Cooks are different from bakers
By Clea Simon, Globe Correspondent, 1/30/2002
Maybe it's a question of liking salty or sweet. Perhaps the issue splits on whether we like to dabble and play or are scrupulous about following rules. Wherever the underlying divide lies, a plain truth exists: those who enjoy spending time in the heat of their kitchens tend to fall into two camps. They cook or they bake, and rarely does anyone do both.
''I'll tell you why I never bake,'' says Chris Mesarch, a creator of tagines and stews and a Boston artist. ''If I'm going to put all that work into something, I want it to have some nutrition in it.''
For other home chefs, the decision is less of personal choice than lack of skill. ''I just didn't inherit my grandmother's baking gene,'' laments Kris Fell.
Fell, office seneschal for Harmonix Music in Cambridge, can throw together a marinade for shrimp without thinking, but, unlike her proficient relative, ''can't bake a decent loaf of bread.'' When it comes to cakes, the South End resident admits, the results have been memorably horrible. ''I remember when I wanted to make a devil's food cake and I was trying to combine several recipes,'' she recalls. The final product looked good, but the first person to taste it asked, ''How much baking soda did you use in this?''
''I was trying to make it light and fluffy,'' she explains.
Fell's dilemma points out another major difference between cooks and bakers. Cooks, most admit, are wont to taste and change and taste again. They improvise and substitute ingredients; they are taken by the thought of a new herb or the overabundance of a friend's garden, rather than a line-by-line prescription for a dish.
Fell's attempts at bread and cakes - as well as her talent with savories - may have less to do with a genetic anomaly than with her own inability ''to follow recipes precisely,'' she realizes.
It's a refrain one hears again and again, ''I love to taste as I go along,'' acknowledges Mesarch. ''Mmmm ... is that meat ready yet?'' The cooks, it seems, like to think they're more creative, whereas the reality may be that they can't color inside the lines. And baking, with its element of chemistry, only admits that kind of improvisation among the very skilled or the very experienced.
''Cakes are hard,'' says Tony Tommasini. The longtime Bostonian now delights in serving hot, tasty meals to friends in his Upper West Side apartment in New York, but he rarely bakes. ''You try and follow this recipe so exactly and it still doesn't come out the way you hope it will.''
Like Mesarch and Fell, Tommasini admits he's ''not a recipe person.'' Cookbooks may inspire him on occasion, but their instructions rarely get followed from beginning to end. ''I've tried,'' says Tommasini, who is now chief classical music critic for The New York Times. ''I always find it too much work for not enough result.''
For Tommasini, early training - if not genetics - may play a part. He remembers his grandmother trying to teach him homemade ravioli. ''She would make a pile of flour on the kitchen counter and make a crater in it, and start breaking eggs into the hole. I asked her, how much flour do you use? She said, `Until it's nice.'''
There are times, however, when the cooks must turn their attention to sweets. Sometimes it happens because they're asked to bring a dessert to a party. At other times, they decide that a cake or a pudding will be expected to top off a fabulous homemade meal.
It is then that ingenuity is called into play as they try to find cook-friendly recipes. They make bread puddings, which can be tasted and fussed with until right before they go into the oven. They unveil clafoutis, which rely as much on their combination of fruits and nuts as on the simple batter poured on top.
Although it may not stop her repeated attempts at baking, Fell pulls out a recipe for chocolate pudding that she discovered years ago in a magazine (she thinks it might have been Bon Appetit). Gussied up with whipped cream, chocolate shavings or a few raspberries, the pudding provides as fancy a finale as one could desire. Tommasini relies on that other staple of home chefs - the fruit crisp. He varies the filling the season.
Mesarch, however, holds the line. Asked to bring dessert somewhere, she says without shame: ''I just buy it.''
Foolproof fruit crisp
Serves 6
Butter (for the pan)
About 4 cups seasonal fruit (apples, peaches, nectar-ines), peeled, cored, and quartered
Juice of 1/2 lemon (if using apples)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, or to taste
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
1. Set the oven at 375 degrees.
2. Lightly butter a 9-inch pie pan or dish. (Note: This recipe adjusts to a smaller or larger dish easily, just make sure you use enough fruit to almost fill it.)
3. If using apples, toss them with the lemon juice. In a bowl, toss the fruit with cinnamon and nutmeg. Add more to taste, if you like. Arrange the fruit in the dish.
4. In another bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, and butter. With your fingers, work the mixture until it is crumbly.
5. Spread the topping on the fruit.
6. Transfer to hot oven. Bake the crisp for 45 minutes or until fruit is tender when pierced with a skewer and topping is crusty. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.
Boston Globe
[emoji]169[/emoji] Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
