Food of the Gods (with a recipe for mystical gravy)

This essay appeared in the collection, The Cassoulet Saved my Marriage, edited by Caroline Grant and Lisa Catherine Harper, published by Roost Books in 2013.

My dad is haunting me in the grocery store.

Preparing to host my very first grown-up Thanksgiving, I have been spending a lot of time food shopping, and my dad, never one to miss a food-related outing, is coming along for the ride.

The thing is, he died 9 years ago, from complications of a stroke, when he was 62 and I was 34. And it’s awkward. With his celestial nudge, he leads me to the MSG-laced packets of gravy mix he added to straight drippings, but I want to make our favorite meal my way. I remind him that I am allergic to MSG. But even he, a dead man, knows when he’s being improved upon.

Pushing my cart, I feel my heart beating in my chest, and I see him, standing at the mustard-yellow stove, a short guy with a bald head and a mustache, a lit cigarette within reach. He’s attentive, relaxed, sniffing every now and then, and I wonder where I am in the picture. I stop in front of the untouched display of Wonder Bread, which he loaded with sauteed onions, butter, celery, salt and dried sage. I see myself, a skinny girl of 8, standing a few feet behind her dad on the linoleum floor, wanting to love him.

But mouth watering instead.

Experts in the field of child development use an odd phrase to describe one aspect of healthy child and parent bonding: goodness of fit. The phrasing is weird, and the concept vaguely disturbing. It points to the cosmic chaos that every parent (especially those with more than one child) knows: some kid/parent connections are easier to forge than others.

Sometimes an anatomically spastic kid is born to an easily overwhelmed mom. Occasionally a natural-born talker is born to a silent type. Other times a super sensitive, uber-femmy girl is born to an insecure, auto-parts-salesman-who-loves-a-good-joke-and-all-things-food kind of dad. A guy who, in his last weeks in a nursing home, unable to speak coherently, read, write, remember the names of the Beatles, or even smoke, watched the rising young star Rachael Ray on his TV and managed to say, “I like her.” And his daughter, on leave from her life in a Zen monastery to deal with this situation, said, “Me, too.”

Goodness of fit is an idea borne of a well-meaning desire to explain the often shame-filled pain of relationships that don’t quite work, which, for those of us in such relationships with primary people in our lives, offers some relief, as in, ok, it’s not my fault. And yet, it misses the more mysterious ways relationships can in fact edge and shift and turn, moment to moment to moment, through space and time.

While certainly not the kind of father-daughter bond I have heard about and see developing between my husband and our five-year old Azalea—the kind that is reported to lead to everything good from a positive body image to a drug-free youth—my thwarted relationship with my dad did offer me something deep and lasting. Mainly, my dad taught me that you don’t have to be a professional aesthete to be passionate about culinary adventure or some kind of fancy “artiste” to devote oneself to the juice of one’s own creativity.

Though at the time, it was annoying and even embarrassing, I can now appreciate my dad’s relentless pursuit of his own vision and delight, asking the waitress at Big Boy to bring a bowl of lemons so he could fix up the hollandaise he ordered in copious amounts on the side of his Eggs Benedict. There was something old-school sweet about my dad’s passion— something quiet and personal and necessary in a human way. And risky.

By the time I was 12, my dad’s Parts-Plus business had failed, and he declared bankruptcy. He’d survived his first heart attack, but had done little to change his ill-advised habits. We lost our house, his beloved Jaguar, and were living in a small duplex in a new town. My parents filed for divorce. I remember coming home from school and watching him cook in our dim, rented kitchen. It was annoying to have him there at that time of day, jobless and restless, as I usually found respite from my brothers, and the world at large, in the solitude of cooking for myself after school—dishes like sautéed chicken breasts with mushrooms, or homemade mac and cheese. I was discovering myself in the kitchen, the way my body got quiet and knew what to do next. I got tips from cooking segments on Regis Philbin and the Frugal Gourmet; I learned about real garlic, how to peel it, crush it, cook it. I would go to the store with my mom, asking if she could buy, say, boneless chicken breasts (a staple on the cooking shows) and when she said they were too expensive, I learned how to debone the whole breast myself -- on the sly, so as not to raise eyebrows about my uppity tastes.

But this time, my dad was home, cooking canned potatoes, which he had sliced. He added Italian bread crumbs, canola oil, dried tarragon—one of his signature flavors—and fried the heck out those little water-logged, potato-flavored slices. I felt resistant to sharing anything with my dad, a vague and persistent shame on the horizon. At twelve, being a new kid, I was obsessed with looking cool, and it was dawning on me that his grease-scented hands, his El Camino half-car/half-truck, his lame attempts to seem lighthearted in the midst of such obvious failure, all painted a portrait of a pathetic blue-collar dude who was my dad.

So it was against my better judgment that I sat down at the round table in the corner of the kitchen and let my dad plate me up some spuds. They were soft and sweet on the inside, crunchy and salty on the outside.

Those potatoes were profound.

***

The truth is I haven’t cooked gravy that often. I have made a lot of stock-based sauces and stews (a roux being one of my favorite tricks picked up from cooking shows), but only a handful of real, live Thanksgiving gravies. Even so, after all those years of watching my dad let it rip with his gravy—ingredients aside—I learned, in my body, what it is and what makes it good, allowing me to be uncharacteristically fearless about it.

