Beyond Lemonade

I believe there is a similarity between cooks and air traffic controllers. There is an art of keeping dishes airborne, a skill of precision timing and temperature memorization that keeps at once vanilla soufflés rising, lemon candies glazing, and canollis deep frying in a moment of controlled culinary struggle between trying to get the highest quantity of perfectly flaky deserts and not setting off the fire alarm.

I was a bit lost in my Saturday “Cooking with Lemons” class.

It might have been the deception of title of the course because the truth of pastry cooking is that it is never about lemons; it is always about the cardiac trio of eggs, sugar, and flour. From a construction perspective they form respectively the cement, paint, and wood of the structure being built. Lemons are more the furnishing, a few nice chairs being added to the room or the vase in the corner that distracts the eye. It is what you remember about a place. But without a context it would be lost like junk at a yard sale.

The instructor just assumed that we would have ten large eggs separated into whites and yolks. He actually insisted on extra large eggs for a better protein ratio. I lost the reason as he then went into how you should put racks at the bottom of the stove and then on to another point about how to butter a pan. My notes couldn’t keep up with his constant shifting dialog.

Perhaps at my best I could do one pie at a time, but he was determined to do four deserts at once: A chocolate dipped canollis with lemon marscarpone toasted almonds; a Mexican lime, mango and tequila cassata; a lemon and white chocolate tart; and a lemon and strawberry crème fraîche torte. He made the caramel for one at the same time as he worked the crust for another. A sous-chief in the background kept stirring and kneading, and a dishwasher came in halfway through the demonstration to wash the entire Williams Sonoma catalogue of whisks, graters, and bowls he used, but these were meant to be background players to his egg orchestration.

“Remember to get the sugar and water to exactly 238 degrees,” he said. “Sometimes it will get to 231, and you think you are done. But then it will shoot to 238 and if you don’t pay attention you will have only a film left,” he gave as a warning.

I think that was about the mango cassata. The truth is I understand the various cooking temperatures about the same way as I grasp Ashcroft terror levels of green, yellow, orange, and impending doom. Nervous about botching my recipe I highlighted the importance of 238 like it was a universal constant such as the speed of light or the number of phone calls it takes get a girl to go out with you. He then said if it was foggy outside it might have to be slightly higher. I now had fears about having to be a meteorologist as well.

Pastry cooking is hard.

With the kitchen aid blender whirling egg whites, he summoned us over to give us a better sense of when sponge cake has proper texture. We each poked into three sections to measure the bounce.

Perhaps this is the solution of how to manage the process. Perhaps we need to learn how to bake by feel. The thirties for me and my friends has been a constant balancing of hopes and hobbies, of relationships for some blessed with trying to navigate new additions and for others brutal conversations about falling apart in therapy, of careers that rocket up a management ladder or wind up being a never ending series of interviews for third rate companies. It seems at times we have been separated into our own egg parts with one batch for those who look like they have made it and the other that is a deflated soufflé.

It is not so much that our generation wants have our cake and eat it too; it is that somehow we are trying to do four deserts at once. And in this struggle some have figured out how to manage the mishaps of the world when there is still time to adjust the heat. Some are still trying to figure out the dough.

Watching our cooking instructor I still how no idea how he could have so many pots going much less figure out what spoon went with which dish. I thought he must be some savant, a figure that had time going much slower the way the pitches must seem slower to Barry Bonds or the end of Bush’s presidential term for the rest of us.

And then he made a mistake. He was finishing up the Mexican lime, mango and tequila cassata and was about to put into the refrigerator when a woman seated in the row in front of me asked “Shouldn’t you add the mango?” He was human after all.

He quickly apologized for missing the fruit. The desert without the fruit would have just been lime and tequila which certainly is good on a tropical vacation or a memorable second date, but not the art he had hoped.

The sous-chef who had been quiet mentioned that she would not have let him put the cassata in without the mango, and I realized that the only way we can make it through this busy world isn’t just on our sense of feel. We make it with the help of others. The world isn’t quite Netwon’s idea of standing on the giants who came before us, but I believe it is more of a place where we are elbow to elbow with each other in the kitchen (and with global warming we have kind of left the stove on). We need each other to check to see if something is burning. We need people to remember our mango.

And while I can’t say I left the demonstration with a deep grasp of how to make pastries I can say that not only did I get four wonderful deserts for lunch, but also learned the answer to the deeply philosophical question of how many does it take to mango.