Recipes are like old friends
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 As a former chef, I’m a big believer in understanding ingredients. It’s important for someone who cooks professionally to be able to know how and why flavors fit together – or why they don’t. So these days when I’m cooking at home, I rarely use a recipe. With a classical knowledge base and an understanding of the “families” of flavor profiles, it’s more fun for me to throw things together than to follow a specific guideline.
That is, of course, unless I am baking. Baking requires exact measurements and strict adherence to the specifics. I used to tell my baking students at Johnson & Wales University International Baking and Pastry Institute that throwing a little this or that into a sauce as you are cooking (and of course, tasting) is a common way to discover what works best. But if you throw a little extra baking powder or butter into a cake batter, you’re not going to be happy with the results.
So baking recipes – called formulas by professionals – are golden to me. I have gathered hundreds over the years. I sat at my grandmother’s elbow in my high school years jotting down her recipes for “silver” cake – a light, moist layer cake she made with Crisco instead of butter (which in rural Texas during the 50s was unheard of); her coconut pie reserved for the Christmas table; her sister’s – my aunt Milly’s – incredible recipe for chess pie. My other grandmother was not much of a baker, but she did create one legacy in the family – delicate form cookies she politically incorrectly referred to as Chinese chewies.
I kept all these recipes tucked inside a cookbook – A Cook’s Tour of Athens, compiled by the Junior Assembly of Athens, Ga., in 1963 – which was a treasure trove in and of itself: recipes for the Lowcountry classic Country Captain, as well as red velvet cake, became steady and stalwart additions to my repertoire as I grew up, married and became a chef.
When I moved from Rhode Island back to Atlanta seven years ago, my life was in as much disorder as the hordes of boxes I found myself endlessly unpacking. A divorce and a new job as the AJC’s dining critic left me little time to spend on gathering – or even finding – recipes. A lot of my books, including my precious Cook’s Tour, were lost to me – stacked inside a dusty box somewhere in my attic. I told myself I would find them and get them organized again, but I knew that my attic was fast becoming a place where I put the things I would never get back to.
A couple of months ago, they turned up in a box that had been stored at my parent’s house. There, in a small box, were dozens of cookbooks I thought had been lost to me forever – the smallest of prices to pay, I wagered, for a dissolved marriage. And tucked under my textbooks from Johnson & Wales, it was there, stuffed with the hand-written pearls I had scripted so long ago.
Flipping through the yellowed pages, it was like a meeting with old friends and family over the decades; loved ones long lost to me through death or neglect. Here, I could hold them again. Here, they were alive and knew how deeply I cherished my time with them. And when I bake one of these recipes, I conjure my memory of them as if they were standing beside me, giving me guidance.
I suppose, in some way, they are.
Pam Peters’ Pound Cake
This recipe for pound cake is from a dear friend, Pam Peters, I knew at Johnson & Wales University. She is a terrific chef and lady. I’ve lost touch with her over the past ten years, but I hope she is well. This is the best pound cake I have ever eaten: dense, yet really moist with lots of butter flavor. Pam’s father had passed the recipe to her. She passed the recipe to me in an email many Novembers ago, so that I could bake the cake for Thanksgiving. Serve it with the excellent crop of Georgia peaches we have this year, sliced and sugared, for a summertime treat. Thanks Pam.
Yield: one large bundt cake
1 pound unsalted butter
3 cups granulated sugar
3 cups plus 5 tablespoons cake flour, sifted
5 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon extract
Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Grease and flour a large, 9-inch bundt pan. Set aside.
In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, scraping the bowl periodically. Add the eggs, one at a time, until incorporated. Add the flour and milk in three alternating stages, beginning and ending with the flour. Add the vanilla and lemon extracts and blend until smooth.
Bake for two hours.
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Reader Comments (9)
Love the recipe..and the story. Thanks for sharing.
Pam Peters was my first chef instructor at J&W - she was pregnant at the time. I will bake this soon, maybe this weekend when Leah Gaba comes to visit me, ! People may not always stay in touch, but great memories remain. Hope all is well! Jen Decker Kilroy
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OMG....I love that pound cake! I remember making it and thinking " 2 hours to bake?" But when it was done it was perfection! Thanks for writing about it, it evokes so many good memories.
Jen - I am so happy to hear from you - thanks for reading. My best to that hubby of yours, and Leah!
And Cin- I think a visit to Providence might be in order ... stay tuned!
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