiful. Smell fragrant.

Wear something feminine and offbeat. This is no time for capri pants and a shirt. Often you
can
pick up pretty hostessy things on sale.

Chill the cocktail glasses.

Don’t fill him up on stupefying hors d’oeuvres. An assortment of crisp raw vegetable sticks would be fine. If he hates vegetables, Rosa Rita frozen cocktail tacos are delicious. Heat them for twenty minutes. Big fresh mushrooms sautéed, filled with hamburger lightly cooked and placed under the broiler a few minutes are ambrosial.

Unless he’s a drinker, don’t postpone dinner indefinitely, He may be hungrier than you think. You want to
get
to dinner.

Have enough records on the record player to last through dessert.

Do serve wine if he likes it … one of the romantic clichés that got that way because of its potency.

Eat by candlelight.

Use
cloth
napkins, preferably beautiful big ones. It’s not much trouble to launder two napkins.

Cook everything you can well ahead of time, so it will seem that you haven’t fussed at all.

If you’re not sure of his pet dishes, perhaps you’d better skip casseroles. A lot of men
still
equate them with leftovers. Try one of the known man-pleasers—double lamb chops, a small luscious fillet, any of the chicken dishes. If you’d prefer to show off a bit more, and have a sure hand, try one of the feasts you’ll read about in a moment.

A dessert that makes the dinner seem absolutely Lucullan is a scoop of rich ice cream atop some kind of fresh fruit-raspberries, peaches, pineapple. Then give your guest his choice of liqueurs to pour on top—Grand Marnier, Cointreau, crème de menthe. You have to be a spendthrift to afford this assortment, but they last for ages. Hide them from your alcoholic friends.

Make lots of coffee, hot, strong and for
real.

If he smokes, add a Gigi touch to dinner—offer him a fifty-cent cigar.

Leave the dishes in the sink.

Let’s Picnic

Here is another delightful way to entertain a beau. Take him picnicking to the beach, the mountains, a public park, your own back yard, wherever and whenever you can find grounds. Go a little romantic with the menu—no hearty beef sandwiches does he get from
you.
Try this:

A thermosful of cold Vichyssoise (Campbell’s frozen potato soup mixed with half and half) poured into china cups you have brought along. Top the soup with chives (or finely chopped green onion tops in wax paper). The entree will be cold roast chicken, one-half for each of you, or chicken fried greaselessly. Have lots of dainty cucumber sandwiches. (Chop cucumbers fine, mix with low-calorie mayonnaise, spread between crustless, thinly sliced buttered white bread. Cut each sandwich in quarters.) For dessert, the most diabolically fudgy cake you can obtain. Share a bottle of white wine—Inglenook Pinot Black is elegant. Spread out a red-checkered tablecloth. And why not wear a ruffled frock, as Emma Bovary might have done, instead of the redoubtable pedal pushers? You may be attacked, of course … a girl who can
cook
and
look
that way takes a chance.

Other Ways To Pay Back

Dinner parties are admittedly expensive and can only accommodate a few at a time. One popular way of handling multiple obligations is the cocktail party. Much has been said against it, and I for one am a detractor. Trying not to be left alone with a martini (after the hostess blows her whistle, and all guests reassemble in new locations) is, for me, too reminiscent of trying not to get stuck with a partner more than three dances in high school.