What We Eat When We Eat Alone - Deborah Madison [4]
And we’re not just talking about gonzo guys. Refined men like repetition, too. Richard McCarthy, who runs the Crescent City farmers markets, says that when it comes to cooking during the rare moments he’s home alone, he’s a “bit of a pomp-and-circumstance cook,” by which he means many pots and pans are involved. “Even at the worst of times I don’t open a can.”
What comes to mind for Richard are such dishes as sliced Creole tomatoes with cracked black pepper and hard cheese, mushroom omelets, sautéed kale with sesame oil and rice vinegar, bushels of fava beans, and buckets of beets. Not your usual solo male menu, in part because Richard is a vegetarian.
“But at heart,” he says, “I’m also a peasant. I’d happily eat the same foods for days. If left to my own devices, probably I would.”
Women are less predictable. On their own, they eat when they feel like it, have ice cream for dinner, or, if they’ve had wine and cheese in the late afternoon, they might skip dinner altogether. Then again, they might get a wild hair and cook a big greasy lamb chop. You just never know.
One thing we do know is that if women cook all the time for others, they’re not too inclined to get out the pots and pans and cook for themselves. Hence the repast of corn on the cob only, or a feast of frozen Tater Tots. But there are some crossover foods.
Frito pie is something that reads like a guy dish, but this recipe comes from a woman. First, some background. Frito pie is a culinary icon in Santa Fe, where we live. You find it at flea markets, ball games, and fairs, and Woolworth’s used to sell Frito pie when they still had a store on the plaza. They’d open a bag of Fritos and ladle chili on top and you’d eat it right out of the bag. It made a funky but good (as in tasty, not good for you), cheap meal. Now you can get a Frito pie around the corner at the Plaza Café or out at Harry’s Roadhouse, a bit fancier and more expensive, but still good (as in tasty, but better for you.) The bag has been sacrificed and the new Frito pie is served on a plate. It might be vegetarian, and it will include some salady toppings. But here’s the version suggested by one of our female eaters, an East Coast gal.
“Use Hormel beans!” she commands. “Heat them in the micro¬wave. Add Frank’s RedHot, a buffalo-wing sauce. Put Fritos on a plate and pour the beans over them. Or, just forget the chili. Melt cheese over Fritos in a toaster oven for Frito nachos.”
On the other hand, here’s a conscientious dish that really does sound more like something a woman would eat. But this man’s trade secret for solo eating comes from a transplanted American writer who’s lived in England long enough to have acquired an accent. Here’s what he does for dinner.
“I open a tub of cottage cheese and eat it with a puffed rice biscuit, cucumber, and tomato with salt and pepper.” If you’d put it on a plate, you’d have a nice little diety dinner, improved with a drizzle of good oil and freshly ground pepper, plus a clump of watercress.
Even with our often correct stereotypes of how men and women eat, Patrick’s own record of food and drink for the Glazer assignment was schizoid enough that it probably had a confusing effect on the classmate who received it.
“At the time, I was a bachelor and a vegetarian,” Patrick says. “I was eating girly food when I wrote my menu—salads, tofu, things like that. My menu contrasted lunches constructed at Wendy’s salad bars with evenings spent pitting swigs of whisky against avocado tacos. Glaser randomly chose my journal to read out loud, including all the jumps from sprouts to swigs of scotch.”
“This is a virtual world war of food and drink!” Glaser announced to the class.
And indeed, eating solo can resemble eating in the trenches. But then again, it can be an opportunity to take the time to develop a meal, slowly savor it, and drink more wine than usual, as many of our interviewees