By Linda Chalmer
Buffalo, NY – $4.50? For a sandwich, okay. For dessert, I'm not so sure. But the price isn't the real reason. Honest.
Here's the deal: So many dessert recipes require only simple staple ingredients -- the items that you know you already have on your shelf without having to make an extra stop on the way home. They would be on just about anyone's shelf--flour, milk, eggs, sugar, flavoring of some kind.
What varies is not the ingredients; it's the cooking method. Leaven the same ingredients by folding in beaten egg whites and get a sponge cake for your efforts. Mix the ingredients over a heat source, and there's a boiled custard to pour over the cake. If you beat another egg white stiff and lightly brown spoonfuls of it in the oven, you can put little meringues on top of the custard. Add a few berries from the local market in season and--Voila! --a continental dessert.
Now this all poses metaphorical thinking. Cooking this way -- variations on a theme brought about by creativity and what's readily available -- is actually a tip of the proverbial hat to human ingenuity. Some of the great recipes are the simplest country food of their regions: Vichyssoise, for instance, or French Onion Soup, weighing in as two of the easiest, made from the most basic supplies -- root vegetables. What we make from them is earthy, long-lasting, inexpensive, and soul-satisfying.
For onion soup, just a little oil, several onions, and strong broth. The secret is in the technique and judgment. Are the onions translucent enough, just brown enough? Is the broth flavorful enough? Then top the soup with slices of day-old French bread rubbed with garlic and toasted in the oven, and the grated ends of yesterday's cheese, and pop it into the oven in ramekins for a few moments while the company is sitting down.
Home-cooked simple food is actually a plus for working families. Standing at the kitchen counter -- peeling apples for a pie together, maybe -- is one of the best ways to find out what's on your kids' minds. A behavioral expert would tell you that is because you are literally as well as figuratively facing the same way; because they don't have to make immediate eye contact unless they want to; because you are working toward a common goal; and because they can see that they are important enough to monopolize your time and attention. And then you don't have scurry to schedule in appointments for "quality time," either, because you just had some.
Which is not to say those who cook for us in restaurants don't have a wonderful place in the routine of the best home cooks. It is a pleasure to be served in a setting with atmosphere, to try something that the palate doesn't quite recognize, and to sit at leisure with friends or family.
But when it comes to dessert: Out of sheer orneriness, I once calculated that four eggs cost less than 30 cents. Two cups of milk come to about 40 cents. Ten tablespoons of sugar constitutes a pittance when taken out of a five-pound bag that cost you only a dollar and change to begin with. A tablespoon of vanilla out of a one-ounce bottle is a fraction of the two dollars you shell out for the real thing. So estimate 20 cents for the sugar and a whopping 30 cents for the vanilla.
That's maybe a dollar-forty for four largish servings, or about 35 cents each. Even if you add a little spare change for sprinkling brown sugar on top before you run them under the broiler, you still come out three dollars ahead of the game--each.
I wish heady profits to all restaurant owners. And when you see me coming, pull out my chair. Bring me an extra teaspoon when mine falls on the floor. Pretend I am an old friend when I come in with new ones. But don't suggest the cr me brulee.
I never order it in restaurants anymore.
Listener-Commentator Linda Chalmer is a writer who makes her home in Western New York.