The Heart(h) of the Matter

Saturday night is my night to cook, and last night I tried a new recipe. It’s from Mark Bittman’s column in The New York Times, “The Minimalist,” one of my favorite sources for recipes. The recipe was for a Puerto Rican pork shoulder roast, and though I’d never made it before, the results were perfect: I’m not always the best roaster in the world, but the meat was perfectly done, and the flavor…well, let’s just say that I’ve had authentic Nuyorican pork and Cuban pork and mine was just as good. I served it sliced, with big bowls of simple black beans and rice, with a plate of sliced ripe mangoes, avocadoes, and limes. The meal was meant to taste like the Greater Antilles brought to Western New York, and it did.

I haven’t always enjoyed cooking even when I think I have: often I’d set myself a goal too ambitious, and following the recipe felt like composing a higher-maths proof. When I was younger I was simply overconfident, arrogant and pretentious—that may be one of the reasons I liked Marcel on Top Chef Season Two; he had the cocksure attitude that comes with being twenty-five, feeling finally validated as an adult, having had few serious setbacks in life and your whole life ahead of you (or so you think, which is part of it). Like Marcel, I was sometimes more interested in end effects than proper process and procedure. I’d start out making a dish that I didn’t even have all the ingredients for, then have to interrupt myself to run out for baking powder or cream of tartar. Over two decades in the restaurant business, I gained a wealth of knowledge and a good palate, but those weren’t connected to any heart or soul. They weren’t even entirely connected to appetite, to hunger. If there’s such a thing as being a gourmand from the neck up, that’s what I was. Sure, occasionally I had a food experience that was a life experience or vice versa, but they were few and far between and I didn’t recognize them for what they are: the heart(h) of the matter.

Now I have a family to cook for, a kitchen large enough, and an occasion both regular and essential (by which I mean that when we sit down to the table on Saturdays, because of the week’s routine everyone is always really hungry and really tired). And I really enjoy putting the time and effort into thinking, Hmm, I’ll bet this pork shoulder will be a little fatty. That’ll be good, but perhaps something clean to go with it. So, the mangoes… Or, I know the girls like simple foods, but my brother and sister-in-law like a bit of flavor. So I didn’t make just a pot of beans, but a good pot of beans. And as I tended that pork shoulder roast—checking the level of the water in the roasting pan, turning it every hour as recommended, watching the color and trying to gauge its sense of doneness—I realized how much I cared about it. And who made me come to care about it. In other words, I found reasons to put love into my cooking because I’m among people I love, and love to cook for. It makes toasting a slice of cinnamon bread for Nina or pouring a sippy cup of juice for Camille an act both simple and not simple, small and large. It sure made that pork roast taste good.