Food: I cooked the 25 best American recipes ever. My family is still laughing at me.
SlateRead all the stories from Slate’s 25 Most Important American Recipes of the Past 100 Years. Accurate oven temperature and baking times are essential.” Well, I’d baked my cake at exactly the temperature the recipe instructed, and for exactly the time the recipe specified, so surely it was fine? Not only is every step in assembling the ingredients carefully explained, she even tells you how to toss the salad: “Prepare to use large rather slow and dramatic gestures for everything you do, as though you were Caesar himself.” Child’s goal was to make sure not only that I did it correctly but that I did it in the proper spirit, which extends to the way Caesar, and Julia, suggest we eat the salad: with our hands, on huge, whole leaves of romaine. “Everyone in my family will yell at me if it doesn’t taste exactly the same.” Four hours later, the brisket tasted pretty good, if not life-changing. But it’s a labor of love, a reflection of Child’s and Jones’ shared belief that, as Jones’ biographer Sara B. Franklin writes, “the kitchen didn’t have to be a site of drudgery and oppression, but could rather be one of creativity, cultural exploration, and sensual pleasure.” As Franklin points out, Child’s smiling, chatty persona in her wildly popular TV show struck a raw nerve among some feminists including Betty Friedan in the 1960s, suggesting “not only that women should be happy with their role at home but that the work of feeding others was their burden to bear.” Was it easier for me, a guy, to embrace this kind of showcase cooking because, no matter what, I would never be forced to feel that the work of feeding others was my burden to bear?
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