Don't forget the dog - cooking; humor; includes recipe - Column

National Review, May 20, 1996 by Digby Anderson

AS THIS column regularly insists, what is wrong with most would-be cooks' cooking is that they are socialists. I know you don't think you are a socialist. And I'm sure you aren't one at the office or when you vote. I'm not quite so sure about when you're in your bedroom. A lot of chaps who are right-on conservatives in the office are a bit wobbly when it comes to sexual morals. But it is certainly the case that many more who are impeccably right in all the rest of their lives suddenly become Stalins when they get in front of the stove.

Take Geoffrey. He's trying to learn to do a little more cooking. I caught him the other day making his first Spanish omelet. Fine. A Spanish omelet is a first-rate dish. More people should cook them. There Geoffrey was, egg in one hand poised over a bowl in which were several other broken eggs. On the left of the bowl was the recipe he was following. It was the wrong recipe. It listed what is needed (for four people) as 1 pound of potatoes sliced thin, 2 cups of olive oil, 6 eggs lightly beaten, salt, and pepper. Now, I know this is the recipe given in nearly every book, but it's wrong for people who want to learn to make a Spanish omelet. And whom else could the recipe be for? If you know how to make one already you don't need the recipe. The correct recipe is 3 pounds of waxy potatoes sliced thin, 6 cups of olive oil, 36 free-range eggs lightly beaten, a high-sided cast-iron frying pan and a lid that covers it, salt and pepper, and a dog.

The dog does not have to be Spanish. Any dog will do. If you really can't get hold of a dog then you can try using a cat, or rather two, but they must be kittens. They won't be as good. Actually there is another missing ingredient, but we'll come back to that. Here's what you do. Cook the potatoes slowly in one and a half cups of oil -- they should half saute, half steam -- using a spatula to make sure they don't stick. When they are cooked, turn them into a bowl and let them cool. Then add a dozen beaten eggs, the pepper, and the salt to the bowl and stir a little. Clean the frying pan. Put half a cup of oil in it, warm the oil over gentle heat, and pour back into it the potato-and-egg mixture. Cover it with a lid. Turn the heat to the gentlest (you may need a heat diffuser to even it out). Cook until the omelet is just set, shaking the pan occasionally and in later stages lifting the omelet with the spatula to prevent sticking. Finish the omelet off under the broiler for a moment.

Oh, I forgot, the dog. What will actually happen is this. You will break the eggs as Geoffrey did, directly into a bowl. You have obediently bought free-range eggs, eggs of chickens that are let out to eat over open country. Such eggs are, consequently, laid in different places. Occasionally it takes the farmer a while to find one of them. And for this reason or another it is bad. That would not matter except that you have just dropped this bad egg into the ten you have already cracked and it spoils them. So throw the whole mess away and start again. Always crack eggs into a cup one by one, then pour into the bowl.

On your second try everything is fine until you get to the final bit. No recipe can tell you precisely how to shake and lift, and you get it wrong. The omelet sticks and burns. Not enough to ruin it but enough to make it not very good. Give it to the dog.

Cats will often refuse an omelet, but kittens may eat a little. If you can get two of them, there is a chance one might. But dogs are better. At this point someone will suggest adding to the recipe instead of a dog "a pauper." Why not give the omelet to the poor? Now, I'm not going to get into this discussion here and now, though I find modern paupers even less reliable than kittens when it comes to unsuccessful dishes. Suffice it to say that you are having enough problems making a simple omelet without trying the reform of the Social Security system.

By now, though, you see the point, indeed several of them. Conservative cooks do not serve their first attempts at dishes to guests. It is not kind. They practice a new dish several times, and they anticipate failure. They know that no recipe can give them all they need to know, and that techniques -- practical matters -- are not well taught by printed instructions. In fact the missing ingredient I mentioned is, of course, a friend, a friend who knows how to cook a Spanish omelet. He will show you. And you can throw away the recipe.

Michael Oakeshott, the conservative political philosopher, put it like this, "It might be supposed that an ignorant man, some edible materials, and a cookery book compose together the necessities of . . . cooking. But nothing is further from the truth. . . . The cookery book is the stepchild not the parent of the activity. [It] may set a man to dressing a dinner but if it were his sole guide, he could never in fact begin: the book speaks only to those who know already the kind of thing to expect from it and consequently how to interpret it."