Good thing.

In just a week, I will be sitting down with friends and family to a meal I will have made almost single-handedly. I have been shopping for a couple weeks. I have even started cooking. Yesterday Azalea and I made chocolate shortbread cookie dough with fleur de sel to put in the freezer; we made an apple pie dough that tasted terrible, like shortening instead of butter, so we threw it out. My dad didn’t have a sweet tooth, nor do I. As much as I like baking (not to mention the idea of having all these homemade confections casually lying around) I always need to follow a recipe, and even still, I can’t seem to get it right. Or maybe it’s because I have to follow a recipe—baking is, after all, much more of a science than cooking—that I am not very good at it. The way I learned, watching my Dad, was by pure instinct—starting with raw desire, then developing just enough skills to conjure it on a plate, or steaming in a bowl.

A sleight of hand, a mystical experience.           

It was only in this realm of my dad’s other-worldly food life that I felt even a little bit comfortable around him. When he moved out West, I visited him a couple of times, and I remember how eager he was to take me, his pretentious teenage daughter, to his new supermarket and introduce me to the gals bagging his glass bottles of Coke and garlic salt. They called him “Jeffy.”

At his favorite breakfast joint, the waitress brought his ramekin of extras before he could even light a butt, and the two of them had such a teasing banter going I wondered if they were sleeping together.

In the evening, he invited all the other Michigan refugees in the apartment complex to a little poolside shindig and served his favorite new dish, a barbeque masterpiece of various secret ingredients and jarred sauces he called ass-kickin-chicken. My dad was tan, happy, popular, feeding the masses, and they loved him for it.

I had to admit, it was like tasting the food of the gods.

***

Unfortunately, call it lack of goodness of fit, or just bad luck, I still never really liked my dad.

I realize now what a bummer that is, knowing that, sure, he was a little goofy and awkward with me, and he made some bad calls over the years, but he was also pretty sweet. The way he just f-ing loved food opened me, if not to him, directly, at least to my own love of food. Ultimately, his heavenly realm of ordinary food warmed my own heart and prepared me for a life of spiritual practice, one where I can embody my dad’s passion and, with all my might, try to steer my ship through clearer waters.

The Buddha taught that karma moves in every direction, including backwards, a pinwheel of cause and effect, tumbling through the universe. In other words, my heart-racing desire to put my maple-buttery hands all over my farm-raised turkey, roast it, and offer it to the people I love is my dad’s delight in sensory pleasure and the meals he magically invoked.

By just doing my thing in my own way, alone in my tiny kitchen, I am feeding the connection between my dad and me, even beyond life and death. It sounds crazy, and it is: the way love casts a spell over a dead bird, transforming it into a bond that never existed. The way non-existence transforms into a candle-lit table for twelve.

The rest, as they say, is gravy.

This essay and the recipe below first appeared in this collection in 2013.

 How to Make Mystical Gravy     

PRE-KITCHEN PREP

Any kind of mindful body practice will do—a few minutes of yoga, meditation, or taking a walk and feeling your feet against the earth will ground you in your body, a must for making Mystical Gravy.

Read as many recipes as you can.

Taste some gravies before tackling your own. Notice what you love. Do you like it thick, thin, greasy or clean? Chunks, or no chunks? Light or dark? Buttery or acidic? Or both? Try to open your mouth-heart to gravy.

Just for kicks, try cooking in silence.

IN THE KITCHEN

Flavor your bird well, rubbing it with herbs, oranges, butter, whatever you like. Don’t skimp on salt. Stuff it with something delicious. Cook it according to whatever recipe you have chosen.

When it is cooked, remove your bird from the pan.

Look at your drippings. Taste them. Relax your body, taste again, taking note of the flavor. Do you notice a deep richness or a plain oiliness? This will help direct you in the next steps. If you want, you can skim some of the fat at this point. But save the schmaltz!

Put a quarter cup (or so) of drippings into a jar. Add the same amount (ish) of plain white flour, and whisk it all together. Add 4 or 5 cups of cold water if you have hard-core drippings, or of chicken stock (from a box or otherwise) if not. Trust yourself to make the right choice. Put the lid on the jar and shake.

Either put the remaining pan drippings in a large saucepan or, better yet, place the roasting pan across two burners. Turn the heat up to medium-high. Slowly add the flour mix. Let it boil, whisking the whole time.

Stay focused and relaxed. Don’t talk to anyone, if possible.

As your gravy thickens, add a little more of the flour mix, lightly boil, whisk, and then taste. Make more flour mix if you need to, sans the original scoop of drippings, of course.

Do you need to add salt? Pepper is really important. More salt. Don’t be shy. It’s a once a year thing.

Keep adding flour mix, whisking and tasting.

If it’s too flat, add some wine or cider vinegar.

If it is too weak, add some butter, a tablespoon or five. And/or more stock.

Imagine someone you love eating your gravy.

Salt. Pepper.

Relax. Stay quiet.

Whisk the gravy and keep on keeping on until you taste delight.